Head coach Mark Pope of the University of Kentucky Wildcats has managed to reinvigorate a stagnating men’s basketball program under former coach John Calipari. Pope brings passion and an old-school work ethic partly instilled from his old coach from when he was at UK, Rick Pitino. So far Pope has done quite well, embracing the NIL era and keeping UK competitive at the highest level. At the time I’m posting this, UK men’s basketball is ranked #8 in the polls. Instead of having my sports devotion fall with the Pope of the church of UK basketball, however, my loyalties lie with the Pearl of great price–Bruce Pearl and his Auburn Tigers squad. Still, since I married a UK graduate, my wife has pulled some of my sports loyalty toward UK, at least when they’re not playing Auburn.
What does basketball have to do with the topic at hand? UK’s head coach Mark Pope is a Mormon, which has opened fresh consideration about how the Latter Day Saints (LDS) Church relates to the more long-standing Christian traditions of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. I will tend to refer to these three branches of Christianity as orthodox Christianity, marked by adherence to the early creeds for defining proper belief; creeds like the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed. Mormons reject the ancient Christian creeds out of the principle of not wanting to impose anything on top of simple, biblical Christian faith, though they could agree with several points in the creeds. I recently read two books: Talking with Mormons: An Invitation to Evangelicals by Richard Mouw, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, and How Wide the Divide: A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation, cowritten by evangelical Bible scholar Craig Blomberg and Mormon professor of Scripture Stephen Robinson. These books have helped me parse through what Mormons and my own community of evangelical Protestantism share in common and where we diverge.
Relations have varied between these two groups. Historically, there has been hostility toward Mormonism that at times resulted in persecution. In the 1800s, Mormons were driven from different places by state governments, and the federal government limited the rights of Mormons who practiced plural marriage when it was still commended by the church. More often than outright persecution, however, Mormonism has been critiqued and denounced by orthodox Christians. I will bring forward critiques myself, but admittedly some have not always done this well and have perpetuated falsehoods and misunderstandings about Mormonism on a popular level, or have a very incendiary tone. Some evangelicals have labeled Mormonism as a cult, which is just about always a non-starter for dialogue. Both Mouw and Blomberg think it’s inappropriate to label Mormonism in this way, particularly since that word conveys the idea of a group being overly controlling and oppressive. Here’s Mouw at length for why he think it’s an ill-fitting label:
In fact, even the label “cult” seems inappropriate for describing the Mormonism that we’ve seen up close. Jehovah’s Witnesses–they’re a cult. They stick to a party line. You don’t find them arguing among themselves–at least in a way the rest of us can see and hear. If someone does insist on raising questions from within about Jehovah’s Witnesses teachings, they’re quickly expelled from the group. And the very idea of a world-class Jehovah’s Witness university is a hard one to entertain. Mormonism is a different story altogether. Brigham Young University is world class. It has an excellent faculty, with doctorates from some of the best graduate programs in the world. Some devout Mormons are well-known scholars at major secular schools. That’s not the way a cult operates. The preferred label these days by those non-Mormons who have studied Mormonism carefully is “new religious movement.” Indeed, Mormonism is one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the world. It deserves to be taken seriously by those of us who believe that what a person believes about God and salvation–and most of all, about the person and work of Jesus Christ–is important (Talking with Mormons, p. 30).
Here’s further wise counsel from Mouw on the danger of not accurately representing one’s opponents, with the implication being that some evangelical polemicists have become false teachers in the name of trying to combat false teaching:
We want to oppose false teachers because they teach things that aren’t true. But if in our attempts to defeat them we play fast and loose with the truth, by attributing to them things that they don’t in fact teach, and if we don’t really care whether we have it exactly right or not, then we have become false teachers: teachers of untruths (Talking with Mormons, p. 21)!
We should always strive for accurate description and an attitude of respect and kindness toward disputants. I welcome correction if I’ve gotten anything wrong in this post or have misrepresented Mormonism in any way.
Some Mormon apologists have returned the heat, with scathing condemnations of orthodox Christianity. But there are examples of friendship between Mormons and evangelicals, and, thankfully, there are several intelligent representatives from both camps who have been engaging in dialogue to better understand each other to find areas of common cause. A story is shared in Blomberg and Robinson’s How Wide the Divide by a young man in a Sunday School class Blomberg was teaching:
“All through junior high and high school,” he explained, “My best friend was a Mormon. We shared the same interests in school, the same favorite sports, and the same moral standards. We talked a lot about our spiritual beliefs. Neither of us ever convinced the other to ‘convert,’ but we liked each other anyway. We each discovered that not everything our churches had taught us to believe about the other ‘side’ was true, though some of it certainly was" (p. 189).
I hope people from both camps can have respectful, engaged dialogue and pursue friendship, even if we don’t always agree.
What follows are some things shared in common between Mormons and evangelicals.
Commonalities
(Some of this is adapted from p. 195 of How Wide the Divide)
:: God is eternal and exists as one God in three Persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Evangelicals and Mormons differ on some of the specifics of how they understand the Trinity, but they share belief in the Trinity).
:: Salvation comes through the grace of Jesus and is made possible by his substitutionary sacrifice and death for our sins on the cross and his bodily resurrection from the dead.
:: People are saved through hearing the message about Christ and responding to God in faith.
:: We can continually grow in grace and sanctification by yielding to the Holy Spirit throughout our lives.
:: The gifts of the Holy Spirit that were manifested in the early church are still given by the Holy Spirit for the church today.
:: The Bible is God’s word and is a reliable, trustworthy witness to God.
:: Jesus has ascended to God in glory and will return again to judge the world and fully establish his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
:: God is a God of love, and those who seek to follow him must follow in the way of love.
:: Mormons and evangelicals would share similar expectations around spiritual disciplines, sex, service, being involved in church, generosity, forgiveness, evangelism, etc. They also would tend to find themselves as allies on some political issues.
:: This is not exclusive to all evangelicals, but as a Wesleyan/Arminian, I would share more in common with Mormons in terms of how we understand predestination, election, the possibility of apostasy, and the need for perseverance in faith than I would with some of my Calvinist brothers and sisters.
I am going to give more room to differences and critiques below, but don’t let them cause us to forget what the two groups have in common.
Differences
Theological Authority, Historical Reliability, and Consistency–Evangelicals and Mormons differ in their understanding of where supreme theological authority is located. For Mormons, the office of prophet holds the highest authority when it comes to understanding God and his will. For evangelicals, that authority lies with the Bible. This is not to say that Mormons don’t value Scripture. The Bible is their book too, but the Book of Mormon maintains that “plain and precious truths” have been lost from the Bible, so Mormons add three other books to their Scriptures: the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Further, Mormons differ from orthodox Christians in that they don’t view the canon (the rule by which everything else is to be measured/evaluated, which for evangelicals is the Bible) as closed or finished. God can speak a fresh word, a new commandment that can be binding on the entire church, at any moment. Evangelicals tend to view the canon as closed, and by that we mean that we are not to expect new revelations from Jesus today that attain the same level of authority as the Bible. Evangelicals trust that in compiling the Old and New Testaments, the Holy Spirit guided the early church to recognize the writings that were faithful to the tradition they had received from Christ and the apostles. The church also gave more credence to writings by apostles or people who were close associates of the apostles and therefore were early in date, as well as writings that enjoyed widespread use and recognition in the church. Having a closed canon doesn’t mean God that can’t speak authoritatively and powerfully today or that people can’t be empowered by the Holy Spirit to prophesy; it rather indicates that Spirit-inspired preaching, prophecy, teaching, and ministry should be consonant with what’s in the Bible and evaluated by the Bible, trusting that in the Bible Jesus gave us all that is necessary for faith, salvation, and the Christian life.
Here is Mouw expounding a bit more on the Mormon understanding of ongoing revelation:
Mormons insist on going “behind” the process that produced “the Book.” What matters about the Bible is that it contains the teachings that had come directly from God to apostles and prophets. And now, they argue, the prophetic office has been restored. This means that “the canon” isn’t “closed.” Revelations continue. What binds together the Bible, then, with the Book of Mormon, the Doctrines and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and any new authoritative deliverances from the continuing line of the true prophets is that they receive their authority from the fact that they come to us from those who have occupied–and continue to occupy–the office of the prophet (Mouw, Talking with Mormons, pp. 63-64).
There are critiques concerning some of the claims made by Mormon prophets, however. The first is that the discipline of textual criticism (the study of ancient manuscripts, often utilized to hone in on what the original words of Scripture were) finds no evidence that any books were lost or expunged from the Bible as claimed by the Book of Mormon.
…distinctively Mormon doctrines regularly rely on the Book of Mormon’s claims that “plain and precious truths” have been lost from the Bible. None of the ancient manuscripts support the contention that the type of “restorations” that the JST (Joseph Smith’s translation) or the uniquely LDS Scriptures make were ever in the original biblical texts. Neither do any ancient manuscripts exist to support the claim that the early church left out entire books from the Bible that would have included distinctively LDS doctrine (Blomberg & Robinson, How Wide the Divide, pp. 35-36).
If the church suppressed books from the Bible, why do we not see any historical or written record of it? Throughout church history we have records of the church rejecting several teachings and documents, along with the reasons why they did it. But a total absence of evidence about any documents Mormons claim were lost from the Bible seems quite suspicious indeed.
Beyond not having any basis in the manuscript tradition for the claim that the church edited out books that would’ve contained LDS doctrine, Blomberg further asserts that the Book of Mormon is guilty of anachronism, which strikes against historical plausibility:
The Book of Mormon is full of the widespread use in Old Testament times of New Testament doctrines, language, concepts, and even specific verses. […] Indeed, the entire Book of Mormon abounds with explicit references to Christ, to his life and ministry and to the three persons of the Godhead long before New Testament times… even though none of these concepts or terms ever appear in these forms in our Old Testament or any other ancient Jewish literature (exclusive of the portions of the Old Testament found only in the JST) (Blomberg & Robinson, How Wide the Divide, pp. 48-49).
There is no archaeological or genetic evidence to support the historical reliability of the Book of Mormon’s claims about Native Americans being descended from an Israelite named Lehi who traveled to the Americas around 600 BC, nor of any of the battles described in the Book of Mormon. This stands in contrast to the high level of historical reliability present in the Bible, particularly when it comes to the study of the Gospels and the New Testament.
A fairly potent critique that Mouw raises is that at times in Mormon theology there is little concern for consistency in terms of what God says and why. He takes the awkward example of Mormons denying black men the office of priest until the late 1970s:
On June 1, 1978, it seems that God was continuing his longstanding prohibition regarding black men in the priesthood. Then on the next day, June 2, God was suddenly in favor of blacks in the priesthood. What happened between those two days? Mormon leaders have offered no clear answer to this question. The simple verdict is that on one day God wanted one thing and the next day its opposite. Now, this is not in itself a strange happening. We all know that changes of practice and doctrinal formulation take place in Christian communities. Catholicism underwent significant changes in this regard as a result of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. And other Christian groups have lifted restrictions on the ordination of women, racial segregation, and so on. But typically these changes come with rationales–church leaders sense an obligation to explain the shifts. In Mormonism, it seems, no rationale needs to be given. God revealed one thing at a certain point, and then reversed his position without any explanation (Mouw, Talking with Mormons, pp. 70-71).
Something similar could be said about polygamy, which is forbidden by Christ and the apostles in the Bible, yet was practiced and permitted by Joseph Smith and the LDS Church for fifty-ish years, but then was forbidden again in 1890 (and more stridently denounced in 1904). Was God not ok with polygamy for about 1800 years, then was cool with it for about 50 years, then decided he wasn’t ok with it again? This calls into question the faithfulness and integrity of God. If God can contradict anything he’s previously commanded in the blink of an eye, why should we trust him and devote ourselves to him? Who’s to say God will be faithful to anything that he has said? What if he changes on us and leaves us hanging? This makes God seem capricious, vacillating, and undependable. It doesn’t seem to comport with James 1:17, that God “does not change like shifting shadows.” Or Deuteronomy 7:9, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.”
For evangelicals and other orthodox Christians, we acknowledge that certainly things did change in how people related to God in the move from the Old Testament (OT) to the New Testament (NT). Christians don’t sacrifice animals, worship at a temple, have to keep kosher food laws, require circumcision, practice all the clean/unclean laws, etc., all things commanded by God in the OT. We hold to a notion of progressive revelation until the coming of Christ, who is God’s full revelation. Progressive revelation entails that some commandments and teachings in the Old Testament were not things that God would expect his people to do forever and were not the full message that God wanted to give to his people, but were foreshadowings that would point to the future work of Christ and the Spirit. This is why Christians interpret those OT passages that are no longer binding through the lens of how Christ and the Spirit fulfill the true intent of those commands. Animal sacrifice pointed to the sacrifice of Christ for our atonement. The Tabernacle and Temple prepared us to see Christ as God’s true house, the place where atonement can be made, with the church being joined to Christ the cornerstone of God’s dwelling place in the Spirit. Kosher and cleanliness laws were external observances meant to point to internal cleanness and holiness of heart, one that involves being set apart for God and avoiding sin. Circumcision points to a circumcision of the heart done by the Holy Spirit. Now that Christ and the Spirit have come, some of those old commands are not to be practiced anymore, though they still are Scripture and are illuminating in helping us understand Christ and the Spirit. Though some things changed going from OT to NT, God’s character and plan never changed, and his faithfulness has never been compromised. Jesus and the Spirit are the fullness of revelation that God had always desired to show the world. Can Mormons provide a sensible fulfillment/foreshadowing interpretation of why black men were forbidden to hold the priesthood and then permitted, or why polygamy was allowed and then barred? Or is God just random concerning what he commands? Further, if Mormon prophets promote teachings that contradict what Jesus said in the New Testament (see the stuff on eternal marriage below), doesn't that imply an insufficiency in Jesus? Did Jesus not know the full truth? Was he mistaken and ignorant? How would you square that with the perfection of Christ and his Godhood?
Too Low a View of God?–There are critiques orthodox Christians pose toward Mormon claims about God. For one, many Mormons believe that God the Father used to be a human being like us. Two sources can be found for the idea. Lorenzo Snow, fifth president of the LDS Church, gave a famous epigram that encapsulates this idea: “As man now is, God once was; As God now is, man may be.” Joseph Smith said in a funeral sermon for King Follett, “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is a great secret” (Blomberg & Robinson, How Wide the Divide, p. 209). Robinson showcases that this notion is not found in any official Mormon Scripture, but it has become so widespread that it has basically become authoritative (pp. 85, 87). Blomberg raises a core concern concerning the assertion of the humanity of the Father:
Given the conviction held by both Prof. Robinson and the Evangelicals–that Jesus is both fully God and fully man–it is not theologically objectionable to speak of humanity in the Godhead per se. Belief in the humanity of God the Father could then be viewed merely as a curiosity, if it were not for the additional claim that God was once a finite human. This is what seems to compromise God’s sovereignty and metaphysical uniqueness, characterized by God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. There seems to be no way for finite beings by themselves ever to become infinite. It is one thing for an infinite God to voluntarily restrict himself to certain limitations of finitude. It is quite another for a finite being to become infinite unless by means of some more powerful agent. That realization appears to me to be the reason unofficial Mormonism developed its notion of the Creator God as merely one among other gods, who was created by them. But then we find ourselves in the logical quagmire of asking who created those gods, and so on, ad infinitum. At this point we find ourselves face to face with polytheism, which the Bible defines as idolatry. Robinson helpfully repudiates this popular misconception, but it is not clear how he can do so and consistently still believe in a finite man on his own becoming God (Blomberg & Robinson, How Wide the Divide, p. 105).
The Afterlife, Eternal Marriage, & Deification–The LDS Church teaches eternal marriage and deification, that faithful Mormons who have had their marriages blessed by the church will remain married for all eternity and will become gods. Further, the LDS church teaches that there will be three levels of heaven representing three different degrees of reward: telestial glory (the lowest reward), the terrestrial kingdom (the middle reward), and the celestial kingdom (the best reward) (Blomberg & Robinson, How Wide the Divide, pp. 152-153). The celestial kingdom involves people getting promoted to godhood. Children who die young and the mentally handicapped automatically attain the celestial kingdom, though for others there seems to be an insistence on being married as a prerequisite to attain the celestial kingdom. Single people don’t seem to get the opportunity for exaltation into godhood, instead attaining a lower level of heaven, though Mormonism teaches that there can be opportunities for them to enter into a celestial/eternal marriage in the afterlife. Most evangelicals aren’t too sure if there will be varying degrees of reward in heaven or not. Paul does mention "being caught up to the third heaven" for a visionary experience in 2 Cor. 12:2, but we don’t see any teaching in the New Testament that applies such language to the afterlife and to three tiers of reward.
Robinson cites Doctrine and Covenants 132:19-20 as the main passage of interest concerning deification and eternal marriage:
…they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever. Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them (Blomberg & Robinson, How Wide the Divide, pp. 84-85).
Robinson is quick to clarify that even though recipients of the celestial kingdom will be exalted as gods, they will not be independent of the one true God, and they still remain subordinate to the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (How Wide the Divide, p. 86).
Robinson’s clarification softens things a bit, but this teaching still contradicts the New Testament in a couple ways. First, Jesus specifically responded to a scenario that the Sadducees gave to him of a woman who was successively married to seven brothers, all of whom died, and they asked whose wife she would be at the resurrection. Jesus told them that at the resurrection people won’t marry or be given in marriage, but they will be like the angels (Matthew 22:23-33). So earthly human marriage is not eternal and won’t carry over into heaven and the resurrection. Second, both Jesus (Matthew 19:10-12) and Paul (read all of 1 Cor. 7) privileged singleness over marriage, and nowhere does the NT indicate that there will be different heavenly rewards for people based on if they were married or not. And nowhere in the New Testament does it say God’s people will become all-powerful gods in the afterlife.
Are Mormons Christians?–Some in the LDS church can have a complicated relationship with the word “Christian,” as that label often comports with orthodox, creedal Christianity in most people’s usage, which the LDS church would have disagreements with, but they certainly believe they belong to Jesus and are his followers and servants in the world. How significant are the differences between orthodox Christians and Mormons? Are they so different that they preclude Mormons from salvation? When does incorrect belief and teaching cross the line and start separating someone from the saving grace of God? In the case of Mormonism, I’m not sure. Their theology on Jesus and salvation by his grace is pretty strong. Mormons are robust on salvation in Christ alone, coming through his sacrifice and grace for us, and how we must trust him as Lord and Savior and serve him. This is right and good. But it is also true that Mormons and orthodox Christians diverge on some significant theological issues, as highlighted above. At the very least, I think Mormons have mistaken teachings in their camp that need to be corrected, and I pray that they do get corrected. My encouragement to you if you're in the LDS Church is either to seek changes in the church that align it with historic, New Testament Christianity, or (probably more likely) to leave Mormonism and go to an orthodox, evangelical Christian church. And if you’re Mormon and think my post isn’t persuasive, then let’s at least be friends and seek to better understand one another and dialogue.
Near the end of his short book, Mouw shares the story of being at a conference where a liberal Protestant theologian denied salvation by grace and denied any sense of substitutionary atonement coming from Jesus’ death at Calvary. The experience made Mouw much more eager to get back to talking with his Mormon friends, who shared with him a commitment concerning our need for Christ’s grace coming through the cross (Mouw, Talking with Mormons, p. 96)! I would consider that Protestant theologian to be on much more heretical and dangerous ground than mainstream Mormonism, though my concerns with Mormonism remain.
I want to highlight again what Mormons and evangelicals share. We share the Bible as Scripture, a belief in some notion of the Trinity, salvation centering in Christ alone, the call to spread the message and convert others, the call to a holy life, the Holy Spirit empowering prophecy and miracles, and more. I pray Jesus guides us all more fully into his truth concerning the matters that divide us.
