Are Mormons Christian? A Letter to Fellow Evangelical Elders

* I recently was in a conversation with some elders of another church.  The topic of Mormonism came up and someone asked me why I would engage in evangelism toward Mormons since they "are Christians."  I gave my answer in that context and then followed-up with a letter.  The majority of that letter is reproduced below with the appropriate deletions to cover the identity of the church.  I post this here for its scriptural reasoning and its quotations from Joseph Smith.
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... Usually among such evangelicals there is a common theological core which it is recognized the LDS church does not embrace.  You will recall that I briefly mentioned that the LDS teaching regarding God denies monotheism in favor of tri-theism, that LDS teaching denies salvation by grace through faith, and that the LDS church believes in a different Jesus.  These are not minor or secondary issues on which Christians of good will and orthodox belief can and do differ—such as eschatological systems or even the proper recipients of baptism.  Rather, these issues are centrally located in the Christian theological system and cannot be modified in the ways that the LDS church does without ceasing to be Christian.

Why is this important?  The Scriptures give us the requirements for an elder.  One of those requirements is that elders in Christ’s church be those who are “holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.  Titus 1.9  Not only must we as elders hold to the truth personally but we must be able to teach the truth and to refute those who teach against the truth.  Failure to upheld these duties brings pain to the church as false teachers are then able to upset whole families (Titus 1.11).  The apostle Paul provides us an example of his fighting for the truth of the gospel in the book of Galatians.  He begins this epistle with forceful words because the truth of the gospel is at stake.

⁶I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; ⁷which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.  ⁸But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!  ⁹As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!  --Galatians 1.6-9

The apostle Paul can also challenge the Corinthian church because they are allowing the preaching of “another Jesus.”

For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.  –2 Corinthians 11.4

And who is doing this preaching of “another Jesus” and a “different gospel”—“false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” (2 Corinthians 11.13).

Just because a group says they are “Christian” or has the word “Christ” in their name (e.g., “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”) does not make them Christian in reality.  We need to examine the teaching of these groups to discern whether they are teaching a false view of God, Christ, or salvation.  When the Mormon religion is examined in this regard it fails to meet the most basic requirements of Christian theism.

Consider the central biblical and creedal teaching regarding monotheism—the belief in one God.  Orthodox Christianity has always affirmed monotheism even as it has confessed the doctrine of the Trinity.  The founding prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, unequivocally denies the doctrine of the Trinity and the monotheism which is crucial to this doctrine.  Consider the following words from Joseph Smith from what is known as the “King Follett Discourse.”

I will preach on the plurality of Gods.  I have selected this text for that express purpose.  I wish to declare I have always and in all congregations when I have preached on the subject of the Deity, it has been the plurality of Gods.  It has been preached by the Elders for fifteen years.

I have always declared God to be a distinct personage.  Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.  If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold! we have three Gods anyhow, and they are plural; and who can contradict it?  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 370.

Many men say there is one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are only one God.  I say that is a strange God anyhow—three in one and one in three! … All are to be crammed into one God, according to sectarianism.  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 372.

Not only did Joseph Smith affirm polytheism and deny the Trinity, he also spoke of how God himself was not always God but was a man like us but attained to Godhood.

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!  That is the great secret.  If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another.  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 345.

…it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God.  We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity.  I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.

These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple.  It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 345-346.

Joseph Smith argues that God the Father himself had a Father!

If Abraham reasoned thus—If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that He had a Father also.  Where was there ever a son without a father?  And where was there ever a father without first being a son? … Hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that He had a Father also?  I despise the idea of being scared to death at such a doctrine, for the Bible is full of it.  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 373.

These teachings by Joseph Smith are still affirmed today in the official teaching of the LDS church.[1]  These teachings are at radical variance from the Bible’s teaching regarding God.  ...

These are no small matters.  I have only looked at the issue of monotheism and the Trinity but the same massive departure from central truth also is found in the LDS doctrines of Christ and salvation.[2]

I would urge you as elders in the church of God to faithfully hold to the essentials of the faith.  If you as elders and leaders in the church will not affirm and defend the truth then those under your charge will not be properly fed and led.  If you don’t believe that Mormons are in need of the true gospel then your people will erroneously believe the same.  They will not seek to share the real Jesus of the Bible with their Mormon neighbors nor will they pray for the conversion of those caught in the deceptions of LDS teaching.

I know that I have spoken directly and my desire is not to cause offense.  Ultimately the gospel message and the authority of the Word of God are at stake.  If you are willing perhaps we can continue to discuss these matters for our edification and the strengthening of Christ’s church.

For the Gospel,

Richard J. Klaus

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     [1] For demonstration of this fact see the recent article by Robert Bowman “Are Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy? A Response to Richard Mouw.”  Online: http://mit.irr.org/are-mormons-approaching-orthodoxy-response-richard-mouw.

     [2] For a short but helpful introduction to these matters please see the article “Is Mormonism Christian?”  Online: http://mit.irr.org/mormonism-christian.  

Theology and the Presidential Election

Dr. Brian Mattson has the text from a recent address he gave entitled: The Theological Stakes in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election over at his website.  In his address Dr. Mattson discusses the theological ramifications that flow from either a President Obama win or a Governor Romney win.  He begins by laying out some framework from which to reason on this issue:

How does one go about probing the “theological” stakes of a presidential election, much less any other cultural event? Where do we start? I have developed my own rubric or framework for evaluating such things, and it begins with God. I lay this out in my book, Politics & Evangelical Theology, and I will summarize it for you. At its root, I seek to ground our political evaluations in what God has told us about himself. For this is our preeminent creaturely task. Reformed theologians, particularly from the Dutch Neo-Calvinist tradition, call this “Thinking God’s thoughts after him.” For my taste, that is a bit narrowly intellectual for a general rule, with slightly too much emphasis on “thoughts” and “thinking.” My own version is simpler and more down-to-earth: As creatures made in the image and likeness of God, we must seek to love what God loves. Love comprehends more than just our intellects; it tells us not just of an object of apprehension, some nugget of truth we should know, but also an object of affection and desire. “Love” is a more well-rounded term than “thinking,” which is why I prefer “loving what God loves” to “thinking God’s thoughts after him.”

In and of himself, as the Triune being, God is love. If this is so, his revelation of himself has to be a revelation of what he loves. When it comes to the distinctly political questions facing our nation and culture, I find three of God’s loves particularly significant. God loves people. God loves prosperity. And God loves justice. In those three categories I believe I have captured all of the great relevant political questions of our time. That God loves people means something for issues of the dignity and value of human life and sexual well-being. That God loves prosperity means something for economics, wealth creation, and helping the poor. That God loves justice means something for our earthly systems of justice, foreign and domestic.

Dr. Mattson goes on to assess President Obama in relation to these categories of  people, prosperity, and justice.  His comments, although brief, are well worth reading.  In coming to assess Governor Romney the theological ramifications are also worth noting.  Dr. Mattson writes:

It is a happy coincidence that when it comes to public policy issues, the worldview of Mitt Romney contains substantial overlap with that of orthodox Christian teaching. This is partly due to the fact that Mormonism is a uniquely American folk-religion of the 19th century. The American values promoted by Joseph Smith were therefore 19th century American values, a time when human life, prosperity, and justice were far more informed by the Christian worldview than they are today.

Mitt Romney is therefore pro-life, pro-marriage (thankfully the 20th rather than 19th century Mormon version), pro-economic freedom, against partiality before the law and various race and class quotas, and he seems to believe in that old-fashioned distinction between good and evil. They do not seem for him to be relative terms.

But his election to the office of President presents its own set of theological problems, and I think it wise that we face them squarely. I have in mind this: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has wanted nothing more than to be culturally included as a respected and legitimate branch of orthodox Christendom, and having one of their own as the President of the United States will go a very long way to achieving this aim. This will present a theological and cultural challenge for orthodox Christianity, especially since we might, frankly, agree with a President Romney on many things.

As a Christian theologian I believe we must resist the mainstreaming of Mormonism. In other words, I believe we must join in common cause with Romney on many political issues, but the ground of our agreement needs to be kept crystal clear. There is, as I said, substantial overlap between the cultural views of Mormonism and orthodox Christianity. The word “overlap” suggests that we must not conflate the two. The theological ground for Mormonism’s views of people, prosperity, and justice is, frankly, the imagination of a 19th century religious fanatic who happened to land on some truthful things. The ground for orthodox Christianity’s views of people, prosperity, and justice is the Word of the Living, Triune God, revealed to us infallibly in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

I believe we need to resist the inexorable slide into “conventional wisdom.” Let me give an example. We can see already even in the conservative political movement a certain conventional wisdom that homosexuality is a perfectly legitimate lifestyle choice. Oh, yes, the National Review set might agree with us on the issue of the definition of marriage, but it is fast becoming conventional wisdom that opposing homosexual conduct itself is bigoted and beyond the pale. I foresee something similar with respect to Mormonism. With the election of Mitt Romney, Mormonism will be well on its way to becoming legitimate and sacrosanct, insulated from critique. It will soon be considered bigoted and out-of-bounds in polite society to oppose Mormonism as antithetical to orthodox Christianity. I do not know of an easy solution to this coming problem. But I do know we need to be able, as an aphorism has it, to walk and chew gum at the same time, maintaining our substantial overlapping agreement on many issues while simultaneously making clear our foundational theological divergences. If we fail to do this we will be damaging the true Church of Jesus Christ, inviting cultural confusion, and ultimately harming the message of the gospel. This will be the foremost theological consequence of a Romney presidency, and we must be prepared for it.

These are important words for evangelicals in the days ahead should Governor Romney be elected president.  Already the evangelical church is downplaying the differences between Mormonism and orthodox Christianity and this trend will only become more pronounced with a Romney presidency.  

Mormonism 101 Resources from Alpha and Omega Ministries

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries has put together a series of posts that helpfully give one a proper understanding of Mormonism.  For those looking for a good reference for understanding the nature of the Godhead according to Mormonism be sure to check this out.