«Are Mormons Christians?» — and why the criterion matters more than the answer

It is the question that comes up in almost every conversation, sooner or later: but are you Christians?

I have heard it in every possible way. With sincere curiosity, as an accusation, and as a rhetorical question — the sort where the answer is already settled before I open my mouth. I served two years as a missionary in Brazil and spent eight years at the Institute of Religion. I cannot remember a month in which I did not hear it.

For a long time I answered the obvious way: yes, we are. And over the years I realised that this answer convinces nobody — nor should it. One assertion against another settles nothing. Anyone who has already decided the answer is «no» hears my «yes» as propaganda, and is right to hear it that way: it is exactly what anybody would say about his own faith.

So I changed method

That is how the book began. I write in the very first chapter what I set out to do:

In this chapter I will take up the critical points used by many to disqualify the Mormons as non-Christians. Using the very tools they use, I will compare their arguments with the scriptures, showing the reader a second point of view capable of taking him out of a hostile paradigm.

In Defence of the Truth, Volume 1, chapter 1

Not to dispute the criterion. To accept it — and apply it to everyone, including to whoever proposed it.

A criterion either holds for everyone or it is worth nothing. It is the oldest rule of honest thinking and it is the one almost nobody applies to himself.

First, clear the ground

Before answering a question like this you have to know what is being talked about. In the book I sort the Christian churches into three groups, not out of a taste for tidiness, but because each group answers the same historical question differently: what happened to the Church that Christ founded?

1. The Catholic Church. It holds that the priesthood, the doctrines and the ordinances have existed without interruption since Jesus Christ founded them, through the apostolic succession from Peter. The answer is: nothing happened — the chain never broke.

2. The Protestant and neo-Pentecostal churches. Founded by reformers who hold that the original Church fell into apostasy and who, through the study of the Bible, attempt to re-establish the original teachings and practices. The answer is: the chain broke, and it is rebuilt by reading the text.

3. Those who assert the need for a restoration. They hold that the Church fell into apostate conditions and could not be re-established merely through a reform — only through a restoration. The answer is: the chain broke, and a broken chain is not rebuilt by reading; it needs someone to tie it back together.

It is in this third group that my church places itself. And note something that usually goes unremarked: the second and third groups agree on the diagnosis. Both hold that there was an apostasy. They differ only on the remedy — reform or restoration.

The two passages the argument rests on

I do not ask anyone to accept the restoration because I assert it. I ask that they read what Peter said, and then what Paul said, and ask what they were referring to.

And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

Acts 3:20-21

The word is restitution — restoration. Not reform, not continuity, not preservation. And Peter does not present it as a possibility: he presents it as what must happen before Christ returns.

Now, to restore presupposes something simple and hard to get around: something was lost. You do not restore what was never missing.

That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth.

Ephesians 1:10

What is at stake in «gather together in one»

The Greek verb is anakephalaiosasthai — to gather again under one head, to sum up. Paul writes it in the context of a «dispensation of the fulness of times» that is future with respect to him.

The question I ask in the book is not what the word means — it is what it takes for granted. To gather again presupposes dispersion. A future fulness presupposes a present insufficiency. Paul was not describing his own time as the summit; he was pointing beyond it.

Where the method turns against me

This method has a price, and it is only fair to say so: it applies to my church too.

If I accept the other person's criterion in order to see whether it holds, I have to accept that it may hold. There are chapters in this book that I began expecting one conclusion and finished at another. There are accusations I went to check convinced they were unjust and found to be well founded — and they are in there, with the grounds and with the answer, and not with the answer alone.

Volume 1 deals, among other things, with the priesthood withheld from black members until 1978, with the contradictions alleged against the Book of Mormon, with the translation of the Book of Abraham and with what became of the papyri. None of those subjects is comfortable.

A work of apologetics that answers only the easy questions is a pamphlet.

The commonest objection, and what it reveals

The accusation I have heard most is this: you are not Christians because you added scriptures to the Bible.

I write in the book what the heart of the matter is:

The great difference that gives rise to several accusations that the Mormons are not Christians is that the teachings of the Church do not depend entirely on the Bible, whereas other Christians accept the Bible alone as the only book containing all the truths God has given to men.

In Defence of the Truth, Volume 1, chapter 1

I accept the criterion. And I apply it.

If the criterion is «a Christian is someone who keeps to the biblical canon», then the next question is: who fixed that canon, and by what authority? The list of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament did not fall from heaven — it was discerned over centuries, by councils of men, some of whom rejected books that others accepted.

I do not say this to discredit the Bible. I say it because anyone who uses the canon as a criterion of exclusion is leaning on a historical decision that his own theological system cannot justify without appealing to an ecclesiastical authority — which is precisely what the Reformation rejected.

It is not a rhetorical trap. It is the same ruler, applied in both directions. If whoever accuses me has a good answer — and there are good answers, given by serious people — then it is worth hearing. What is worth nothing is a ruler that only measures one way.

Why this matters to someone who is not a Mormon

I suspect most people reading this do not belong to my church. It is still worth their while, and not out of charity.

What is at stake here is an operation performed every day and almost never consciously: choosing the criterion that produces the result you already wanted.

You choose the definition of «Christian» that excludes whoever you wanted to exclude. You choose the definition of «family» that excludes whoever you wanted to exclude. You choose the definition of «merit», of «honest worker», of «good citizen». The trick is always the same — and it is almost never deliberate. People really do believe the criterion, and do not notice that they chose it after knowing the answer.

Learning to reverse that — taking someone else's criterion and applying it seriously, including to them — is a tool good for far more than theology. It is good for reading a newspaper. It is good for listening to a speech. It is good for judging a neighbour.

What the book is not

It is not a conversion. I am not trying to change anyone's religion, and no book has ever changed anyone's.

Nor is it a complaint. You will not find here the lament of someone who feels persecuted — the Church has two hundred years of accusations behind it and survived them without my help.

It is a working book: it takes the accusations one at a time, with the texts, the sources and the dates, and sees what is left standing. If something is left standing against me, it stays written.

The answer, at the end

I stop at the question — which is what the book does too. After twelve chapters, what I ask of the reader is not that he agree with me.

It is that he be able to answer for himself. And that he be able to say by what criterion he answered.

Whoever answers «no» with a criterion he has applied to everyone deserves respect. Whoever answers «yes» for the same reason does too. What is worth nothing is answering either one because it is what he heard someone say.

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This piece develops chapter 1 of In Defence of the Truth — Volume 1, revised edition. The highlighted passages are quotations from the book. The twelve chapters deal with the history of Joseph Smith, the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, the priesthood, the nature of God, the Book of Abraham and the harshest accusations — including the ones that are hard to answer.