“THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT MORMONS AND EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS aren’t as far apart in their theology as some of us had supposed. The bad news is that Mormons and Evangelical Christians aren’t as far apart in their theology as some of us had supposed.”
The wry words were from the late Eugene England, founding editor of Dialogue and a BYU professor. He was evaluating How Wide the Divide?, and he was ambivalent. How Wide the Divide?, published in 1997 by the Evangelical InterVarsity Press, is a dialogue between Craig L. Blomberg of Denver Seminary (Conservative Baptist) and Stephen Robinson of BYU, who first met at an annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, the professional association of Bible scholars. England appreciated the “gracious spirit” of the conversation as a model for interfaith discussion between two old warring religious camps. But he was wary. Blomberg clearly remained an Evangelical, and England thought Robinson may have given away too much.
Behind the polite dialogue lies an old and impolite question. Conventional Christians ask, “Are Mormons Christian?” and in asking think they already know the answer. And Mormons think they have a better, if unspoken answer. They are not only Christians, they are the only true Christians, and their church is the only true church of Jesus Christ.
“It is time for some folks on both sides to lower the rhetorical level, even if doing so entails risk. This book makes a strong move in that direction,” said Richard J. Mouw, reviewing the same work for Books and Culture. “As Robinson would have it, Mormons certainly do believe more than the New Testament’s presentation of the gospel, but they do not believe less…. I need more convincing.” Mouw is president of Fuller Theological Seminary, the nation’s largest interdenominational Evangelical seminary. He concluded, “This book should be carefully studied by anyone who is convinced that such a dialogue is a good and important thing to pursue.”
But Mouw was wary, especially of Robinson’s Evangelical-sounding rhetoric, because of the “larger set of beliefs and practices in which [his] confession is nested.” He warned, “Confusion about who God is and who we are before the face of that God is a very serious business.”
How Wide the Divide? is a debate on four topics: scripture; the nature of God and the deification of believers; the deity of Christ and the Trinity; and salvation and the eternal state. Each author wrote separately about each topic, and there was a joint conclusion about areas of agreement and disagreement. The book has sold well through the Deseret Book chain and Evangelical outlets.
Both authors acknowledged the mutual distrust in their respective histories. Blomberg, for example, recalled that when the Denver LDS temple opened near his home in 1986, some Protestant Fundamentalists picketed, shouted taunts, even threw stones. On the other hand, he noted, more recently some Mormons had slipped into the library at his seminary and stolen or damaged books considered to be anti-Mormon.
Reviewers on both sides expressed ambivalence: pleased at the civilized discourse, they were nevertheless uneasy about the content of the presentation.
England, for example, worried that Robinson tilted too much toward the Evangelical side in his handling of grace, works, and the atonement. Salvation, he wrote, is “not a quid-pro-quo reward (or punishment) by God but a state of being (or lack thereof), of spiritual growth toward Godhood achieved through whatever combination of grace and choice and effort best works for each of us.” He disliked Robinson’s “scriptural literalism,” finding that “he seems to want to define the resources for our theology much too narrowly.”
Mouw reacted most strongly against Robinson’s charge that traditional Christians have imposed Greek philosophical categories on the pure biblical understanding of the early Christian church. Any perspective can be analyzed in terms of its cultural context. The Book of Mormon, he pointed out, can be critiqued against the “striking affinities” with nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism in its “finite God, a perfectible humanity, and an emphasis on works righteousness.”
The Greek formulations, according to Mouw, were “not impositions of alien philosophical categories but the result of a necessary search for words that would capture the sense of Scripture to guard against dangerous misreadings of the biblical text.” He recommended John Courtney Murray’s The Problem of God (1964) and argued, “If LDS thinkers want to claim biblical fidelity, they must argue, not that they alone come to the Bible unencumbered by philosophical commitments, but rather that their peculiar metaphysical constructs are more adequate explications of the biblical message than those of historic Christianity.” Evangelical reviewers said Robinson claimed to believe every word of the King James Bible while fudging that Mormonism’s “insofar as it is correctly translated” rule is interpreted to subject the Bible to the higher standard of Smith’s scriptural writings. Others found it dubious that the absolutes of God as depicted by Robinson correlate with the finite and changeable deity of Smith’s King Follett Discourse.
For years, Mouw and BYU’s Robert Millet have led a private dialogue between evangelical and LDS thinkers. When Millet wrote A Different Jesus?: The Christ of the Latter-day Saints to explain LDS doctrines to Evangelicals, Mouw provided a charitable foreword and afterword. Standing Together Ministries, an evangelical group in Lehi, Utah, that also seeks improved relations, sponsored a remarkable event in 2004. Ravi Zacharias, a prominent Christian apologist born in India, spoke for an hour in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, said to be the first appearance there by an Evangelical since Dwight L. Moody’s 1899 talk.
Zacharias’ irenic presentation of orthodox Christianity’s differences with Mormonism was overshadowed by remarks from Mouw that created an Evangelical firestorm. “We Evangelicals have sinned against you,” Mouw told the thousands of Mormons. “We’ve often misrepresented the beliefs and practices” of LDS members. Mouw subsequently explained that he did not mean all Evangelicals were guilty of this, nor did he see Mormonism as orthodox, but wanted to foster potential to move Mormons toward belief in “salvation by grace alone” through Christ.
Mouw’s original review was titled “Can a Real Mormon Believe in Jesus?” The very question touches a very sensitive raw nerve. Mormons obsess about the question “Are Mormons Christian?” A Mormon guiding a friend through the Salt Lake City visitors’ center in Temple Square asked, with tears in her eyes, “Why do so many people say we are not Christians? How can they, when the Savior is central to our faith?” The friend paused and then responded, “But do you truly regard non-Mormon believers as fully Christian?” The Mormon, seemingly unaware of the quid pro quo in her answer, exclaimed, “But that’s because we have the priesthood!”
Are Mormons Christian? “What could prompt such a question?” asked Mormon scholar Philip Barlow of Hanover College, speaking at the 1998 Sunstone Symposium. “It’s a bit like asking if African Americans are human.” Barlow did not shy away from recognizing Mormonism as distinct, though Christian in intent at its core, but he thought that Mormons should not minimize the difference for public relations and evangelistic reasons. After all, Joseph Smith called other churches apostate, and they have responded in kind. (Speaking on a later Sunstone panel, Barlow asked local Baptist pastor Mike Gray whether Baptists are Christian. In good Baptist fashion, Gray answered, “Not necessarily.”)
Robinson wrote a full-length book aimed at an LDS audience asking the question Are Mormons Christians? to fortify the Saints with an answer. His BYU colleagues Robert Millet and Noel B. Reynolds put together a proselytizing booklet aimed at non-Mormons, Latter-Day Christianity: 10 Basic Issues, and the first section was titled “Are Latter-day Saints Christian?”
The big guns came out before the Southern Baptists arrived in Salt Lake City for their 1998 convention. Apostle Boyd K. Packer and Millet, then BYU’s dean of religious education, gave February addresses at BYU to brace the students for the Baptist onslaught. Packer pointed to the Christian content of some Latter-day Saint hymns, the reference to Jesus Christ in the name of the church, and the testimony of every prayer and sacrament invoking the name of Christ. Christ, he pointed out, dominates the Book of Mormon. To underscore this the church has enlarged “Jesus Christ” in its logo-type symbol and added the subtitle, “Another Testament of Jesus Christ” to the Book.
“One need not have answers to all [doctrinal] questions to receive the witness of the Spirit, join the Church, and remain faithful therein,” Packer told the students. “Do not be ill at ease or uncomfortable because you can give little more than your conviction…. Be assured that, if you will explain what you know and testify of what you feel, you may plant a seed that will grow and blossom into a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Millet’s devotional address focused on questions the students might face: How does the LDS Church justify its additions to the canon of Christian scripture? What do the Saints believe about God and deification? What do the Saints believe about works and grace? And are the Latter-day Saints Christian?
Along the way Millet quoted from C. S. Lewis, a Christianity Today piece admiringly listing five reasons why the LDS is successful, and the British Evangelical scholar-pastor John R. W. Stott. Millet advised the students to avoid disputation, to know that adversaries may not really understand LDS teachings, and to remember that “the Bible is not the source of our doctrine or authority…. Ours is an independent revelation…. Some of our greatest difficulties in handling questions about our faith come when we try to establish specific doctrines of the Restoration from the Bible alone.”
In 2001, the Vatican reached the significant decision that LDS converts to Catholicism must be rebaptized, though the church customarily accepts baptisms performed in most other denominations. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican daily, explained that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decided that Mormon baptism “is not the baptism that Christ instituted,” partly due to the LDS belief that “God the Father had a wife, the Celestial Mother, with whom he procreated Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.”
Prior to Rome’s ruling, Catholic conservative Father Richard John Neuhaus contended in his First Things magazine that it is “surely wrong” to see Mormonism as a Christian derivative in the way Christianity is a Jewish derivative, because the LDS faith is “in radical discontinuity with historic Christianity.” Neuhaus considered Islam a better parallel because it revises tenets and scriptures in ways Christianity did not with Judaism. The LDS church may present itself for evangelistic purposes as “Christianity-plus” or an “add-on,” Neuhaus concluded, but “dialogue with Mormons who represent official LDS teaching is interreligious dialogue.”
America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, staunchly opposes LDS theology. The second largest, the United Methodist Church, rejected LDS baptism in 2000 on grounds that Mormonism by self-definition “does not fit within the bounds of the historic, apostolic tradition of Christian faith.” A Methodist paper noted that the LDS church adds scriptures to the Judeo-Christian Bible and has “some radically differing doctrine on such matters of belief as the nature and being of God; the nature, origin and purpose of Jesus Christ; and the nature and way of salvation.” Other cited problems: God the Father is a procreating deity with “a body of flesh and bones” and is “male gendered and married to a heavenly mother of clear female gender.” Jesus is not eternal with the Father and is “an entirely separate and distinct being” identified with Jehovah, the Father’s oldest child. Mormonism uses the language of the Trinity but with different meaning and is tri-theistic or possibly polytheistic. Also, “Gods and humans are the same species of being, but at different stages of development,” and the goal of human salvation is “achievement of godhood.”
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was one of the first major bodies to study officially whether Mormons are Christians. The project began with a national Presbyterian convention in Salt Lake City in 1990, with a follow-up study released in 1995. Presbyterian guidelines state that the LDS church “expresses allegiance to Jesus Christ in terms used within the Christian tradition” but nonetheless is not regarded as “within the historic apostolic tradition of the Christian Church.”
Presbyterians are advised to treat Mormons as adherents of another religion, putting relations under the “interfaith” rubric. Besides the need for rebaptism, Mormons should not receive Presbyterian Communion; and weddings and funerals involving mixed families are handled as “interreligious” rather than intra-Christian rites. A more sharply edged Utah Presbyterian report said that “it would be accurate to classify Mormon theology as polytheistic rather than monotheistic.” It also said, “The only conclusion which can be reached is that the new and distinct religious tradition brought forth by the Mormon Church must be regarded as heretical.” The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod cites similar differences, though it politely “neither makes nor implies any judgment” on individual Mormons’ faith.
The Saints universally resent it when outsiders consign them to non-Christian or semi-Christian status. They consider the very “Are Mormons Christian?” question an insult. At the same time, however, their own scriptures virtually forbid Saints to recognize that the great churches of Christianity—Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant—have any authentic claim to be Christian. Robinson, for example, wrote that non-Mormons may have “opportunities to accept the gospel in the postmortal life,” but that “the historical church no longer possessed the gospel” after the Great Apostasy.
Asked by an active Mormon whether he considered Mormonism to be “Christian,” the ex-Mormon author Charles Larson responded, “I felt the proportion of Orthodox Christians who considered Mormonism to be Christian was probably about the same as that of Latter-day Saints who considered Orthodox Christianity acceptable in God’s sight.”
According to Joseph Smith’s scriptural account of his 1820 First Vision, he asked God which of the competing “sects” was correct. “I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.’”
In the Mormon understanding of history, the church literally disappeared shortly after Jesus’ apostles died, although apostate human organizations perpetuated the false claim to be Christian. The same process of apostasy was repeated among the believers in the New World who were visited by the Mormon Jesus. There was no church on earth during a hiatus of some 1,400 years until God intervened to restore apostolic governance through the prophet Joseph Smith and his successors. Traditional Christians maintain that the Mormon historical lacuna is contrary to Jesus’ New Testament promise that the Spirit would guide (“The gates of hell shall not prevail against [my church]”—Matthew 16:18) and that he would always be with the church (“Lo, I am with you always”—Matthew 28:20).
The late Hugh Nibley of BYU was among those who spelled out the LDS concept that the church existed for only a short time and dissolved into a severely corrupted form of belief, the Great Apostasy. Nibley contended that Jesus and the apostles expected this rapid end of the pure, primitive Christian church to occur. One indication, as Nibley read the New Testament, was that the apostles showed “complete indifference…to the great business of converting the world” and failed “to leave behind them written instructions for the future guidance of the church”—a “colossal oversight” if they saw any future for the organization. He further asserted that Christians in the ancient world rewrote church history by flagrantly fabricating, destroying, and altering the documentary evidence, a claim recently made in the Da Vinci Code novel that was refuted by most historians. Conventional scholars, of course, present a radically different reading of the evidence, according to which the apostolic church was highly conversion-oriented and established the rudiments of organization that was to develop. Also, they do not find evidence of such flagrant documentary deceit.
The belief that all other purportedly Christian churches have fallen into error is the negative side of the Mormon equation. The positive side is the message that the one true church exists once again in these latter days. In an 1831 revelation to an Ohio elders’ conference, now contained in the Doctrine and Covenants, Smith stated that those who received the Book of Mormon had “power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased.”
Besides the Ohio revelation, the LDS scriptures are filled with other passages defining the Utah-based denomination as God’s only church and the literal kingdom of God on earth. The scriptures cite specific criteria. For one thing, the true church must have “Christ” in its official name. For another, it must baptize youths by immersion at the age of responsibility (eight in Mormonism). Smith’s scriptures are particularly insistent that infant baptism is a “mockery before God” and that those who believe in it are “in the bonds of iniquity” and “in danger of death, hell and an endless torment” (Moroni 8:9, 14, 21). That, of course, includes the vast majority of the world’s Christians. In Mormonism the true church is believed to have unique power to exercise “the keys” of authority through the two priesthoods, which were restored through personal visitations in New York State by John the Baptist and then by the New Testament apostles Peter, James, and John.
Somewhat similar exclusivist claims used to be found in Roman Catholicism, but the Second Vatican Council clarified matters. The “unity of the one and only Church…subsists in the Catholic Church,” the council said, but “significant elements” that give life to the church can exist outside the Catholic institution. Non-Catholics, in “certain, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church,” are regarded as “Christians” and “brothers.” Most orthodox Christians regard a baptism carried out with water in the name of the Trinity to be valid across denominational lines. Mormons regard only LDS baptism as valid, so that, for example, they would rebaptize a Presbyterian convert just as the Presbyterians rebaptize the Mormon convert. Each treats the other church as another faith.
On the negative side, the Mormon scriptures contain more than twenty passages denouncing the rest of Christendom as apostate. A typical passage, I Nephi 13, predicts the following course of Christian history. Gentiles form a “great and abominable church” whose founder is the devil himself. The false church takes away “many plain and precious things” from the scriptures and from the gospel. With Christ’s true teaching no longer present, “an exceedingly great many do stumble, yea, insomuch that Satan hath great power over them.” But in America, “the land which is choice above all other lands,” God will again restore his message. In the following chapter, an angel summarizes the point: “Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil,…the whore of all the earth.”
In the very influential, though nonofficial, tome Mormon Doctrine, the late Apostle Bruce R. McConkie gave a hard-edged interpretation of this teaching. He explained that there is a “simple test” to determine the authentic church: it will be named after Christ; display the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods and the offices of apostle, prophet, and Seventy; practice such ordinances as baptism for the dead; and teach the latter-day restoration.
The universality of “apostasy” apart from Mormonism, McConkie wrote, is seen in the fact that all other churches “believed falsely that God was a mystical spirit essence that filled the immensity of space and was everywhere and nowhere in particular present,” rather than Mormonism’s flesh-and-bones God. McConkie set the “priesthood” of the true church over against “priestcraft,” which is “of the devil.” Except for its ethical teachings, “so-called Christianity does not come much nearer the truth in many respects” than Greek, Roman, or Norse mythology, McConkie stated. “Believers in the doctrines of modern Christendom will reap damnation to their souls.” Even the Reorganized Church, he taught, was a mere “apostate faction.”
Asked in an interview whether the LDS Church still believes what Smith stated about other churches in his First Vision, President Hinckley put the best face on matters: “We accept that as a statement which came to him, which is printed, of course, and published in his history as a statement. But we go forward with a friendly relationship, with a respect for people everywhere and with an effort to accept them as we meet them and, where opportunity exists, to talk with them and explain to them what we believe…. We don’t criticize them for what they believe. We accept the good that comes of that understanding which they have, but we feel we have something to offer beyond what they have.”
Well, then, could the LDS Church ever join Christian ecumenical organizations, or recognize the baptism of other churches as valid rather than rebaptizing all converts? Said Hinckley, “Anyone who wants to join this church must be baptized into this church. That’s the rite of passage into this church. But that doesn’t stop us from working with others. We work with other churches on social issues, on moral issues, on humanitarian issues.”
Liberal Mormons like to point out the beliefs and spiritual insights they hold in common with non-Mormons, though the LDS Church cannot simply blend into the ecumenical landscape and, presumably, never will. For practical reasons, Saints do cooperate in some interfaith or ministerial organizations on the local level, but the denominational leadership has not pursued membership in world, national, or state councils of churches, nor is it clear that such councils would ever approve LDS membership, since Mormon teaching violates the basis of ecumenical fellowship. The LDS scriptures simply do not allow Mormons to view the others as legitimate churches. Separation, then, makes theological sense on both sides. As Hinckley indicated, that does not bar the Mormons from occasionally channeling humanitarian money through, say, Catholic Relief Services, or allying tactically with conservative Protestants and Catholics in specific political causes of mutual interest.
Proselytizing is, of course, a mutual stress point. The desire of each group to attract the other’s sheep feeds an underlying edginess that is probably inevitable and permanent despite polite interfaith dialogue. The Southern Baptists in particular are uncomfortably aware that the greatest recent LDS growth in the United States has come on their own home turf. Mormons number 750,000 in the Southeast.
Within Mormonism today there appear to be important competing strands relating to such core doctrines as sin, grace, and the atonement, and how to express them. O. Kendall White Jr., a Washington and Lee University sociologist, called one such strand “Mormon neo-orthodoxy” in a book examining his own religious heritage. In this view, the cultural crises since World War II produced, inside Mormonism as well as among non-Mormon Christian theologians, a perspective of pessimism. As a result, a more negative view of human nature arose, along with an increased emphasis on the aspect of sin in human nature. Related to this was more of an emphasis on the sovereignty of God and the contingency of man dependent on God.
In White’s view, this change in cultural perspective affected Mormon theology, which moved away from its traditional optimism about the nature of man and the use of human agency in progressing toward perfectibility. The Mormons speak more often in absolutist language and talk more of grace. White was concerned that “a quest for respectability, the pursuit of converts, and expansion of Mormonism throughout the world tempt contemporary Mormons, especially officials, to present Mormonism as mainline Christianity.”
LDS apologists at FARMS hated White’s book. Reviewer Louis Midgley called it a “fine example” of a book that fails to take the Book of Mormon seriously. White’s “underlying assumption” is that faith “is challenged by modernity” and that “believers ought to reach an accommodation with modernity by adopting its assumptions and reflecting its values.” Midgley criticized White for ignoring “notions of sin and dependence upon deity that are found in the Book of Mormon and in the early revelations to Joseph Smith.” Midgley also criticized the research of retired BYU history professor Thomas G. Alexander, who showed changes in Smith’s emphases in theology after 1835 and claimed that the later Smith moved toward a more optimistic view of human potential.
Both camps claim to be speaking for “traditional” Mormonism, quoting proof-text support from LDS scriptures, the King Follett Discourse, and later prophets and apostles. Millet and Robinson might be seen as exponents of White’s “Mormon neo-orthodoxy,” though their writings became popular after the appearance of White’s book. The vocabulary they employed when writing about sin, grace, and the atonement, and the omni words they used to describe God, sounded very similar to the language of Protestant Evangelicals and other traditional Christians. Millet even used the term “substitutionary” in discussing the atonement. Others, such as Paulsen, England, Ostler, and Alexander, stressed the advantages in the concept of a limited deity that flow from the Follett sermon and other early Mormon writings. For instance, such a concept presents an optimistic emphasis and avoids traditional theology’s aforementioned problem of theodicy, that is, how a sovereign God can be seen as loving when evil and suffering exist. It also stresses human free will.
Embedded in any Mormon discussion of grace and the atonement is an assumption that “men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression,” one of Smith’s Articles of Faith. All Mormon factions agree that LDS theology rejects the orthodox Christian doctrine of original sin, though Mormons do believe that all people sin on their own and need redemption through Jesus Christ.
A related theological issue is Christology—how one understands the person of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. Mormonism clearly rejects the Christ of Christian orthodoxy, who is coeternal and coequal with God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the triune Godhead. The Mormon Jesus is subordinate to the Father. Moreover, as the LDS adult Sunday school manual Gospel Principles teaches, Jesus is “literally our elder brother,” since we are all “begotten and born of heavenly parents,” though Jesus had the distinction of being God’s firstborn. As McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine explained it, “By obedience and devotion to the truth he [Jesus] attained that pinnacle of intelligence which ranked him as a God” even in his preexistent state. The divine Son became the creator (that is, organizer) of the earth and was chosen to work out the atonement, and is now “infinite in all his attributes and powers.” The LDS leadership marked the third Christian millennium with a decree that defined Jesus as “the Great Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Messiah of the New” and called him “the only Begotten Son in the flesh” (not eternally begotten) and earth’s creator “under the direction of the Father.” In Mormonism, unlike the whole of orthodox Christian theology, the Incarnation is not, in principle, a unique event.
All Mormons also unite in the belief that every human is a child of God by nature. Traditional Christianity teaches that humans are God’s children by adoption, through grace, not by nature. In Mormonism humans are God’s literal spirit children born in a premortal existence that is forgotten when they are reborn on earth. The Encyclopedia of Mormonism says that in the premortal life “individuals existed as men and women in a spirit state and thus coexisted with both the Father and the Son.” Mormons believe “the intelligence dwelling in each person is coeternal with God. It always existed and never was created or made” (D&C 93:29). This is regarded as a “central doctrine of the church.”
In Mormon theology, humans are given mortal existence and bodies in a state of probation. Marriage and procreation are central to exaltation. “We were placed here on earth to progress toward our destiny of eternal life,” Apostle Dallin Oaks told a 1993 General Conference. “To the first man and woman on earth, the Lord said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’…This commandment was first in sequence and first in importance. It was essential that God’s spirit children have mortal birth and an opportunity to progress toward eternal life.”
In Mormonism God is married. Like God, humans can progress to godhood, continuing their progression and procreation in the afterlife. The Mormon heaven is a very domestic concept, and celestial marriage is essential to exaltation. Humans are born into mortal life without sin but have free agency, and with this free agency they can exercise free will in making moral choices. Through these choices they can sin against moral law, but they can also choose obedience, celestial marriage with a family sealed for eternity, and progress toward godhood.
Mormons believe that Adam’s fall was a good thing, not the tragic event of traditional Christian understanding. As Oaks put it, Adam and Eve “could not fulfill the Father’s first commandment without transgressing the barrier between the bliss of the Garden of Eden and the terrible trials and wonderful opportunities of mortal life…. This transition, or ‘fall,’ could not happen without a transgression—an exercise of moral agency amounting to a willful breaking of a law…a planned offense, a formality to serve an eternal purpose.”
Mormons distinguish between “transgression” and “sin.” Adam’s transgression was not sin.
The Mormon Articles of Faith state, “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.” Mormons use the conventional rhetoric of the atonement and grace, but a genuine understanding of their atonement doctrine must flow logically from the implications of the unique LDS beliefs about the nature of humans as children of God and from the rejection of original sin. That is, if man is not sinful by nature, why is the atonement needed, and what is meant by grace? In traditional Christianity the atonement is necessary to counteract the consequences of original sin, the fall of Adam.
The First Presidency issued a formal statement on its theology of God in 1916; it never issued a formal statement of its theology of man. The lack of systematic theology affects other doctrinal areas as well. Though it is “bound to touch sensitive nerves,” Keith E. Norman wrote, there is not yet a “definitive doctrine of the Atonement in Mormonism.” Mormon writing about the Atonement is “for the most part derivative from traditional Christianity.” Norman, a Mormon with a doctorate in early Christian studies from Duke, said that the Book of Mormon prophet Enos “prays for the redemption of others” and is “told that they must earn it on their own merits” (Enos 9–10).
In Mormonism, when sinners approach Christ “innocently suffering for our wickedness, our hearts are softened and we resolve to change our ways.” Rather than the traditional absolutist deity, as Norman explained it, this “Mormon God is not the stern judge demanding payment…. We cannot become like God by letting someone else take responsibility for our actions…. Personal actions have personal consequences. Christ’s role is not to let us off the hook, but to show us that it is possible to achieve holiness, to become perfect as God is perfect, to demonstrate how to do it, and to motivate us to follow his example.”
Christ’s suffering and atonement, then, were his expression of a powerful empathy for his brother, mortal humankind on earth. Men and women are saved because his example moves their hearts to respond; this grace, through the atonement, guides their lives and the moral choices they make, through their free agency and in faith. God gives a sense of justice and knowledge that enables us to choose the good, and salvation is a process of becoming more like God. This view of sin and the atonement is very similar to that of liberal Protestant theology. (Mormons believe in the literal bodily resurrection of Christ, however, and liberal Protestants typically do not.)
For Mormons, Gethsemane is more central to the atonement than is the cross. “Gethsemane was the scene of Jesus’ greatest agony, even surpassing that which he suffered on the cross,” says the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which considers Gethsemane to be Jesus’ “most challenging experience.” According to the late church President Ezra Taft Benson, “It was in Gethsemane that Jesus took on Himself the sins of the world.” The caption opening the “Atonement” chapter in Gospel Principles reads, “In the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ took upon himself the sins of all mankind.” The lesson teaches: “The Savior atoned for our sins by suffering in Gethsemane and by giving his life on the cross.” Mormons take literally the description of Christ’s agony drawing sweat as blood in Gethsemane.
Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane was similarly explained by the BYU philosophy professor emeritus Truman Madsen in an interview with Newsweek’s Kenneth L. Woodward. Mormons, Madsen said, stress the cross less than “what happened in Gethsemane. You won’t find a cross in any Mormon chapel. That doesn’t mean we don’t believe he was crucified; he was. But crucifixion has been suffered by other men. It’s a terrible way to die but it’s not unique. What was unique in Jesus’ suffering was that he knelt in Gethsemane…. He so identified with the totality of man’s sins and setbacks that it was as if he were guilty of all of them, and he sweat blood just as Luke says…. He experienced such a compassion for mankind that there is not one condition that you can get in terms of sin, badness, setback, tragedy, or pain, not one condition in which you can say, ‘You don’t know what I’ve been through.’ Because he can always say, ‘Oh, yes I do. I’ve been there.’ So he suffered that his bowels might be filled with compassion.”
Woodward, a Notre Dame-educated Catholic, told Sunstone shortly after his Newsweek article appeared, “Compassion is an important and admirable virtue, but it’s not the same thing as atoning for sins, in the usual sense of that term.” Similar to what has sometimes been called the “martyr” or “good example” theory of atonement, the LDS belief functions within a theology that denies original sin and is fundamentally different from the mainstream definitions of orthodox Christian doctrine. Gospel Principles summarizes, “we accept Christ’s atonement by placing our faith in him. Through this faith, we repent of our sins, are baptized, receive the Holy Ghost, and obey his commandments…. Christ did his part to atone for our sins. To make his atonement fully effective in our lives, we must strive to obey him and repent of our sins.”
The above explanation of Christ’s atoning grace is consistent with the Mormon understanding of God and man, and the operative role of obedience in exaltation. Any discussion about the relation of works and grace, of course, treads on centuries of thin ice. It is easy to trivialize the doctrine of an opponent. Martin Luther disparaged the New Testament book of James because of its stress on works, but Lutherans really do regard James as part of the New Testament canon. Not many LDS General Conference talks cite Romans in explications of Pauline grace, but Mormons recognize that Romans is part of the King James Bible. Evangelicals may preach that individuals are saved by grace alone, but even the most extreme among them believe that God demands continuing works of obedience along with repentance. And the most extreme Mormons and Catholics really do think that what one believes matters, alongside what one does.
As it happens, significant convergence has developed between Protestants and Catholics on the “faith versus works” issue that sparked the Reformation break with Rome. In 1999 the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation issued a joint accord on that historic sixteenth-century dispute: “Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works…. We confess together that persons are justified by faith in the gospel ‘apart from works prescribed by the law’ (Romans 3:28). Christ has fulfilled the law and by his death and resurrection has overcome it as a way to salvation. We also confess that God’s commandments retain their validity for the justified…. We confess together that good works—a Christian life lived in faith, hope and love—follow justification and are its fruits.”
On the faith-works scale, Mormons clearly tilt toward the works side. A typical Mormon proof-text is II Nephi 25:23: “We know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” This contrasts with the Protestant proof-text in Ephesians 2:8–9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Justification by belief alone, minus works, is “a most pernicious doctrine,” the LDS Apostle James Talmage wrote, while Apostle Bruce McConkie said it is hard to imagine how pure doctrine “could be more completely garbled and perverted” than the way the Church of England’s Articles of Religion treat this point.
“Salvation is attainable only through compliance with the laws and ordinances of the Gospel; and all who are thus saved become sons and daughters unto God in a distinctive sense,” according to a 1916 doctrinal exposition by the First Presidency and the Quorum of Twelve.
The Encyclopedia of Mormonism lists five essential steps to salvation: faith that Christ can save from sin; repentance for one’s sin; immersion baptism when one is old enough to be accountable; the gift of the Holy Ghost through the laying on of hands by the Melchizedek priesthood (performed immediately after baptism); and “enduring to the end.” Using the terms of the LDS Articles of Faith, practicing the church’s “ordinances,” and giving lifelong obedience to its “laws” are required along with belief.
As the Encyclopedia explains, the believer must “remain faithful to all covenants, continue in righteousness, and endure faithfully to the end of mortal life” to receive fully the grace that Christ’s work made possible. Or again, as taught by the LDS scriptures, “if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God” (D&C 14:7).
Adam is also an important character in the Mormon view of redemption. The role of Adam in Mormon theology is unique. He is a hero, a prince, and he is also identified as the Archangel Michael. (Other identifications unique to Mormonism: Jesus is the Old Testament Jehovah and Noah is the Angel Gabriel who appeared to Mary to announce the impending birth of Jesus.) In Mormonism, angels are human beings at another level of exaltation, serving as messengers sent from God, while conventional Christianity believes angels are another order of being, separate from humans. According to the Encyclopedia, “Noah stands next in authority to Adam in the Priesthood” (Joseph Smith: History of the Church 3:386) and ranks third in position from the Lord.
“For Latter-day Saints, Adam stands as one of the noblest and greatest of all men,” according to the Encyclopedia. He helped Elohim and Jehovah (i.e., Jesus) in the creation—that is, organization—of the earth. (Mormonism teaches that matter is eternal.) The Encyclopedia says that Adam had a “position of authority next to Jesus Christ.” In their premortal state, Adam and Eve could not procreate, so their fall was deliberate; they ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and were given bodies and the ability to carry out God’s commandment to have children. God also rewarded them by sharing his plan of salvation.
In LDS scripture Adam said, “Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.” And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient” (Moses 5:10, 11).
Adam, (as Michael), “seems the logical one to give aid and comfort to his Lord on such a solemn occasion [in Gethsemane],” wrote Apostle McConkie. “Adam fell, and Christ redeemed men from the fall; theirs was a joint enterprise, both parts of which were essential for the salvation of the Father’s children.”
B. H. Roberts was in line with this tradition calling Adam “our Father Adam, the ‘Grand Patriarch’ of our race—the ‘Ancient of Days.’” But elaborating on the idiosyncratic position of Adam in LDS thinking, Brigham Young had gone further and identified him with God the Father in his Adam-God doctrine later repudiated by the church. He famously declared in an 1852 sermon that Adam “is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do.” He later preached, “I tell you, when you see your Father in the Heavens, you will see Adam; when you see your Mother that bear your spirit, you will see Mother Eve.” On February 20, 1912, a First Presidency letter issued under Joseph F. Smith’s administration denied the essentials of his predecessor prophet’s Adam-God teachings, focusing only on the 1852 sermon while ignoring Adam-God teachings through the remaining twenty-five years of Young’s life. This Adam-God theology is a dead issue today, although the high status of Adam remains unique to the LDS church.
“Blood atonement” is the other controversial Brigham Young teaching from which the church has backed away. This was the tenet that some sins, such as murder, are so serious that the atonement of Christ does not, by itself, provide sufficient grace for forgiveness. Only the spilling of blood as a form of capital punishment can redeem the offender. The Encyclopedia claims that the teaching “is not a doctrine of the Church and has never been practiced by the Church at any time.” In 2003 the LDS church said it had “no objection” to ending the firing squad executions and Utah soon banned the method.
Heaven, in Mormonism, exists in three tiers: the celestial kingdom, with the highest degree of exaltation, available to the Saints who have undergone the appropriate ordinances and progressed in obedience to such a state; the terrestrial kingdom; and the telestial kingdom. Progression in degrees of glory is possible in the afterlife, and good people who have not in this life received the “fullness of the gospel” may progress as far as the middle (terrestrial) kingdom. The highest level, the celestial kingdom, is a homey destination in which all the exalted can live with their eternal families and continue to procreate. It is this familial goal of exalted togetherness in the afterlife that is the greatest focus of Mormon theology and expectation.
Some scholars believe that Joseph Smith was a universalist, that is, an adherent of the belief that all will be saved. That belief was a common ingredient in nineteenth-century liberal thinking. The Mormon hell is small; only a relatively few “sons of perdition” will be permanently consigned there. The Encyclopedia says that Christ “grants to all the desires of their hearts, allowing them to choose their eternal reward, according to the law they are willing and able to abide.”
So are Mormons Christians? The public relations site www.mormon.org quotes the straightforward Apostle M. Russell Ballard: “We do believe things about Jesus that other Christians do not believe, but that is because we know, through revelation, things about Jesus that others do not know.” The historian Jan Shipps, one of the shrewdest outside observers, redirects the question in Mormonism. Clearly, she wrote, the radical theology of Mormonism, though drawing on the Christian imagination, is not a part of traditional Christianity. Its own claims prohibit one from considering it one “slightly idiosyncratic” form of Christianity, since “the Saints think of themselves as Christians and think of their church as the only legitimate Church of Jesus Christ.” In reality, she concluded, Mormonism differs from traditional Christianity in much the same way that traditional Christianity came to differ from Judaism. Shipps wrote:
Although the [LDS] gospel is available to all, the “unit of exaltation” is the family rather than the individual. Consequently, the ultimate goal of the Latter-day Saints is not eternity somehow spent in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. Mormonism holds up a different goal: “eternal progression” toward godhood. When this theological conception is added to the peculiar understanding that Saints have of themselves and their Hebraic-Christianness, which grew out of their past as peculiar people, it becomes as clear as can be that, nomenclature notwithstanding, Mormonism is a new religious tradition.
But perhaps for Mormons themselves the best answer to that frequently repeated question is the one President Gordon B. Hinckley gave his flock in a 1998 General Conference talk: “There are some of other faiths who do not regard us as Christians. That is not important. How we regard ourselves is what is important.”