A. Keith Thompson, a Latter-day Saint from Australia, has released a new book which will be of interest to those who follow this blog:
Trinity and Monotheism: A historical and theological review of the origins and substance of the doctrine (also available on Book Depository and Amazon)
Here is the description of the book provided by the publisher:
Trinity and Monotheism: A historical and theological review of the origins and substance of the doctrine (also available on Book Depository and Amazon)
Here is the description of the book provided by the publisher:
This book traces the idea of monotheism from
Egypt in the 13th century B.C., through Israel’s Divine Council down into Greek
and Roman times when the rabbis were trying to protect their sacred religion
from confusion with the god pantheons of those empires. The book identifies
Jewish criticism of heretical Christian polytheism as the watershed which the
Trinity doctrine was developed to answer.
The Trinity doctrine is then traced through
the Nicene Council in 325 A.D., the schism between East and West and into
Anglican Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s innovation of a God “without body, parts
or passions” in 1553.
The book ends with brief discussion of the
Christology of the Unitarian, LDS and Jehovah’s Witness faiths and concludes
that as intended, ‘Constantine’s Creed’ accommodates differences in Christian
belief because he wanted to use that faith as glue that would hold his Empire
together.
A. Keith Thompson is a Professor of Law and
the Associate Dean at the Sydney School of Law of The University of Notre Dame
Australia. He previously worked for twenty years as International Legal Counsel
for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Pacific and then
through the African Continent.