MORMONS AND CHRISTIANITY

If you check in on realclearreligion.org now and then, one of the things you may notice among the twelve articles it highlights everyday from various sources is that at least one or two  concern Mormonism from a Mormon perspective.  In comparison, Mormonism claims to the 6.1 million adherents in the United States.  The total number of Lutherans in the United States is in the neighborhood of 7.4 million.  Yet aside from the past sexuality wars, articles about and by Lutherans appear only occasionally.

Justification for this might be Lutherans are just boring folk.  (In fairness, sometimes I wonder.)  Another more likely explanation is the often cited factoid that Mormons are the fastest growing religious group in America.  (Not true.  The fastest growing are the Amish followed by the Orthodox Jews.)  My personal sense is that this is a simple case of bias on the part of the realclearreligion editors.  Well…it is their website, so they can do as they wish.  Still, the imbalance is striking.

Be that as it may, if you chance to read these articles about Mormons, one common theme is the ongoing and intense resentment that most Christians do not regard Mormons as Christians.  If a Christian should happen to say Mormons are not Christians in casual conversation, it is highly probable a Mormon will respond with insults and vitriol.  Often one will hear vicious insults against what Mormons bitterly call the "Christianity police".  Yet among Mormons themselves the contempt and distain they have for "orthodox" Christians is brutally palpable. 

The reasons for this are many; but mainly Mormons believe they and they alone proclaim the true, original faith of the early Christian Church of the Apostles.  Somehow, either through oppression of the Catholic Church, the unwarranted influence of Hellenic thought forms, or cataclysmic disaster, this "original" Christianity was extinguished--non-existent until a set of golden plates were revealed to Joseph Smith by the angel Maroni.  (No such angel exists in any version of the Christian or Hebrew Scriptures.  Neither Moroni can be found in found in the traditions of each faith.  According to Mormon documents, Moroni was once a faithful man in the ancient Americas who became an angel.)  Through these golden plates, the true Christianity of the original Apostles was again made alive among men.  After Joseph Smith translated the golden plates, he said they were returned to Moroni.  Therefore, if the golden plates ever existed, they cannot be examined.

That most "orthodox" Christians regard Joseph Smith as a liar, counterfeiter, and a false prophet would be something of an understatement. 

Two years ago, I somehow got into a long conversation with a Mormon gentleman through a series of posts on another website.  Our discussion was characteristically stern.  It began politely enough.  But soon, he began to attack me personally and his remaining messages sarcastic and snotty most of the time.  I tried my best to be firm but restrained and respectful--although he may have seen it differently.  He abruptly ended exchanges; but not before he called me a bigot. 

He began with what he thought was his trump card.  Namely by going to the English dictionary:  Christian:  one who believes in Jesus Christ.  In his mind, this settled the matter once and for all.  I responded that lexicographers were not competent to pronounce on theological doctrines.  Whatever qualifications those who compile dictionaries may have, arbiters of who is actually is a faithful disciple of the Risen Lord they are not--and no one made them so.  (Certainly it is not a role they would insist for themselves.)  This repetitively infuriated him to no end.

Of course, if someone wants to call themselves "Christian", there is little that can be done to stop them.  It is one thing, however, to claim the descriptive "Christian" for oneself.  But it is quite another to compel other Christians to agree with you.  Lest we forget, even to this date, a sizable mass of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists do not believe Catholics (and in sometimes, Lutherans) are Christians either.

But Christianity encompasses more than to "believe in Jesus Christ".  It is important to ask what it means to be Christian if one rejects the two thousand year history of what in fact is historical Christianity. Christianity is doctrinal but it is more than a collection of doctrines. Christianity is the past and present reality of the society composed of the Christians past, present, and future. As is said in the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” That encompasses doctrine, ministry, liturgy, and a rule of faith. Christians disagree about precisely where that Church is to be located historically and at present, but almost all agree that it is to be identified with the Great Tradition defined by the apostolic era through at least the first four ecumenical councils, and continuing in diverse forms to the present day.  That is the Christianity that Mormon theology rejects and condemns as an abomination and fraud.

Indeed, true Christianity is marked by the adherence and subscription to the three ecumenical creeds:  The Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and Athanasian Creed.  The Creeds do not condemn those Christians who have not been properly been taught and hold to uninformed theologies in ignorance.  Neither do they condemn those Christians who lived before the Creeds were adopted as statements of faith of the universal Church.  What they do censure and anathematize are those who reject the Creeds in informed malice.  And it is all three Creeds which Mormons refuse to subscribe--especially the Athanasian Creed.  It is true that there are Protestant Churches which do not adopt the Creeds out a sense that they are to trust only in the Bible; but they do not reject the substance taught by the Creeds.

Despite the sometimes insistence that they could agree to the Creeds, Mormons emphatically will not.  If Christian doctrine is summarized in, for instance, the Apostles' Creed as understood by historic Christianity, official Mormon teaching adds to the creed, deviates from it, or starkly opposes it almost article by article.

Mormons have insisted that the Creeds are formulations written years after the Apostolic age and thus are illegitimate and heretical.  The claim is that the "so-called" Christian Church was fraudulent, corrupt, and populated by impostors and the true Church did not exist after the passing of the Apostles.  With the revelation of the golden plates to Joseph Smith, the true Christianity of the Apostles was restored to mankind.

As a matter of course, all Christian Churches profess to preach the faith as taught by Christ and the Apostles.  Catholics especially claim a direct lineage and consistent teaching of the Apostles through the past to the present.  That the Mormons preach the Gospel of the "New Testament" Church is the matter of contention.  In its particulars, the faith of Apostles as recounted by Mormons is at serious variance with is known.  That Joseph Smith rewrote the Bible to reflect the "true faith" opens up the issue of whether Mormons and the historic Churches are using the same Scriptures.

A fair question would be to turn the inquiry around: according to Mormon theology, are any non-Mormons Christians?  This is a touchy matter.  But the consistent answer from the founders of Mormonism to the present day is "no".  Only in the Mormon Church is salvation to be found.

On the bottom line, Mormons are anti-Trinitarian.  They believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not one God--the "three in one".  Instead, Mormons believe the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate Gods.  They do not like the application that they are polytheistic.  Rather they prefer to be described as “henotheisic,” meaning that there is a head God who is worshiped as supreme.  Further Mormonism claims that God is an exalted man, not different in kind as Creator is different in kind from creature as taught by both historic Christians and Jews. The Mormon claim is, “What God was, we are. What God is, we will become.” Related to this is the teaching that the world was not created ex nihilo but organized into its present form, and that the trespass in the Garden of Eden, far from being the source of original sin, was a step toward becoming what God is.  With the possible exception of a few lone Process theologians and peculiar mystics, no Christian theology has ever made anything like such a claim.  Most would not hesitate to condemn these doctrines as heretical and blasphemous.

If Mormons wants to say they are Christians, no one can or will stop them.  That they are an exemplary people in many, many ways is beyond denial.  But while they agree that faith in Christ is necessary for salvation, they categorically reject the doctrine by which the Lutheran Church stands or falls: that we are saved by the Grace of God alone.

I leave it to you to decide for yourself whether Mormons are Christians.  But the weight of the evidence indicates they are not.  One doubts that the Christ they speak of is even the same Christ Lutherans and the rest of the universal Church worship as Lord and Savior.