My Response to Dr. R. Albert Mohler on Mormonism

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I have merely scanned Dr. Mohler’s statement and your response but as I understand it you dispute his (or anyone’s) right to define a Christian. ( Assuming my interpretation to be accurate) my response is that, as a Catholic, I am convinced that if I sat down with the most extreme anti-Catholic fundamentalist Baptist, we could within minutes formulate a prayer to Jesus which we would both be happy to use and would both be happy to do so before a cross. I could not do that with any mormon because you are not permitted to pray to Jesus and you reject the Christian symbol of the Cross. I and my Baptist friend would also share a firm belief in the Trinity which mormons reject. You call Jesus A son of God (along with Lucifer). These differences would make any Christian I know reject your claim. Islam honours Jesus but denies his divinity and denies the Trinity just as mormons do. Are muslims Christians? Of course not, neither are you.
If I were to find golden plates (or pretend that I had) which stated that we could all be gods (your belief) and requiring me to undertake human sacrifice: Would my ‘church’ be Christian merely because I said it was? - in your view YES it would.
 
My apologies I see that it was not your own response but that of another mormon apologist - (my arguments against his/your views are of course unaltered)
 
StevieD said:
I have merely scanned Dr. Mohler’s statement and your response but as I understand it you dispute his (or anyone’s) right to define a Christian. ( Assuming my interpretation to be accurate) my response is that, as a Catholic, I am convinced that if I sat down with the most extreme anti-Catholic fundamentalist Baptist, we could within minutes formulate a prayer to Jesus which we would both be happy to use and would both be happy to do so before a cross. I could not do that with any mormon because you are not permitted to pray to Jesus and you reject the Christian symbol of the Cross. I and my Baptist friend would also share a firm belief in the Trinity which mormons reject. You call Jesus A son of God (along with Lucifer). These differences would make any Christian I know reject your claim. Islam honours Jesus but denies his divinity and denies the Trinity just as mormons do. Are muslims Christians? Of course not, neither are you.
If I were to find golden plates (or pretend that I had) which stated that we could all be gods (your belief) and requiring me to undertake human sacrifice: Would my ‘church’ be Christian merely because I said it was? - in your view YES it would.
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And yet, your baptist friend may claim that you a catholic are not christian. Do you see the problem? Whereas your mormon friend would consider you a christian. Mormons pray to heavenly father in the name of christ. Nothing wrong with that. The mormons have nothing against the cross but they do not use it as a symbol. But for mormons the cross does bring to mind the suffering that christ experienced.
 
why_me said:
And yet, your baptist friend may claim that you a catholic are not christian. Do you see the problem? Whereas your mormon friend would consider you a christian. Mormons pray to heavenly father in the name of christ. Nothing wrong with that. The mormons have nothing against the cross but they do not use it as a symbol. But for mormons the cross does bring to mind the suffering that christ experienced.
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I don’t understand the validity in bringing up Baptist theology. Regardless of their view, they have no barring on the Catholic Church (with the exception of ecuemenical discourse) and no Catholic considers them a valid authority. Your comparison could only hold some merit, which is arguable itself, if one considered the Catholic Church and the Baptists as equally authorities.

I’d say the use of the cross as a symbol is the least of concerns when it comes to a Catholic’s view of Mormon theology. It is mostly the the denial of key points of the Nicene Creed that inhibit Mormons from being considered Christian bretheren. Besides, I wonder why it is an important issue (theologically, socially I understand) for Mormons who wish to be viewed as Christian by other churches. Didn’t the “Great Apostasy” destroy “true” Christianity, thereby rending only the Mormons “true” Christians?
Why then would they want acknowledgement from apostates?
 
why_me said:
And yet, your baptist friend may claim that you a catholic are not christian. Do you see the problem? Whereas your Mormon friend would consider you a christian. Mormons pray to heavenly father in the name of Christ. Nothing wrong with that. The Mormons have nothing against the cross but they do not use it as a symbol. But for Mormons the cross does bring to mind the suffering that Christ experienced.
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Most modern Baptists would not claim that a Catholic is non-Christian in the sense that a Mormon is non-Christian. Catholics are seen as fair game for evangelism largely because so many of them are effectively unchurched, so few are well informed about their faith or have a vital relationship with God. Certainly a Baptist disagrees with Catholics regarding soteriology, Hagiology, liturgy, an so forth. But the Baptist does not deny the doctrines of the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and so forth. There is fundamental agreement on a wide assortment of key doctrines, where on most of those same doctrines the LDS Church diverges in it’s theology significantly enough to break fellowship with mainstream Christianity. Mormon theology is essentially henotheistic; Mormon soteriology is more Pelagian than not. Mormon Christology distorts the real identity of Christ as historic Christianity has understood him from the Apostles forward. One cannot say that about the differences between Baptist and Catholic theology, howeversomuch they dispute one with another.
 
z,
Actually, I though it was vary good, despite what you had to work with. For example, for the question about are Mormons Christian, he should have stuck with an answer like this: Historically, a Christian is someone who considers Jesus to be one in Substance with God the Father as well as redemer of the World. Mormons do not consider him one in Substance, so by that definition, no. However, they do define themselves as Christians, as they see Christ as more than man and as redemer of the world. Instead, he never clearly states what makes one Christian and how that is not Mormon. And this quote killed me.
We are not talking about liberal Christianity that minimizes doctrine
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So Baptists are liberal? Oh my. Their own faith, and so many Protestant denominations, minimizes doctrine. Does this mean that Catholics and Orthodox represent conservative, classic Christianity?

Now as far as the rest, I would say that it was well done from a Mormon perspective. I would have liked to see how he would have responded to it. I think I know how I would have.
 
ralphinal said:
So Baptists are liberal? Oh my. Their own faith, and so many Protestant denominations, minimizes doctrine. Does this mean that Catholics and Orthodox represent conservative, classic Christianity?
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I would say, yes Baptists are liberal, as are all proetestints. as you say, they all minimize doctrine except their own selections from it. Also, there are “conservative” baptists and “liberal” baptists, they aren’t all identical. Usually the definition revolves around cultural things, such as dress codes, hair length, feministis issues, stuff like that.

I would also say that yes, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity represents conservative, full gospel Christianity.

momrons, being that they seem to be a specail brreed of religion within the Christian community, seems to me are mor liberal than many protestants, as their doctrines are extremely thin, poorly defined, and apparently change from time to time as politcal and cultural forces come to bear upon them (ie polygamy and africans in the priesthood for example)
 
ralphinal said:
z,
Actually, I though it was vary good, despite what you had to work with. For example, for the question about are Mormons Christian, he should have stuck with an answer like this: Historically, a Christian is someone who considers Jesus to be one in Substance with God the Father as well as redemer of the World. Mormons do not consider him one in Substance, so by that definition, no. However, they do define themselves as Christians, as they see Christ as more than man and as redemer of the world. Instead, he never clearly states what makes one Christian and how that is not Mormon. And this quote killed me.

So Baptists are liberal? Oh my. Their own faith, and so many Protestant denominations, minimizes doctrine. Does this mean that Catholics and Orthodox represent conservative, classic Christianity?

Now as far as the rest, I would say that it was well done from a Mormon perspective. I would have liked to see how he would have responded to it. I think I know how I would have.
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I don’t know what you are talking about here. It seems to me that you had not understood what I had written very well, nor what he had written.

zerinus
 
zerinus said:
I don’t know what you are talking about here. It seems to me that you had not understood what I had written very well, nor what he had written.

zerinus
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I thought I did. Were your parts the ones in red?

HIs arguments had more rhetoric than substance and he did not seem to understand the Mormon position. Is that correct?
 
Man well for one thing Mormons have made up their own religon you guys seem to skip over very obvious and basic observations of their religon for one it was based in america. America is the greatest God will come back to America b/c America is Gods chosen country not Isreal. Its a nationalistic religon for america made by americans. You can easily identify numerous contradictions with their doctrine and the Bible. A church of God or at least to be considered Christian should easily parralell with the bible and with minimal contradictions that can be easily and logically explained:thumbsup:
 
kadesh said:
Man well for one thing Mormons have made up their own religon you guys seem to skip over very obvious and basic observations of their religon for one it was based in america. America is the greatest God will come back to America b/c America is Gods chosen country not Isreal. Its a nationalistic religon for america made by americans.
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thank you, not to derail the thread as i have not yet read the article, but I think you put your finger on exactly what bothers me about the momron religion, the fact that it is such a homegrown armican one.

yes it does seem to bme that many moromons apologist avoid directly getting to the point and prefer a lot of rhetorical flourish instead.

but the main thing, in my eye, that makes that religion very suspect is that it is a notionalistic american religion, born in an era of nationalism and national growth (Monroe, Jackson soon to come, etc), westward expansion, Mexican War spack at the start of the Utah digs, etc. Also that it comes out of the same theological bag as other American sects, like Jehovahs and 7th Days Adventrists, it just loses a lot of credibility due to those things, among others.
 
J_C said:
I would say, yes Baptists are liberal, as are all Protestants. as you say, they all minimize doctrine except their own selections from it. Also, there are “conservative” baptists and “liberal” baptists, they aren’t all identical. Usually the definition revolves around cultural things, such as dress codes, hair length, feminist issues, stuff like that.

I would also say that yes, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity represents conservative, full gospel Christianity.

Mormons, being that they seem to be a special breed of religion within the Christian community, seems to me are mor liberal than many protestants, as their doctrines are extremely thin, poorly defined, and apparently change from time to time as political and cultural forces come to bear upon them (IE polygamy and Africans in the priesthood for example)
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I don’t want to get into the old argument about ‘liberal’ versus ‘conservative’ here. In one sense, Protestantism does introduce a sort of liberal principle into Christian theology–it maintains private interpretation and personal experience as having nearly equal authority alongside Scripture and Tradition. This individualist approach to faith is very different from the Catholic/Orthodox understanding of submission to authority. Mormonism takes this element of individualism almost to an extreme, with it’s focus upon ‘personal revelation’ as a key to knowing what is absolute truth and what is not. Of course, even Mormonism has it’s own internal emphasis upon authority, so one can overstate that case if one is careless.

In another sense however, most Baptists and other Evangelicals are quite conservative, whereas Mormonism is at it’s core very radical. Evangelicals do accept the traditional canon of Scripture as authoritative. Moreover–they allow that private interpretation MUST submit itself to the normative sense of the whole Church from historical times forward.

There is an understanding among historic Protestants that something like the sensus fidelium obliges every Christian to relinquish their personal or private views and to accept as true only those things which all Christians everywhere and always have believed and taught. The argument that Luther, Calvin and the other Reformers had with the CC is that they believed the 16th-Century hierarchy had abandoned the sensus fidelium in some crucial areas. Most of the Reformers initially thought of themselves as doing no more than what St. Francis or other reformers had done for the Church previously: calling the hierarchy of that Church back to the roots of the Christian theology. Of course, the reforms ended up going beyond what those Reformers of the 16th century intended, but that is another matter.

Joseph Smith’s goal in the 19th century was also in some ways initially very conservative. He was part of a movement of Christians who believed that getting back to the true Faith received by Christians everywhere and always would take a special act of God–a revelation. Smith believed received just such revelations–or he pretended to receive them, as you will. (Frankly I think it a bit of both–that Smith probably knew on one level that he was engaged in ‘holy lying’, yet on another level felt that his goals and ends were Godly and God-inspired, therefore sufficient justification for what he was doing).

The problem is that Smith’s method is not the method used normatively by Christians to arrive at truth. Christians ordinarily had used Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, with Scripture being understood as a closed canon that held final authority over other methods. Smith re-opened that canon, and in some sense actually made each LDS believe a part of that open canon. Every believing Mormon in some way or another comes to their beliefs by way of a personal revelation from God.

And, that personal revelation, although it must submit itself to Joseph Smith’s revelations and to the Church he established, trumps Tradition and even Reason. This is why faithful Mormons do not treat the Book of Mormon as if it were a work of pious inspired fiction: they insist that it is genuine, unvarnished history, even if no generally accepted evidence presents itself to establish that claim. The Doctrine and Covenants, despite their zigs and zags in theology, are ‘true’ because the individual Mormon has received personal knowledge they are true. The Pearl of Great Price is true despite being bereft of any generally-accepted textual evidence, because Mormons ‘know’ that Joseph Smith is a true Prophet of God and that these books were translated by him by the gift and power of God. Etcetera.

It is in that sense that Mormonism is not merely ‘liberal’ in a way that Protestantism is not; rather, Mormonism is fundamentally radical, fundamentally different at it’s very roots from even Protestant Christianity. Mormonism is different from Christianity in it’s very epistemology.
 
If the question is WHO gets to define what Christianity is, then I would say that traditional Christian orthodoxy settled that in the year 325 A.D. at Nicea and further consolidated 56 years later at Constantinople. Christians believe that God is One in three co-eternal, co-equal, consubstantial, Persons. Arians and others who reject this are either formal or material heretics. Case closed.

The idea that one can willfully self-identify as a Catholic, Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Christian, Republican, Democrat, Boy Scout or whatever, without holding to the principles of that group and without reference to the foundation of the term is reckless and immature.
 
zerinus said:
Read my response to Dr. R. Albert Mohler on Mormonism:

zerinus.blogspot.com/2008/05/response-to-dr-r-mohler-on-mormonism.html

Any thoughts?

zerinus
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I have also started a thread on this subject on beliefnet’s own forums. You can see it here:

community.beliefnet.com/forums/showthread.php?p=473092#post473092

I don’t normally post there. This is the first time. But since the original discussion took place there, I thought it was a good place for it to be discussed. Feel free to contribute if you like.

zerinus
 
mercygate said:
If the question is WHO gets to define what Christianity is, then I would say that traditional Christian orthodoxy settled that in the year 325 A.D. at Nicea and further consolidated 56 years later at Constantinople. Christians believe that God is One in three co-eternal, co-equal, consubstantial, Persons. Arians and others who reject this are either formal or material heretics. Case closed.

The idea that one can willfully self-identify as a Catholic, Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Christian, Republican, Democrat, Boy Scout or whatever, without holding to the principles of that group and without reference to the foundation of the term is reckless and immature.
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Not only do Christians identify Mormonism (correctly, in my opinion) as a non-Christian religion; but so do all the great Mormon prophets of old!

**“Christianity . . . is a perfect pack of nonsense…the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century.” (Brigham Young, “Journal of Discourses,” vol. 6, p.167)

"Christians—those poor, miserable priests brother Brigham was speaking about—some of them are the biggest whoremasters there are on the earth, and at the same time preaching righteousness to the children of men. The poor devils, they could not get up here and preach an oral discourse, to save themselves from hell; they are preaching their fathers’ sermons —preaching sermons that were written a hundred years before they were born. . . .

“You may get a Methodist priest to pour water on you, or sprinkle it on you, and baptize you face foremost, or lay you down the other way, and whatever mode you please, and you will be damned with your priest.” (Heber C. Kimball, “Journal of Discourses,” 5:89)

“…the Book of Mormon remains secure, unchanged and unchangeable, …But with the Bible it was not and is not so…it was once in the sole and exclusive care and custody of an abominable organization (Christianity), founded by the devil himself, likened prophetically unto a great whore, whose great aim and purpose was to destroy the souls of men in the name of religion. In these hands it ceased to be the book it once was.”
Hope this helps you, Zerinus…

LaMar
 
yeah i know mormonsim also not forget was founded by joseph smith as you probably already know in I think New york, and correct me if i am wrong but during that time in the east coast there were alot of immagrants ciming in with different views on religion and such so it makes sense that he would make up his own. Going off topic a bit one other thing that personally bothers me about mormonsim is how they strip God of his divinity if you know what i mean. For example God was a man on another planet who rose to “godhood” and has an eternal wife with whom he procreated us his “spiritual children” and Jesus being another exaulted man who also rose to “godhood” by following mormon ways. They just try and bring God from his almighty throne down to our dirty human playing field and try to make him like us and us like him. It just doesnt work that way God is mysterious. He is divine and always is and for us to say we to can be gods like him is straight up blasphmey! Oh and so is having another gospel Galations 1:7-9 this is another one of those biblical contraditoins i talked about ! :bible1:
 
mercygate said:
If the question is WHO gets to define what Christianity is, then I would say that traditional Christian orthodoxy settled that in the year 325 A.D. at Nicea and further consolidated 56 years later at Constantinople. Christians believe that God is One in three co-eternal, co-equal, consubstantial, Persons. Arians and others who reject this are either formal or material heretics. Case closed.

The idea that one can willfully self-identify as a Catholic, Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Christian, Republican, Democrat, Boy Scout or whatever, without holding to the principles of that group and without reference to the foundation of the term is reckless and immature.
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Well put. I liked this post a lot.
 
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