Okay, about who gets to decide who is Christian, a Roman Catholic says they have 1500 years worth of history to give them the authority to call any group Christian or not. But then, so do the Orthodox, Anglicans, and yes, even Arians - all of whom have roots imbedded in the rock of Peter. So, who gets to decide then?
This is not a relevant objection, because the claim that Mormons are not Christian does not follow the secular reasoning of finding principles that we can all agree on. It is based on specific theological suppositions taken to be true, simply. And though these suppositions are generally common to the groups you just named, they do not need to be. For us, it only matters that Mormons are non-Christian by the standards set by Catholic Christianity. This means of course we are responsible for showing that Catholicism is true in order to sustain this critique.
For this to not reduce to a muddle, a distinction must be made between a
internal and an
external critique. To show you what I mean, I will use an example often leveled against Catholicism rather than against Mormonism. Non-Catholics, typically Protestants, often criticize the Catholic Church for worshiping Mary, and Catholics often respond, “No, we don’t worship Mary; you misunderstand us.” I am not fond of responding this way, and I actually have a bit more respect for this charge than a lot of my fellow Catholics do. This is because the person who is making the claim might actually understand Catholic practice, but still believe it to constitute worship. For a Protestant, prayer is an act of worship
as such. Since they believe God has revealed prayer to have an intrinsically worshipful character, it does not matter to them whether Catholics deny that they worship Mary. If the dulia/latreia distinction is false, then Catholics worship Mary by praying to her, willy-nilly.
For this reason, the Protestant charge is coherent and respectable, as an
external critique, which draws upon principles from outside a Catholic worldview. An
internal critique would consist in examining Catholic teaching on prayer and finding a way to reduce Catholic prayer to Mary to an act of worship on its own terms. This is why, rather than assuming a person is ignorant who thinks we worship the saints, I prefer to find out what that person’s understanding of prayer within their own religion is. When it turns out to be something different from the Catholic notion,
I give the Protestant credit for making a accusation consistent with his own theology - for there is nothing improper about external critique as such - and then turn the discussion to his denial of the dulia/latreia distinction, on which his criticism rests.
I will happily admit that the denial that Mormons are Christian is an external critique; it does not derive from within Mormon principles, but presupposes a specifically Catholic assumption about the nature of God revealed in his covenant name Yahweh. Thus, by saying Mormons are non-Christian, I immediately take responsibility to uphold the entire Catholic faith upon which I make that assertion.
You may be thinking, “Well then, isn’t this all just circular? You’ve assumed your own position as a basis for arguing against mine? So much for the logical distinctions you’ve been touting in your posts.” I respond that the reason for saying that Mormons are not Christian is not simply to make an argument, but rather to define what the real stakes of the argument are, namely, salvation itself. A person who joins the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is taking an action that separates him from the Catholic Church in a radical way that will come heavily to bear on that person’s salvation and ultimate justification in God’s sight.
The LDS Church has made a great investment in recent years in creating an illusion that the distance between themselves and the mainstream Churches is not so great. this serves to dissolve the relevance of the reasons people have presented for objecting to Mormonism, and which can stand in the way of getting converts and retaining members. They have been successful. And example can be seen in my wife’s experience of leaving Mormonism at age 20, following her discovery that Mormonism teaches a plurality of gods. Something that dawned on her, but not on any of her LDS friends, was the simple observation that to believe something like that and be wrong about it is a very grave matter for one’s soul. It was therefore incumbent on her to give serious thought and consideration to the impact that this teaching had on the realities of Christianity, prior to accepting it. By merely recognizing that something like that was a big deals - that a foundational difference in worldviews separates belief in one god from belief in many - she had thought already far more deeply about the subject than her family, her colleagues and teachers at seminary, and I daresay, many of the BYU professors whose scholarly defenses of Mormonism I have read.
When we say Mormons are non-Christian, we are not trying to conclude the argument by dismissing Mormonism out of hand. We are claiming that salvation is at stake here. As the first-century Christan text the
Didache begins, “There are two ways, the way of life and the way of death, and great is the difference between them.” With stakes like that, it is foolish to pretend that the difference between the ways is not there.
