First Things journal publishes my letter--November issue
I am a subscriber to First Things, a journal that focuses on the right of religious people to express their views in the public square in the discussion of public policy.
A major aspect of the expression of religious beliefs in relation to public policy is the ability of religious people to work together for common goals. This occasionally involves the question of how much the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should be regarded as a "Christian" church, since some "Christians" (such as Southern Baptists) oppose giving any recognition or legitimacy to the Mormons, even when the Mormons wish to work together on common social goals. Some of that hostility was demonstrated explicitly during the presidential primary run of Mitt Romney.
On occasion, First Things founder Father Richard John Neuhaus has gone out of his way to question whether Mormons are Christian, such as in his review several years ago of the book Mormon America by his friend, journalist and former Time Magazine religion editor Richard Ostling.
Happily, in the October issue, First Things allowed Elder Bruce Porter of the First Quorum of Seventy (a general leader of the LDS Church who oversees various programs) to present an essay about his own and other Mormons' strong faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior of mankind. It was accompanied by an essay by Richard McDermott, an Evangelical theologian who co-authored the book Claiming Christ with BYU professor Robert Millett. First Things' web page (FirstThings.com) also carries an hour of telephone interviews with the two authors by an editor who is a faculty member at Creighton University, a Catholic institution in Omaha, where I used to live. I recommended he present further questions about Mormonism to my friend Colin Mangrum who is a professor on the law school faculty there. My letter to First Things correcting some of the misstatements in McDermott's essay appears in an earlier entry here at my blog.
In the current (November 2008) issue of First Things they have printed my earlier letter commenting on articles relevant to the question "Is Mormonism Christian?" that had appeared in the June/July issue. The letter appears below:
The June/July 2008 issue of First Things had a kind of synchronicity for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
First, N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, responded (Correspondence, June/July 2008) to Richard John Neuhaus’ comments on his new book, Surprised by Hope, which had included a criticism that its “concrete eschatological expectation” of a physical resurrection on a perfected earth was “more suggestive of Joseph Smith than St. Paul”-noting that Mormons were simply taking seriously the relevant passages in the New Testament at the very time that “the Western Protestant church . . . was eliminating the ancient concrete eschatological expectation.”
Then Joseph Stanford, commenting on Robert Louis Wilken’s discussion of Christological interpretation of the Old Testament, noted that the Book of Mormon is replete with the affirmation that the Old Testament prophets actually foresaw Christ.
Finally, Fr. Neuhaus (While We’re At It, June/July 2008) takes note that the long-held Orthodox doctrine of theosis, or deification-paraphrasing Irenaeus, “God became man so that man . . . might become God”-is “getting serious attention from evangelical Protestant theologians” as evidenced by the new book Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions. “And yes” he says, “Mormons also have what appears to be a version of the idea.”
All three of these ideas-the ultimate possession of the transformed earth by the physically resurrected saints, the explicit prophecies about Christ by pre-Christian prophets, and the deification of man as the ultimate goal of salvation through Christ-are ideas for which Mormons are still deemed un-Christian, because they are distinct from the teachings of most Protestant denominations. Yet, as is evident from the pages of First Things, these so-called Mormon ideas are ones with a long Christian pedigree, dating back to the original saints of the New Testament period, a fact noted by scholars like Wright, Wilken, and the contributors to the book edited by Christensen and Wittung.
Fr. Neuhaus and others writing in the pages of First Things have taken up the question “Are Mormons Christian?” a question that was renewed with the past candidacy of Mitt Romney for the presidency. Since these three ideas are now identified as within the spectrum of legitimate Christian belief, a Mormon can hope that, the next time the question is raised in these pages, these three beliefs held by the Latter-day Saints will be moved from the down side to the plus side of the answer.
A major aspect of the expression of religious beliefs in relation to public policy is the ability of religious people to work together for common goals. This occasionally involves the question of how much the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should be regarded as a "Christian" church, since some "Christians" (such as Southern Baptists) oppose giving any recognition or legitimacy to the Mormons, even when the Mormons wish to work together on common social goals. Some of that hostility was demonstrated explicitly during the presidential primary run of Mitt Romney.
On occasion, First Things founder Father Richard John Neuhaus has gone out of his way to question whether Mormons are Christian, such as in his review several years ago of the book Mormon America by his friend, journalist and former Time Magazine religion editor Richard Ostling.
Happily, in the October issue, First Things allowed Elder Bruce Porter of the First Quorum of Seventy (a general leader of the LDS Church who oversees various programs) to present an essay about his own and other Mormons' strong faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior of mankind. It was accompanied by an essay by Richard McDermott, an Evangelical theologian who co-authored the book Claiming Christ with BYU professor Robert Millett. First Things' web page (FirstThings.com) also carries an hour of telephone interviews with the two authors by an editor who is a faculty member at Creighton University, a Catholic institution in Omaha, where I used to live. I recommended he present further questions about Mormonism to my friend Colin Mangrum who is a professor on the law school faculty there. My letter to First Things correcting some of the misstatements in McDermott's essay appears in an earlier entry here at my blog.
In the current (November 2008) issue of First Things they have printed my earlier letter commenting on articles relevant to the question "Is Mormonism Christian?" that had appeared in the June/July issue. The letter appears below:
The June/July 2008 issue of First Things had a kind of synchronicity for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
First, N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, responded (Correspondence, June/July 2008) to Richard John Neuhaus’ comments on his new book, Surprised by Hope, which had included a criticism that its “concrete eschatological expectation” of a physical resurrection on a perfected earth was “more suggestive of Joseph Smith than St. Paul”-noting that Mormons were simply taking seriously the relevant passages in the New Testament at the very time that “the Western Protestant church . . . was eliminating the ancient concrete eschatological expectation.”
Then Joseph Stanford, commenting on Robert Louis Wilken’s discussion of Christological interpretation of the Old Testament, noted that the Book of Mormon is replete with the affirmation that the Old Testament prophets actually foresaw Christ.
Finally, Fr. Neuhaus (While We’re At It, June/July 2008) takes note that the long-held Orthodox doctrine of theosis, or deification-paraphrasing Irenaeus, “God became man so that man . . . might become God”-is “getting serious attention from evangelical Protestant theologians” as evidenced by the new book Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions. “And yes” he says, “Mormons also have what appears to be a version of the idea.”
All three of these ideas-the ultimate possession of the transformed earth by the physically resurrected saints, the explicit prophecies about Christ by pre-Christian prophets, and the deification of man as the ultimate goal of salvation through Christ-are ideas for which Mormons are still deemed un-Christian, because they are distinct from the teachings of most Protestant denominations. Yet, as is evident from the pages of First Things, these so-called Mormon ideas are ones with a long Christian pedigree, dating back to the original saints of the New Testament period, a fact noted by scholars like Wright, Wilken, and the contributors to the book edited by Christensen and Wittung.
Fr. Neuhaus and others writing in the pages of First Things have taken up the question “Are Mormons Christian?” a question that was renewed with the past candidacy of Mitt Romney for the presidency. Since these three ideas are now identified as within the spectrum of legitimate Christian belief, a Mormon can hope that, the next time the question is raised in these pages, these three beliefs held by the Latter-day Saints will be moved from the down side to the plus side of the answer.