As I’ve noted a few times before, I’m a de facto Trinitarian, but I can’t say that I’m tremendously invested in the Trinity as an orthodox doctrine of Christianity. I know that some of this has to do with my Mormonism—growing up in a non-Trinitarian tradition has surely shaped my thinking about this—but I don’t think that’s really what’s going on here. Yes, I’m often sympathetic to the beliefs of the tradition I spent so much time in, but I’m also a non-theist who tends to see God as more of a metaphor for humans’ fleeting experiences with the ultimate than as someone whose nature and consubstantiality can (and must) be understood in distinct terms.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post about an important part of RLDS history that I mostly love but also get slightly annoyed by. In short, Wallace Smith, who was then prophet-president of the RLDS Church, was put on the spot by a local seminary professor, who asked the following question:

If our mutual studies of Christianity and the RLDS Church were to discovere that there was a discrepancy between what Jesus taught and what Joseph Smith taught, which would you accept?

Really loving this (six year old) podcast episode. I don’t care much about the Trinity except when it’s understood in the ways that Karin Peter and Susan Ocley describe here.