I suggest that the Mormon view of the relation of the divine persons to the Godhead can be outlined as follows:
1. Distinct Persons. There is exactly one Most High God, the Father. There are three
in the Godhead who have shared the intimate relationship of indwelling love
from all eternity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three distinct
divine persons who are one Godhead in virtue of their voluntary indwelling
unity. Each of the three divine persons is a distinct person in the fullest
modern sense of the word, having distinct cognitive and conative personalities.
Each also possesses a unique material body. Because each of these capacities
requires a distinct consciousness, each divine person is a distinct center of consciousness.
2. Loving Dependence and Ontological Independence. The Son and the Holy Ghost are subordinate
to the Father and dependent on their relationship of indwelling unity and love
with the Father for their divinity. That is, the Father is the source or font
of divinity of the Son and Holy Ghost. If the oneness of the Son and/or Holy
Ghost with the Father should cease, then so would their divinity. Further, it
is inconceivable that the Father could be fully divine in isolation from them
because the divine attributes are literally actualized by the love of the
divine persons for each other. The divine properties of a fulness of deity
emerge from the relationship of unity of the divine persons. The emergent
divinity also deifies each of the persons in the Godhead and each is thus a God
in unity of shared divinity. The divine persons are essentially related to each
other in a genetic sense as members of the same divine family. The Son is not
only equally divine with the Father; he is the Father’s Son—the perfect reflection
of the Father’s likeness and image because he is begotten as issue of the
Father. The Spirit is the exact replica of them both as their joint agent and advocate.
They are defined both in their individual identities and also in the kind of
beings that they are by these essential relations. However, the Son and Holy
Ghost do not depend upon the Father for their existence as individuals and thus
each of the divine persons has individual or de re ontologically
necessary existence.
3. Divinity. Godhood or the divine nature is the immutable set of
essential properties necessary to be divine. There is only one Godhood or
divine essence in this sense. Each of the distinct divine persons shares
equally this set of great-making properties which are severally necessary and jointly
sufficient for their possessor to be divine. Each of the divine persons has
this essence, though none is simply identical with it. All of the divine
persons or gods belong to the same genus or kind as the one God in the sense
that they equally possess the same divine nature.
4. Indwelling Unity. The divine persons actualize the divine nature of virtue of
a voluntary relationship of indwelling love or perichoresis with each
other. The unity of the divine persons falls short of identity but is intensely
more intimate than merely belonging to the same class or genus. There are
distinct divine persons, but not separated or independent divine persons.
Because the divine persons have access to the mental states of each other, they
are fully transparent to each other and in the divine life there are no
barriers between the persons; and thus there is no alienation, isolation, insulation,
secretiveness, or aloneness. The divine persons exist in a unity that includes
loving, interpenetrating and intersubjective awareness of another who is also in
one’s self. The divine persons somehow spiritually extend their personal presence,
awareness, and power to dwell in each other and thus become “one” “in” each
other. Thus, the divine persons as one Godhead logically cannot experience
the alienation and separation that characterizes human existence. The Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost have freely chosen to be in this relationship of indwelling
unity in each moment for all eternity.
5. Deification. Humans may share the same fulness of divinity as the divine
persons in the Godhead through grace by becoming one with the divine persons in
the same sense that they are one with each other. However, humans are eternally
subordinate to and dependent on their relationship of loving unity with the divine
persons for their status as gods. By acting as one with the Godhead,
deified humans will share fully in the divine nature, including the attributes
of knowledge, power, and glory. These are divine persons or gods other than the
father who are subordinate to the one God . . .
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: Of Gods and
Gods (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2008), 260-61
