Gospel Topics Chapter 2 Sherlock Part 2

ViewPoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. ViewPoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's ViewPoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. We continue our look at a book that came out in late 2020 titled the LDS Gospel Topics Series, A Scholarly Engagement. It is a book that has a number of authors in it who have written chapters responding to what are known as the gospel.

topics essays. And as we've been mentioning in this series, the gospel topics essays came out beginning in 2013 and were posted incrementally up to the year 2015. And they were meant to tackle some of what we would call the more controversial issues of LDS doctrine.

They were basically forced in doing this because the LDS Church realized that because they did not have clear answers regarding these issues for its membership, many people reading about the LDS Church history and doctrine on the web were becoming very confused and many were leaving the church because the church refused to give their membership some solid answers. This chapter is written by a man by the name of Richard Sherlock. And as we mentioned yesterday, Mr. Sherlock's brief bio at the bottom of page 51 says, I converted to Roman Catholicism from the LDS Church in 2010. So he's writing as a member of the Roman Catholic Church. But I'll tell you up front, a lot of what he says dealing with this topic, I don't think most Protestants would have a problem with it because I think he's expressing his historical issues. And in doing so, he is showing that the LDS position is tenuous.

Today we're looking at page 54. And he does use this word univocal quite a bit. It's not a word we normally use in conversation, it basically means one meaning. But Eric, wouldn't you agree that the use of this word is important because what he's trying to show is that the Mormon Church tends to give one meaning to a word, especially when it comes to the subject of God. And they refuse to embrace any type of figurative language that probably should be utilized in a lot of the passages that they use to support their position regarding God. In fact, on 54, he says a univocal use of language brings God down to our level. And then he says on this view, the language means the same when applied to God as it means when applied to human beings. In Isaiah 66 2, we read from the Lord, my hand made all these things.

Then God must have a hand. In Isaiah 6, we read of Isaiah's vision of the Lord sitting on a throne. Does this mean God sits on a real throne like an actual king?

When the psalmist writes, when I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers, Psalm 6, does this mean that God has fingers? Finally, in Exodus 33 11, we are told that the Lord would speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Now we can tell you from experience that we have had Latter-day Saints draw that type of a conclusion based on these verses. Now, Mr. Sherlock goes on though, and he says on a univocal understanding of language, this must mean that God has a face, just as Joseph Smith said when he told of his 1820 visionary experience. He says Mormonism is deeply invested in the univocal use of language about God. Thus, when God says that he will create man in his own image, it means an image just like yours or mine with face, hands, eyes, and ears. And we could even add a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's, because that's how Latter-day Saint leaders have described their God. In yesterday's show, we covered Genesis 1 26 and 27, which contains the phrase in his own image, showing that it could not possibly be referring to this idea that God must have a body of flesh and bones, because as I mentioned in that conversation in Genesis 1 26 and 7, Joseph Smith himself said the conversation takes place between God the Father and Jesus the Son, or the pre-incarnate Jehovah, as Mormonism teaches.

And certainly the pre-incarnate Jehovah did not have a body of flesh and bones at that time, so it would make no sense to draw the conclusion that image is speaking of a body of flesh and bones. We look at page 56, and he's going to enter into the discussion dealing with theosis. Now, we've talked about the doctrine of theosis numerous times on this show. It comes up a lot because even though Eastern Orthodox scholars have refuted the LDS understanding of the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis or deification, Mormon apologists still keep using it.

They don't seem to care, or even care to listen, to what Eastern Orthodox scholars have said on this issue in refuting their conclusions. But Mr. Sherlock touches on this, and I think based on what he's dealing with, he has to, because that is found in the Gospel topic essay, Becoming Like God. He cites a number of texts that Mormons have used that they feel are proof texts to support this idea of men becoming gods. He, for instance, quotes Psalm 82, Matthew 5 48, 2 Peter 1 4, and then he says, After this brief consideration of available biblical texts, the Gospel topics essay turns to an analysis of patristic texts that seem to speak of man becoming God, that is, the process of deification. The patristic period goes from AD 100 to AD 451, and there are a number of men who would fall into this category of being a patristic father, because patristic actually means father, so a church father in this case.

So what Mr. Sherlock is going to note are two specific church fathers, beginning at the bottom of page 56. First, the essay cites an often quoted passage from St. Irenaeus, who died about the beginning of the third century of the Christian era. In his work against heresies, he writes that Christ did, through his transcendent love, become what we are, that he might bring to us what he is himself. Of course, this passage does not actually support the traditional LDS claim that the goal of human existence is to become a god on our own. It supports the human telos as being union with God.

This view can and has been understood as deification in a broad sense. Then he's also going to quote Clement of Alexandria. Now, both of these individuals are in the Gospel Topic essay dealing with becoming like God.

Clement of Alexandria wrote, The word of God became a man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God. And again, that statement made by Clement of Alexandria has been used in a number of apologetic works produced by Latter-day Saints to try to support the notion that the early church fathers believed like they did. For the solution to this, we have to go back to page 56 in Mr. Sherlock's chapter, where he says, At the outset, the essays admit that what exactly the early church fathers meant when they spoke of becoming God is open to interpretation. And he says this, of course, implies that the interpretation given in this essay is not the only plausible interpretation.

Now, Eric, you and I caught that when we did our review of this essay years ago. And it seems to undermine the case that this LDS scholar, whoever it is, it could have been a number of scholars that worked on this essay, Becoming Like God, it seems to undermine what they're trying to show. They want to give the impression that this was easily understood in the early years, but that statement, where the essay says what exactly the early church fathers meant when they spoke of becoming God is open to interpretation, at least to us, seems to open the door to show that the LDS interpretation doesn't really have to be taken all that seriously in light of other plausible explanations. Now, what I mean by that is the other plausible explanations, if they're plausible, they're going to still fit within the realm of scripture.

In other words, they're not going to contradict other verses. I think this idea of men becoming deity, as Mormonism teaches, certainly conflicts with other verses in the Bible, and because of that needs to be rejected. And we need to understand the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions nowhere teach theosis as the Eastern Orthodox do. But when you come to the Eastern Orthodox, their scholars today will distance themselves from any kind of LDS interpretation that somehow man can become deified without having any union whatsoever with the Father or the Son.

And I think that's important, and it needs to be emphasized again. It is wrong for Mormon apologists. It's wrong for Mormon leaders to keep making this comparison of their doctrine of deification with the doctrine of theosis in Eastern Orthodoxy when you have their own scholars, Eastern Orthodox scholars, refuting the Mormon conclusion. And they mention the Mormon Church by name, so you can't be confused.

They are making it very clear that what the Mormons are teaching on this subject does not reflect what Eastern Orthodoxy is teaching. At the bottom on page 57, he goes on and he says that Jesus became what we are, that we might become what he is. In the exchange formula, we are not gods by nature.

We are creatures. And that ties into, I think, what he says on the next page on 58 at the bottom, where he says, like Irenaeus, as well as Tertullian, at the same time, Clement of Alexandria was one of the earliest clear Trinitarians in the Patristic period. He writes of the Son being, quote, co-existent with the Father, end quote, and, quote, the Word itself, the Son of God, who, being by equality of substance, one with the Father is eternal and uncreated, end quote. Then he goes on to write at the top of page 59, Christ being of one substance with the Father is the foundation of Trinitarian theology, a unity that the Latter-day Saints explicitly deny. However, if our telos is seen in the Son, a point Clement makes clear, then our telos is union with God, not becoming a separate God. I think that Mr. Sherlock is certainly agreeing with us that any comparison to Eastern Orthodoxy is not substantiated. And toward the end of this section on the bottom of page 59, he says, of course, the Patristic writers never spoke of, quote, unquote, becoming God in the sense of becoming another or separate God the Father. And yet in Mormonism, the idea that as God is, man may become.

And so they hope that someday they will become as God the Father. As with most Christian organizations, Mormonism Research Ministry depends on the generous financial support of friends like you. If you like what we do and how we do it, would you consider helping MRM meet its financial obligations? Merely go to our website MRM.org. At the right, you'll see a donate button. Click there and follow the instructions. MRM is a Christian nonprofit 501C3 organization, and your gifts are tax deductible. Not only that, they are greatly appreciated. Thank you for your support of this ministry.