E.D. Kain asks: are Mormons Christians? It's a question worth discussing, but it takes a long time, since it hinges on what it "really means" to be a Christian, and it's hard to come to any agreement on exactly where to draw that line. Some Catholics still believe that Protestant churches are full of idolators, and you can still find Protestants who believe the reverse. You can't determine whether Mormons are "really Christians" until you know what it means really to be a Christian. There's a lot of self-interest in that question, since many people want to draw the real-Christian line so that a particular someone falls inside of it.
What's easier to determine, as a matter of history and institutional continuity, is the degree to which someone is an orthodox Christian. As I've argued before, orthodoxy has to do with the history of the church you're a part of, not the objective, eternal correctness of your beliefs:
"To put it simply, your denomination's relationship to the Nicene Creed will tell you a great deal about the sense in which you can call yourself an orthodox Christian. If your denomination rejects it entirely, then you probably can't claim orthodoxy. This is not necessarily a matter of eternal salvation, just a matter of the sensible application of a label. Take Abraham Lincoln, for example. He attended church, but he never joined one as an adult. So I think it's safe to say that there's not much of a positive case for calling him an orthodox Christian. Am I 'casting him out'? Not at all. I really have no way of knowing whether or not Lincoln was 'actually a Christian,' and it's probably fruitless to try and pin it down.
"Unfortunately, and as usual, there is grey area. One can be a member of an orthodox denomination and yet be publically heterodox in one's beliefs, or one can adhere to a different theological tradition than that of one's church."
Does anyone object to the claim that we can look at church history and figure out some loose boundaries for orthodox Christianity, and that Mormonism falls outside those boundaries?
For a fuller discussion of Mormon theology and its differences with orthodox Christian theology, see the articles by Bruce Porter and Gerald McDermott in the October 2008 First Things.
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7 comments:
Well certainly determining whether an individual who identifies as a Christian is or is not can be very difficult and a total waste of time.
But it would seem to me rather blatantly obvious that a group of people who have adopted a third book into their liturgy that utterly transforms just about the entire Christian doctrine have quite purposefully and profoundly departed from Christianity.
Thanks for the First Things link and the thoughtful response...
Sorry that everything got so derailed on the Mormons line.
I guess I just think you've made your argument unnecessarily difficult by leaving out the word “orthodox.”
But, getting back to the original point that “Christianist” is overly broad—it would probably even include anyone who makes Aristotelian natural-law arguments—I think we're agreed.
I'll take any chance I can get to link to that fascinating First Things exchange. I've thought about printing up copies so I can discuss it with LDS missionaries who come knocking on my door.
William,
If you are going to add orthodox (which I think is a fair word to add) then even that needs to qualified by Nicene or Trinitarian orthodoxy.
Mormons aren't Trinitarian Christians. But neither are Shakers, Quakers, Christian Scientists. Hell even Zwingli and a great deal of Swiss Reformed Christianity was pretty much a Unitarian.
Most 19th and 20th century Evangelicalism tends to unitarism (all on Jesus) as is plenty of Pentecostalism (Spirit only).
So even if you get the formal difference, the actual showings up of the denominations is another thing as well.
Chris,
That's a fair point. My perspective is such that I collapse Nicene/Trinitarian orthodoxy into orthodoxy, which would mark all the groups you've mentioned as edging away from orthodoxy. But perhaps this is not the best thing to do.
I'll have to do some more thinking on this one.
Thanks for dropping by.
-wrb
You may enjoy my post Are Mormons Christians? from a Mormon or Latter-day Saint point of view. I believe it to be expansive.
The central issue really is not, "What do theologians, historians, scholars and philosophers think?", but rather, "What does the word of God say?"
Virtually all of McDermott's concerns and critique are clearly non-Biblical. For an analysis of this problem, see http://sites.google.com/site/mcdermottandthebible/.
A question that is much more significant than "Are Latter-day Saints traditional orthodox sectarian Christians?" is "Are traditional orthodox sectarian beliefs about God, Christ and man Biblical?"
Greg and Gordon,
Thanks for the Mormon perspective. Gordon, I'm with you on which question is ultimately more important. But I don't think we'll ever agree on the answer, especially not via internet argument.
It just seems sensible to me to settle the easy questions first before moving to the hard ones, but sometimes people don't do that and things only get more confusing later on.
-wrb
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