Mormons to Christians to Jews…
There’s a current discussion on Twitter about why John McCain became, by default, the Republican candidate for President rather than the very impressive Mitt Romney. Some folks are still angry with Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, for asking (disingenuous? I really don’t know, perhaps he was genuinely ignorant) questions about what Mormons believe.
For a lot of people on the outside, this is a ridiculous debate: “Of course Mormons are Chrsitians! They believe in Jesus!”
But for people who pay attention to theology it’s not about the word “Jesus” or even believing that a person lived and died and rose again about 2,000 years ago – it’s about who you think that person was and what you think he did.
Traditional Christianity has embraced and taught from the beginning that God is a Triune Being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and the Three together comprise God. This is one of the places that Christianity separates from its Jewish roots: Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” and understands it to mean the Triune God but Jews focus on “one” and say, “No, God can’t be a Trinity.” Obviously, as a Christian, I believe the two can be reconciled – but that discussion isn’t the topic of this post.
The LDS don’t believe in the Trinity; they don’t believe in eternal unchanging God; the Mormons believe that God was once a man and that a perfectly realized Mormon man has the potential to become god in his own future creation. This is radically different from either the Christian or Jewish view of God’s eternal and unchanging nature, “Who Was and Is and Is To Come.”
Normative (“orthodox” with a little “o”) Christianity believes that Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity, that He has been God and with God from eternity past to eternity future, always and forever. John says it beautifully in the first chapter of his gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4)
Obviously that is not the Jewish view of Jesus or God and fair enough; they’re not Christians, of course they don’t believe what Christianity teaches. But that’s not the Mormon view, either. According to the theology of the LDS, Jesus and Lucifer are both spirit sons of God the father (who was once a man) and each came up with a plan to reconcile fallen humanity with God and God the father preferred the plan of his son Jesus over the plan of his son Lucifer, who took offense.
Now I don’t know much about what Mormons believe happened to Lucifer after God rejected his plan and it’s not relevant to my point. The fact that Mormon theology makes Jesus and Lucifer equal beings prior to the incarnation makes the Mormon Jesus very, very different from the normative Christian Jesus. The fact that the Mormon Jesus wasn’t with God from the beginning makes him very, very different from the normative Christian Jesus.
Details regarding the conception of Jesus and the scope of the forgiveness Jesus achieved on the cross and the Person of the Holy Spirit all show a significant difference between Mormon beliefs and orthodox Christian beliefs.
Simply using the name “Jesus” and pointing to an historical figure to say, “we believe in THAT guy,” doesn’t mean we believe the same things about “that guy.” Christianity believes that Jesus is Creator and Lucifer is part of the created order; they have never been equal or equivalent beings. In and of itself, the different understandings of God and Jesus, who they are, their history and their relationship is sufficient to mark a vast difference between the two religions.
My analogy is that the Mormon faith is to Christianity as Christianity is to Judaism. Christians embrace the Hebrew scriptures (although, to be fair, many Christians are greatly ignorant of the Hebrew scriptures and some suffer confusion about the very nature of the “old testament God” – but those are personal limitations and not reflected by normative Christian theology) and then ADD the new testament, the gospels and epistles. Likewise the Mormons embrace the Christian bible (old & new testament) and ADD another gospel and additional books that form specific Mormon theology. Joseph Smith was told by his angelic source that none of the churches were rightly following Jesus and he needed to form a new one. So he did.
I think the LDS and Mitt Romney in particular would be better served to acknowledge that they are Mormon and while the religion has some similarities with Christianity it is significantly different. In my opinion Christians shouldn’t try to pass themselves off as Jews and Mormons shouldn’t try to pass themselves off as unqualified Christians – it looks deceptive to people who know something about the differing theology.
Frankly, at that point it’s like the same-sex marriage debate: you can call it a “marriage” but that doesn’t make it a “marriage”… It’s a truth-in-advertising and/or accuracy-in-labeling question.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I grew up with the belief that if you acknowldge that Jesus is the Son of God, and accept him into your life as such, you will be saved. I am not in any way a biblical scholar. I went to church and sunday school growing up and I did not continue. Where I mainly disagree with you is that the Mormons do consider themselves as Christian whereas the “Jews” do not. I have attended bible study as a child in the LDS church, and it was not all that different than my regular Baptist bible school. I think that the Mormon religion has evolved over time as have ALL religions and I truly believe that it’s wrong to flat out state tht a certain group is not Christian. JMHO But thanks for the forum!
March 11th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Thanks for your comment, rcul8r – I think the question, and it may be subtle, is this: does belief in Jesus, by any definition & whoever He happens to be, sufficient to save us?
Now obviously we are human and our perception & understanding of God is going to be very limited – BUT God regularly warns us to avoid idolatry, something easy for us to fall into. If we worship God and our understanding is limited but not greatly erroneous, He receives our worship, leads us in grace and truth, opens His word to us, etc. And our understanding of Who God Is grows.
But what if we worship God and our concept of God is at odds with what God says about Himself? Is that still building a saving relationship?
I hope so – but I don’t know for sure. I have a lot of Mormon friends (and some family members, too) and I pray that they are saved by the blood of Jesus, just as I am. I pray that our varied conceptions of Who God Is and Who Jesus Is and what He did are not so different as to lead someone into damnation– but I don’t know that for sure and I’m not comfortable saying, “It doesn’t matter if you believe that Jesus who died on the cross is the spirit-brother of Lucifer and his blood covers the sin of Adam; it doesn’t matter if you believe God was once a man as you are a man.”
Maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe that all falls within God’s “acceptable human ignorance” range – but when I see specific and direct conflicts with scripture, both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, I get nervous.
I’ve had friends observe that many LDS outside Utah and other heavily Mormon areas may not know their own theology and may not know how much it differs from normative Christianity.
I have a friend who grew up Mormon, attended BYU, and in the course of a conversation admitted that she’d never read the Bible and sort of felt that BYU and the (LDS) church had discouraged them from reading the Bible & wanted them to focus on specifically Mormon scriptures. Out of curiosity she started reading the Bible and became convinced that these are indeed two difference religions and she ultimately left the LDS and joined an orthodox (little “o”!) Christian church.
All I did was point her at the Bible and encourage her to read it and see what God says in it.
My question remains, however: if you believe that you have scriptures and understanding of the faith which is so superior as to require separating yourself from the mainstream churches and keep folks who haven’t been baptized in your particular form of faith from even entering your temples, then WHY would you want to be known by the same generic name? WHY wouldn’t you witness to normative Christians and try to bring us into a right understanding of God, Jesus and salvation?
HAPPILY I have no input (zero, zilch, none) into who is saved and who is not – that is ENTIRELY God’s prerogative and I trust Him. But I also know Jesus warns us to enter by the narrow gate and wide is the way which leads to destruction; I don’t define the narrow gate but look to the Bible to show me its dimensions.