Claiming Christ

Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate is a book written by Robert L. Millet¹ and Gerald R. McDermott.² The book follows up where Stephen E. Robinson and Craig L. Blomberg left off in How Wide the Divide?: A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation. Although I have not yet read Claiming Christ, aquinas at Summa Theologica appears to have written a masterful review at An LDS Perspective on Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate. Here is an excerpt:

Morehead’s Musings: This book presents an academic discussion of theological issues. But while such theological frameworks may appeal to Evangelicals who approach their faith and interactions with those of other faiths with this priority and framework in mind, it runs the risk of missing the mark in communicating meaningfully with Latter-day Saints. This is not to dismiss the importance of worldview and doctrine which are surely related to ethics and praxis, but what might be the (even assumed) frameworks that Latter-day Saints begin with, and how might Evangelicals begin from these starting points and then bridge the way to their concerns over theological discussion? 

Aquinas: This is a great question. We really need spend more time learning each others metaphors. I think McDermott “breaks” Latter-day Saint metaphors by projecting and imposing criteria and meaning from Evangelical metaphors. I’d like to offer three examples of this. First, McDermott makes the argument that the LDS Jesus doesn’t transcend the cosmos (Claming Christ, 75). The Latter-day Saint metaphor is that God creates by bringing order out of Chaos. Cosmos is order. Chaos is disorder, unformed the unorganized. God speaks to Chaos and it obeys. So, what McDermott really means is the LDS God doesn’t transcend Chaos because Chaos exists when God creates. However, this breaks the metaphor because the metaphor only works when Cosmos and Chaos are opposites. The metaphor doesn’t care or it doesn’t make an issue of Chaos pre-existing as a challenge to the absoluteness of God. The point is not who exists before: God or Chaos. The point is that it is God who is creating by speaking to the waters. The point in this metaphor is that God is God because of his creative powers. The Holy Ghost broods over the waters and brings forth heaven and earth from the primordial waters in Genesis. That is one example.

A second example is the Latter-day Saint metaphor of the hidden, the fragment, the shard, the vestige, the remnant. Terryl Givens did an excellent job describing this view at the Joseph Smith Conference. Mormonism emphasizes possibilities and potentialities, the recovery of truths and lost worlds; bringing forth hidden things to light. The metaphor is that there is a kind of heavenly library. In the beginning of the Book of Mormon, Lehi was given a book to read, Angels read to Joseph Smith heavenly versions of a Bible that man does not possess. Nibley once spoke of the Temple as a kind of divine library; the depository of all knowledge. The metaphor is that of non-finality and dynamism, ongoing revelation and an open canon. This can only make sense for an infinite and eternal God. McDermott breaks this metaphor by claiming that Mormons have creeds just like Evangelicals (Claiming Christ, 19). It is a novel idea, made with good intentions, but it ultimately ruins the metaphor and assumes that Mormonism must behave like a religion which puts a premium on the final and the definite, on the certain and complete. It overlooks the function of creeds as understood by Joseph Smith, which set up stakes and allow people to only accept so much and no more. It is the definite; putting down beliefs in stone, unchanging, static. This is not the LDS metaphor. Creeds don’t work well with open-systems like Mormonism.

A third example of breaking the metaphor, which is probably more a different paradigm, is the clash of the role of evidence and faith. For Mormons, evidence can never create a testimony ex nihilo. At best, evidence might support a pre-existing testimony but can never create one out of nothing. Evangelicals on the other hand, claim they put their trust in the scientific evidence and objective proof that Christianity is true. The Gospels, they argue, are historically reliable and provide the best proof that Christianity is true. Mormons simply cannot accept that faith and belief come from objective evidence and proof, otherwise what would be the difficultly in accepting the claims of Christianity? This is the opposite of faith for Latter-day Saints. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. Bushman explained this well in his autobiographical work On the Road with Joseph:

“Mormons wonder why all Christian don’t understand that we believe in the Book of Mormon on the basis of a spiritual witness. It is very hard for a Mormon to believe that Christians accept the Bible because of scholarly evidence confirming the historically accuracy of the work. Surely there are uneducated believers whose convictions are not rooted in academic knowledge. Isn’t there some kind of human, existential truth that resonates with one’s desires for goodness and divinity? And isn’t that ultimately why we read the Bible as a devotional work? We don’t have to read the latest issues of the journal to find out if the book is still true.”

So one of the reasons this doesn’t make sense for Latter-day Saints is that it excludes a lot of people from having a viable and valid witness of the truth. It excludes all the early Christians who never had any archeological proof of the Old Testament. It excludes children from having valid witnesses of truth. It excludes elderly men and women, who may not be up on the latest scholarship and academic knowledge. It is simply difficult to believe Evangelicals who say their witness is based on scientific evidence and rationalism. As Bushman says, we think they believe as we do, but they do not. But this fits our respective paradigms. For someone who believes God has revealed everything that has given us complete and final truth in the Gospels, everything is in a final version. What else is there to do but look at all the truth? However, for someone who believes more is coming, and more will be revealed, we can’t wait until all the facts are in to believe, we have to believe in something even tentatively; otherwise we will never be able to have faith. Bushman explains, “We can’t be reading the latest journal to see if the Book is still true.”

If you allow me to make a reference to popular culture, Latter-day Saints might watch the opening scene of The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring movie and imagine early Christian history when we are told: “History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge. . . Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.” Now, when I say this, the appropriate response from Evangelicals is to say, “Hmm, that is interesting, maybe there is something to that, maybe LDS do see the potential the hidden, the fragment, truths that are pieced together which reveal hidden worlds, the remnant, and the ruin.” The inappropriate response is to argue: “Tolkien wasn’t Mormon. Tolkien wasn’t teaching Mormonism, or the so-called Great Apostasy. This line wasn’t from Tolkien, it was from Peter Jackson.” The inappropriate response would be for Evangelicals to gather several Tolkien scholars and produce a book claiming that Tolkien never believed in Mormonism. Again, this would be not appreciating and understanding the metaphor. All of this shows how it doesn’t make sense to use creeds in this environment. This thread runs all through Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. He reveals things that are hidden. The Book of Mormon is still a sealed book. The Nephites come across bones and people in a distant land and wonder about their history. They discover 24 plates among the ruins and exclaim, “Doubtless a great mystery is contained within these plates.” Nephi speaks of more revelation to come, even a vision of the entire history of the world. The D&C contains a translation from a fragment of the parchment of John. The Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham abruptly end, without any sort of conclusion, suggesting to the reader that there is more that we simply do not have. Worlds burst on to the scene and then end abruptly. We are only given slices of visions here and there. Again, creeds do not work well in such a system.

One of the problems with the debate format is that it doesn’t tend to encourage this kind of exploration into each others metaphors and paradigms, which is really necessary for significant understanding.
Last of all, if Evangelicals want to reach Latter-day Saints they should spend more time thinking about what is good, edifying, uplifting about Evangelical theology and doctrine and conveying that to Mormons. This is part of the Mormon mission—to seek out the virtuous, lovely or praiseworthy. It is part of the LDS articles of faith. The concept of goodness is one that Richard Bushman has tried to articulate to his audiences. In the Book of Mormon narrative, Lehi speaks of tasting the fruit of the Tree of Life. The prophet Mormon says that he “was visited of the Lord, and tasted and knew of the goodness of Jesus.” Joseph Smith talked about how the doctrines taste good to him. Evangelicals consistently misunderstand the metaphor. They generally reduce this concept to that of flavor, and that this runs afoul of a kind of post-modernist, relativist position that you might like chocolate and I might like vanilla and thus we only have our preferences to rely on. This is not what Latter-day Saints mean by tasting truth. It is not a preference or a flavor; it is taste at its deepest level. In the Book of Mormon account, Lehi didn’t measure the fruit of the tree of life, or merely look at it, or hold it, or prove its existence by argument or by archeological means, he tasted of the fruit, which was sweet and desirable to make one happy. The metaphor correctly understood I feel will be extremely useful to Evangelicals. You can’t communicate taste to another person, it must be experienced. You can lead someone to something, show them, guide them, but ultimately they must drink from the living water. In addition, taste is a matter of discernment. We can taste beauty and goodness in our lives. Often the Evangelical position resists the notion that truth is contingent on beauty and goodness because it seems too subjective. Things can appear to be good and appear to be beautiful, but it doesn’t make it so, goes the argument. However, Latter-day Saints simply won’t respond to this. The gospel must taste good or it is not true. Evangelicals are free to ignore this, but not if they want to reach Latter-day Saints.³

I look forward to reading Claiming Christ. For additional information, see To How Wide the Divide Graduates.

Sources:

1. Robert L. Millet is Professor of Ancient Scripture and the Richard L. Evans Professor of Religious Understanding at Brigham Young University.↩
2. Gerald R. McDermott is Professor of Religion at Roanoke College.↩
3. “An LDS Perspective on Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate“. 24 August 2008. Morehead’s Musings. 14 November 2008.↩