Gloriscope reviews Mormon, Protestant, and Catholic published opinion

Posted 8:45am CT Jan. 17, 2008 in Minneapolis, USA
LONDON 14:45 – JOHANNESBURG 16:45 – MANILA 22:45 – SYDNEY 01:45 18/1

“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit,
but test the spirits to see whether they are from God,
because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
(1 John 4:1 NIV)

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Does Mormonism glorify the God of the Bible?
Click here for a comparison table of biblical and Mormon beliefs.

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By Gloriscope staff 

What does the Book of Mormon claim?

Let’s look at the The Book of Mormon. We have in front of us a blue book of 779 pages with the cover title THE BOOK OF MORMON and subtitle Another Testament of Jesus Christ. On the internal front page it says “Published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A.” and on the next page it says that it was printed in the U.S.A. in 9/95.

The first paragraph of the book’s one-page Introduction says:

“The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God’s dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains, as does the Bible, the fullness of the everlasting gospel.”

The last paragraph of the Introduction says, “Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is his revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah.”

What does the Mormon President say?

We can now ask, “Are Mormons Christians?” Let us first see what is the opinion of Gordon B. Hinckley, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He is called a prophet and he is considered by the Mormons as a main able to receive new revelation from God.

David Holman, writing in his article “Romney’s ‘Mormon Problem,’” published in the American Spectator (Dec. 16, 2005), quotes Hinckley as saying, “Are we Christians? Of course we are! No one can honestly deny that.”

But Dr. Dennis A. Wright, DMin, Founder and President of the evangelical ministry Understanding The Times, wrote an article quoting an official LDS Church publication which says:

“In bearing testimony of Jesus Christ President Hinckley spoke of those outside the Church who say Latter-day Saints ‘do not believe in the traditional Christ.’ ‘No, I don’t. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak.” (Church News, June 20, 1998, page 7). (Dr. Wright’s article “Does Mitt Romney Have a Mormon Problem?” was posted online in Christian Worldwide Network on Dec.. 24, 2005.)

Mormonism goes mainstream

Our discerning readers have probably noticed that the Mormon church is trying to project itself as a mainstream church. Daniel Brook writes in his 2007 article “The Mormons Are Coming!” in the GOOD Magazine:

“This strategy of mainstreaming themselves seems all but official Church policy.” Daniel Brook adds, “More recently, the Church redesigned its logo to make the words ‘Jesus Christ’ much larger, possibly in an attempt to minimize the differences between Mormonism and traditional forms of Christianity. Mitt Romney has adopted a similar strategy in his presidential campaign.”

This “mainstreaming” effort of the LDS Church and Mitt Romney has not escaped the attention of U.S. and European news media. After Mitt Romney’s speech about his religion in December 2007, a British newspaper, the Financial Times of London, published an editorial with the headline “Mormonism goes mainstream” (Dec. 10, 2007, page 10).

So, are Mormons mainstream Christians or not?

“For one thing, Mormons have long taught that they are not a part of mainstream Christian faith,” writes Scott Alan Nesbitt from First United Presbyterian Church in Clinton, Iowa, in the January 15, 2008, issue of the U.S. Protestant magazine Christian Century. “It is only in more recent years that Mormons have attempted to identify more closely with traditional Christianity. None of Mormonism’s long-standing teachings about apostate Christianity have been revoked.”

Mormons claim they are the only true Christians

Do Mormons claim that they are the only true Christians and all other people who call themselves Christians are false Christians? Or do Mormons perhaps consider themselves the only “fully developed” Christians?

Amy Sullivan wrote in her article “Mitt Romney’s Evangelical Problem” in the Washington Monthly, September 2005: “Mormons believe that they are the fully realized strain of Christianity – hence the ‘latter-day saints.’ They acknowledge extra-biblical works of scripture (such as the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants), follow a series of prophets who claim to have received divine revelations, and teach that God inhabits an actual physical body. This is all blasphemy to evangelicals,” says Amy Sullivan.

Two reporters from the New York Times, Adam Nagourney and Laurie Goodstein, say a similar thing in their article about Mitt Romney, published on the front page of the New York Times on February 8, 2007: “Mormons believe that Smith rescued Christianity from apostasy and restored the church to what was envisioned in the New Testament – but these doctrines are beyond the pale for most Christian churches.”

Michael L. Scherer, writing in the November 2005 issue of Metro Lutheran, a Lutheran newspaper in Minneapolis, pointed out that Mormons in Utah (where most Mormons live) tend to discourage other churches from displaying their Christian identity. He wrote: “More crucially, however, is the fact that this non-Christian cult (which wants us to think it is Christian, but has a reputation for keeping Lutherans and others in Utah from displaying crosses on their church buildings) now has over 10 million members and is growing rapidly. It is a religion of Law, not Grace. For Mormons, salvation is earned. Lutherans should care profoundly about that.”

Similarity with Islam

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, the Roman Catholic editor of the Catholic magazine First Things, sees a similarity between Mormonism and Islam. Neuhaus wrote in the March 2000 issue of First Things that “the LDS is, by way of sharpest contrast, in radical discontinuity with historic Christianity. The sacred stories and official teachings of the LDS could hardly be clearer about that. For missionary and public relations purposes, the LDS may present Mormonism as an ‘add-on,’ a kind of Christianity-plus, but that is not the official narrative and doctrine. A closer parallel might be with Islam. Islam is a derivative of Judaism and Christianity. Like Joseph Smith, Muhammad in the seventh century claimed new revelations and produced in the Qur’an a ‘corrected’ version of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, presumably by divine dictation.”

The respected British-U.S. weekly the Economist of London also sees a similarity between Mormonism and Islam. (Muslims recognize Jesus as a prophet of Allah, but do not see him as God). The Economist wrote in a big article January 4, 2007: “Like Muslims, the Mormons believe that God’s covenant with Abraham, and the message of Jesus of Nazareth, were distorted by later generations – only to be corrected by their own prophet.”

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus also sees a similarity between Mormonism and the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon. He wrote in the same issue of First Things: “There are other similarities between Mormonism and the Unification Church, such as the emphasis on the celestial significance of marriage and family. According to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ‘Gods and humans are the same species of being, but at different stages of development in a divine continuum, and the heavenly Father and Mother are the heavenly pattern, model, and example of what mortals can become through obedience to the gospel.’”

How Christian is the Mormon doctrine?

All in all, then, how Christian are Mormons if judged on the basis of their entire doctrine? Can Mormons be considered Christians?

Former President Jimmy Carter, an evangelical Christian, was reported to accept Mormons as Christians. Arizona Daily Star wrote November 16, 1997: “Former President Jimmy Carter, in comments at odds with the leaders of his Southern Baptist faith, says Mormons should be considered part of the Christian community. The Deseret News reported yesterday that in a teleconference with religion writers this week, the Democratic 39th president said that leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention were wrong to imply that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a non-Christian cult.”

However, Wayne Grudem, a well-known evangelical theologian and author of a 1290-page Systematic Theology, does not see Mormons as Christians. Although professor Grudem supports Mitt Romney for President, because Romney is a conservative and in Grudem’s view best-qualified of all presidential candidates, .Grudem adds: “I strongly disagree with a significant number of Mormon theological beliefs, which I find to be inconsistent with the Bible and with historic Christian teachings.” (Townhall.com, October 18, 2007)

“There are so many anomalies in the Mormon faith that one is compelled to ask at what point such a religion crosses over into a category separate from Christianity,” writes Scott Alan Nesbitt in the Christian Century, Jan. 15, 2008. “Mormons may be similar to Christians in various ways, but that doesn’t mean that they actually are Christians.”

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, the Roman Catholic editor of the respected Catholic magazine First Things, wrote in his article “Is Mormonism Christian?” in the March 2000 issue of that magazine: “If Christian doctrine is summarized in, for instance, the Apostles’ Creed as understood by historic Christianity, official LDS teaching adds to the creed, deviates from it, or starkly opposes it almost article by article.”

Stephen Reed wrote in Breakpoint, Jan. 10, 2008: “Only the Latter-day Saints faith uses the Book of Mormon, thereby declaring the Bible incomplete. Only the Mormons believe that Jesus had a post-resurrection visit to North America. Only Mormon men are promised by their faith that they will inherit a planet to rule, becoming something like a god in the afterlife. Christians may rightly consider this kind of idea to be more from the imagination of Joseph Smith than the mind of the Creator. So Mormonism is not ‘just like Christianity’ at all. It is something wholly different, whether one calls it a ‘cult’ or simply ‘unorthodox.’”

Which Christ do Mormons worship?

But what about the Mormon belief in Jesus Christ? Mormons always emphasize that they believe in Jesus Christ, that they love and worship him. Indeed, Jesus Christ’s name is in their church’s official name: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A reader with the handle rll7548 is skeptical. In a feedback post to the Salt Lake Tribune April 2, 2007, the reader quotes the well-known anecdote about Abraham Lincoln, in which Lincoln asked somebody about a lamb: “‘Suppose we call the tail a leg, then how many legs does a lamb have?’ His opponent tersely responded, ‘Five!’ Mr. Lincoln then brought the argument to a close, saying, ‘That’s the same mistake you’ve been making all day long… Calling a tail a leg does not make it one.’ In exactly the same way, the LDS officials crying out, ‘We are Christians,’ does not make them such.” The same reader added, “Claiming a label does no more to make an essential change in a person than standing in a garage makes one a car. The core of LDS doctrine is what makes the label ‘Christian’ invalid when applied to the Mormon Church.”

Shaun Aisbitt published an anecdote in the online Encyclopedia of False Christs (2002), which illustrated the same argument. Shaun discussed faith with two Mormon missionaries who were claiming that they were Christians, because their Mormon church has the name of Jesus in its official name. Shaun could not agree with them, and then they said they were Christians because they believed in Jesus. Shaun Aisbitt continued:

“I said if I accept them as Christians, will they accept me as a Christian because I believe in Jesus? Yes they agreed, then I pointed at a tree and said ‘come, let us pray to Jesus’. They said the tree wasn’t Jesus, I said you just accepted me as a Christian because I believe in Jesus, well that tree is my Jesus (bear with me here! this just an example of the fallacy of their argument, I don’t believe Jesus is a tree!). They eventually began to understand what I was getting at. When we say we follow Jesus, we need to make sure the Jesus we are following is the right one. Just saying we follow Jesus and not follow the Jesus of the Bible, leads to following men and demons. This of course leads to a lost eternity.”

Mormons in future

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus concludes his article “Is Mormonism Christian?” in the March 2000 issue of the Catholic monthly First Things:

“The leadership of the LDS will have to decide whether its growth potential is enhanced or hampered by presenting Mormonism as a new religion or as, so to speak, another Christian denomination. Sometimes they seem to want to have it both ways, but that will become increasingly difficult. And, of course, for Mormons whose controlling concern is spiritual, intellectual, and moral integrity, questions of marketing and growth, as well as questions of institutional vitality and communal belonging, must be clearly subordinated to the question of truth. As for the rest of us, we owe to Mormon Americans respect for their human dignity, protection of their religious freedom, readiness for friendship, openness to honest dialogue, and an eagerness to join hands in social and cultural tasks that advance the common good. That, perhaps, is work enough, at least for the time being.”

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Note: Click here for a schematic comparison of the biblical and Mormon beliefs.

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TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY!

Published in the U.S.A. Copyright © 4T4C News Corp. 2008. All rights reserved.