Hi, Breakpoint listeners. You've probably heard us talk about the Colson Fellows program on Breakpoint. I'm excited to let you know that the Colson Fellows team is hosting a one-hour live informational webinar on October 23rd at 1 p.m. Eastern. These webinars allow you to hear an overview of the program and get your questions answered.
The webinars are hosted by our Vice President and Dean of the Colson Fellowship. Michael Craven. Here at Breakpoint, we work hard to help you consider current events through a Christian worldview. If you want to go deeper to discover how to develop the wisdom and skills needed to walk wisely in this cultural moment, then the Colson Fellows program might be for you. This 10-month program takes you on a deep dive into Christian worldview through readings, devotionals, monthly cohort meetings, and more.
If you're interested, an informational webinar is a great next step to learn more. Again, the webinar will be Thursday, October 23rd at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Register today at colsonfellows.org slash webinar. That's colsonfellows.org slash webinar.
Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. the Colson Center on Johnstone Street. The hours and days following the horrifying murder and arson at a Latter-day Saints church service in Michigan. is not the time to parse theological identities.
However, many have used the tragedy as an opportunity to offer their own answers to a question that has grown in importance and controversy over recent years. Are Mormons truly Christian? Pew Research lists Latter-day Saints among all Christians, along with Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Mormons not only call themselves Christian, it's actually in their name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
However, To borrow from Shakespeare, naming a flower a rose does not make it smell as sweet. Though Mormonism uses similar concepts and terms as Christianity, what's meant is often very different from what Christianity teaches. As Lucas Kouneman put it in an article at the Gospel Coalition, while both Mormons and historic Christians believe in Jesus Christ, they're referring to different people. Mormonism began in the early nineteenth century on what was then the American frontier.
So many new religious groups were sparked in that part of New York State at that time in American history. The region became known as the Burned Over District. many of the new movements claimed to know something that everyone else in church history had forgotten or missed. While just about every one of these groups added or subtracted in some way from biblical teaching, Joseph Smith claimed to have received a series of expansive visions that completely rewrote the script of Christianity. While Marcion in the second century and Thomas Jefferson in the nineteenth century subtracted what they didn't like from the Bible, Smith crafted Mormon doctrines by adding three entirely new books.
each with concepts unlike anything in the Bible. And this led to a completely reimagined understanding of God, something different from anything that Christians preached since the time of the Apostles. In fact, the Mormon view of God is even more extraordinary and different than the other more notorious aspects of Mormon doctrine and practice, including the special undergarments, the polygamy, and the idea that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri. Mormon theology is simply incompatible with the Christian understanding of God. Christians see God as eternally existing from before all time in creation as He has always been.
Mormons claim that God has not always been as he is. As Joseph Smith put it in a sermon in 1844, and I quote, God Himself was once as we are now, is an exalted man and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. That is the great secret. I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form. I'm going to tell you how God came to be God.
We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, he said, and take away the veil, so you may see. Further, in Mormonism, the Godhead is made up of three distinct beings, three gods. Their unity is one of purpose, but not, as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity clarifies, of one nature. Another incredibly important difference is a difference about who and what Jesus is.
Christianity has always taught that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, a full member of the Trinity, begotten, not made. He's always existed, but at the incarnation, he took on flesh, came to earth, remaining then and now, fully God and fully man. But in Mormonism, Jesus is God's natural son, the offspring of the Father and a heavenly mother. All human beings, in fact, are also God's children in this way, according to Mormon doctrine, having lived in heaven before our conception and birth. In other words, Mormons and Christians hold different and incompatible views about God, about Jesus, about humans, about sin, salvation, and the church.
Now, as many people attest, Mormons are very often wonderful people. Despite some oddities like not being able to drink coffee, they're often our moral allies in an increasingly immoral society.
However, that does not mean Mormonism is Christian. Mormons and Christians do not worship the same God. As a friend of mine often says, this is a case in which sharing a vocabulary does not mean sharing a dictionary. Sharing certain convictions of morality does not imply sharing a theology. Christology, anthropology, soteriology.
Ecclesiology or eschatology. among other things. Watering down the truth about each religion is not only unhelpful, it's an insult to both of them. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr.
Timothy Paget. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. For a version of this commentary that you can download and share with others, go to breakpoint.org.
