Talking Doctrine

Mormons and Evangelicals in Conversation

Richard J. Mouw, Robert L. Millet, Richard J. Mouw, Robert L. Millet

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780830840809
• eBook ISBN: 9780830898824
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Over the past two centuries relations between Mormons and evangelicals could at best be described as guarded and suspicious and at worst as antagonistic and hostile. In recent years, however, evangelicals and Mormons have frequently found themselves united against certain influences in society—militant atheism, growing secularism, ethical relativism and frontal attacks on marriage, the family and religious liberty.With this background, a group of nine Mormon and ten evangelical scholars undertook a remarkable journey over a period of fifteen years to discuss differences and investigate possible common ground. The essays in this book reflect thoughtful, respectful and nuanced engagements on some of the most controversial topics that have inflamed passions in the past.Evangelical contributors include

• Craig Blomberg
• Christopher Hall
• Gerald McDermott

Among the Mormon participants are

• Spencer Fluhman
• Camille Fronk Olson
• Grant Underwood

They and thirteen others consider what they have learned about honest, frank and respectful dialogue while also taking up key doctrines for both communities. The results may surprise you as the nature of God, authority, grace and more are all discussed with both candor and generosity.

PART ONE

The Nature of the Dialogue

1

The Dialogue

Backgrounds and Context

Derek J. Bowen

Evangelicals and Mormons are relative newcomers to the practice of interfaith dialogue. The genesis of modern interfaith dialogue is generally traced back to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions held in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair.1 Although Christianity largely dominated the conference, nine other religions were represented. Mormons and many evangelicals were among those groups missing, and it wasn’t by accident. For Mormons, their “representation was not wanted nor solicited by the organizers of the 1893 Parliament.”2 Even after inclusion was reluctantly granted, further discrimination caused the Mormon delegation to walk out in protest. As for evangelicals, the identification of interfaith dialogue with liberal Protestantism was enough to keep conservatives like Dwight L. Moody and the archbishop of Canterbury away from the event, believing the parliament symbolized the compromise of Christianity.3 Consequently Mormons and evangelicals did not participate in the beginnings and early practice of interfaith dialogue—due to the discriminatory exclusion of Mormons, as opposed to the deliberate avoidance of evangelicals. Despite their differing reasons for absence, both groups have generally continued to remain aloof from this movement for most of its existence. Yet ironically, two of the groups most averse to interfaith dialogue decades ago now have among their ranks some of the greatest beneficiaries and practitioners of the enterprise in the present-day Mormon-evangelical scholarly dialogue. It is equally surprising that the dialogue is specifically occurring between Mormons and evangelicals, two groups who take the Lord’s Great Commission very seriously, but who also share a long history of antagonism toward one another.

Several factors coalesced to cause the Mormon-evangelical scholarly dialogue to occur by the late twentieth century. One significant factor was the loss of what many historians have referred to as the American evangelical Protestant empire of the nineteenth century.4 Between the years 1860 and 1926, the population of the United States grew from 31.5 million to over 117 million.5 Although evangelicalism also grew during this time, it could not keep pace with the massive number of immigrants entering the country. By 1890, Roman Catholicism surpassed Methodism as the single largest Christian denomination in America, and has remained so ever since.6 In addition to immigration, Protestantism’s division into liberal and fundamentalist camps over issues like evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, further weakened evangelical influence. These and other developments caused evangelicals to lose their majority status—from approximately half of the American population to 26 percent of Americans currently.7 Although their fundamentalist forebears first reacted with a separatist approach, neo-evangelicals, with their commitment to cultural engagement, began to see dialogue as a new method of evangelism. For some evangelicals, dialogue became a means by which to negotiate the new reality of religious pluralism as a smaller group within the American mosaic of religion.8

Meanwhile, a series of changes occurred within Mormonism that in many ways brought it closer to evangelicalism, in both doctrine and practice. Although early nineteenth-century Mormonism resembled evangelicalism in many particulars, the followers of Joseph Smith gradually followed a path of radical differentiation from the dominant Protestant culture of nineteenth-century America. As Richard Mouw will discuss later in this volume, Latter-day Saints did not simply step forward and offer to the world new books of Scripture; they announced that God had chosen to restore the prophetic office. Mormonism introduced a worldview that combined the temporal and the spiritual, uniting religion with economics and politics (see Doctrine and Covenants 29:34). Mormonism introduced a priesthood hierarchy and let it be known that the divine apostolic power to perform salvific ordinances (sacraments), the power once held by the early Christian church (Matthew 16:19; 18:18), had been restored as well. In other words, in spite of the fact that Mormonism arose in a Protestant world, its ecclesiastical structure resembled Roman Catholicism. And with the claim of modern prophets and continuing revelation came the renewal and spread of spiritual gifts, including the gift of tongues, and the reports of miracles and signs and angelic visitations. By the end of Joseph Smith’s life, in 1844, he had introduced the practice of polygamy, or plural marriage, as well as the startling and for some repulsive belief that men and women could become like God.

The Mormon movement into the twentieth century and into the traditional American society began quite dramatically in 1890, when Latter-day Saints (LDS) Church president Wilford Woodruff declared an end to polygamy. From 1890 on, Mormonism followed a new path of assimilation into American and evangelical cultural norms, which to a great extent continues today. Besides forsaking polygamy in favor of monogamy, Mormonism also forsook communal economics for capitalism and theocratic politics for democracy.9 Later social assimilation included joining the evangelical cause of Prohibition, a move that reflected the LDS adherence to what the Saints called the “Word of Wisdom”—a health law first introduced in 1833—a ban on alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee. By the early decades of the twentieth century, the complete observance of the Word of Wisdom became a requirement for members in good standing to enter their temples.10 Mormonism also adopted to some extent the anti-intellectual heritage of fundamentalism, dismissing both evolution and scientism and looking askance at what religionists came to know as the “higher criticism” of the Bible.11 With the later emergence of neo-evangelicalism, Mormonism soon found a moral and political ally within the Republican Party who supported causes like antiabortion legislation and traditional marriage amendments. But none of these changes would have been enough to foster the Mormon-evangelical dialogue without accompanying shifts in Mormon theological emphases.

Two related intellectual movements within Mormonism during the twentieth century brought Mormon theology closer to evangelical doctrine than ever before. Beginning around the mid-century point, there was a greater emphasis placed on the belief in an infinite God, the plight of fallen humanity and salvation by the mercy and grace of God. Sociologist Kendall White has called this movement “Mormon neo-orthodoxy.”12 White argues that Mormon neo-orthodoxy, like Protestant neo-orthodoxy, was a “crisis theology,” in that both movements developed out of a response to the crisis of modernity. In the case of Mormonism, White suggests that “Mormons have traditionally believed in a finite God, an optimistic assessment of human nature, and a doctrine of salvation by merit. In contrast, most Mormon neo-orthodox theologians have tended to embrace the concept of an absolute God, a pessimistic assessment of human nature, and a doctrine of salvation by grace.”13 White proposes that a traditional Mormonism somewhat compatible with modernism gave way to a Mormon neo-­orthodoxy compatible with evangelicalism and to some extent fundamentalism. Observing such change, Richard Mouw wondered in a 1991 Christianity Today article whether an “Evangelical Mormonism” was developing.14 Building on the foundation of Mormon neo-orthodoxy, John-Charles Duffy has suggested that another intellectual movement developed, one he coins “Mormon Progressive Orthodoxy.”15 Duffy defines Mormon Progressive Orthodoxy as “the effort to mitigate Mormon sectarianism, the rejection of Mormon liberalism, and the desire to make Mormon supernaturalism more intellectually credible.”16 Some observers of the Mormon-evangelical dialogue would classify a majority of the LDS participants in the dialogue as adherents of Mormon Progressive Orthodoxy, although none have specifically identified themselves as such. The recognition of such developments has brought some evangelicals to the dialogue table in order to encourage what they perceive as spiritually healthy developments within the LDS faith. (Most of the LDS dialogists would, however, claim that they have no such inclinations or ambitions, only a desire to assist their evangelical brothers and sisters to come to appreciate the “Christian” foundations of Mormonism.)

Into these prime conditions walked Pastor Gregory C. V. Johnson of “Standing Together,” a parachurch evangelical ministry in Utah.17 As a young child Johnson had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his family, but later as a teenager converted to evangelicalism following what he describes as a born-again experience. This joint experience with and exposure to both Mormonism and evangelicalism created a natural interfaith dialogue within Johnson himself, a passion to help bridge what had for decades been an unbridgeable gulf. Over time, this inner dialogue organically evolved into an outer dialogue between groups of Mormons and evangelicals organized by Johnson. As student body president of Denver Seminary, Johnson introduced one of his professors, Craig Blomberg, to religion professor Stephen Robinson of Brigham Young University (BYU). Through their interaction, and with the encouragement of Johnson, in 1997 Blomberg and Robinson wrote How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation (InterVarsity Press). As the first public step toward a more formal Mormon-evangelical scholarly dialogue, the book received a mixed review of praise and disdain. Most of the Mormon appraisal was positive, whereas the evangelical assessment was generally split between encouraging remarks from scholars and bitter criticism from professional countercultists.18 In April of 1997 Johnson became acquainted with BYU religion professor Robert L. Millet, and their monthly lunch conversations gradually evolved into a public forum titled “A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation,” a two-hour program that discussed the value of religious exchange and also addressed doctrinal similarities and differences between the two faith traditions. To date, Millet and Johnson have been invited to hold their public dialogues some seventy times to churches (both LDS and evangelical), universities, civic organizations and law schools, throughout the United States, Canada and even in Great Britain. Besides their own presentations, Millet and Johnson helped organize an interfaith gathering, “An Evening of Friendship,” in the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle with Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias in 2004, the first time an evangelical had spoken in that venue since Dwight L. Moody in 1899. Zacharias returned to the Tabernacle a decade later, to a packed house.

After three years of meeting together, Johnson suggested to Millet the possibility of expanding their conversation to include scholars from both faiths. This resulted in a semiannual dialogue that has continued since 2000. The first meeting occurred at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Among the first evangelical participants were Greg Johnson, Richard Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary), Craig Blomberg (Denver Seminary), Craig Hazen (Biola University), David Neff (editor of Christianity Today) and Carl Moser, at the time a doctoral student in Scotland and later a professor of religion at Eastern University in Philadelphia. On the LDS side, participants included Robert Millet, Stephen Robinson, Roger Keller, David Paulsen, Daniel Judd and Andrew Skinner, all from BYU.19 Additions and subtractions in participants have taken place over the years.

The participants would come “prepared (through readings of articles and books) to discuss a number of doctrinal subjects, including the Fall, Atonement, Scripture, Revelation, Grace and Works, Trinity/Godhead, the Corporeality of God, Theosis/Deification, Authority, and Joseph Smith’s First Vision.”20 Meetings have been held at Brigham Young University, Fuller Theological Seminary, Wheaton College, the Mormon historical sites of Palmyra, New York and Nauvoo, Illinois, and at meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature.21

After meeting some twenty-four times, it was determined in the summer of 2014 that the dialogue in its current iteration had served its purpose. Convicted civility had become the order of things in the gatherings, trust and respect and empathy had been established, doctrinal clarity on both sides had come to pass, and lasting friendships had been formed. More than two or three had gathered many times in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it was the consensus of the dialogue team that his Spirit and his approbation had been felt again and again.

2

Reflections After Fifteen Years

Robert L. Millet

In 1991, not long after I was appointed dean of religious education at Brigham Young University, one of the senior leaders of the LDS Church counseled me, “Bob, you must find ways to reach out. Find ways to build bridges of friendship and understanding with persons of other faiths.” That charge has weighed on my mind since then.

To be able to articulate your faith to someone who is not of your faith is a good discipline, one that requires you to check carefully your own vocabulary, your own terminology, and make sure that people not only understand you but also could not misunderstand you. Mormons and evangelicals have a similar vocabulary but often have different definitions and meanings for those words. Consequently, effective communication is a strenuous endeavor. To some degree, we have been forced to reexamine our paradigms, our theological foundations, our own understanding of things in a way that enables us to talk and listen and digest and proceed.

The Dialogue Begins

Derek Bowen has just provided a useful historical background for the dialogue. Let me begin by suggesting that in the early sessions, it was not uncommon to sense a bit of tension, a subtle uncertainty as to where this was going, a slight uneasiness among the participants. As the dialogue began to take shape, it was apparent that we were searching for an identity—was this to be a confrontation? A debate? Was it to produce a winner and a loser? Just how candid and earnest were we expected to be? Some of the Latter-day Saints wondered: Do the “other guys” see this encounter as a grand effort to set Mormonism straight, to make it more traditionally Christian, more acceptable to skeptical onlookers? Some of the evangelicals wondered: Is what they are saying an accurate expression of LDS belief? Can a person be a genuine Christian and yet not be a part of the larger body of Christ? A question that continues to come up is, just how much “bad theology” can the grace of God compensate for? Before too long, those kinds of issues became part of the dialogue itself, and in the process, much of the tension began to dissipate.

These meetings have been more than conversations. We have visited key historical sites, eaten and socialized, sung hymns and prayed, mourned together over the passing of members of our group, and shared ideas, books and articles throughout the year. The initial feeling of formality has given way to a sweet informality, a brother-and-sisterhood, a kindness in disagreement, a respect for opposing views, and a feeling of responsibility toward those not of our faith—a responsibility to represent their doctrines and practices accurately to folks of our own faith. No one has compromised or diluted his or her own theological convictions, but everyone has sought to demonstrate the kind of civility that ought to characterize a mature exchange of ideas among a body of believers who have discarded defensiveness. No dialo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Prefaces by the Editors
• PART ONE: The Nature of the Dialogue
• PART TWO: Specific Doctrinal Discussions
• Afterword
• Notes
• Contributors
• Praise for Talking Doctrine
• About the Editors
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright