Christocentrists: Mormons as Non-Christians

I believe that many Mormons are Christians as broadly defined by historic markers of Christian faith. That does not mean that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Christian. It is indisputably derived from Christianity and variations on Christianity, but its distinctive and constituting doctrines are irreconcilable with even a very liberal construal of biblical Christianity. It is, as Rodney Stark and many others have argued, a new religion and, by the lights of historic Christianity, a false religion. It is true that there are Mormon scholars who are working mightily to reconcile the LDS with Christianity, and one wishes them well, but they have their work cut out for them.-Richard John Neuhaus

If you ignore that Mormons revere Christ more than Muslims do (though Jesus is highly thought of in the Koran) on a relative scale it seems that Islam or Judaism are more like mainstream Christianity than Mormonism. For example, Mormons are not really monotheists! Not only do they dispense with Trinitarian theology as philosophical gibberish and accept that the three aspects of the Godhead are actually separate beings, they accept that other gods may exist.-Razib Khan

As for Christianity, no one need take the Latter-day Saints literally upon that insistence: the Mormons after all are not even monotheists, and they take Jesus only as another name for the God of this world. None of this seems an irony to me, nor would I urge any of this as an indictment of the Mormons. They are a total system of belief and behavior, dedicated to particular hopes, dreams, and interpretations.-Harold Bloom

[A] stunningly heterodox theology that makes Areios look moderate and agreeable.-Daniel Larison

To say that Mormons aren't Christian ought to be no more controversial than to say that Jews are not Christian or that Muslims are not Christian. In fact, by any reasonable standard, Jewish and Muslim beliefs are a hell of a lot closer to those of Christianity than are the Mormon's. After all, Mormons aren't even monotheists!-Thursday (Earlier Post)

Ross Douthat and Matt Yglesias had some unkind things to say about the Book of Mormon. This led to two follow up posts from Ross. With some modifications and additions here are my contributions to the discussion at the latter:

I.
In discussions about whether Mormons are or are not Christians, things often circle widely around the central difference between Christians and Mormons. Mormons keep tiptoeing around it and Christians aren't always very clear about it. So, I'll just go on and say it: the issue is monotheism. All talk about a Triune God and Trinitarian theology is just a fancy way of describing how Christians relate their beliefs about Christ to their basic monotheism.

For example, Dilan Esper (apparently not a Mormon, but an apologist for their position) wrote:

I bet the average believer defines it in terms of having a personal relationship with God, believing that Jesus is the savior, and, perhaps, that the New Testament is the word of God.

This is an excellent summary of the similarities between (at least some forms of) Christianity and Mormonism, but unfortunately it elides over the central difference: monotheism. Belief that there is only One True God is not a peripheral Christian teaching and has been strongly emphasized in any church that I've ever gone to. In contrast, as I understand it, Mormons believe that God was once just a man like us (i.e. he was once non-divine), that it is possible for us to become Gods, and that there may be other Gods out there equal to God. While I respect Mormons for many things, Mormons have to understand just how central monotheism is to how Christians define themselves and how they decide whether or not to include other people within the term Christian. If you are not a monotheist, if you do not deny all other gods, you are not a Christian within the self-understanding of most believers. Period.

Mormons want to use the term Christian, because they revere Christ, believe he is their saviour, and follow his true teachings, as they see it. Up to a point, I can understand this position. Mormons have to understand, however, that Christians have been using the term for 1900+ years to describe something else, and that Mormons are trying to change the historical meaning of the word. By that historical meaning, it is not just enough to revere Christ and believe in him in some sense as saviour, you have to believe that he is the one and only true God. After all there are Hindu groups who also revere Jesus, accept him as their saviour and believe he was a god, and it would be preposterous to describe them as Christian. To summarize, while Mormons believe Jesus Christ is a god, Christians believe Jesus Christ is the One True God.

As has been pointed out, in practice, many Mormon congregations may be strongly de-emphasizing many of the above distinctive beliefs about God, and may be headed back towards Christianity as it has been historically understood. If this continues, Mormons may yet become fully Christian within the historical meaning of the word. If that happens, they will become nothing more than an eccentric Christian group, much like the Seventh Day Adventists, who have their American prophet and supplementary prophetic material too, but are now widely accepted as fully Christian. Most Christians will never believe in the prophetic minstry of Joseph Smith, or find any value in The Book of Mormon, but those are not the absolutely crucial issues. In such a spirit, I issue this challenge: if any Mormon here is willing to deny categorically that:
a) God was once a man like us (i.e. he was once non-divine),
b) that he, Jospeph Smith, or anyone else can become a God, AND
c) that might be other Gods out there,
AND
affirm that there is only One True God, existing from all time and supreme over all reality, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent yet transcending all reality, and affirm that this God is Jesus Christ, then I don't see really much of a problem calling you a Christian, if an eccentric one.

I wish all Mormon readers here all the best, but have this final suggestion: trying to persuade Christians that monotheism isn't an absolutely crucial Christian belief is pointless. It is as central to Christian self-understanding as any belief can be. Unless and until Mormons become monotheists, Christians will quite properly regard them as being part of an entirely separate religion.

II.
Is the Bible itself monotheist? This bears some comment:

1. The Bible had many writers, editors, etc. One cannot assume they all had the same view of God.
2. The earliest parts of the Bible clearly have a henotheistic worldview. Yahweh is Israel's God, but other gods are not denied.
3. This changes starting with the Prophets going on to Deuteronomy, which is clearly monotheistic. The earlier narratives were re-edited to conform as much as possible with the monotheistic view, but not completely rewritten.
4. By the time of Jesus, the Jews were indisputably strong monotheists and the earlier henotheistic Hebrew writings were interpreted in light of the later monotheistic writings. Jesus was an observant Jew and there is no evidence he had any quarrel with the monotheist worldview.
5. After Christ's death, for the longest time, the Old Testament writings were the only Christian scriptures. Christian teaching regarding Christ was in the context of early Judaism, which was strongly monotheistic. The biggest disputes were over the keeping of Jewish law and over whether Jesus was divine at all or just a great Jewish teacher with a special mission from God. The dispute over the latter question was due to concern about whether Christ's divinity was compatible with monothotheism, a question which Jews and Muslims still bring up to this day.
6. Gentiles started to come into the church. As the church became less and less Jewish in composition, the importance of the Jewish monotheistic background, including the Old Testament, started to recede. By the second century, all hell had broken loose with many, many different groups believing many different things all claiming to be Christian.
(5 and 6 overlapp somewhat, but basically the chronology holds.)
7. The Church Fathers held on to the Old Testament (interpreted according to the later, monotheistic parts) and the Jewish monotheistic background of the Church, starting the process which led on to Nicea.

Now, Joseph Smith was a clever fellow and, give him his due, he picked up on the henotheistic worldview of the early Hebrew narratives, something which mainstream Christianity was in denial about. I happen to think it a bizarre method of interpretation to interpret the later monotheistic parts of the Hebrew Bible by the older henotheistic parts, but I have to admit that Smith was picking up on something that was actually there.

As Harold Bloom has noted Mormons seem to have gone back all the way to the religion of the early, early Hebrews. Unfortunately from a Christian position they seem to have gone back all the way to a time when Hebrew religion was not all that different from paganism. I suppose, if you take the New Testament and interpret it in light of the earliest, henotheistic parts of the Hebrew Bible, you might come up with something like Mormonism. Of course, in order to do that you have to radically de-emphasize the later monotheistic parts of the Hebrew Bible and Jesus' Jewish background, but one can at least see how one might come up with such beliefs.

III.
Dilan Esper writes:
I am not convinced that even monotheism is that important to the average Christian.

This argument doesn't go far enough. Below a certain IQ level (I would say roughly equivalent to the ability to graduate from college) people cannot understand any theological concepts at all. Functionally, they cannot distinguish between Christ, Adonis, Krishna or Buddha, let alone between Mormon and Christian ideas about Christ. Popular religion is really just a big supernatural smoosh. Since the conception of the god is the same and the god pretty much does exactly the same thing, does it really matter what you call him. He's just a big guy up in the sky who does stuff for you. I'm not kidding you. At a popular level, there just isn't really much of a difference between any religions. Take this down to a certain level and we might as well call Buddhists Christians and Christians Buddhists. Who cares? The common people believe exactly the same thing.

Mr Esper continues:
Really, you can go down this route of saying "you aren't a Christian unless X", but if you do that, you will end up with a much narrower defintion of Christianity that excludes the vast majority of people who consider themselves Christian.

I have no problem with a definition of Christianity that excludes the vast majority of people who consider themselves Christian. There is even a very precise term for this: "nominal Christian." For example, I have no problem saying that Christian Europe never really was that Christian. The elites were, but the masses were still pagan. If you look at the "Age of Faith" in the Middle Ages, the supposed height of Christian civilization, true piety among laymen was almost all a middle class phenomenon. Nor do I have any problem saying that a large percentage of the bums in the pews, especially in the U.S., are not really Christians, despite their vehement protests to the contrary. I'm not just picking on Mormons.

IV.
Perhaps a helpful suggestion. I really do have some sympathy for Mormons who want to express the central role Christ plays in their faith. The problem, as I see it, is that the differences between Christianity and Mormonism are too great for one term to bear. So, why not use another term?

My suggestion: Christocentric. The term would refer to any religion that worships Christ. I don't think anyone could possibly object to saying that Mormonism is a Christocentric religion and that Mormons are Christocentrists (and darn proud of it). Its accurate, puts their reverence for Christ to the front, and doesn't result in any confusion between two very different religions.

While we are inventing terms why not include Christophile. This term could refer to anyone who reveres Jesus as a person or a teacher, regardless of their religious position. Islam could be said to be a Christophilic religion, and even an atheist could be a Christophile.

V.
Its interesting that so many Mormons seem to regard the Christian emphasis on monotheism as a minor theological quibble. "Why are you so hung up about whether there really is only one God? We all love Christ don't we?" The implication is that Christians are somehow arbitrarily picking this particular difference just to be disagreeable. I think that only shows just how far apart the two traditions really are. If I may speak personally, monotheism is it, the central fact. Christ's mission does not make sense without it. Furthermore, to speak even more personally, as a Christian, I can feel the pull of both Judaism and, to a much lesser extent, Islam. As G.K. Chesterton has written, "Unitarianism is a theological position which is never to be spoken of without the greatest of respect." And, because of this common monotheism, I feel an immense sense of kinship with people of the other Abrahamic faiths, while Mormons seem off living in some wholly other world. (Even the weak tea monotheism of early Confucianism moves me more, though I have to agree with Derb: the Analects are a crashing bore, even in a translation as distinguished as David Hinton's.) Obviously this is only one person's feeling, but, as can be seen from the quotes at the beginning of this post, the reasons behind it hardly seems to be arbitrary Christian prejudice.