In this first of a three-part episode, pastors Derek and Cliff discuss how the evangelical perspective on Mormonism has changed over the last forty years.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I am here today with Cliff McManis, and we are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and professors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we want to talk about how Christians should think about Mormonism. But before I get to our topic, I want to point your attention to withallwisdom.org, where you will find a large and growing collection of resources on various theological, cultural, and practical topics that are all rooted in God’s Word and aimed to help you make genuine progress in your walk with the Lord. Now on to our topic, Cliff. I want to hand it right over to you today, and I want to start with a basic question. Can you tell us how evangelicals and Mormons are engaging and interacting today on a broad scale? How are major teachers—in both Mormonism and evangelical teachers—how are they engaging, talking, interacting on the topics of Mormon theology and Christian theology? What’s the state of Mormonism and evangelicalism today?
Cliff: Thanks, Derek. Yeah, that’s a complicated question. But there is a definitive answer. And before I give the definitive answer of how our Mormons and evangelicals are interacting and interfacing today, how about a little background? I think it might set the context. I grew up, you could say, as an insider into Mormonism in that in the 1970s, I had immediate relatives who were Mormons, and they were aggressive, active, passionate, proselytizing Mormons. And I was very close to them. So they tried to proselytize me for years, actually, into Mormonism. And I was just a young child and a teenager even at the time. This was in the 70s and then going into the early 80s. So I did spend some time inside Mormonism at their social activities. I was on the Mormon Basketball League for years. I participated in Mormon talent shows. As a young lad. As a juggler and stand-up comedian, believe it or not, at the Mormon talent shows. So they had a lot of social events to just draw people in. I was involved in those and also just went to several Mormon events and even church in the ward and activities, and this was all because they were proactively trying to recruit me to Mormonism. And I learned Mormon theology during that whole time. I was given a Book of Mormon. I was encouraged to read it.
So this is over the course of almost ten years, while at the same time I was a so-called practicing Catholic. So I’m getting a double dose. I’m interested in neither of those, all the while I’m just only interested in basketball. But anyway, so I was not a Christian and then at age 19, I get saved. And then all of a sudden, as a new believer, I have this insatiable passion to know the truth of God’s Word. And as a result, I gave a lot of dedicated time to truly understanding Roman Catholicism, the religion I was raised with by my parents. And then also, I wanted to know Mormonism better now that I was a Christian. In light of the fact that several of my relatives were trying to persuade me to become a Mormon for over ten years. So that was the early 80s. And I’ve been studying Mormonism really since then, and have interacted with it at a pretty deep level and got to know it pretty well. But what I can say when I became a Christian in the early 80s, and I was in college at the time, the state of the union, with respect to your average evangelical and what they thought of Mormonism across the board from your average lay evangelical Christian in the pew all the way up to the professors of seminaries and presidents of seminaries, for the most part, they viewed Mormonism as a false religion.
And I would even say the consensus was that Mormonism was considered a cult, which was kind of a nasty, harsh word. Cult put it in a separate category from just a false belief or a false religion. So that had been the case in evangelical Christianity really for decades. Like in 1963, Anthony Hoekema, who was a well-known theologian and a professor at Calvin College and other seminaries, wrote a book that was pretty well-known. It was called The Four Major Cults. That was the title of it. You can still get it. Mormonism was one of the religions featured in that exposé by Anthony Hoekem in 1963. Later on in the 60s, then, was the landmark best-selling book that Walter Martin wrote called The Kingdom of the Cult. Right? Still a best-seller to this day that was written in the 1960s, and has gone through many iterations, and Mormonism is featured in that book as well. And there’s probably nothing that ever surpassed the work of Walter Martin in that book. On the Kingdom of the Cult…and just the title of the book…and then Mormonism is included in that. That has been the moniker that evangelicals had given up to that time of, what is Mormonism? It’s a false religion.
It’s a cult. It’s not Christian. Well, then there was a major change and shift in the 1990s where all that got reversed and a 180 in the evangelical world. And there’s a lot of factors that triggered that. But the end result is that today, say, here in 2022, the consensus from evangelicals, whether it’s the Christian in the pew that the Baptist Church, Presbyterian Church or the professor at the evangelical seminary or even the president of any evangelical seminary, if you were to ask them about Mormonism, you might get all kinds of different answers. Some would actually be very complimentary towards Mormonism. Some of these evangelical leaders, surprisingly, would say, yeah, well, Mormonism actually, it’s not a cult. That’s what we’ve discovered and learned in the last 30 years. Now that we’ve done more deliberate, objective study, now that we’re more civil. And we haven’t been fair to the Mormons. And what we’ve concluded is that actually they are just kind of either a quasi-Christian denomination or one of the Protestant denominations. And actually, they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Now, that’s kind of the extreme view, but it’s out there and even in mainline denominations and very large, significant seminaries. So the largest seminary in the world, at least that’s what they call themselves, is Fuller Seminary down in Pasadena, California. It has had a president there for 20 years. And in the last 15 years of his tenure there, he embraced a conversation with Mormons and major Mormon leaders and major theologians at Brigham Young University. And he’s even written and published books on Mormonism and encouraging evangelicals how to have the proper attitude towards Mormons. And he exhorts us, we need to change our mind. We can’t be calling them a cult anymore. We have way more in common than historically we thought. And so today, I think the landscape has totally changed. And it’s uncouth, for the most part, for many evangelical Christians to say that Mormonism is a cult. As a matter of fact, we get chided if we use that terminology. You can’t call Mormons cults. They’re nice people. Uh, they say they believe in Jesus Christ. They say they believe in the Bible. And so, there’s been a 180 in terms of an absolute dramatic change in terms of how Christians perceive Mormonism, I’d say back in the 60s and 70s and early 80s, compared to where we are today. And so for me, I’ve seen this transition happen gradually over three plus decades, 30 going on 40 years now. And to me, it’s not been a good trend. It’s been alarming.
Derek: And that was going to be my question. Is this a good thing?
Cliff: This is not a good thing because, from my point of view, Mormon theology hasn’t changed. It’s written down. It’s encoded. Maybe some of their conversation, their terminology, their campaigning, their marketing, and those kind of things have changed. But their basic theology hasn’t changed. And another trend that I’ve seen over these 30-40 years is that evangelical, Bible believing Christians have become more and more ignorant of what Mormons really believe and who they are. As a matter of fact, Mormons have shied away from the term Mormon. They used to embrace that term— Mormons. We are the Mormons. And there was a deliberate effort on their part as a church, as a movement to say, no, we can’t call ourselves Mormon anymore because that’s a term that scares people. And so they use the word Christian—we’re Christians, Latter Day Saints, LDS, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So they’re trying to use Christian terminology more and more. So, the state of the union today, I think, in the evangelical Christian world is not good. And the proof of that is you can just look at books that are available on Mormonism, written by evangelicals. They’re favorable. They consider Mormons brothers and sisters in Christ. An example: I know Joel Osteen is quite a controversial person, but he is considered one of the most famous Protestant Christian pastors in America. And not long ago, he made that statement when interviewed, I think it was by Larry King or somebody, where he said that Mormons are brothers in the faith. And that would be typical of a lot of people, sadly.
Derek: So anecdotally, I have a relative who is otherwise a strong Christian and who I’ve had great fellowship with, who said about 15 years ago the startling thing that he believed that Mormons are our brothers in Christ, and that’s how we need to treat them as such. And so that was surprising to me. So you’re talking about a broad scope here of how the landscape has changed. You’re mentioning Joel Osteen is a popular pastor who said these things. And then it trickles down to even the anecdotally, I know someone personally who’s a Christian who would say that very thing.
Cliff: And like I said, there’s a lot of variables that contributed to the change from considering Mormonism a false and deceptive counterfeit religion from the 70s and 80s to where we are today—that it’s just another Christian denomination and they’re nice people, right? I would say there is a landmark catalyst book. If I had to pinpoint where the change began or where everything began to pivot, I propose it’s this book here that I’m holding in my hand, that was actually published in 1997. I was actually living in Utah when this book came out in 1997. It’s called How Wide the Divide. It’s says, a Mormon and an evangelical in conversation. And the book is a dialogue between two theologians. One is very well-known, from a conservative Baptist seminary. He’s still around. He’s considered one of the most influential evangelical theologians today. So he represents the evangelical position. And then the Mormon that writes in this book was probably one of the most highly esteemed Mormon theologians at the time. His name was Stephen Robinson. He was a gentleman that I got to meet and have dinner with when I lived in Utah. At BYU, I was an invited guest and we sat down and chatted, talked about our differences between Mormonism. But anyway, that’s this book. It’s between these two men, an evangelical theologian and a Mormon theologian, and they talk about four topics, and they write their point of view on each topic. And then at the end of each chapter…so they talk about Scripture. It’s an exchange they have over Scripture. What do evangelicals believe? What do Mormons believe about Scripture of the Bible? They also talk about God and deification or becoming deity.
The third topic is they both talk about who Jesus is in the Trinity, and then they conclude the book by the two of them giving their perspectives on soteriology or salvation, or how we might be saved. And so they go back and forth. The evangelical writes, here’s what we believe about the Bible. And then the Mormon guy says, well, here’s what we believe. And then the two of them together write a joint conclusion. At all four chapters, they have a joint summary conclusion on what Mormons and evangelicals believe about Scripture, God, Christ, and salvation. And the surprising thing about this book, Derek, is their joint conclusion. For the most part, it’s a summary of what they agree upon, which to me was startling. And I wanted to read just a couple sentences to you to get your reaction of what you think. Okay, here is their chapter on Scripture and here’s their joint conclusion. So keep in mind this is an evangelical theologian and a Mormon theologian. And they conclude, “We find on the topic of Scripture more agreement between us than we had expected to find. Both of us professors agree that all Scripture is inspired of God. We hold the same understanding of inerrancy. We agree that the present biblical text is the Word of God within the common parameters of the Chicago Statement of inerrancy.” So I know that your PhD actually was on the Chicago statement, wasn’t it?
Derek: It was.
Cliff: So I want to get your thoughts on that. They’re telling us here things that they surprisingly agree on with regard to Scripture. They don’t say the Bible but Scripture because the Mormon says there’s four scriptures. There’s the Bible, and then the pearl of Great Price, the doctrines of covenants. And their four standard works doctrine, covenants in the Book of Mormon, plus the Bible. So they use this word “scripture.” But we find on the topic of Scripture more agreement between us than we had expected to find. And we both agree that Scripture is inspired of God, and we hold the same understanding of inerrancy. So what are your initial reactions to that kind of a statement?
Derek: It’s astounding. First of all, I think the first sentence that you mentioned is misleading because it doesn’t matter how much you agree on, you could agree on 99% of something, but that 1% is so foundational, so fundamental to the actual meaning of the terms that we’re using, that it doesn’t matter how much you agree on. So I just think that’s a misleading statement to open it up. Then secondly, it depends on what the meaning of Scripture is. You can’t say that we agree on that. All Scripture is inspired by God, because you have to define what you mean by Scripture. What scriptures are we talking about? And obviously, as you just mentioned, the Mormons believe that the Bible is or I should say the Book of Mormon and the Bible are on equal planes of revelation—that God has inspired those texts, and we would reject that outright. We would say, no, that God has not inspired the Book of Mormon, that is not a God breathed book, but the Bible is. And so it’s misleading at that point as well. And then in terms of inerrancy, now you can correct me if I’m wrong, but in terms of inerrancy, I thought it was the case that the Mormons believed that, in fact, the Bible has been so thoroughly corrupted that we needed an additional revelation to help us not only understand the Scripture, but we needed another revelation so that we could know what God is truly saying because the Bible has been so badly corrupted. So maybe that’s an issue of transmission and not inerrancy.
Cliff: Actually, you’re correct. You are correct on all counts. I liked your first word—astounding—because that’s the way you should react when you hear that. Yeah, here’s an evangelical Christian, a Mormon, and they’re saying that they agree on the topic of scripture. I totally agree. That is completely misleading. Completely misleading. We find on the topic of scripture more agreement. We agree that all scripture is inspired. They don’t even agree on what scripture is exactly. You can’t go to step two, right? Because you don’t even agree on what Scripture is, right? We categorically reject the Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price as counterfeit, right? I would even say they are satanically inspired. So there is no way that I can make this statement like this evangelical did. Oh, we both agree that all scripture is God breathed. So it’s alarming. But that’s just typical of this, wanting to find common ground in places that you have no common ground at the ultimate level of truth. And then finally they say this is on Scripture, again, we agree that appropriately modest and nuanced claims of modern revelation. And that’s what Doctrines and Covenants claims to be. It’s all new revelation that Jesus gave directly to Joseph Smith in the 1830s and 40. So that’s what he’s talking about. Modern revelation. So we agree that appropriately modest and nuanced claims of modern revelation need not jeopardize the authority of the Bible. So, Derek, would you agree that new revelation given to Joseph Smith in the 1830s and 40s through the doctrines and covenants doesn’t undermine the authority of the Bible at all?
Derek: Oh, it absolutely does. In fact, first of all, we believe that God’s revelation and giving Scripture is he completed that when John wrote revelation in the 90s and 80, 90. And so we believe that that there’s no more revelation in that this scripture, this this text, this Bible is the sufficient word of God. And it’s complete in and of itself. And there’s no more revelation to be given after that. So that’s step one. And then step two is the revelation that Joseph Smith supposedly got was so in contradiction to what we find in Scripture, that you can’t begin to defend it as legitimate revelation. And so, no, I reject categorically to use the word that you’ve just used, I reject categorically that that it doesn’t matter how you nuance it or craft your definition. You can’t include the Book of Mormon and those other documents as revelation from God.
Cliff: Yeah. So I think just to piggyback on what you’re saying here. So the Doctrine of Covenants, supposedly Jesus giving Joseph Smith new ongoing revelation that he writes down and adds and turns it into a holy book. You’re saying, number one, that that undermines the doctrine of canonicity of what we already had, right? And then also it undermines the doctrine of sufficiency. The Bible is no longer sufficient. We need more information. And then if you read the Doctrine and Covenants and I don’t recommend that you do because it’s false prophecy, it’s false religion, it’s deceptive, but much of it contradicts what the Bible says. So it goes against Scripture, the Bible. So I’m going back to your word. Astounding. I can’t believe that a highly respected, trained evangelical theologian from one of our major seminaries can agree. And really what he’s doing is he’s endorsing Mormonism and Mormon scripture.
Derek: And it’s incredibly confusing where there should be a sharp line between Christianity and Mormonism. It’s now being blended into one. And that’s exceedingly confusing for Christians. And also as something we’ll talk about later, it’s exceedingly confusing for Mormons, honestly, because they need to see the clear distinction between Mormonism and true Christianity.
Cliff: Absolutely. Do we have time for another one?
Derek: We do.
Cliff: We do. So here’s their next chapter where the two of them talk about God and deification or our view of God. And here’s how the summary conclusion at the end of the chapter starts out. Here’s a quote. In the LDS view. Oh, no, this is by Stephen Robinson. He’s giving the Mormon view of God. Okay, here it is, the Mormon view of God. And he says in the Mormon view or the LDS view, God is eternal and unchangeable. So Stephen Robinson is trying to tell us, and we’re supposed to believe that the Mormon god. Is eternal and unchangeable. Thoughts?
Derek: Well, again, I just feel like I’m being. Uh, gaslit a little bit here, because that is not how I’ve understood Mormon theology at all. Right? And I’ve done a fair amount of studying it just for the sake of instructing others on how to evangelize Mormons and so on. And that is. Unless he goes on to qualify that somehow or some way. That just seems to be a patently false statement, because that is not what they believe about God.
Cliff: Yeah, no, you’re right, he does. He goes on to qualify it, actually. He goes on to redefine the word eternal.
Derek: Okay, okay.
Cliff: And he goes on to redefine the word unchangeable okay or immutable okay. Which is not fair. And that’s why this statement is completely misleading. And it’s very deceptive. And if you’re not real discerning and you don’t know a whole lot about Mormonism and you’re a Christian and you pick this up because it’s recommended by Christianity Today, this book, How Wide the Divide and a whole bunch of Christians are recommending this book. You let your guard down. If you’ve got a seminary president from an evangelical seminary saying, hey, yeah, you should get How Wide the Divide and read it. And then you pick it up and it’s like, oh, okay. Well, that president at that evangelical seminary said, I should read this, and you got your guard down and you read this statement. The Mormon guy says, in the Mormon view, God is eternal. I was like, oh, wow, that’s great.
Derek: I’m so glad we agree.
Cliff: Yeah. And the God is unchangeable. So for the record, there’s the truth. In the Mormon view, God is not eternal. He hasn’t always existed. He’s actually a created being. He was created. He came into existence. He hasn’t always been. He lived. For example, God the Father, as we know him now, hasn’t always been God, right? He used to be a man. He was a normal man. He used to be a sinful man on earth like any of us. And he worked his way to godhood. And yet that’s the same God that Stephen Robinson is trying to tell us that that God is eternal and also unchangeable. Unchangeable, by the way, for the record, means immutable. Unchangeable does not change. Right? The Mormon God has changed. He’s getting better all the time. He’s progressing. And he has been it’s called the law of eternal progression. That’s actually one of their phrases—the law of eternal progression. God is always changing. God is always getting better. And you can do the same. You can become a God. You can work your way to godhood. I’ve got family and relatives who are Mormon, and have been Mormon even for five generations.
Some of them very close to me, and told me point blank to my face when I asked them about Mormonism. Is it true that Mormons believe you can become a God? And I remember one of them, very close to me, who graduated from Brigham Young University and was a fifth generation Mormon. He said, oh yeah, Cliff, actually, that’s my goal. My goal in life, Cliff, is to become a millionaire and to become a god someday. And he knew that he would be changing. He’s trying to become a god. So this idea that a god in Mormonism is eternal and unchangeable is completely misleading and a false notion. And that’s just I want to give our listeners—a taste of what this book is like to be aware of this. It’s How Wide the Divide and it set the mark back in 1997, and a flurry of other books came out by evangelicals and Mormons just like it, trying to tone it down and say, no, Mormonism and Christianity. It’s all on the same continuum, basically just different emphases.
Derek: Well, I think this has been a helpful introduction, and we want to continue to talk about these things, which we are going to do. So this has become a multi-part series on Mormonism. And so we just encourage you to tune back in because we’re going to talk more about this, but we thank you for listening for today. We would encourage you to check out withallwisdom.org, where you’ll find articles on all kinds of topics and practical, theological, social issues. Check out withallwisdom.org and until next time, keep seeking the Lord in His word.
