- RLD on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “If you go to the Church website and search for the phrase “heavenly parents,” you’ll find it all over, including in some very official documents the Church pushes heavily–first and foremost would be the Family Proclamation, but there’s also the theme the young women recite every week. That’s clearly referring to our Heavenly Father and our Heavenly Mother. It’s true that there’s no clear scriptural support for the doctrine that we have a Heavenly Mother. It’s something we deduce from other doctrines, which, as Jonathan points out, are also not as clear in the scriptures as we might like. I’m not going to tell anyone they have to believe it–it’s the kind of thing we don’t insist on (see my previous comment). But it’s clear that a large enough majority of Church leaders believe it that they can refer to it in official statements and curricula without anyone objecting. I can’t blame Beshears for thinking the existence of our Heavenly Mother is official Church doctrine. (Personally, I rejoice in it and think there’s a woman-shaped hole in our theology without it, but I understand those who are skeptical tend to think differently about other things as well.)” May 13, 15:25
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “I have made a personal commitment to persevere until the end, even if I am the last one in my family to do so. My teenage children are finding it increasingly difficult to go to church on Sundays, and it saddens me that, after doing everything we were taught as a married couple and a family, in the end only my wife and I attend on Sundays. I wish church services were more meaningful, and that the classes and participation had a deeper impact on me and my family, but I don’t know if it’s us or if we’ve lost our love for the simple, essential things. Personally, I make a great personal effort to make Sundays at church special, but I don’t know if it’s me or the people at church or the church’s rigid structure, or if I’ve learned to view life with a depth that makes me think that not everything is quite like that, nor as easy as the four- or five-step recipe for reaching exaltation and having a life full of joy.” May 13, 15:20
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “REC911, I am a bit puzzled by your comment. You just said that you don’t worship Jesus, a member of the Godhead, the “one god” that Bruce R. McConkie says makes us monotheists. Is the Book of Mormon wrong? “And now behold, I say unto you that the right way is to believe in Christ, and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel; wherefore ye must bow down before him, and worship him with all your might, mind, and strength, and your whole soul; and if ye do this ye shall in nowise be cast out.” (2 Nephi 25:29). “And they did all, both they who had been healed and they who were whole, bow down at his feet, and did worship him; and as many as could come for the multitude did kiss his feet, insomuch that they did bathe his feet with their tears.” (3 Nephi 17:10).” May 13, 12:38
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “In the ancient text of the Nag Hammadi, there is God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit the Mother. A family affair. I like the thought that the person God sent to comfort us through spiritual feelings is a Mother. Having said that, there is lots of just crazy stuff in the Nag Hammadi! For me as a member, I worship God, I follow Jesus as the path to God. I do not worship Jesus. My main relationship with a deity is with God. I do not worship the church or its leaders or doctrines in any way. The church is also a path to God, through Jesus. Everything should lead us to God in the church through Jesus. I think Jesus gets a little disappointed when we fixate on Him and not the Father. The correct knowledge of the Trinity is something worthy of our time and understanding but not a necessity to fixate on or determine ones salvation. A belief in Jesus as our savior and His atonement is very important and powerful. How he dressed, parted his hair, looked like, was the Father, not the Father, just the Son or both, should not be the deciding factor of being a “Christian” or not. I wish our Christian brothers would understand this.” May 13, 10:52
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “I self-identify as a faithful Latter-day Saint, but the following statement is problematic for me: “The Latter-day Saint Jesus, however, is the firstborn spirit child of God the Father and a heavenly mother, a being who achieved His divine status through personal progression.” I know there are Latter-day Saints who believe in and proclaim heavenly mothers, but as another commenter has pointed out, there is no scriptural basis or canonical support for this — I see it not as doctrine but merely as a thread in the tapestry of Mormon thought. Indeed, in our latter-day scripture seems to proclaim trinitarianism, if I may use that term, and Jesus himself repeatedly proclaims in the first person that He is our God — and our temple endowment, the pinnacle of revelation, shows that Jesus has always stood beside the Father. When Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals argue with each other, I think there may be some error and chauvinism in participants on both sides. I am reminded of our Savior’s counsel to his enthusiastic but errant apostles in Matthew 12:30, Mark 9:40, and Luke 9:50, and even further back to Moses’ counsel to the enthusiastic but errant Joshua regarding Eldad and Medad. I also like Paul’s counsel to let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, suggesting that each of us should confidently hold our own convictions with the purpose of honoring God rather than judging others and their convictions. In other words, charity matters.” May 13, 09:01
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: ““The nature of Christ is a really big deal to traditional Christians–whole councils were called over it–so it’s a very important facet of our theology and worship.” This is a very important difference, but maybe not the one he thinks. Early Christians (but late enough to be well into what we call the Great Apostasy) had esoteric philosophical debates about the nature of God and Christ, and then the winners declared that you had to agree with them to be an orthodox Christian; i.e., the losers were going to Hell. Demanding that people agree to a set of abstract propositions about the nature of God (the creeds) remains an important part of “traditional Christianity” to this day. (In saying that, I may be falling into the mistake Jonathan points out. I really don’t know how important creeds are to Orthodox Christianity, for example.) Latter-day Saint thinking is not always as clean a break from traditional Christian thinking as it ought to be, but I don’t think any Latter-day Saint imagines someone going before the bar of Christ and being told: “Sorry, you believed in the Trinity, so no Celestial Kingdom for you.” Even putting aside that people will continue to learn after this life, it’s just not that important to us. When we worry about it at all, it’s mostly about the consequences of such thinking (“How can one truly love a God without body, parts, and passions?”). We’ll argue for the truth as we see it, but it’s always something they care about more than we do. This is why we tend to talk past each other when we debate “Are Latter-day Saints Christians?”” May 13, 08:17
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “You’re not wrong, Jonathan. It has been a thought in the back of my mind throughout reading the book too, which I kind of got at on the “Evangelical Prism” section of my book review. One thing in the book that I thought was ironic that he pointed out that Joseph Smith’s starting point for a narrative of a great apostasy was divisions in Christianity, but then he portrayed them as essentially the same on all points discussed.” May 13, 06:32
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “Kind of rolling my eyes here. The Evangelicals are Traditional Christians because their heresy is 300 years older than our heresy? Yeah, okay, sure. He might want to ask his Catholic and Orthodox friends if “priesthood” is just a quaint archaism for them. “My way of explaining how one is equal to three (good and correct) is incompatible with your way of explaining how three is equal to one (bad and wrong)” is comical, especially since it’s based on a few opaque creeds that took shape many centuries after the New Testament, and LDS doctrines without much or any scriptural basis – we don’t even have a complete record of what was said in the King Follett sermon, and there’s no canonical support at all for belief in a Mother in Heaven. I mean, I like the LDS doctrines and think they’re true, but maybe we could all step back and be more humble about how much we think we know about the nature of God, instead of elevating it into an area of essential distinction. I have no particular interest in being accepted by or acceptable to Traditional Christians, and I think the differences in theology are real and valuable. But I reject the idea that Evangelicals, heirs of the single most consequential schism in the Christian faith, are in any position to claim to speak for Traditional Christianity. The Protestant Reformation was a big deal! It led to religious wars for the better part of two centuries. I think an honest look deeper into Christian history would find LDS doctrine doing a lot of things – not everything, but a lot of things – that turned up at various times in various Christian communities over the centuries. Acknowledging that would do more to help Evangelicals understand their LDS neighbors than pounding on early medieval creeds.” May 13, 04:53
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “Good post, I think we need to remember there are many groups at Church we have to be careful not to take for granted. The old men in EQ sit on hard chairs in a gym segment. The empty nesters are often not engaged beyond Temple and family history work. The members in Primary and Youth are disconnected from the adults. The time intensive calling folks are near burn out. The members on the margin are at risk of falling away. Women are often undervalued by default. Building and maintaining community is hard.” May 12, 20:29
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “To be clear, the 70-year old who decides it isn’t true is most certainly not the typical experience, it was just one particular scenario I thought would be particularly hard. I get that it’s usually a more gradual process across years or decades where one gradually sorts out what they like from what they don’t.” May 12, 13:07
