Is Mormonism Christian?
In the October 2008 issue of First Things, a journal of the application of religious principles to public policy, two essays were presented under the title, Is Mormonism Christian? The first is by Bruce Porter, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of the LDS Church, one if its top leadership. The second is by Professor Gerald McDermott of Roanoke College. They can be viewed at FirstThings.com. I wrote the following letter to the editor:
As a longtime subscriber to First Things I would like to thank you for your presentation of the discussion, “Is Mormonism Christian?” in the October issue. Presenting a first-hand account of Mormon beliefs about Christ by a believing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is something that is rarely done by any publication. Bruce D. Porter simply testifies that Latter-day Saints believe literally in the New Testament message that Jesus is the Son of God, the Creator, and the resurrected Savior of all mankind. Similar personal testimonies can be found at JesusChrist.lds.org.
I have enjoyed reading Professor Gerald McDermott’s book, coauthored with Professor Robert Millet of Brigham Young University, Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate, and I am grateful for his witness in that book, and in this article, that “Jesus Christ is central to the Book of Mormon” (p.38). This is a simple fact that many critics of LDS beliefs simply refuse to admit, but one that any honest reader, like McDermott, will acknowledge.
I therefore point out my disagreement with McDermott about his four reasons for distinguishing Christ in the Bible and Christ in the Book of Mormon in the spirit of further dialogue.
First, McDermott claims “there is only one voice testifying to the authenticity of the American Jesus . . . Joseph Smith.” This is like saying that there is only one voice testifying to the authenticity of the Jesus who appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus.
But it also ignores the other personal witnesses besides Smith. McDermott leaves an inaccurate impression when he says that “none of the eleven witnesses [of the Book of Mormon] claimed to be able to translate the writings on the plates.” While it is true that the eight men who stood together and held and hefted the golden plates, and whose affidavit has been printed in every copy of the Book of Mormon, had a very prosaic experience with a material object, it is also true that the three other men, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, affirm in a separate affidavit that they had a much more significant experience. All three men affirmed literally to their dying days that, after kneeling in prayer near Whitmer’s home in Fayette, New York, they had seen an angel holding the plates, and “that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us.” (See their affidavit) So there are four men who testify of the reality of the message of the Book of Mormon, and its testimony of Christ, and join voices with the four evangelists in testifying that he is the Son of God.
Additionally, on April 3, 1836, Cowdery was with Smith at Kirtland, Ohio, in experiencing a vision of the resurrected Savior. And on February 16, 1832, at Hiram, Ohio, before a dozen witnesses, Sidney Rigdon shared a vision with Smith in which they jointly testified “And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives! For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the only begotten of the Father-That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.” (Doctrine & Covenants Section 76, verses 22 to 24)
Second, McDermott feels the Book of Mormon witness of Christ has less value because it is modern, rather than ancient, despite the book’s own assertion that Christ came to a small group of believers in the Americas within a year of his resurrection. Secular critics of Mormonism assert that all documents claiming the reality of the resurrected Christ are preposterous, and that modern ones simply make it more obvious. But the Book of Mormon declares its purpose to stand as a second witness affirming the reality of the miracles of the Old and New Testaments in an age when many doubt them, “in an age of railways” as Charles Dickens put it.
Third, McDermott thinks the Christ described in the Book of Mormon is not quite the same as the one in the gospels, because he is “fixated on America.” That is like saying the Jesus who never departed the Holy Land in his mortal life is “fixated on Palestine”. The Book of Mormon declares that its purpose is “the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.” Christ appearing and teaching in the ancient Americas as well as in Judea, and Galilee, and Asia Minor, is an affirmation that he is Lord over all the earth, and over all mankind.
Fourth, McDermott adopts an evolutionary theory of Smith’s beliefs about deity, much like the evolutionary theories that claim that the gospels are fiction that developed in the wake of Jesus’ death. He says that the Book of Mormon indicates Smith believed in a Trinitarian God in 1829, but adopted a social trinity view before his death in 1844. He ignores the fact that Smith’s first vision, in 1820, revealed the Father and the Son as two similar beings, and that the Son denounced the creeds of that day for teaching the doctrines of men. This was clearly a reference to the concepts of God as being a bodiless entity without emotion that were imported from the philosophy that was the intellectual consensus of the Roman Empire at the time of the Council of Nicea.
McDermott’s main brief against the Mormon concept of Christ is that he prefers his own extra-biblical documents, the creeds of the fourth century and forward, to the extra-biblical documents of the Mormons. The Mormons point out that neither Jesus, nor Peter nor Paul ever stated that it is necessary to believe in a God who lacks body or passions in order to be saved. Instead, they call on all mankind to believe in a Christ who has a resurrected body that was felt by the apostles, who experienced suffering, both physical and emotional, to pay the price of sin for all mankind, and to fulfill the love of the Father for all of us in the world. The Latter-day Saints believe in the resurrected, suffering Christ, beloved by the Father, in whom the first, pre-Nicene saints believed.
McDermott graciously acknowledges that nothing he has said bars Mormons from salvation: “We are saved by a merciful Trinity, not by our theology.” Since Mormons read the Bible literally, are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, seek forgiveness and admission to God’s presence through the merits of the Atonement, pray to the Father in the name of Christ, and can reach salvation like any Baptist or Catholic, what is the purpose of ostracizing them as “non-Christian”?
At a time when the forces of secularism seek ascendancy in America, when many in power want to suppress the assertion that the word of God is relevant to public policy, shouldn’t Christians of all kinds look for reasons to unite with other believers in the living God? To focus on sectarian distinctions when Christianity is under siege is to emulate the internecine squabbles within Jerusalem that led to its destruction by the pagan Romans.
As a longtime subscriber to First Things I would like to thank you for your presentation of the discussion, “Is Mormonism Christian?” in the October issue. Presenting a first-hand account of Mormon beliefs about Christ by a believing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is something that is rarely done by any publication. Bruce D. Porter simply testifies that Latter-day Saints believe literally in the New Testament message that Jesus is the Son of God, the Creator, and the resurrected Savior of all mankind. Similar personal testimonies can be found at JesusChrist.lds.org.
I have enjoyed reading Professor Gerald McDermott’s book, coauthored with Professor Robert Millet of Brigham Young University, Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate, and I am grateful for his witness in that book, and in this article, that “Jesus Christ is central to the Book of Mormon” (p.38). This is a simple fact that many critics of LDS beliefs simply refuse to admit, but one that any honest reader, like McDermott, will acknowledge.
I therefore point out my disagreement with McDermott about his four reasons for distinguishing Christ in the Bible and Christ in the Book of Mormon in the spirit of further dialogue.
First, McDermott claims “there is only one voice testifying to the authenticity of the American Jesus . . . Joseph Smith.” This is like saying that there is only one voice testifying to the authenticity of the Jesus who appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus.
But it also ignores the other personal witnesses besides Smith. McDermott leaves an inaccurate impression when he says that “none of the eleven witnesses [of the Book of Mormon] claimed to be able to translate the writings on the plates.” While it is true that the eight men who stood together and held and hefted the golden plates, and whose affidavit has been printed in every copy of the Book of Mormon, had a very prosaic experience with a material object, it is also true that the three other men, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, affirm in a separate affidavit that they had a much more significant experience. All three men affirmed literally to their dying days that, after kneeling in prayer near Whitmer’s home in Fayette, New York, they had seen an angel holding the plates, and “that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us.” (See their affidavit) So there are four men who testify of the reality of the message of the Book of Mormon, and its testimony of Christ, and join voices with the four evangelists in testifying that he is the Son of God.
Additionally, on April 3, 1836, Cowdery was with Smith at Kirtland, Ohio, in experiencing a vision of the resurrected Savior. And on February 16, 1832, at Hiram, Ohio, before a dozen witnesses, Sidney Rigdon shared a vision with Smith in which they jointly testified “And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives! For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the only begotten of the Father-That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.” (Doctrine & Covenants Section 76, verses 22 to 24)
Second, McDermott feels the Book of Mormon witness of Christ has less value because it is modern, rather than ancient, despite the book’s own assertion that Christ came to a small group of believers in the Americas within a year of his resurrection. Secular critics of Mormonism assert that all documents claiming the reality of the resurrected Christ are preposterous, and that modern ones simply make it more obvious. But the Book of Mormon declares its purpose to stand as a second witness affirming the reality of the miracles of the Old and New Testaments in an age when many doubt them, “in an age of railways” as Charles Dickens put it.
Third, McDermott thinks the Christ described in the Book of Mormon is not quite the same as the one in the gospels, because he is “fixated on America.” That is like saying the Jesus who never departed the Holy Land in his mortal life is “fixated on Palestine”. The Book of Mormon declares that its purpose is “the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.” Christ appearing and teaching in the ancient Americas as well as in Judea, and Galilee, and Asia Minor, is an affirmation that he is Lord over all the earth, and over all mankind.
Fourth, McDermott adopts an evolutionary theory of Smith’s beliefs about deity, much like the evolutionary theories that claim that the gospels are fiction that developed in the wake of Jesus’ death. He says that the Book of Mormon indicates Smith believed in a Trinitarian God in 1829, but adopted a social trinity view before his death in 1844. He ignores the fact that Smith’s first vision, in 1820, revealed the Father and the Son as two similar beings, and that the Son denounced the creeds of that day for teaching the doctrines of men. This was clearly a reference to the concepts of God as being a bodiless entity without emotion that were imported from the philosophy that was the intellectual consensus of the Roman Empire at the time of the Council of Nicea.
McDermott’s main brief against the Mormon concept of Christ is that he prefers his own extra-biblical documents, the creeds of the fourth century and forward, to the extra-biblical documents of the Mormons. The Mormons point out that neither Jesus, nor Peter nor Paul ever stated that it is necessary to believe in a God who lacks body or passions in order to be saved. Instead, they call on all mankind to believe in a Christ who has a resurrected body that was felt by the apostles, who experienced suffering, both physical and emotional, to pay the price of sin for all mankind, and to fulfill the love of the Father for all of us in the world. The Latter-day Saints believe in the resurrected, suffering Christ, beloved by the Father, in whom the first, pre-Nicene saints believed.
McDermott graciously acknowledges that nothing he has said bars Mormons from salvation: “We are saved by a merciful Trinity, not by our theology.” Since Mormons read the Bible literally, are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, seek forgiveness and admission to God’s presence through the merits of the Atonement, pray to the Father in the name of Christ, and can reach salvation like any Baptist or Catholic, what is the purpose of ostracizing them as “non-Christian”?
At a time when the forces of secularism seek ascendancy in America, when many in power want to suppress the assertion that the word of God is relevant to public policy, shouldn’t Christians of all kinds look for reasons to unite with other believers in the living God? To focus on sectarian distinctions when Christianity is under siege is to emulate the internecine squabbles within Jerusalem that led to its destruction by the pagan Romans.