The Are Mormons Christians blog debate

Cat Herder · Understander of unimportant things

The Are Mormons Christians blog debate

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

Frankly I just don't care if outsiders consider us Christains or not. I went to an evangelical christain school for years and I bet 95% of them didn't think I was Christain. So what. It bothered me in the past. I would complain, "But we believe in Christ, our church bears His name, He is the Savior of the world, etc" but they don't care. Frankly I don't want to be lumped in with folks who handle snakes, practice TV style faith healings, had inquisitions, believe in Purgatory, the Rapture, ordain women and gays to the priesthood, believe in an all in one trinity, believe in a canabablistic version of the Sacrament, and a whole slew of other wacko traditions. If the word Christain means so much to them, let them have it. I prefer to be a Latter Day Saint anyway.

rayb · Hot Air Balloon

So do you ever find yourself defending mainstream Christianity to openly hostile antireligious folk? I do all the time, and quite frankly, it can be exhausting.

--Ray

Roper · Senior Bucketkeeper

I've been following the debate. Contributed a few times. My main contention is this: If one has to accept the councils and creeds of 4th century to be called an "Orthodox Christian" as Dr. Mohler has defined it, then I'm with Jason--I don't care to be an Orthodox Christian. Christ was not. His disciples were not.

Additionally, I believe the whole premise to be presumptuous: Christ is the One who decides who belongs to His fold--not Dr. Mohler, or OSC, or anyone else participating on that forum.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Bountiful hereby collectively flips them the bird!

oh...

Cat Herder · Understander of unimportant things

Saw this comment this morning on OSC's last posting.

Very well said, well said indeed:

The Orthodox and Catholic Churches split over the question of whether the Son "proceeds from" the Father or is eternally co-equal with Him. The condemnation of Mormons for believing God the Father has precedence over God the Son is a similar disagreement. It doesn't make Greek, Russian and Armenian Christians any less Christian.

The attack on Mormons for believing that God through the grace of Christ has the power to elevate some of His children to become like his Son in many ways is based on ignorance of the fact that divinization or theosis was the understanding of many early Christians about the nature of salvation and eternal life, and is still a central doctrine of the Orthodox Churches even today!

The claim that Mormons are "polytheists" because they worship the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as three separate persons is silly, because the Nicene Creed says exactly that. It insists that they are three separate persons. Jews and Muslims call the Christian belief in the Trinity "polytheism", since it is clearly different from their belief that God is a single entity. If you think the Father and the Holy Ghost were identical with the Jesus who hung on the cross, you are committing a heresy that the Nicene Creed was specifically designed to oppose. If you think Jesus does not have a body, even though he was born of Mary and died and was physically resurrected, you are likewise taking a position contrary to the Nicene Creed.

It is in fact amazing how people who condemn Mormon beliefs as "non-Christian" don't really understand the full breadth of what is accepted as "traditional Christianity."

What is even more ludicrous is that so many Evangelical Christians assert that all they need to do to be saved is make a one-time declaration of faith in Christ. They believe that anyone who believes the Bible has all the authority that anyone can get to be a preacher and to baptise. Yet when it comes to Mormons, they suddenly start making up extra requirements for salvation that they don't apply to themselves. Nobody stands up at a Billy Graham crusade and tells people "You must be able to recite the Nicene Creed before you can be received as saved or be baptized". If Evangelical Christians' salvation depended on their ability to correctly explain what the Nicene Creed says, and what it means and does not mean, most of them would flunk.

For that matter, why accept the Nicene and Chalcedon Creeds, but reject so many others that were enacted by the Catholic Church before the Reformation? Is the theory that the Catholic Church was valid and authoritative in the 4th Century, but lost its way and its authority after that? If so, you basically agree with Mormons that Christianity got off track sometime before the Reformation. Furthermore, it is hypocritical of Protestants to claim that they somehow inherited the mantle of legitimacy from the Catholic Church, even though it was off track, and that Protestants are now in position to anathematize other later reform movements. If the Catholic Church is not completely authoritative, where does Protestant authority come from? How can legitimate authority derive from an illegitimate source? If anyone with a Bible can assert authority, then how can Protestants tell later formed churches who also embrace the Bible that they have no authority?

If Southern Baptists want to excommunicate Mormons from Christianity, what about Catholics? Orthodox? Coptics? Methodists? Presbyterians? Congregationalists? United Church of Christ? Episcopalians? Unitarians? Dr. Mohler recently said that Baptists should respond to Pope Benedict's affirmation of Catholic primacy by asserting Catholic illegitimacy. Dr. Mohler has such a narrow definition of even "traditional orthodox Christian" that it excludes all the pre-Reformation churches as well as the post-Reformation churches, as well as many of the Reformation churches!

What about the Evangelical theologians who are now asserting the simple truth that the Neo-Platonic, pagan concept about a God without emotions (e.g. LOVE) is simply contrary to the Bible and a man-made doctrine that distorts the message of the Gospel? Through simple logic and study of the Bible they have come to the conclusion that the Catholic church had already lost its way in 325, which is exactly what Mormons believe. Those theologians are teaching at Evangelical seminaries and universities, and are "Christians" in good standing, so why should that be a reason to deChristianize Mormons?

A more fundamental issue is whether the entire idea of depriving someone of their rights as citizens, including the right to be elected to office, is a legitimate position for a true Christian to take. the rulers of the world in which Jesus and the early Church operated were pagans, not Christians, yet Christ did not call the government illegitimate and oppose its ruler over that. He did not even call for the ouster of the corrupt high priests who led the Jews. Nor did Peter, Paul or John or James after him. The early Christian church was established and grew for three hundred years under a non-Christian government system. It was not a stated goal of Christians to replace the rulers with Christians. Christians have lived for millenia in countries not ruled by Christians, and did not seek revolutions because of that. When Britain and France and Italy conquered nations, they did not do so in an effort to establish Christian rule, per se. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's" is Christ's call to have dual loyalties, one to God in our religious beliefs and the other to the rulers of the nation in which we live. There is simply no imperative in the Gospel to seek to place Christians in power. That was Constantine's idea, and the mixing of religious office with political power was the root of the corruption that propelled the Reformation in response.

Christians, even if they don't think Mitt Romney is Christian, have no charter in the Bible to keep him from being elected. When the question is simply stated, Will I be free to be the Christian I want to be under this man as president, the answer is clearly Yes! On every political issue affecting Christians as Christians, Mitt Romney supports their views on how society should be structured and the laws enforced.

Conclusion: The notion that only "Christians" should be elected to office is NOT a Christian teaching rooted in the Old or New Testaments, nor in any of the Creeds. That is a wholly man-made conceit, that is NOT Biblical and therefore should be rejected by Christians as a doctrine they owe any allegiance to.

Posted by: Raymond Takashi Swenson | July 26, 2007 9:02 PM

As predictable, this individual has taken some flak for it already by know-it-all evangelical types.

rayb · Hot Air Balloon

The initial response to OSC's latest response was a disappointingly low-minded "Dude, learn logic." or something to that effect. The poor guy didn't recognize that OSC's response completely deflated Mohler's rhetoric... very admirable job.

I don't mind admitting I'm not a traditional Christian--rather I am a practicing Christian...

--Ray

Cat Herder · Understander of unimportant things

rayb wrote:

The initial response to OSC's latest response was a disappointingly low-minded "Dude, learn logic." or something to that effect.

You know, that is one of the biggest things that irritates me and makes me laugh at the same time... when people say that the person they are "debating" needs to learn how to debate, and since they don't the implication becomes that person's viewpoint is invalid and not worthy of consideration.

What it tells me about that person on the other side is he/she: 1. has no way of intelligently responding to the other person's comments; 2. may be losing face and is trying to deflect it by modifying the rules; 3. thinks he/she knows more about persuasive speech because they had a class or two in philosophy or were on the debate team in high school; 4. some of the above; 5. all of the above.

Isn't the point of a debate about persuading the audience to accept your position as the better of the two presented? Dr. Mohler did not define his position adequately, kept changing the definition of the question being debated, and had little to back his assertions up with. OSC seriously made him look like the learned ignoramous he is.

Organist · Senior Member

We are the pure primitive Christianity, taught by Christ and the apostles before they were killed, the priesthood authority lost, and creeds and power seeking individuals changed the doctrines.

rayb · Hot Air Balloon

I think it is wise of OSC to not attempt to convince the audience of the minutia of Mormon doctrines, but he simply and unapologetically accepts them as what they are, and that they are not baptists doctrines, and where there's an exaggeration he simply says that the Dr. is wrong and leaves it at that. This very attitude is threatening to many folk, because they think that someone will believe the other guy without considering both sides... Heck, even some of the mormons keep trying to get in their doctrinal points one by one...

I love how he's avoided being baited. I wish I had greater mastery in this regard... my only skill in this regard is that I'm really good at baiting folks... :)

Now back to that thread on income tax...

--Ray

salesortonscom · Wise and Revered Master

There was an interesting forum on the BYU channel last night. The title was something along the lines of Mormonism and the Media. Generally watching a forum is not my cup of tea but this one was very interesting. They talked about how as Members we want to be a part of the "Christain" family but we also want to be peculiar and the difficult struggle between the two which goes along with this topic. Also talked about the recent PBS docudummery and other attempts to explain Mormonism and how they focus on the most outrageous stuff and we as members don't really recognize ourselves in the final product. One panelist made an interesting comment about where these media folks go off the track. If they would begin their presentation with Christ and shows his importance to latter day saints then bring in Joseph Smith, BOM, etc, then it not only is more informative about who we are but it also would make more sense. Instead they always want to jump right to Joseph Smith, his golden bible, polygamy, etc and what you get is this wacky view of the Church because it never gets put into context of our belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was very good. I recommend checking it out.