(Fair warning: Bunch of religiony stuff below.)
I’ve been very pleased with “Hello Saints,” series of YouTube videos by Pastor Jeff, an evangelical who’s on a mission to understand as much as he can about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (exonymically, “Mormons”). He’s done a terrific job of attending Church sites, a temple open house, General Conference, a local Sunday meeting, etc., and reacting honestly to what he finds there — what he’s learned, how it comports with what he’s understood before, how it compares with his own understanding of Christianity, etc. (I especially appreciate that he compares Latter-day Saint doctrine not with “Christianity,” but with “evangelical belief,” or “mainstream Christianity.” I know that he thinks we’re doing Christianity wrong in some key areas; he also knows that we think the same of him. But neither of us think that’s a reason to kick the other out from underneath the umbrella.)
One thing I’ve always wanted to do is to react to his reactions, in that recursive fashion for which YouTube is becoming notorious. However, I’m not set up to make good-looking videos (as contrasted with his especially), and when dealing with things which require both nuance and precision in expression, I would much rather produce a text than wag my tongue.
Pastor Jeff’s most recent video, “Pastor and Latter-day Saint HONESTLY Compare Doctrine,” is him and Latter-day Saint Greg Matsen discussing six core doctrinal differences. I’m in no way saying that Greg’s responses and discussion are wrong, but as with most Latter-day Saints who try to think deeply about our doctrine, I would have answered in different ways. So after I heard the first couple of discussions, I paused the video and decided that I would listen to Pastor Jeff’s summation of mainstream Christianity, then give my own commentary before listening to Greg’s.
So here’s the first portion, with the intro and the first discussion topic:
Belief #1: Sufficiency and Authority of Bible (stop at 3:47 before Greg responds)
(Point of order: Roman Catholics aren’t necessarily going to agree with the “mainstream Christian” doctrine as Jeff explains it.)
The easy answer is to say that “Latter-day Saints just believe in MORE Bible!” In the same way that an evangelical would look at a hypothetical denomination that, for example, doesn’t have the Gospel According to John in their canon, or ONLY includes the Gospels and the non-Pauline epistles but specifically excludes the Pauline epistles (not an eye-witness, you know). More scripture is always better.
But beyond that: As inspired — “God-breathed” — as scripture is, nothing which is filtered through human mind and pen can be inerrant. It simply can’t happen. Even if the will of a human scribe were completely subsumed in the will of God, the expression of that will in human language must, of necessity, be flawed. And then when another flawed human being to whom that text is addressed reads that flawed text, his understanding will be double-flawed. And that’s in any scriptural text’s most flawless reading. Add scribal errors, deliberate but well-meaning “corrections,” cultural gaps and misunderstandings, translations, and up to thousands of years of traditions which strongly influence the eisegesis of the text…
Fortunately, the Bible doesn’t say that it’s inerrant or all-sufficient. (2 Timothy 3:16, which is the strongest biblical prooftext of any such concept, simply doesn’t say that.) Nor does the Bible say that it’s the “authority.” No scripture can say that it’s the authority. No man can say he’s the authority.
So what is the authority?
God.
“But if the Bible is God-breathed…”
The Bible convinces no one, nor does any scripture.
Scripture and the witness of the Holy Spirit convinces, convicts and converts.
The Holy Spirit, or direct inspiration, or personal revelation. God testifies of Himself, and it is only through that means that we understand anything of the will of God.
Belief #2: One, Almighty, Triune God (stop at 6:59 before Greg responds)
Above, I used the word “eisegesis.” If you need a refresher, “exegesis” means what you “read out of” a text — to expand upon what’s found there. “Eisegesis” is the opposite; it means to “read into” a text — to bring your own biases, convictions and opinions to the text and fit them into what you find there.
I think the doctrine of the Trinity, as usually explained in mainstream Christianity, is an extreme case of eisegesis. Christians, influenced both by the Jewish scriptural declarations that “God is one,” plus the Hellenistic philosophical imperative toward monotheism, looked at the texts of the New Testament and said, “Well, we’ve GOTTA be complete monotheists, so we’ve gotta reverse-engineer that into scripture!” And it’s perfectly understandable, because the opposite common concept to monotheism is the kind of polytheism which surrounded Judaism from Egypt clear down to Rome: “Gods” who behaved like humans but bigger, with squabbles and factions and grudges and… Early formulations of the Trinity were very much intended as a way to distinguish the Christian deity from THOSE guys.
In my current reading of the New Testament, one thing which is forcefully brought to my attention on almost every page is that at least one of the core components of mainstream Trinitarian doctrine, that the three persons of the Trinity are coequal, is self-evidently wrong. In almost every mention of or interaction with the Father by Jesus, Jesus subordinates himself to the Father. He consistently portrays the Father as greater than He, and subjugates His will to the Father’s over and over again. In this facet, at least, the expressed doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t match up with the text from which it is supposedly derived.
Now, understand that all of us, Latter-day Saints and evangelicals and Catholics and whoever, when we’re describing the nature of God and the relation of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, are talking about things we don’t understand. At all. Any sort of “explanation” ends up falling back on a combination of word salad and throwing up our hands while saying, “It’s a mystery.” But I think that the textual evidence of God the Father being above (and therefore, in some degree, separate from) God the Son in important ways is so clear that one can’t argue against it from the New Testament — one would have to argue it against the New Testament.
(Sorry. I got a little off explaining Latter-day Saint beliefs and more into explaining against mainstream Christianity…)
Oh, there’s a little bit more of Jeff explaining more about the nature of God within this section. And I agree when he says that, once you starting talking about it deeply enough, God’s state “defies our comprehension.” So when he speaks about God being “otherly,” about being “outside the universe” and yet omnipresent, my best response is, “Sure, if we stipulate that we’re goldfish trying to describe what’s outside the bowl.” But when Jeff states that God is not bound by the laws of this universe, I will jump in and say: But God is nevertheless a God of law. He may inhabit, for want of better terms, a higher and more encompassing domain than we do; He may have twelve spatial dimensions where we have only three, and thus can do things which seem, from our vantage point, to defy the laws of nature. But He does not break laws. That is not, in my understanding, His nature. He uses higher laws to supersede lower laws, in the way that an airplane does not “break” the law of gravity, it makes uses of other physical laws which are more powerful in some respects than gravity.
And when Pastor Jeff brings up the LDS idea of God “progressing,” I will echo Greg (yes, I listened ahead a bit) in saying that God is perfect — His “progression” does not entail Him becoming “better” in the way that imperfect humans can improve. But He does become greater. His kingdom grows, with every one of His children who returns to Him better than we started. His joy becomes more full as more of His children come into His presence through the atonement of His son.
Belief #3: Humans Are Lost Image-Bearers of God (stop at 12:58 before Greg responds)
I would say that Latter-day Saints believe that we are “in the image of God” even more than most mainstream Christians. We are flawed images, yet capable of so much that, as one Latter-day Saint phrase puts it, we are “gods in embryo.” Yet to be capable of such great good, we must also be capable of horrendous evil. Which is why we can say that we are gods in embryo on one hand, and yet inescapably (by our own efforts) fallen. We believe that God truly wants us to become like Him; we also believe that, absent the atonement of Jesus Christ, it’s flat-out impossible.
But I would also say, in contrast to Pastor Jeff, that while the Fall brought sin and separation from God into the world, it was not a “catastrophic tragedy” in the sense that I think he means — by which I mean that God wasn’t blindsided by the serpent, and everything since then is not some cobbled-together Plan B. God’s limitless understanding means that he could take Satan’s attempts to frustrate the divine plan and use it instead to further that plan.
(If that rankles evangelical sensibilities, think of this parallel: Did Judas Iscariot frustrate God’s “plan A” by getting Jesus crucified? Not at all. God knew that evil men, influenced by other evil entities, would seek to destroy Jesus. He therefore incorporated those evil efforts into His plan to bring to pass the great and necessary atonement. In the same sense, then, while the intents which directly caused the fall were evil, God made use of those events to bring to pass something more glorious. And I’m sure that just sticks in Satan’s craw.)
Belief #4: Jesus is God and the Savior of the World (stop at 16:10 before Greg responds)
As written above (copied from the heading in the video), I wouldn’t have a disagreement with that (allowing for not sometimes using the same precise definitions for all of the words — curse you, imperfect human language!). And as Jeff elaborates it… nope. No problem. I would be completely comfortable declaring my faith in those terms.
The conversation continues there with some back and forth, but it’s not feasible or helpful if I stop to step in front of Greg every time Jeff makes a comment.
Belief #5: True Church is All Who Have Been Born Again (stop at 26:14 before Greg responds)
This might seem a little combative toward Jeff’s formulation above, but as far as I can tell, the idea that the “true church” is all who have been born again, regardless of their denomination, seems like a very recent doctrinal innovation — like in the past couple of centuries (and even more recent when we’re talking about evangelicals accepting Roman Catholics and vice versa). The most charitable reasoning for that would be that, yes, Christians have fallen astray in that regard and needed to turn around and start following the Bible more closely; the more cynical reasoning would be that, when looking at the eleventy-billion Christian denominations and realizing that no one of them (outside of Catholic and Orthodox denominations) had anything close to “authority” to proclaim their church “more right,” Christian thought-leaders tried instead to erase the potential for theological “holy wars,” especially when the doctrines over which they were fighting would end up morphing within each denomination anyway.
While the New Testament isn’t conclusive in proving that Jesus instituted an actual organization church during His Lifetime (“And that’s why we need other scripture!”), there are certainly strong indications, both to the presence of such an organization/authority structure and its necessity. (Ephesians 4:11-13, as well as the number of times in Acts that the gathered Apostles were considered an authoritative arbiter of disputes, and that ordinances needed to be performed by those with authority.)
And as for baptism not being necessary for salvation, well: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark 16:16) Note that the requirement for salvation is belief AND being baptized (i.e., making a formal covenant), whereas if one doesn’t believe, then whether one is baptized or not doesn’t matter.
Later in this section, Jeff asks why a Latter-day Saint would continue going through the temple to complete ordinances and make covenants on behalf of others. My response would be two-fold:
- All ordinances must be performed in the flesh — there’s no way to baptize a spirit, and Jesus said that baptism was necessary.
- But also — and this is largely Nathan thinking here — yes, I know that it’s an ungainly “workaround” to have the living Saints now go repeatedly through temple ordinances on behalf of the dead. Couldn’t God, in His wisdom, have designed the whole plan in a way that was more efficient? I think that God purposely designed it that way for the benefit of the living. Take the most time-consuming ordinance, the endowment: How much would I learn from it (and it is specifically a teaching ordinance in the way that most others are not) if I participated once, and never revisited it? But as I serve in the temple performing proxy ordinances, I am reminded of the truths I learned and the covenants I made, and I renew those covenants for myself as I perform them for others by proxy.
Belief #6: Jesus Will Return (stop at 33:52 before Greg responds)
Absolutely. 100%. We believe that Jesus restored His authority to and through The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints precisely in preparation for His return. These are the Last Days — they’re Laster than they were yesterday, and they’ll be even Lasterer tomorrow.
As Jeff said, there are different view among different denominations about the timing of the resurrection, what the “tribulation” means, whether there will be a millennial reign, and we could jump in and debate with all of those, but the central point is: He’s coming. Get ready.
As I mentioned above, I really appreciate Pastor Jeff’s exploration of not just what Latter-day Saints believe, but why. I think my urge to get into the conversation is partly because of the Great Commission, and partly because, as humans, we all love explaining the important things we believe.