Tuesday, September 12, 2006
What To Do With Those Pesky Mormons?
Regular readers of this blog know that I have a political blog as well - Article VI Blog about religion and politics, specifically about the potential Presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney, a Mormon, and a highly credible candidate. I blog there with a partner, a Mormon, known in blogging as The Hedgehog, Lowell Brown.
My motivations for doing the blog are twofold, First, I am attracted to Romney as a candidate. It is way too early to make a decision about who to vote for, but I like they guy, have met him personally and still like him, which is often unusual for candidates. The other reason is that I think too close a mixture of religion and politics will do far more to hurt the church tha it will the government and right now, I think we may be getting a bit too close - especially when there are whispering amongst evangelicals that they could not possible vote for Romney becasue he is - shudder - a Mormon.
At Article VI, we limit ourselves almost solely to politics, we try to avoid theology as much as possible. But that does not mean I'm not doing some reading. Just finished a book - How Wide The Divide - in which scriptural scholars, one Mormon (Stephen Robinson), one evangelical (Craig Bloomberg), discuss the differences and similarities in belief. They end the book this way:
Bottom line is this, to my mind the Mormons have missed the mark on several issues, but they are not engaged in any heresies that have not been a part of the church historically almost since its inception, they represent a unique combination of those heresies, but hey.... The church has been debating these things for cenutries and centuries. In essence they are way out not-strict-trinitarian pentecostal arminians. That makes them wrong, but it does not make them an evil cult bent on worldly conquest or destruction.
What makes the average Christian "afraid" of Mormons is not theology, it's history. Well, history is just that, history - the past. I have but one single concern about the Mormons and that is, given their adherence to present-day prophetic utterance, what is to prevent highly controversial historical practices from re-emerging at the whim of the current prophet? My Mormon blogging partner assures me it will never happen, and is gathering for me materials to show the institutional doorstops they have to prevent it from happening, I'll be fascinated to see that.
That said, one thing I know will help prevent those practices from re-emerging, and that is beginning to include them in the dialog with us traditional Christian types. They want to be known as "Christians" though they readily admit they do not hold the creeds that traditionally define Christians. Fine, let's extend them the title "non-creedal Christian" and seat them at the table with us. Within our ranks there are huge divergences of thought on a large variety of matters - Mormons are not so divergent, at least not anymore.
When it comes to matters temporal - values and behavior, frankly I think they are better at it than most of us, and they have much to offer us in that department.
The time for "cultic" status for Mormons is at an end, they are way different - agreed - but so are the Orthodox and Roman churches and all but the whacko-right are willing to include them in our dialog.
Related Tags: Mormon, Christian, dialog, cult, cultic
My motivations for doing the blog are twofold, First, I am attracted to Romney as a candidate. It is way too early to make a decision about who to vote for, but I like they guy, have met him personally and still like him, which is often unusual for candidates. The other reason is that I think too close a mixture of religion and politics will do far more to hurt the church tha it will the government and right now, I think we may be getting a bit too close - especially when there are whispering amongst evangelicals that they could not possible vote for Romney becasue he is - shudder - a Mormon.
At Article VI, we limit ourselves almost solely to politics, we try to avoid theology as much as possible. But that does not mean I'm not doing some reading. Just finished a book - How Wide The Divide - in which scriptural scholars, one Mormon (Stephen Robinson), one evangelical (Craig Bloomberg), discuss the differences and similarities in belief. They end the book this way:
On the one hand, we jointly and sincerely affirm the following foundational propositions of the Christian gospel as we both understand it.It was a fascinating read, and I'd love to discuss it in detail with the right people, but they are kind of hard to find on this issue. I must also comment they did leave one extremely important issue undiscussed that to my stick-in-the-mud Presbyterian mind is the real bug-a-boo and that is the view of prophecy, although it was covered to some extent in their discussion of canon.
- The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one eternal God.
- Jesus Christ is Lord. He is both the Son of God and God the Son.
- There is no other name and no other way by which any individual may be saved other than through Jesus Christ.
- Jesus Christ suffered, bled and died on the cross to perform a substitutionary atonement for the sins of the world.
- Jesus Christ was resurrected on the third day and raised up in glory to the right hand of God.
- We enter into the gospel covenant and are saved by the preaching of the word and by the grace of God.
- We are justified before God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
- We are progressively sanctified by yielding our lives to God?s Holy Spirit, who enables us to obey God?s commands.
- All the gifts of the Spirit manifested in the New Testament church continue in God?s church today.
- The Bible is God?s word and is true and trustworthy within those parameters that the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy and the eighth LDS Article of Faith share.
- Jesus Christ will publicly and visibly return from heaven to establish his millennial kingdom on earth.
- The God of heaven is a God of love, and those who desire to be with him must also seek to be motivated in all their relationships by love.
On the other hand, the following important issues continue to divide us.
- Are the Old and New Testaments the sole inspired, authoritative canonical books that God has revealed to guide his people, or should the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants be included as well?
- Does God the Father currently have a physical body or not?
- Was God at some point in eternity past a human being like the mortal Jesus, or has he always been the infinite Supreme Being?
- Can exalted humans one day share by grace all the attributes of God or only the so-called communicable attributes?
- Is God a Trinity in essence or only in function?
- Do the classic early Christian creeds accurately elaborate biblical truths about God and Christ, while admittedly rephrasing them in later philosophical language, or have they so imported Hellenistic concepts into their formulations as to distort biblical truth?
- Is ?justification by faith? or ?justification by faith alone? the more appropriate summary of the Bible?s teaching on that topic?
- Do good works function solely as a response to God?s gracious act of saving us, or do they also determine the level of our eternal reward?
- Do people have a chance to respond to the gospel after death or not?
- Is heaven, the abode of the ?saved,? subdivided into three degrees of glory or not?
- How serious are the consequences for each of us if one belief system turns out to be wrong and the other turns out to be right?
We remind our readers, in closing, that there are numerous areas of doctrine we have not discussed at all, so that our views on those topics will not appear in either of these lists. Still, if any among either Evangelicals or Latter-day Saints are surprised to discover that those on the other "side" can honestly assent to some of the twelve joint affirmations listed above, or still incorrectly insist that they do not, we shall have succeeded in establishing the need for this book. That we can readily formulate a list of eleven important disagreements establishes the need for even further dialogue. As we have repeatedly stressed, we can only hope that such dialogue may be characterized by speaking the truth to one another in love.
Bottom line is this, to my mind the Mormons have missed the mark on several issues, but they are not engaged in any heresies that have not been a part of the church historically almost since its inception, they represent a unique combination of those heresies, but hey.... The church has been debating these things for cenutries and centuries. In essence they are way out not-strict-trinitarian pentecostal arminians. That makes them wrong, but it does not make them an evil cult bent on worldly conquest or destruction.
What makes the average Christian "afraid" of Mormons is not theology, it's history. Well, history is just that, history - the past. I have but one single concern about the Mormons and that is, given their adherence to present-day prophetic utterance, what is to prevent highly controversial historical practices from re-emerging at the whim of the current prophet? My Mormon blogging partner assures me it will never happen, and is gathering for me materials to show the institutional doorstops they have to prevent it from happening, I'll be fascinated to see that.
That said, one thing I know will help prevent those practices from re-emerging, and that is beginning to include them in the dialog with us traditional Christian types. They want to be known as "Christians" though they readily admit they do not hold the creeds that traditionally define Christians. Fine, let's extend them the title "non-creedal Christian" and seat them at the table with us. Within our ranks there are huge divergences of thought on a large variety of matters - Mormons are not so divergent, at least not anymore.
When it comes to matters temporal - values and behavior, frankly I think they are better at it than most of us, and they have much to offer us in that department.
The time for "cultic" status for Mormons is at an end, they are way different - agreed - but so are the Orthodox and Roman churches and all but the whacko-right are willing to include them in our dialog.
Related Tags: Mormon, Christian, dialog, cult, cultic
