(1) The text in this place, as well as other places, was heavily conditioned by scriptures sometime after circa 630 to 613 BCE, beginning at the time of the aftermath of the so-called “Deuteronomist Reforms” to modify the original theological pronouncements of the older texts (this, of course, would not necessarily account for both the major differences in style and apparent lateness of some of the vocabulary used in Isaiah chapters 40-66, as compared with Isaiah 1-39).
(2) This passage is one of those passages that have been
interpolated into the original text of Isaiah sometime after Isaiah penned his
texts, and an anthology assembled. (If so, we could just as well ignore and
dismiss it now . . .
(3) Jesus, as Jehovah, is speaking as if he were the Father
and here is giving the total credit for the whole of the creation to the
Father, even though he, the Son, was the intermediary through whom the entire
universe was made (the Greek New Testament states that this intermediary is
also distinct in number). Incidentally, this text seem to be a favorite among
some Jews who are engaged in polemics against Christians. Why? Christian
doctrine also posits that a someone was with God during the
creation, and that that someone was the Son by whom the creation
of God was carried out. According to the New Testament, the Father was not
alone in the creation. The early Christian doctrine involving this
situation has as precedent a literal understanding of the situation of Wisdom
with God at the creation in the Greek Septuagint text (Proverbs 8:22-31).
Several early Christian writers posited that the Wisdom in that selfsame
passage was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself—long before his
own incarnation! Another passage in Proverbs also can be seen as a basis for
the idea of a Son of God. This is a rhetorical question asked by the author of
this passage in Proverbs (Agur the son of Jakeh), wherein he asks:
Who hath
ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists?
who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of
the earth? what is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou
canst tell?
So, God had someone with him. It might be seen as a serious
contradiction between this arrangement and the very text of Isaiah—if we were
to ignore the fuller contexts and take this above Isaiah text both literally
and at face value, as it currently stands. . . .
(4) Israel had a serious problem with worshipping other
creator-gods and savior-gods of their foreign neighbors. It is possible that
the LORD (in the Kethiv) attempted to prevent that very issue from happening by
simply asking a rhetorical question, not mentioning anyone else involved but
himself. Had the LORD then mentioned that there were others involved,
Israel probably would have gone off and tried to worship the others as well!
This sort of thing precisely was what the LORD also was trying to discourage
throughout Isaiah chapters 40-48, assuming no changes to any one of the texts.
As discussed above, the text of Isaiah 44:9-17 is the immediately preceding
context that governs interpretation of Isaiah 44:24, and other passages quoted
above from the same section of Isaiah.
(5) Alternatively, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are in
this place described as a perfect unity, and therefore could use those
first person, singular pronouns, etc., found in this verse, thus conflicting
neither with the text of Abraham 4 (nor with any other passages from other LDS
scripture texts), not with LDS doctrine. This same kind of language is used
throughout the Bible (even more so in the Old Testament than in the New)
to express various forms of unity. For example, the Church is spoken of as one
body, using singular pronouns and verbs to describe the actions of this body
(Ephesians 4:16) which is composed of separate and distinct members or
individuals. (Compare also 1 Corinthians 6:17, wherein the text states that
whoever “is joined to the Lord is one spirit.”)
Once this is fully understood and comprehended, Latter-day
Saint doctrine actually and truly has little to no problems with any aspect of
the idea of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost being represented as one God.
Indeed, says John Taylor: “The Lord appeared unto Joseph Smith, both the Father
and the Son.” (Journal of Discourses 21:65)
D. Charles Pyle, I Have Said Ye Are Gods:
Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic
Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament (Revised and
Supplemented)
(North Charleston, S.C.: CreateSpace, 2018), 138-41
