Clark, we buy most of our books in digital form (our library is full and overflowing) and read them on iPads. There is a Kindle reader app that works well for us.

John, for what it’s worth, Sam and I put in our bid to solve the faith/works/grace-of-the-gaps conundrum using math. :) You might find it interesting: The Salvation Equation.

My problem with anyone’s interpretation of Paul, though, is that, without exception, it seems everyone leaves something out. The only person who agreed with Paul completely was Paul. (just ask Peter or Barnabas, not to mention James) Evangelicals leave out the predestination. Latter-day Saints leave out the faith of grace over works of the law. Everyone except Latter-day Saints leaves out baptism for the dead. And almost anyone modern leaves out at least some degree of the rampant sexism. So, to me, “remastering” almost certainly just means removing all the things you disagree with while making it more straightforward and readable.

That’s why I love the literal translations of Paul, as convoluted and opaque as they can be at first glance. At least they’re closer to the genuine article.

In other words, I like the grain: that keeps it authentic. When I disagree with Paul, I want to make sure it’s Paul I’m disagreeing with, not just some translator.

Or when I gain some great insight, which also happens, I want to credit that to the original source.

If I’m wrong, please show me the church that doesn’t allow women to speak in it, and forces them to ask their husbands questions at home. Even the most patriarchal I have seen have softened that to simply prohibiting women from teaching, or for Latter-day Saints, ruling, in the church. There may be an exception out there somewhere, but I haven’t seen it, and I wouldn’t be impressed if I did.

I think a lot of what Paul taught is rightfully left in the past, to first-century Saints in Rome or Corinth, as most of his letters undoubtedly are.

But I think that is best left to each person to decide for herself or himself.

I just didn’t understand the doctrine, and that is why I threw the baby out with the bathwater. Right… There was no baby in the bath water.

“In the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the terms saved and salvation have various meanings. According to these meanings, your answer to the question “Have you been saved?” will be either “Yes” or “Yes, but with conditions.” The following explanations outline six different meanings of the word salvation.” -True to the Faith.

It goes on to list these six different meanings. Salvation from Death. Salvation from Sin. Being Born Again. Salvation from Second Death. Salvation from Ignorance. Eternal Life/Exaltation.

Second, (although I disagree with you on this), there’s no warrant for the assumption that we should expect to find all LDS doctrine in either the Bible or the Book of Mormon.

Third, although most Protestants are ignorant of deification, it was an early Christian doctrine rooted in the new Testament, and there is a good bit of recent non-LDS scholarship on this. LDS have naturally been interested in this and republished some of it, e.g. this MA by a Catholic.

On several of these points, you seem to want some kind of global consistency, which is not a realistic assumption for anyone. Theological diversity is a challenge to many people (especially Evangelicals), and Mormons don’t particularly care for it either, but it’s a reality of scripture and existence.

Mormons don’t have two senses for salvation. At best they distinguish from being saved from death which is a free gift of Christ to all and being saved from sin which one must take hold of. But again that’s mainstream Christian theology. It’s hardly unique to Mormons. The issue of degree seems separate. I get that some might want it all or nothing, but as Wright notes, that’s at odds with Paul himself in places like Romans 2:6-9 among many places. We’re judged according to our works which implies degrees.

Salvation is a free gift in that it gives us the ability to follow in the spirit. Every Mormon believes we’re given the spirit and that the spirit is an enabling power both in terms of teaching us but also in terms of giving us power to accomplish the things he’s given us. It’s true that until recently Mormons tended not to use the terminology of grace for this but it’s certainly the theology of grace. If one fully takes hold of grace and lives the life of holiness then that entails exaltation. The problem of course is that not everyone takes hold of the free gift of grace that is offered them by Christ.

I’d also strongly disagree that this is not salvation as taught in the Book of Mormon. The key passage on justification by grace in the Book of Mormon is Hel 10 where because Nephi’s taking hold of the atonement and has sought God, God will “bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yeah, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thous shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will. […] I give unto power, that whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

There are plenty of others. Take Mosiah 15 where Abinadi is speaking of how Jesus is both the father and the son. He is father because he’s subjected the will of the flesh to the Father and is conceived by the power of God and become One. Then we’re told about how others will be his seed, the way he is the son of the father. This is pretty clear on deification, especially if one is familiar with Merkabah literature from Jewish sources from about 2 BC – 500 AD.

As for families the whole point of salvation in the Book of Mormon is to enable a restoration (See especially Alma 40-41) So of course there will be families because what’s restored is what we had in this life. That entails family. Perhaps it’s made more explicit in places like the D&C but it’s definitely entailed by the Book of Mormon. Alma is quite explicit that restoration is to restore good for good. If families are good then they are to be restored.

In any case I’d say now you’re speaking of what are the consequences of salvation rather than salvation proper.

The question ultimately is whether Paul presents anything that contradicts this. You’ve not done that at all.

Gee, you are right. I simply didn’t know Mormon doctrine, but those who can say Paul is convoluted are definitely those who know Mormon doctrine the best.

In reality, it is convolution that requires two definitions of the word salvation. And that is what Mormon doctrine needs. The reason Mormons have two definitions for it is that the doctrine of exaltation is not found in the Bible, nor in the Book of Mormon. And therefore, to continue to embrace both books, the word salvation needs to do double duty. It has to mean both salvation in any of the degrees of glory, and salvation as an eternally progressing being in the presence of God the Father.

When I talk to Mormons about salvation, they will tell me it is indeed a free gift. When I press them on this, they will then change their story, and say, “Oh…well you are talking about exaltation!” Which, of course, it what they were meaning when they were saying salvation all along. But when I showed them how salvation isn’t free, they change the parameters.

When Mormons talk to Christians, they will always call exaltation “salvation.” And they’ll insist that “salvation” is a free gift. But when their hand is forced, and they are shown clearly that in Mormonism salvation isn’t free, then they get themselves out of the tight spot by exiting the conversation through the door called “exaltation.”

Because, like I said, in Mormonism, salvation does double duty. It means salvation when talking to Christians. It means exaltation when talking to Mormons. And thus the deception continues.

“Salvation in its true and full meaning is synonymous with exaltation or eternal life and consists in gaining an inheritance in the highest of the three heavens within the celestial kingdom. With few exceptions this is the salvation of which the scriptures speak. It is the salvation which the saints seek.” Bruce R. McConkie

But it is NOT the salvation as described in the Bible or Book of Mormon. No 3 degrees. No godhood. No eternal family.

That is convoluted.

I hope it is clear from all this that Paul is thinking with entire consistency. Of course, if we come to him with a less than adequate frame of reference, such a low-grade protestant understanding which has downgraded free grace into cheap grace, it is easy to get muddled and then, projecting our problems onto Paul, to accuse him of the muddle, as though he had simply decided to hold onto some bits of an ethical code and go soft on other bits. No: when we get to know Paul better we see what is going on.

In particular, we may remind ourselves of the towering significance, in his thought, of Romans 6.1-11. Having just expounded the gospel of grace, God’s rich, welcoming and forgiving love meeting us where we are, helpless sinners (5.6-10), he faces the question: if God’s grace meets while we are sinners, must we therefore stay as sinners so that God’s grace can go on meeting us there? He knows the answer as soon as he has asked the question, but a great many people in today’s church do not know it and cheerfully answer, ‘Yes!’ instead. It is one of the most important principles of biblical ethics, and one trampled in the mud again and again in contemporary debate: that God’s grace meets us where we are, but God’s grace, thank God, does not leave us where we are; that God accepts us as we are, but that God’s grace, thank God, is always a transforming acceptance, so that in God’s very act of loving us and wooing our answering love we are being changed; and, more dramatically, in baptism and all that it means we are actually dying and rising, leaving one whole way of life and entering upon a wholly different one.

Let us hear no more, then, of the sub-Pauline idea that since we are justified by grace through faith there is no need for a life of holiness, and that to insist on one is to smuggle ‘works’ in by the back door. Another potential great gain of the so-called ‘new perspective’, though not usually worked out by its major exponents, is the fact that it allows Paul’s own emphasis on final judgement according to works, which he insists on again and again, to emerge into its proper light without damaging or endangering in any way the basic principle of justification by faith itself. (See, for instance, Romans 2.1-16; 14.10-12; 2 Corinthians 5.6-10; and compare e.g. 1 Thessalonians 3.19-20; see my Romans commentary on the key passages.)