First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time to hop into this discussion and answer these questions.
Next, I like to give you a little piece of advice while on the board: let it fall off like water on a duck’s back. (It=anything that might aggrevate you)
And now for my question. I find it somewhat interesting that you bring in the Jewish faith in your comparison to the Mormon faith. I said it once to a group of Mormon missionaries that it seems that the Mormon Church is a reinstatement of the Jewish law (and they completely disavowed the even concept). What I tried to explain (and I will try to condense it for this post) is that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. an example would be Luke 4. We see Satan tempting Jesus. Satan quotes Psalms 91 as a prophecy of of the protection for Christ, and Jesus responds with Deut. 6. I say all this because Jesus is the word. He fulfills the Old Testament. This fulfillment creates the New Testament. Now, the Mormon church is a restoration (or recreation) of the Old Testament which is then a restoration (or recreation) of Jesus.
Would you accept that general analysis?
I would say that “the Mormon argument” (as absurd as it is to claim “the”) comes down to the validity–or lack thereof–of the practices of the Jewish Christians. Bart Ehrman gets into the thinking and practices of Jewish Christians in
Lost Christianities. These Jewish Christians are probably who Paul was so angry with in Galatians 2, and we only have fragments of them–there are scraps of wrtings of the Ebionites and Nazaraens, for example, but nothing more.
So while Historic Christianity sees the Church of Christ strengthening and coming together as orthodoxy and orthopraxy are established, Mormons see incremental apostasy. Mormons want to claim a restoration of Christianity before all of the decisions were made that make them heretics.
The young Mormon missionaries are well-versed in the basic teachings of Mormonism, but haven’t had the training to “do theology.” They may not have even understood what you were getting at!
There are legalistic Mormons who probably err on the side of OT thinking when it comes to “obedience to prophets,” but there are also Mormon mystics/gnostics, Aesthetics, Ascetics, and so on.
But let me take up what I believe to be an aspect of your argument: The letter to the Hebrews makes no bones about dispensing with temples and tabernacles, and salvation through the Mosaic law because of Christ’s sacrifice. Christ is our “High Priest in the Heavens” so to speak.
There is also 1 Peter 2 and 1 Cor. 3, which describe the followers of Christ as “the temple” wherein God dwells.
Most Mormons don’t understand these passages–in part because English speaking Mormons use the King James Bible and their comprehension of 17th century English isn’t that great, but also because they require some fancy dancing–so to speak.
The argument that Mormon scholars are likely to advance on these things goes something like this:
The OT sacrifices have been done away, and Christ is our High Priest in the Heavens, and the Mormon temple ordinances reflect his New Covenant. Mormons find grace and knowledge through the temple ordinances, but the ordinances themselves are only the means–and not the source–for grace and knowledge.
In D&C 124, the LDS Church is warned that if it is not able to build a temple in Nauvoo, it will be rejected by God as a church. In order to build the Nauvoo temple, Mormons had to come together as a people–as stones built on the cornerstone of Christ and willing to be fitted in the 1 Peter 2 sense–and be filled with the Spirit of God. The Nauvoo temple was an outer emblem of the inner work, so to speak. In that sense, Mormons can believe in the idea of the body of followers as the temple of God.
Because Mormons are heterodox by design, gnostic Mormons may think their salvation is more through knowledge in the ordinances (and there are Mormon scriptures that support this idea), legalistic Mormons think their salvation is in perfect keeping of the temple commandments and covenants (and there are Mormon scriptures that support this idea), and there are Paul-influenced Mormons who see the temple ordinances as teaching salvation by grace alone (and some of these think that this is a knowledge that distills slowly, so around we go again!). I could keep going with these “types” of Mormons–I’m not being exhaustive here.
By design, there is no mechanism in Mormonism to make all of these people agree. This can make discussing Mormonism with Mormons a frustrating affair, because while they often talk about the same concepts, they don’t necessarily have the same understandings.
I hope this helps a bit. Thank you for your thoughtful observation!
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