Are Mormons Christians

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twopekinguys said:
Exactly. Your prophet made that claim while being interviewed as the prophet of the mormon church. Therefore, he was not merely speaking as a man. Something mormons love to throw around in order to discredit sticky statements such as this.

So, your prophet flat out stated mormons do not worship the God of the Bible, but evidently another one.

Thanks for agreeing!!
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I think you misunderstood his post.
 
Judas_Thaddeus said:
I’ll agree to that he might have believed that, but what’s you’re point?
The Traditional Christ is NOT of Joseph Smith’s bible, I’ll agree, look: In the beginning was the gospel preached through the
Son. And the gospel was the word, and the word was
with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son
was of God.

​
Yeah, not the Eternal Creator God as described in the
**Holy Bible **(which again Mormons don’t believe in):In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word
was God.
  • John 1:1, NAB
    Now here’s my challenge: Find the OLDEST manuscript
    containing John 1:1 and demonstrate how Joseph Smith
    was even CLOSE to being right. Fair, yes?
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Your posts are by far the most visually creative…
 
gazelam said:
I think it’s safe to say that Gordon B. Hinckley believed that the traditional Christ of Orthodox Christianity is not the Christ found in the Bible.
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Gazelam,

Couple of simple questions.

Do you believe that Christ taught the apostles without error?

Do you believe the apostles then taught their immediate descendants without error?

In other words, God spent three years teaching twelve people on faith and morals. Could God have taught in error?

Then, those 12 apostles that he taught for three years, did they teach their immediate disciples, those that they taught the Word Of God to, did the apostles teach in error?

?
 
iepuras said:
No, Mormons are not Christian despite their protestations otherwise. Their beliefs on Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost (Mormon godhead) are light years away from Trinitarian theology of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is uncreated and the cause of all creation; whereas Heavenly Father is an exalted man with a resurrected body of flesh and bone, and Jesus is his son, both in the spirit and flesh. Mormons don’t really have a very defined theology on the Holy Ghost, just that he has a body of spirit. The Mormon Heavenly Father and Jesus organized the earth with existing materials. They didn’t create anything out of nothing, unlike the Trinity. The Trinity is one God in three distinct but not separate persons. The Mormon godhead of Heavenly Father, Jesus and Holy Ghost all have separate bodies and are merely one in purpose. Mormon beliefs on god and generations of gods makes them polytheistic.

When I was Mormon I believed I was Christian but never got worked up about Christians saying that Mormons are not. Now that I am studying real Christianity, I clearly see that Mormons are not Christians.
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Absolutely~ pleasant people but theologically, NOT Christian. The Catholic Church doesn’t consider them Christian. Read more about their beliefs and you will see. I especially note reading Catholic Answers book “Essential Catholic Survival Book” and spend time reading the section on Mormons…very enlightening!

mlz
 
JonNC said:
The underlined is preposterous.

Of the bolded, I have to ask what your sources are for this. Which communions or denominations state thus?

Jon
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I agree with Jon…this is ridiculous. Prior to becoming Catholic I was a part of many protestant church communions with belief in the Trinity!

mlz
 
gazelam said:
I do not have a copy of this book and it appears to not be available on line for free. So, no can do.
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Ok (I assumed so). As is the case many times with quotes such as these, the surrounding context of the statement will provide clarity as to how the author(s) intended the statement to be understood, which is often different from the way the people quoting them use them. I see that Elder Holland’s talk "The Only True God and Jesus Christ Whom He Has Sent" uses that quote, and, as I and others have noted before, that talk critiques a caricature of the Trinity doctrine, and not the actual belief (as is often the case in LDS apologetic arguments against the Trinity, which argue against Modalism, not the Trinity). Therefore, I don’t buy the usage of that quote from the Dictionary that I find on LDS and other non-Trinitarian websites attempting to critique the Trinity, at least not until I see the quote in context.

Suffice it to say, Trinitarians believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is present in the Bible. The Bible repeatedly talks of the existence and worship of only one God. The Old Testament is filled with examples of the Israelites turning to the worship of other gods, and God calling them back to worship of the one true God. The Bible also refers to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as “God”, and demonstrates that they are distinct from each other. That captures the fundamentals of the Trinity doctrine. The “formal doctrine” of the Trinity, with formal and technically precise theological definitions, came later on through inspired Ecumenical Councils that aimed to formally define certain foundational Church teachings in the face of heresies related to the nature of God and the nature of Christ. Therefore, saying that the doctrine of the Trinity is not found in the Bible is very different from saying that the “formal doctrine” of the Trinity isn’t there, at least for those that understand the theological distinction between the two concepts.
 
Are Mormons Christians? That will depend on your definition of ‘Christian’. In the broadest of senses Mormons are Christians. More narrowly defined, probably not.
 
andrewstx said:
That has been very true with my experience in the Southwest as well, and not just among Baptists either. It’s common among fundamentalists in general.

As a rule they will speak of Jesus as the “son of God” which is true as far as it goes. But they don’t as a rule speak of Jesus as God the Son.

I was raised and dunked in a fundamentalist denomination that gave the name 'the churches of Christ" to it’self. They did not believe in the Holy Trinity because that term is not reffered to verbatim in the pages of it’s God, the bible.
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Thanks. I’m glad at least one person doesn’t think I’m crazy.
mlz said:
I agree with Jon…this is ridiculous. Prior to becoming Catholic I was a part of many protestant church communions with belief in the Trinity!
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“Many believe p. Therefore, not many believe ~p.”

This is a fallacy. “Many” is a very broad word. There can easily be many on opposite sides of an issue. I did not venture to say “most” because I do not have enough experience to say that. But I can tell you there are many Protestants who do not believe in the Trinity. That is an empirical fact.
 
QNDNNDQDCE said:
Thanks. I’m glad at least one person doesn’t think I’m crazy.

“Many believe p. Therefore, not many believe ~p.”

This is a fallacy. “Many” is a very broad word. There can easily be many on opposite sides of an issue. I did not venture to say “most” because I do not have enough experience to say that. But I can tell you there are many Protestants who do not believe in the Trinity. That is an empirical fact.
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I believe earlier you stated that you were talking about individual Protestants, and not denominations or churches. Individuals are certainly entitled to their own personal views. There are probably many Catholics that have an irregular understanding of the Trinity. The issue is what the actual churches and denominations teach (and I believe that is what those that have objected to your original statement are talking about, and not individual belief). The LDS Church, as an institution, is non-Trinitarian, believing that they have restored the original and true teachings on the nature of God. The vast majority of “Protestant” churches are Trinitarian, and their baptisms are accepted as valid by the Catholic Church. There are a few “Oneness” or “Unitarian” churches, such as the United Pentecostal Church International, that are non-Trinitarian, and their baptisms would not be accepted, just like LDS, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other non-Trinitarians.

So, sure, it may be an empirical fact that there are many individual Protestants that do not believe in the Trinity. There are most likely also many individual Protestants and Catholics that do not believe in the Atonement, nor believe that it is necessary. What is actually important is what the churches and denominations teach. That’s what JonNC and other posters were talking about and asked for references on, to which you replied that you don’t have any, and were talking about individuals. So, it seems as if you’re talking past each other.
 
Yes, you are right that I was speaking about individuals, not official creeds. There is a difference between a Catholic who believes mistakenly about the Trinity and a Protestant who believes mistakenly. The Catholic would, presumably, assent to the Church’s teaching whenever he is corrected, and thus has an implicit assent to the correct doctrine. Not so in the case of the Fundamentalist.

The main thing I was trying to say is that “believes in the Trinity” seems like a pretty ad hoc and inadequate definition of what separates a Christian from an infidel. Are individual “Bible-believing” Fundamentalists who believe no differently from your run-of-the-mill Baptist other than rejecting the Trinity not Christians on that point alone? Were the ancient Arian bishops not Christians either?

What makes someone a Christian? Valid baptism? Then are apostate Catholics who become Oneness Pentacostals Christians but those born into Oneness Pentacostalism not Christians? Is the crux of the matter rather holding to orthodox doctrine? Well, why then call Protestants Christian, who profess belief in the Trinity but in the same breath call the Mass an abomination?

This is what I really wanted to get at. It comes across as a meaningless distinction to insist that Protestants are our Christian separated brethren, but that Mormons are pagans who are in no way Christians. I am not saying that this conclusion is wrong, but, so we don’t look like we’re making things up on the fly to justify things we have decided without any reason, we need to say more than “Mormons aren’t Christian because they reject the Trinity and Protestants are Christians because they believe in the Trinity.” Believing in the Trinity is perhaps necessary to be a Christian, but that can’t be all. Someone could believe in the Trinity but reject the Incarnation. They would certainly not be Christians. What is the minimal requirement to be called Christian?
 
How far removed from Trinitarian doctrine can a particular denomination be for the Catholic Church to recognize its baptisms?
 
QNDNNDQDCE said:
I might as well quote your post, although you are not the only one who asked this.

I’m not so much speaking of any denominations or communities. I can think of few demoniations that reject the Trinity in their creed. I am referring mostly to individual Baptists. Keep in mind that I live in the South, so I live around a certain fringe (though numerous) demographic down here which has a very individualistic mindset. My source for saying this is only first-hand conversations with individuals. Some reject the essentiality of the doctrine of the Trinity, holding that it is not clearly and explicitly taught. Some reject the doctrine outright, holding various opinions: for example, that the Son is the incarnate Father, or that Jesus is not God at all.

This should not be too surprising. For many, the doctrine of the Trinity is no more clearly taught in Scripture than the doctrine of Purgatory, and was obviously a historical development, being imposed on Christendom by Pope Constantine at the Council of Nicaea. If we reject Purgatory, why not the Catholic Trinity too?

Even among those belonging to creedal denominations, we would have to be naive to suppose there are no individuals among their ranks who hold to similar opinions.
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Then this would not exclude the possibility that there are some individual Catholic that reject the Trinity. After all, there are individual Catholics that reject the real presence, that reject the Catholic position on ABC, etc.

My own thoght is that its best to look at the teachings of individual communions, as opposed to what individual people might think, but that’s me. I also don’t think the average Baptist is deep enough into history to recognize that the doctrine of the Trinity is defined in an early council.

Jon
 
Brandon_Cal said:
How far removed from Trinitarian doctrine can a particular denomination be for the Catholic Church to recognize its baptisms?
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Not Catholic, but from what I understand it mostly has to do with the formula: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen”

Jon
 
Are they Christians? No. In no way, shape or form. Here are some reasons why I think they are not.
  1. They do not believe in God of the Bible.
  2. They believe Jesus and Lucifer are brothers. (Angels are not human)
  3. God is not a racist.
  4. God allows all people in His Church. Not those who can pay.
  5. There are not different levels of Heaven (There is Heaven and Hell, pick one)
  6. God should be ahead of the times (Revelations come after?)
  7. God has no beginning and no end.
  8. Jesus did not fail His Church.
There is a lot more. All you have to do is read their D&C, P.o.G.P and the J.o.D.
 
JonNC said:
Not Catholic, but from what I understand it mostly has to do with the formula: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen”

Jon
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Actually, Mormons use the correct formula. They just mean something completely different by it. The name of the God we worship is “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. We are Baptized in the name of God. Because of their rejection of the Trinity, they, by the very nature of the situation, are Baptizing into the names of three gods who are one in purpose.
 
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