On September 18, 2008, I wrote a critique of an article titled “Is Mormonism Christian?” written by Gerald R. McDermott, Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion at Roanoke College. The article appeared in the October 2008 issue of FIRST THINGS: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life. Shortly afterward, Professor McDermott kindly sent me a response to my critique. With his permission, I am pleased to post his response below. I want to thank Professor McDermott for taking the time and interest to engage in my review.
Response to “Aquinas”
Dear “Aquinas”:
Let me say first of all that I appreciate your careful and respectful way of making critique. It is only by that method, I think, that you and I, and evangelicals and Mormons generally, have any hope of learning from one another and growing in our knowledge of God.
I also appreciate your affirmation of some aspects of the book I did with Bob Millet, Claiming Christ. You wrote about it publicly, and generally in a positive way, while at the same time expressing forthrightly your criticisms.
I do regret the short space in which I was forced to write in First Things. As I told my dear friend Bob Millet, the content is not substantially different from what I wrote in Claiming Christ. But because I had to write in such a compressed way, the tone is sharper-suggesting perhaps a dismissive hostility that is not at all what I feel. As I wrote more than once in my book, I have been deeply impressed by the humanity and love I have seen in my Mormon friends. And I also wrote more than once in the book that there are things evangelicals can learn from Mormons.
Now I think that some of your trouble with what I wrote comes from seeing my statements in the First Things article outside of the larger and more nuanced argument in Claiming Christ. Another reason is that, at times, you seem to confuse what I said about the pre-fully-deified Jesus with what I wrote about the present Christ. Or perhaps I was not clear enough!
Some of our differences come, as you point out, from my failing to distinguish what some Mormons say as opposed to my suggestions that all Mormons believe such and such. More on that below.
Then there are simply our deepest theological differences which will remain as long as you’re a Mormon and I an orthodox Christian. But I still think it is helpful to all of us to explore those differences.
Let me explain my reasons for making some of the claims I did.
1. Jesus is a different God from the Father. I think this is clear from Smith’s King Follett discourse: “The head God called together the Gods . . . the doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any doctrine . . . In the beginning the heads of the Gods organized the heavens and the earth.”
a. I know that this discourse is not official scripture, but as Stephen Robinson wrote, its views have become semi-official and are regarded as normative in the LDS Church.
b. Besides, the Encyclopedia of Mormonism says God is “plural” and teaches a Mother in Heaven, who is like the Heavenly Father in glory and perfection.
c. You fault me for suggesting that Mormons think the Son is “independent and unrelated” to the Father. I DO understand that LDS think the Father and the Son are intimately related-just as my son is intimately related to me and shares my will and purposes (most of the time-hah!). Nevertheless, as you say, you and other LDS believe Jesus and the Father are two different beings (even tho they share will and purpose ALL the time), just as you and I are two different beings. This is precisely where we disagree. And so we are not talking past each other as much as you think.
2. There are several or more Gods.
a. I understand that for LDS, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the only Gods with whom we have to do. But Smith also talked about the Father having his own Father, and that Father too being from a Father-and the three “personages” being “three Gods.” Thus Smith DID suggest at least three Gods. Orson Pratt wrote similarly: “The person of our Father in Heaven was begotten on a previous heavenly world by His Father; and again, he was begotten by a still more ancient Father . . . .”
b. Yes, I know from Bob Millet and others that this is not part of normal LDS discussion. But why is it not firmly repudiated? In the absence of such repudiation, those outside the LDS perhaps can be forgiven for thinking that this possibility shows in stark fashion a major difference between Christian orthodoxy and LDS faith.
c. The notion that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are different Gods is a logical deduction from the oft-repeated LDS insistence that there is not ontological oneness in the Trinity. I understand that some LDS still use the word “Trinity” while rejecting orthodox understandings of it. (And by the way, Augustine affirmed quite clearly ontological oneness-oneness of being-clearly rejecting the tritheism one sees in Smith.) But the theologically-minded among them also insist that oneness in the Trinity is limited to unity of purpose and mind among three different beings. Thus it seems clear that LDS understanding of the Godhead is a version of tri-theism. I do not hear any LDS saying they really DO believe in onotological oneness between the Father and the Son, for example. In the absence of that, I must retain my conviction concerning what texts explicitly state: that the LDS worship three Gods.
i. You suggest Smith had a particular way of making consistent “three gods” as “three personages” with oneness. If you continue to reject ontological oneness, how is your claim any different from traditional Mormon explanations’ of unity in purpose and will and glory?
d. I hear what you are saying about trying to understand how Smith thought he was consistent between the Book of Mormon and his later discourses-that he felt his statement of three Gods was consistent with unity in the Godhead. Would I be wrong to imagine that his thinking evolved, and that he therefore saw his later “three” as a way of interpreting the earlier “one”? If that is the case, then the rejection of the orthodox Trinity goes all the way back to the earliest prophecies. I guess I would still say the evolution was profound, and therefore that if it was not a contradiction it was nevertheless an extraordinary progression in thinking.
3. Jesus grew into God.
a. Smith said in the King Follett discourse that “God himself was once as we are now.” He said he would refute the idea that “God was God from all eternity.” What was true of the Father must also have been true of the Son. As Professor Millet wrote in A Different Jesus?, “As a premortal spirit, [Jesus] grew in knowledge and power to the point where he became ‘like unto God.’” (my emphasis) In Claiming Christ, Bob says there is no inconsistency between 1) believing that Jesus became God and therefore not believing in his “eternality,” and 2) believing that He is “the Eternal God,” and is from everlasting to everlasting. Bob refers to this as a mystery, and I respect that. I believe that God is one being and three persons, and I say that too is a mystery. But what seems clear is that LDS doctrine-at least for Joseph Smith and Robert Millet-is that Jesus both grew into becoming God and is somehow also the eternal God.
4. Jesus is the same species as we are.
a. This does not seem to be a stretch. Robert Millet uses exactly the same language in Claiming Christ (p. 85). Joseph Smith said, “You have got to learn to be Gods yourselves . . . the same as all Gods have done before you.” (I know this does not mean that we would ever “replace” God, as you suggest I claim. I never suggest that.) Terryl Givens says Mormonism rejects orthodoxy’s “infinite qualitative difference” between the divine and human.
i. Now that does not mean that there is not now an enormous difference between us humans and Jesus Christ as he exists today as God-for Mormons. I acknowledge that in the book over and over. Perhaps my article is not clear on that. This, I think, is what tripped you and others up. You think I am suggesting that Mormons think Jesus today is the same as we. No, I acknowledge the fact that He is God whom Mormons worship, and is thought to be of perfect beauty and glory. That is what I mean by “fully divine.” Mormons say Jesus is fully divine, but important Mormon authorities (I am adjusting my language to your criticism of my failure to distinguish among Mormon voices) acknowledge he was not always fully divine.
ii. The key difference that I tried to point out is that even tho Jesus today for Mormons is God, he is nevertheless still of the same species. He is not ontologically different, but our same nature perfected into Godhood. This is still a fundamental difference with historic Christianity.
b. I hear what you are saying about my saying Jesus was “merely” a man. You fault me for ignoring what Robinson wrote. But there is a difference. Robinson criticizes evangelicals for saying that the Mormon God is merely a man. My statement is that (important) Mormons believe he was merely a man at one time. So I was not suggesting that God is merely man-only that Jesus was once merely a man.
5. A physical Jesus limited by the cosmos.
a. D&C says Jesus’ spirit fills the immensity of space, but suggests there is nothing beyond this material cosmos. The Encyclopedia of Mormonism teaches that eternal law is independent and co-eternal with God. David Paulsen states that God “does not have absolute power” but only the power to use natural laws to further His purposes. BH Roberts wrote that God “may not act out of harmony with the bother eternal existences which condition or limit him”
b. One could say, as I think I hear some LDS saying, “This is no different from orthodoxy because we too believe God is the author of those laws.” But if that is the case, then the laws are not co-eternal with God and independent of God. The two notions simply do not cohere philosophically.
i. So I take your criticism that I should have acknowledged diversity here. But I would add, next time, that there is a philosophical problem here.
c. To say that God orders or dismisses Chaos does not refute what I said. If Chaos existed co-eternally with God, then God is not larger than the cosmos. He does not transcend the cosmos. He is in a real sense limited by the cosmos. Only a Creator of all can be free from being limited by parts of the all.
Thanks for hearing me out.
Gerald McDermott
Aquinas, thanks for the two-way dialogue with Gerry on this.
Congratulations to Aquinas on getting a personalized response. And thank you to Mr. McDermott for responding.
I’ll admit to being a little put-out to find that some of the material in the First Things article was basically verbatim from his arguments in Claiming Christ and did not seem to take Millett’s rebuttals in that book into account. McDermott’s explanation of space and time restraints makes sense enough. So enough said on that.
I may have a bit more to say about this later, but I’d have to re-read it a few times first. Thanks again.
I think it’s undeniable that the gulf between ourselves and Evangelicals is largely over creation ex nihilo. That said some of McDermott’s comments about our view of Christ just strike me as terribly odd given the formal traditional Christian theology of the two natures of Christ.
G. R. McDermott: I admit to some consternation at your response—since it seems not to own up to evangelical commitments. I agree that Mormons are not Christians in the sense that we accept the same view as you. However, it seems problematic to make the dividing line a coherent or “orthodox” doctrine of the Trinity. I have not read any theologian in the tradition that has ever stated it coherently without falling into either tri-theism or modalism. If one must be able to articulate a coherent doctrine of the Trinity to be Christian, I doubt that a Christian has ever existed. Your response is a good case in point. In fact, let’s take your points one at a time:
“1. Jesus is a different God from the Father.” How does this differ from asserting that Jesus is a different divine person from the Father? You surely affirm that the Son has properties of identity distinct from those of the Father, do you not? (If not, then you’re a modalist). What do you mean when you assert that Mormons believe that the Father and the Son are different gods? Surely you don’t mean that they don’t equally share the divine nature in Mormon thought—since the Son is rather clearly equally divine with the Father in Mormon thought.
No Mormon I know, and certainly not Joseph Smith, would assert, as you have, that the Father & the Son are “independent and unrelated.” In LDS thought they share an indwelling perichoretic unity of divine oneness that far surpasses mere agreement in purpose of wills. That seems to secure the kind of unity the New Testament had in mind while still teaching that they are not the same divine person.
It seems to me that you must be asserting that Joseph Smith taught that the Father & the Son were distinct divine persons in a sense that you find unacceptable—since in Mormon thought they both possess the same deifying properties in their fullness. What do you find unacceptable that would also not disqualify your view of divine unity given that you must admit that the Father & the Son are not identical as divine persons? Here is the basic problem as I see it:
(a) There is exactly one God who is the divine person Yahweh.
(b) The Father is God.
(c) The Son is God
(d) The Father is not identical to the Son.
As is easily seen, there is a fairly clear logical contradiction that arises from asserting these four premises. Any 3 of them entail the denial of the 4th. Yet I believe that those who affirm the Trinity as you do assert each of these premises. I’ve seen all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid the fairly clear logical contradiction, but none that work even plausibly. If one must be able to come up with a doctrine that solves this problem to be Christian, then I doubt there can be any Christians. That is why making the Trinity the dividing line is not merely ironic, but just doesn’t make sense in my view. Of course one can always insist that the Trinity is just a mystery. But how can you even suggest that Mormons cannot be counted as Christians for failing to grasp a mystery? Is your view that we must be able to assert contradictory propositions in order to have Christian faith? Strange criterion that! Not even Jesus came close to asserting a doctrine of the Trinity as the dividing line for those who were his followers. Moreover, I believe that on the Trinitarian criterion you adopt not even Jesus of Nazareth was a Christian. Strange criterion that!
“2. There are several or more Gods.” The truth of this proposition of course depends on the appropriate sortal being chosen as the basis for counting. There is only one Father. There is only one Godhead. There is only one divine nature. There is only one divine will and sovereignty manifest in any exercise of the divine power. There is only one omniscient store of all that can be known that is known in unity. These seem to be the kinds of unity taught in the New Testament.
There is more than one divine person—in fact there are exactly 3 in the Godhead. There is more than one being identified by the term “god” in the divine council of gods. These are the senses in which Joseph Smith and Mormon scripture affirm that there is more than one of the gods. So if each divine person is a God—as the term is sometimes used in the OT and NT and in Mormon scripture, then there cannot be fewer gods than there are divine persons.
I acknowledge that Smith’s view is not Augustine’s, but given Augustine’s psychological analogies of the Trinity, it is fairly clear that Augustine borders on outright modalism—a charge made even more compelling if we throw in his rather Neo-Platonic doctrine of divine simplicity. That isn’t what was taught in the NT and one ought not be thrown out of the Christian community for refusing to adopt Augustine’s modalism.
“3. Jesus grew into God.” Simply not true. “Jesus learned even as God” is a true statement of Mormon thought. He learned from the things that he suffered even though he was the very divine person who delivered the Law and was already fully divine before becoming mortal. Indeed, Jesus was fully divine before his mortality on any Mormon view. He didn’t grow to become divine at a first moment of reality in Mormon thought.
“4. Jesus is the same species as we are.” That is true in Mormon thought, but not in the sense that you affirm it. We are all children of God just as Jesus is the Son of God. However, we don’t just grow to be gods if we are watered and fed and hosed off often enough. I agree that we have a vast difference with evangelical thought in our rejection of creatio ex nihilo. However, if Jesus is a different species than humans then he was not truly human and you have an incoherent and unbiblical christology. If humans are created by nature, and Jesus is uncreated by nature, then you seem to have either a Docetic christology or a view that resists even a two nature christology.
“5. A physical Jesus limited by the cosmos.” The Godhead transcends the ordered universe because that order depends on the Godhead. Moreover, given that the universe is what is because of God’s concurring power, it is subject to God’s power. Finally, it makes little sense to say that if chaos is eternal then God is limited by the cosmos since the cosmos is an ordered reality. It is true that there is a chaotic and disordered reality (spoken of in a number of OT passages, including prominently Genesis 1 as you know), but it is subject to God.
If everything that is not created is not God, then there cannot be distinct divine persons who are not identical. If the Father’s will is necessary and sufficient for all else that exists, then the Son’s will is neither necessary nor sufficient for what exists and thus the Son is not and cannot be God on such a view. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is inconsistent with any plurality of divine persons.
For these reasons, I find your analysis of Mormon thought unsound. I claim at least one overriding merit of Mormon thought: it is internally coherent and it coheres with scriptural statements far better than the Trinity that makes the distinct divine persons three uncreated beings all of whom are somehow just one divine being. If Mormons must be thrown out of the orthodox club for such beliefs, then so be it.
a, b, c, d – Blake, that is what biblical scripture contends.
But how do I respond now when friends claim that the scripture reads illogical in places?
I stay with the mystery within Scripture.
Todd: There is a coherent and scripturally faithful way to approach this issue — it just isn’t based on mystery in the sense that you use it. Look it up — not once do scriptures say that the Trinity is a mystery. In fact, they don’t use the term Trinity at all.
There are legitimate mysteries. But mysteries of the sort: the doctrine is totally incoherent and so it must be accepted as mystery isn’t a legitimate way to approach the issue. Rather, it is a way of avoiding it. Further, if I’m going to be excluded from the category of the “saved” because I don’t accept a doctrine, or accept it but in a way that is so wrong that it is heresy, then it can’t be that I am failing to grasp a mystery. In order to be excluded from the “saved” based on a doctrine I have to be at least capable of understanding it. I suggest that no one can understand an incoherent assertion because it merely affirms what it also denies. Thus, the criterion adopted by McDermott — the “getting the doctrine of the Trinity right” criterion — is a fairly nonsensical way to draw lines between Christians and non-Christians.
It seems to me that McDermott isn’t necessarily arguing that one must accept the Trinity to be “saved.” I’m not clear he made that assertion in his book or in his response to me. Both in How Wide the Divide and in Claiming Christ authors are comparing and contrasting their respective faiths and lines are often drawn between the faiths. I think most Latter-day Saints do not mind if lines are drawn between Mormonism and Evangelicalism so long as those lines accurately and fairly describe the differences.
I think there are two arguments here. First, should the Trinity ever be used as a litmus test for salvation? Second, has the Trinity ever been used as a litmus test for orthodoxy? I think these are different arguments: one is theological and one is historical. Now, perhaps that is a distinction without a difference and perhaps some do equate orthodoxy with a saved condition, however, it does seem that some Evangelicals don’t necessarily equate the two. My understanding was that McDermott was making more of a historical argument rather than a theological one, at least from what I read, but perhaps I misunderstood.
If an Evangelical observes that, historically speaking, orthodox groups have been those who have accepted the doctrine of the Trinity, and learn that Latter-day Saints do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, then conclude that historically Latter-day Saints would not be considered orthodox, then I wouldn’t be offended by this argument or line of reasoning (and certainly one can disagree with this line of reasoning). Historically, for example, it seems to me that creation out of nothing became the dominant paradigm in the Christian tradition, and since Latter-day Saints do not accept creation out of nothing, then historically Latter-day Saints are departing from what developed in the Christian tradition. I think that is a fair description to make, and it avoids any argument as to whether salvation hinges on creation out of nothing, whether creation out of nothing was the original Hebraic world view, and whether creation out of nothing best fits the biblical data. These later questions are important (and perhaps what everyone else really wants to discuss. And I know, Blake, that you’ve written extensively on these very questions and it’s too bad there wasn’t more discussion of this in the book Claiming Christ), however in many areas our faiths are still at the stage of accurately and fairly describing the differences. Comparing and contrasting is only useful to the extent that we are comparing and contrasting real differences that take into account the range of possibilities within each tradition, not caricatures of our faiths, incomplete understandings, or only certain strands within these traditions.
One critique of Claiming Christ that I was making was that I didn’t feel it accurately accounted for what Mormons believe (especially when stating “Mormons believe this and that”) and I was trying to point out what those areas were and how they could be more completely described. While many Evangelicals are concerned with boundary maintenance and heresy-refutation, I’m hoping that discussions can focus more on accurately describing the faith. To that end, I’m glad that Clark at Mormon Metaphysics and Blake have weighed in on this issue.