Freedom, God, and Man
In other articles I
have pointed out the long-term theological dangers of the true gospel and
church establishing too cozy of a relationship with the political powers that
be. There is almost always some kind of "state religion" in place,
whether recognized or not, which has as its very purpose and goal the
dismantling or co-opting of any competing ideology, specifically that of the
Christian church, and that dismantling and skewing of the Christian church can
be both subtle and powerful. A further difficulty arises when one group of
Christians has fully accepted and absorbed the most important anti-freedom
aspect of that political state religion, and then goes on the offensive, on
behalf of the state religion, to mock and malign those remaining Christians who
have not yet fully incorporated the aspects of the state religion that seek to
belittle men in a theological framework to make them more pliable and obedient
to the political powers that seek to control and exploit them, in other words,
to take away their freedom.
To help illustrate
this process of conflict of Christian sects on the issue of the nature of God
and man, we should notice that in May 2016, Richard J. Mouw, president emeritus
of Fuller Theological Seminary, obviously a Protestant institution, published
an article entitled "Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy" in First Things, an influential print and
online journal of religion and public life.1 This article apparently
caused quite a stir at the time, and it was fairly easy to find two articles
which seek to rebut his claims in great detail.2 There are likely to
be many verbal and written responses to his article, and there is apparently
quite a long history of related discussion, but these two articles, combined
with Mouw's, seem to cover the logical territory quite well.
At issue is whether
the Mormons still believe and teach the concept encapsulated in Lorenzo Snow's
couplet “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.”
Mouw asserts that the
Mormons are downplaying this old couplet nearly to the point where they don't
really accept it anymore. The consequence of that change would be that Mormon
theology becomes only marginally different from orthodox Protestant and
Catholic theology. Perhaps "helpfully" striving to maintain the
greatest possible distinction between orthodox Christianity and the Mormons, so
the Mormons can be better vilified, those non-Mormons and perhaps even
anti-Mormons writing rebuttals demonstrate that the contents of Lorenzo Snow's
couplet are still widely accepted and used by Mormons as a group.
I don't intend to
offer an exhaustive study of thought and practice among the Mormon leaders and
members on this point, to try to determine the exact practical status of this
teaching in the real world of Mormonism, but I do wish to make clear the
logical issue itself and the theological consequences to Mormons if Mouw is
right or eventually becomes right. As I see it, just being able reasonably and
plausibly to call into question the import of Lorenzo Snow's couplet is a major
theological setback for Mormons.
As a practical matter, it should raise
many questions when we say that we can become as God is, in an exalted state
with a continuation of the family and "of the lives," etc., as we do
probably every week in various church meetings and publications, and hear
continued promises about it, and then to separately hear a message from leaders
that might sound something like this:
But
we really have no idea whether this sort of thing has ever happened before in
the history of this or any other universe, or whether it is part of the settled
gospel or not. In fact, we have no idea where our God came from or how he
received his current exalted status. It looks like we may be the first to try
this "exalted man" thing, and we have no idea how it is going to turn
out. It may work or it may not, but we suggest you act as though it will work
out anyway, a kind of very specialized LDS form of Pascal's Wager. It's not
something we know enough about to have any significant faith in, but it still
sounds like an interesting idea to us, and we hope for the best.
Actually,
although we have descriptions of the various heavens in the D&C, we really
don't know if that is accurate or not. Maybe the Protestants have the right
idea of heaven and man's nature after all. Our heaven might be just a
combination of Universalism (universal salvation for all) and the old heaven
and hell idea, which at least offers more than one level for heaven.
My logic on this point is that either
man is an eternal being granted extreme levels of freedom to learn and form
opinions and act on those opinions and suffer or gain the consequences, bad or
good, or he is not. If he is not extremely free, then he can never have the
experiences and gain the wisdom (often by becoming an expert by first making
all the mistakes) so that he can, through that track record, possibly earn the
trust of those who hold the power in the heavens so that he can be said to largely
"deserve" the powers and responsibilities and opportunities that are
held out to be part of the state of exaltation. If he is not eternally endowed
with that extreme freedom and those extreme opportunities, and instead is
something much less, then the gospel of Christ is essentially meaningless and
pointless, and the concepts of justice and mercy are also meaningless, and the
whole complicated gospel theological superstructure collapses down to standard
Protestantism.
Most man-made religions assert that
man is a creation of God, so that man is inherently much less than God and is
subject to every imaginable whim of God in that creation ex nihilo process, and
any kind of limitations may apply. This is a very handy teaching for man-made
religions, which I call "warlord religions," because it tells men,
millions of times over, during their often miserable lives, that they are
meaningless in the universe, to God and to earthly leaders, and so any earthly
leader, naturally taking upon himself the title of the Viceroy of God, can
abuse or enslave or kill men and it has little or no meaning or consequence
since man himself is meaningless. Whether the religion happens to be some form
of Calvinism or some form of Buddhism, the result is approximately the same –
man is no more important than a grasshopper. The main difference is that with
Calvinism, there is only one time through the system before reaching the end,
where with Buddhism, an individual may be caught in a nearly endless
reincarnation loop before reaching some endpoint.
The atheistic evolutionists say
essentially the same thing, but just leave out any mention of a God, meaning
man has no divine spark at all, but this is only a minor step down from the
theology that man is a nearly meaningless plaything of God. In the atheist
view, he just becomes "completely meaningless," instead of being
"nearly meaningless." Such teaching, if believed, makes men into
better physical and mental slaves, easier to govern and exploit. This, of
course, is Satan's ideal world.
Luckily, it seems that most
Protestants do not actually believe their own theology, and never have, since
they are, and have been, the most consistent advocates of all forms of
political freedom, and are responsible for the very existence of freedom in the
Western world and especially in the United States. In fact, this makes the
Protestants better advocates of the Lorenzo Snow couplet than are the Mormons
these days, bringing up the "Are Christians Mormons?" issue examined
by David
L. Paulsen and others.3 The LDS church headquarters stopped being an
advocate of scriptural Christian political freedom at least 80 years ago, so,
on that scale, the LDS church is indeed less Christian than the Protestants, and
that alone is a huge and nearly dispositive point in favor of Mouw's argument
that the Mormons don't actually believe any longer in the idea that a man can and
should become a God. They may say that in Sunday school, but they are unwilling
to act on it or even mention it in the real world.
If the LDS church, by mistake or
indirection or forgetfulness or spur-of-the-moment public relations policy,
joins with all man-made religions in making man as small and unimportant and
meaningless as possible, and concedes that any heavenly exaltation and power
and continuing responsibility is unlikely, or that our likely status in heaven
is unknown or ambiguous, then the LDS church will have become one of those
thousands of man-made religions and is no longer unique in any meaningful way.
The shape of our steeples may be all that is really left to distinguish us from
all others.
While, in the moment, it may seem like
good public relations or business policy to downplay this potentially unique and
politically and religiously irritating feature of LDS theology, which puts men
potentially equal with God, it appears that the church leaders actually have no
idea of the catastrophic damage they are doing to the entire prophesied gospel
mission when they waffle and claim lack of knowledge or understanding of this
most important of all issues in LDS theology. The Book of Mormon may be the
"keystone of our religion" as far as how the ideal religious teaching
process goes, but the real keystone of the actual theology underlying the Book
of Mormon is the nature of God and man -- the astounding claim that the two are
of the same species and have the same possibilities. Quibbles about how and
when to baptize a person pale in comparison.
I believe that Richard Mouw is to be
commended for his diligent and objective research in uncovering and
highlighting this LDS theological keystone, so to speak. His researches have
caused quite a stir, as well they ought to. This is not a small point. Instead,
it is the point on which hangs almost the entire uniqueness of the LDS gospel.
When we find church leaders avoiding this topic or pretending they don't know
anything about it, they are actually saying a great deal more than they
probably mean to say. Their efforts at clever public relations tactics designed
to smooth over public controversy about unusual LDS theology actually raises
very many important questions, although those questions rarely seem to be
clearly articulated, and so are left dangling, incompletely addressed. It is one thing to try not to draw
embarrassingly personal attention to an issue such as LDS "magic
underwear," but it is quite a different thing to not be sure whether we
believe some of our own teachings about the hereafter, which teachings are
required in order for our theology concerning heaven to be internally
consistent, or to not be sure whether we are orthodox Protestants or not.
Are
Mormons Christians (as to their concept of man)?
There is a related line of reasoning
we need to understand which involves some serious obfuscation which needs to be
clarified. It is common to hear partisan Protestant preachers saying that
Mormons are not Christians. Typically I believe that such a claim is quite
baffling to most Mormons. We might answer that we certainly believe in Christ,
and we even have the name of Christ embedded in the name of our church. But
such an answer is really a logical non sequitur, of no help at all to the real
debate which is going on. We are arguing past each other and expressing
frustration since neither side actually knows what the other is thinking when
they make these broad general statements about being or not being Christians.
If the Protestant preacher were
attempting to state his claim as clearly as possible, instead of consciously
using deception to demean and flummox the uninformed Mormons, he would simply
say that the Mormons are not orthodox Protestants. But that is merely an
unremarkable truism which would have no anti-Mormon impact in the marketplace
of ideas. Of course Mormons are not orthodox Protestants. That is what both
sides are saying.
What the preacher is really saying when
he argues that Mormons are not Christians is that he is taking at face value
our statement that we believe in the Lorenzo Snow couplet which means that we
are saying that we believe man is of the same species as God, something which
orthodox Christians completely deny. And, conversely, when we insist that we ARE
Christians, to the carefully tuned Protestant theological ear we are claiming
that we don't believe in the Lorenzo Snow couplet. In other words, we are
talking past each other, with usually neither side understanding what the real
issue is or even what their own statements mean to the other. Again, Richard
Mouw should be applauded for his avoidance of polemics and getting to the heart
of the matter. It
is not the nature of Christ and our belief in him that we are arguing about,
but rather the nature of man.
Grace
and works
Having gotten this far into this
theological thicket, it seems useful to bring up another related troublesome
issue. The theological issue of the effects of grace versus works in the
process of achieving salvation is also something which seems to divide the
Mormons from the orthodox Protestants, and apparently involves the same kind of
confusion about the nature of man and heaven. As I see it, if a person's
version of heaven is simply that they will be given a harp to play and a cloud
to sit on, then an uncomplicated gift of grace is perfectly adequate. However,
if part of being in heaven means that an individual could be given enormous
powers and enormous responsibilities, perhaps for the orderly advancement of
millions or billions of people as they live out the various segments of their
eternal lives, then works could have some real meaning. One does not want to bestow
power and responsibility on someone, especially responsibility for other
individuals, unless that person is well prepared and has proven himself. For
example, a person does not usually advance to become the CEO of a company
simply by doing a good job of working on the loading dock for a few decades. A
great deal more training and experience and wisdom is expected of someone who
has the power to make or break a business organization. Of course, orthodox
Protestants do not have to worry about this kind of situation where good works
would be required to achieve salvation or exaltation, since they can only
imagine their being parked on a cloud somewhere and not interacting with anyone
else.
Investing
in freedom
Today we sometimes hear the phrase
"paying forward" as a means for idealistic persons to take some
action now which is considered an investment in a better future for themselves
and others. Teaching convincingly about a heaven which involves great personal freedom
and responsibility, which is an integral part of the Mormon concept of heaven
and exaltation, is made a great deal more difficult to teach and to be
understood if no one can find any examples in life, or even in any real-world
history, that shows the great benefits of living one's life in freedom and
being able to accomplish marvelous things through the use of that freedom. If
everyone everywhere is in chains, how do you teach that chains are not the
natural condition of man? It could make a Mormon Sunday school (if even
permitted in an unfree land) just too theoretical to be accepted as a real
possibility. Of course, people will always feel the need for more freedom when
they are actually being oppressed, but, apparently, even those longings for freedom
can eventually be confused and suppressed if enough propaganda and punishment
is applied.
In other words, in order to be able to
teach the correct gospel about what heaven is like, and therefore what life
should be like here, and the rules we should live by, one should be actually
living in a mostly free state, or at least be able to see vivid examples of
where freedom is or has been available. The point here is to say that the
gospel organization should always be teaching freedom as the first principle of
the gospel and of heaven and of life here on earth. To fail to do that puts at
risk the ability for anyone and everyone to even understand the gospel and its
heaven.
We have the difficult situation today
where the leaders of the LDS church decided at least 40 years ago, and perhaps
as long as 80 or even 100 years ago, that teaching political freedom would not
be part of their curriculum. They have obviously done that to make the church
less objectionable to all the approximately 200 Caesar's who rule over the
people of the Earth. But, in doing so, they have greatly muddied the content of
the gospel while also making it much harder to teach in its clarity and
fullness.
As it is, today's church leaders
happily benefit from using all the advantages of being an American church and
operating from an American base, which, at least at the moment, allows a great
deal of political and religious freedom.
But they apparently take that freedom as a permanent given, an entitlement, for
which they need to offer nothing in return. They apparently see no need to
invest in freedom or to "pay it forward" to make sure that they and
all others in our nation can maintain that freedom against the constant
incursions upon it by the forces of tyranny.
The church leaders often seem to be
saying that this is not really an American church, which seems to be code for
saying that even though we are from America, we do not actively support
traditional American ideas of freedom. At the same time, the church seems to be
claiming the right to operate outside the legal ideology and control of the
political entity in which its headquarters resides. For example, although the
LDS Scriptures incorporate the U.S. Constitution by reference, the church
headquarters does not seem to believe that any of those constitutional
principles apply to its own operations. It seems at times to pretend to be
either multinational or supranational or non-national as far as ideologies and
allegiances and political duties are concerned.
But I don't think the church can
really fairly and reasonably have it both ways on a long-term basis –
exploiting all the advantages of a free America while denigrating the
importance of that country and its freedoms and refusing to defend and extend
those freedoms internally and externally.
Political freedom is the eternal quest
of man, as illustrated by the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, speaking and
writing in the context of French society before the French Revolution of 1789.
The opening lines of his 1762 book The
Social Contract are legendary:
"Man
is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master
of others, but remains more of a slave than they are."
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, in his dramatic opening lines to his immensely powerful treatise
"The Social Contract," wrote that man was naturally good but becomes
corrupted by the pernicious influence of human society and institutions.4
I consider it scandalous that the
gospel organization on earth would not take a vigorous role in this greatest
and grandest issue of the universe and of all time, the freedom of mankind.
References
1.
Https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/mormons-approaching-orthodoxy.
2. Robert M. Bowman Jr., "Are
Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy? A Response to Richard Mouw"
http://mit.irr.org/are-mormons-approaching-orthodoxy-response-richard-mouw
Ronald V. Huggins, "Lorenzo
Snow's Couplet: "As Man Now Is, God Once Was; As God Now Is, Man May
Be": No Functioning Place in Present-Day Mormon Doctrine?" A Response
to Richard Mouw."
https://www.academia.edu/18608484/Lorenzo_Snows_Couplet_As_Man_Now_Is_God_Once_Was_As_God_Now_Is_Man_May_Be_No_Functioning_Place_in_Present-Day_Mormon_Doctrine_A_Response_to_Richard_Mouw
3. David L. Paulsen, "Are
Christians Mormon? Reassessing Joseph Smith’s Theology in His Bicentennial,"
BYU Studies 45, no. 1 (2006). pp
35-128.
David L. Paulsen, Hal
R. Boyd, Are Christians Mormon? (Routledge,
May, 2017)
4. http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/rousseau/rousseau.html
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