The Divinity and Humanity ofJesus Christ (w/ Jaxon Washburn)

Uh You're entering. Outer brightness How can you look upon this end there with such love? Grace overflows my cove. All of my soul and my heart have been revived in you. I'm satisfied.

All right. Hey, Fireflies. Welcome back to Outer Brightness. I'm coming to you from the beautiful city of Pikeville in eastern Kentucky, deep in the mountains of Coal Country. More interestingly, though, this is the home of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

So we are. Happy to have a guest here with us, Jackson Washburn, who's a Latter-day Saint.

So, hopefully, we won't do any kind of reconstruction of the Hatfield-McCoy feud here tonight. And, Jackson, I understand you've got a hurricane blowing where you are. Yeah, yeah. I think they just, what's the term? Like, decreased it to a tropical storm.

I don't know how significant that is. They both sound scary for someone from Arizona, but it's not even raining right now. Things are looking good, and I think going to be just fine. All right, good deal.

So, Jackson's joining us in Outer Brightness for the second time. He came on last summer to talk about an article of his that he had written. And we did an episode with him where we read through his article and discussed it. And that was fun. He recently reached out to me and sent a link to a podcast episode from the Why Religion podcast, which is the podcast for the BYU.

Religion department. They had had on Dr. Jason Combs to discuss an article that he wrote. And Jackson proposed that we listen to it, and I propose that he come on and discuss it.

So here we are. And I'm going to give a quick intro to who Dr. Jason Combs is, professor at BYU.

So here's his bio. Jason Robert Combs is an assistant professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He joined the BYU faculty in 2016 after working as a lecturer at High Point University, Guilford College, and UNC Greensboro in North Carolina. Colmes earned his bachelor's degree in Near Eastern Studies from BYU. He holds a master's degree.

He holds two, multiple master's degrees in biblical studies from Yale Divinity School and in classics from Columbia University. He earned his PhD in religious studies with an emphasis on the history of early Christianity from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I understand that he studied under Bart Ehrman. He wrote an article that is discussed again in this podcast episode. It's the Why Religion Podcast, episode number 37.

So we're going to be discussing that with Jackson tonight. Jackson, welcome back to Outer Brightness. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. All right.

So, Jackson, the last time you joined us on Outer Brightness, you were interning at the Joseph Smith Papers Project and you were preparing for your final year at Arizona State. A lot's happened in your life in the past year. Why don't you update our listeners on some of the recent happenings in Jacksonland? Yeah, so I successfully completed my internship with the Joseph Smith Papers. It was a wonderful experience.

I felt like I grew a lot in terms of my own, I don't know, professional skills and whatnot. Did a lot of documentary history work there, which is appropriate given the venue. And yeah, lots of learning and growing during that time. But I also, as you mentioned, I've since had my final year at Arizona State.

So I graduated. This last May with degrees in religious studies and history. And during that time, I also applied to grad schools, different graduate programs, where I got accepted and am now looking forward to attend a week from now actually my program at Harvard Divinity School.

So I'm going to be getting a Master's of Theological Studies there with a focus in the history of Christianity. And I'm just really happy about that. Harvard was my number one pick as far as my schools went.

So it was just great news after kind of a sucky year and a half of both the pandemic and also in December. It's important for me to mention late December, my father was actually diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. He's since been able to have multiple rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, which was successful and he's considered in full remission right now. Things are looking very Very positive, and so there's been a great turnaround there as well that I'm very grateful for.

So, yes, I've been pretty busy. A lot's been going on. I've been throwing a couple curveballs, both in my life or my family's life, but we've gotten through it and. Things are looking pretty good.

So, yeah, I just recently moved to Boston. I've been able to kind of settle down for the last couple of weeks, and my program officially starts on September 1st.

So, I'm very much looking forward to it. Yeah, that's awesome. Congratulations on acceptance into Harvard. That's no small feat.

So, really happy for you there. And again, also really happy for your dad's remission. I know we and others were praying for that. Yeah, likewise. And yeah, my dad was very blessed to have a wide number of people from a number of different religious backgrounds praying for him.

And it definitely means a lot to me that you and others with Outer Brightness were included in that mix. All right. Thank you. We're glad you're back. Matthew, the Knuckle Calvinist, is joining us as well, as usual.

So for our listeners, I've pulled out several clips from the Why Religion Podcast. Podcast episode. We'll go ahead and play those so that you can listen to them and we will listen to them. And then we've got questions to put to Jackson. And from, you know, from each one, we'll kind of springboard off into a kind of a roundtable discussion of the topic of the podcast episode, which is Christology.

So here comes the first clip. The title of your chapter, and the one that we're going to be unpacking today, is Christ After the Apostles: the Humanity and Divinity of the Savior in the Second Century.

So, I want to actually start by telling you how much I enjoyed this chapter and want to begin by reading your opening paragraph.

Sounds good.

So, this is what it says. Late one evening in the middle of the second century AD, a small group of Christian priests, trained in the philosophy of Plato, met in secret in the backroom of a church in Rome. Their goal? To complete the work of transforming the pure doctrine of Christ into a philosophically sound but morally deficient theology. They forged documents and altered scripture to suit their needs.

In the end, over the course of that evening, they succeeded in forever altering the true doctrine of the nature of Christ into a fraud that would be propagated throughout the centuries.

So that intro is captivating and I'm sure causes each of us who heard it to be filled with some righteous indignation. But in your mind, there's one really important fact about this story that you feel at least ought to be considered. What is that? Yeah, the most important fact about that story is that it's not true. Yeah.

Yeah, I made the whole thing up. Yeah, but the reason that I started with that story is because I think a lot of Latter-day Saints have that vision in their head. I think we create this image of early Christians as all being wicked priests or something like that who are trying to dismantle Christianity. Yeah, these secret societies, right? I think we sort of assume that we have this time period where Jesus and his apostles were active.

Jesus dies, is resurrected, comes back, speaks to his apostles. They form a church. And then that's the end of the story. And there's darkness. And then years later, a few Christians come back on the scene and start writing.

And by then, things have totally changed. That's simply not the case. Once Christians start writing, they never stop. Christians are very prolific. And so the New Testament texts span the whole first century.

And by the beginning of the second century, we have other Christians writing, many of whom were disciples of the early apostles. And they write their experiences and they write advice to other Christians. This is a group that's sometimes called the Apostolic Fathers because they were so close to the time of the apostles and sometimes were disciples of them. All right. So in that first clip, the host of this particular episode of the Why Religion podcast is Professor Ryan Sharp.

And he reads out the introduction to Professor Jason Combs' article, Christ After the Apostles: The Humanity and Divinity of the Savior in the Second Century. Dr. Combs' article, which I've read also, presents at first a false narrative of wicked priests corrupting the text of the New Testament. Jackson, what do you think of Dr. Combs' recasting of the LDS Church's narrative of a great apostasy?

Well, I definitely really love how that segment or that episode was begun by playing out a narrative that to many Latter-day Saints is going to sound probably very familiar to ones that maybe they've heard in Sunday school settings or in talking with, I don't know, companions on their mission or in other kinds of settings. And I really appreciate the fact that he very quickly points out that this Is more of a, I don't know, an invented narrative than one that has a strong basis in history.

So, personally, of course, I think it's incredibly important to, when it comes to various historical claims that we make, to have those be solidly backed up by the historical record, or at least put Presented in such a way that they can be defended using the historical record.

So, in the case of Dr. Combs' work, I really appreciate how he's seeking to point out to members of his own faith tradition ways in which perhaps they've misrepresented or misunderstood early Christian history and how they might go about approaching that in ways that are more accurate, historically defensible, and I guess primarily historically grounded, right?

So, I'm certainly all for it.

So, do you see this similar shift? In the either within the LDS leadership or in teaching materials or in the general membership, or do you see this as mostly a change of starting in academia and maybe it'll filter down? Yeah, so I can definitely say that on the popular level, I don't see significant shifts in this area.

Well, at least historically speaking, let me back up a little bit. There have been multiple different, shall we say, apostasy narratives within Latter-day Saint history. And they've perhaps been inflected in different ways or emphasized different points of early Christian history.

Some might emphasize early Christianity's. Kind of philosophical intersection with Greco-Roman philosophy or the various philosophies of the time and the ways in which that potentially shaped or molded or, I don't know, caused Christianity, the Christian message to be presented in different ways. There's others that definitely coming out of more of a vein of anti-Catholicism that was likely part of, I don't know, predominant Protestant narratives.

So, for instance, early 20th century, late 19th century, you know, sentiments that really emphasize the Catholic Church's role in this apostasy, right? Those have existed. Others which emphasize perhaps just this kind of immediate scattering of righteous disciples who aren't able to pass on their legitimate. Authority.

So, this emphasis on what's argued as the disunity of early Christianity, emphasizing different groups, some considered now Orthodox, others considered heterodox or heretical, such as various like Gnostic or other groups like that.

So, yeah, these narratives, you know, they've taken different emphases and some have perhaps been a bit more historically defensible than others. But, you know, as is the case with many topics in LDS history, it's often slow going that the LDS leadership itself, you know, really comes from a background of really comprehensive or solid understanding of those kinds of things. I think it's safe to say in the last like two decades or so, especially the last decade, the LDS church leaders have really begun to. Try and become more accurate with the claim, the historical claims they make with respect to early LDS history. You know, they have resources such as the Joseph Smith Papers and others at the Church History Department now that it's not uncommon for me in reading maybe different conference talks or other remarks that are given that tell some type of historical narrative that their sources are from those places, right?

And so it's a lot better grounded in history. But yeah, it's not super common that I hear LDS church leaders talk about early Christianity in much detail. And when they do, it tends to be very generalized, very I don't, yeah, just broad in scope and perhaps like touching on some of the points that I mentioned earlier in a very generalized kind of way.

So I I do appreciate that you mentioned also kind of the segment of LDS academia, because I have seen LDS academics, whether at BYU or other places, really try to become more conscientious and Careful with the kinds of claims that they make in this area, and their publications are reflecting that. And so, in cases like this, where you have BYU's religion department, you know, this is their podcast, essentially, it's through those scholars that a lot of these perhaps more accurate historical takes are going to be disseminated to LDS membership more broadly. But even then, the LDS church is big in terms of its membership with respect to having millions of members. And I guarantee you that the Why Religion podcast isn't necessarily getting millions of downloads per episode.

So, even then, if you have good resources, they're coming from good places that are publicly available. It's often the case that the number of Latter-day Saints themselves who receive those things are going to be partial at best. All right. Matthew, anything further before we go on? All right.

So, Jackson, as I was making my transition out of the LDS church in like 2010, 2011 timeframe, one of the first Latter-day Saints scholars that I remember interacting with on Facebook was Jared Anderson. And he also studied like. Like Jason Combs did under Bart Ehrman. And I remember commenting at one point to Jason or to Jared in a Facebook post that having come out of the LDS church and kind of jettisoned the idea of a great apostasy in the way that the LDS Church presents it, that I felt like I had come to, that all of Christian history was mine, I think is the way I worded it. And what I meant by that is that I had found spiritual ancestors among the early church fathers.

One of them in particular I was reading at the time was Augustine's Confessions. And that's the main reason why I felt that way. But I was, you know, I was kind of going off from Augustine into reading Philip Schaff's history of the church and encountering a lot of the other early church fathers as well.

So what I'm going to do now is play a clip for you from the Book of Mormon, from 1 Nephi chapter 13, verses 20 to 29, and then ask you to comment. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, Beheld that they did prosper in the land, and I beheld a book, and it was carried forth among them. And the angel said unto me, Knowest thou the meaning of the book? And I said unto him, I know not. And he said, Behold, it proceedeth out of the mouth of a Jew.

And I Nephi beheld it, and he said unto me: The book that thou beholdest is a record of the Jews, which contains the covenants of the Lord, which he hath made unto the house of Israel. And it also containeth many of the prophecies of the holy prophets, and it is a record like unto the engravings which are upon the plates of brass, save there are not so many. Nevertheless, they contain the covenants of the Lord. Which he hath made unto the house of Israel. Wherefore, They are of great worth unto the Gentiles.

And the angel of the LORD said unto me, Thou hast beheld. That the book proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew. And when it proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew, it was not a matter of the same. It contained the fullness of the gospel of the Lord, of whom the twelve apostles bear record, and they bear record according to the truth which is in the Lamb of God. Wherefore these things go forth from the Jews in purity unto the Gentiles, according to the truth which is in God.

And after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, for From the Jews unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable church, which is most abominable above all other churches. For behold, they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb. Many parts which are plain and most precious, and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away. And all this have they done that they might pervert the right ways of the Lord, that they might blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men. Wherefore, And thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things.

Taken away from the Book, which is the Book of the Lamb of God, and after these plain and precious things were taken away, It goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles, and after it goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles, yea, even across the many waters, which thou hast seen with the Gentiles which have gone forth out of captivity, thou seest, because of the many plain and precious things which have been taken out of the book, which were plain unto the understanding of the children of men, according to the plainness which is in the Lamb of God, because of these things which are taken away out of the gospel of the Lamb. An exceedingly great many do stumble. Yay. Insomuch that Satan hath great power over them, and Jackson, one of the things that, having listened to the Why Religion podcast episode with Dr. Combs and having read his article, one of the things that I appreciate about what he's doing is he's attempting to situate the apostolic fathers especially in a positive light.

For Latter-day Saints, and I appreciate that about what he's doing. But I'm curious what you think about this passage from the Book of Mormon. Do you think that it contributes to what Dr. Combs kind of says is a misunderstanding by Latter-day Saints of the early Christological debates and maybe of the Apostolic Fathers as well? Yeah, no, I'm sure that's been the case.

So, with respect to this passage in particular, Um, you know, this is coming from 1 Nephi 13, where Nephi is experiencing a vision of not just the tree of life, but other kinds of, I don't know, visionary phenomena, let's say, that are kind of mediated and interpreted by an angelic guide. And this has been referred to in different LDS spaces as Nephi's apocalypse, sometimes, meaning, you know, similar to, let's say, John the Revelator or others, that this is an apocalyptic vision, which is grandiose in scope. It doesn't just deal with things in Nephi's own time, but he's also shown a vision essentially of the last days or of the future. And in light of that, I think it's definitely likely that Latter-day Saints, historically speaking, have read this passage and understood it in much the same way that. Perhaps Dr.

Combs described early on in his article. And I think that's what's interesting about that is, at least for me, there's ways that at least I read that where being visionary in nature, I think there's a level of interpretation that it's open to in terms of just like how specific you might want to read into some of the passages. But I do think it lends itself very easily to the kind of Narrative about Christology that we'll be able to talk more about. But also, more directly, I think it speaks to matters of the preservation and transmission of scripture, right? Which is often a very key part of LDS narratives about apostasy, especially as far as the Bible is concerned, right?

So, yeah, I think those are all related. And if it's okay, you know, I'll just kind of briefly summarize like what that kind of looks like with the Bible as we got to, as we described with that passage. Many Latter-day Saints often understand biblical transmission and translation to be this process of, I don't know, the starting point is usually, I would say, the Article of Faith. What is it? Number eight, I think.

Yeah, the we believe the Bible to be the word of God as long as it's translated correctly. Many Latter-day Saints, especially when they might be serving missions, you know, they're coming from not necessarily formal backgrounds of pastoral training or theological study. There's these narratives about the Bible that we have being a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation, you know, like a game of telephone, where often the end product that we have currently is often unreliable, or in cases where it perhaps conflicts with LDS theology or different works of Mormon scripture or things like that, it's held to be inferior to them, that perhaps something was corrupted, perhaps something was lost in translation. And so that's often an uncritical approach to the Bible that many Latter-day Saints take that I don't find particularly Informed by the academic biblical studies or its actual transmission history. I think there's arguments to be made, of course, about various passages in the Bible and whether or not they represent kind of original passages.

Or in some cases, we can see some perhaps intentional changes in the text over time. But by and large, I consider the Bible to be pretty accurately preserved, especially as far as the New Testament is concerned. I think the New Testament is a remarkably well-preserved collection of texts from the ancient world.

So I think it's this just goes for me to say that for Latter-day Saints who perhaps might be inclined to play the, oh, it just must be corrupted to try and maybe get out of some.

Some theological tension or contradiction they might feel. I believe that that's often too easy of a cop-out and one that's unjustified. All right. Yeah. Thanks, Jackson, for that answer.

Well reasoned, I think. Just trying to, so for our listeners, we've Published today in a series of episodes that we did with Steve James, who's another Latter-day Saint that we discuss things with on Facebook occasionally. And the topic of that episode was biblical inerrancy. And we got into some of the topics that Jackson was just talking about with regards to transmission and translation of the biblical text.

So if you're interested in kind of digging more deeply into those topics, go ahead and listen to those episodes. But now let's get to the topic of Dr. Comb's article, which is Christology.

So I'm going to play the next clip from the podcast. There are lots of writings that are patterned after the kinds of writings we have in the New Testament today. And then we have other writings. We have sermons. We have letters written from one Christian to another.

We have writings, some of the writings that are addressed in this particular Chapter that I wrote, Christ After the Apostles, some of the writings that I address most frequently here could be called heresiological writings. They are writings that are trying to catalog groups of Christians that they believe are heretics, that they believe are preaching false doctrine. And this style of writing becomes quite popular as well. The entire book that this article is published in is on Christology. Christology comes from two Greek words, the word that we get Christ from, Christos, and the word logos, which can be translated as word or as thought or as study or lots of things.

So just as theology is study or talk about God, Christology is study or talk about Christ. And Christology tends to focus on understanding the nature of Christ. How is Christ similar to and different from us as human beings?

Okay, so in this clip, Dr. Combs, he defines Christology.

So, Jax, do you agree that Christology is a theological point of disagreement between LDS and Christians of other traditions?

So, Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox? And do you share Dr. Combs' view that the Christological debates that began in the second century are important for LDS today to understand? Yeah, well, certainly Christology is definitely going to vary between not just the large branches of Christianity that you mentioned, but also with Latter-day Saints or the Mormon Restorationist movement.

So much so that I think it's important to note, of course, that of the three that you listed, Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians, at least historically and often theologically speaking, there's still a level of common ground that can be recognized between those three groups, where, yes, you'll see plenty of Of infighting or theological debates. But the level of perceived contrast or dissonance between those three groups and their respective Christological views is often considered far less in scope or significance, at least internally among them, than in comparison to them versus Mormonism. And I think that's significant. Of course, Latter-day Saints or even evangelicals listening will likely be familiar with the claim that Latter-day Saints worship a different Jesus. And I've encountered that many times in interreligious conversations with Christians of different stripes.

But yeah, the differences in Christology are, at least to me, pretty significant. Those key differences include who is Jesus? How does he? Jesus relates to God? How does Jesus relate to humanity, both ontologically or as a on the basis of his being or his nature, and salvifically?

Like how does Jesus save us? Those points are often, there's often some key differences and at times some common ground as well, but some differences that are focused on by Christians in performing outreach to Latter-day Saints. And these go beyond just like atonement theories, for instance, right? Within Christianity broadly, you'll have various historical atonement theories such as ransom theory, Christus Victor, penal substitutionary atonement, and some others that are perhaps more recent. But the differences between what we might call the Mormon Jesus and the traditional Christian Jesus are going to be significant.

To your second question, I do share the same view as Dr. Combs that understanding those Christological debates in the second century and later that were held within and among and between early Christians, I think it's important for Latter-day Saints to have an awareness of them, to be somewhat informed about them. You know, of course, I can't ask that everyone's a religion nerd like me or like the rest of us, but I would at least like some more basic historical awareness. If not also an accurate understanding of the basic reasons for why those councils might have been held, I often see misunderstandings among Latter-day Saints about those councils, specifically Nicaea is kind of the most prominent one. You know, misunderstandings of who organized them, of what their purpose was, of what their conclusions were.

They're often, in my opinion, especially Nicaea, caricatured in such a way that feeds into some of the earlier apostasy narratives that I mentioned and would take issue with.

So beyond just this podcast, I've encountered other podcasts in different Latter-day Saint venues that cover the Council of Nicaea, that cover some of these relevant topics with other scholars who are Latter-day Saints themselves, saying, Hey, we need to clarify our messaging here. And these are some common misconceptions you might have about Nicaea or the Creed. Or some of these other councils.

So I just think it's important that Latter-day Saints generally have an awareness and like you know an accurate understanding of them because they help inform us about the communities and traditions that were among those closest to Jesus and the apostles. They help us understand the mindset, the motivation, and the intentions of early Christians. And they can also clarify potential claims that we make within the apostasy narratives of Latter-day Saints themselves, you know, so as to help us better understand and not unintentionally misrepresent other Christians or Christians of the past. Yeah, great. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Yeah, I'll. I think in general, just, I think Christians also really Of you know, non-Latter-day Saint Christians struggle to understand their own history, and um, a lot of times, so I just finished uh, well, listening on audio book, a book by Matthew Barrett, Simply Trinity, and uh, it's a really great book. And he really he admits that when he was a seminarian, that most Christian seminaries are kind of the way we describe the Trinity, the way we describe uh, you know, how Christians came to understand the Trinity is kind of like a very modern view. Um, and they see it more as like looking at the Bible like a set of math equations, like, okay, all you got to do is show, okay, where it says there's only one God and there's no other God, and then you show also where the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, and then you know, equal sign Trinity kind of a thing, yeah.

And he doesn't say that that's necessarily a wrong way to do it, but it's not a historical way to look at you know the Trinity, yeah. And um, he goes into detail about uh some aspects of the Trinity of Nicene Trinitarianism that we just kind of don't really focus on, there's certain aspects. Of the Trinity, that we don't really talk a lot about. Like, what does it mean for the Son to be begotten? And I think a lot of times in modern Christianity, we think of that as like a metaphorical begottenness, or you know, like the father-son relationship is one of love and respect and you know, a relationship.

But we forget, but uh, he really says that you know, the Nicene fathers to them that it was a true begotten relationship. You know, the father is unbegotten, but he begets the son, um, just as like a human father begets their son, but the divine nature is different from the human nature. And so, the divine begetting, begettingness, I don't know other what other word you use, but the divine begetting of the son is different than a human father begets a son in several ways.

So, I think even Christians, we really struggle with connecting, you know, tapping into that history and understanding, you know, it's not that the trinity like was invented at Nicaea in the sense of like all these brand new ideas were just thrown at you know, slapped against the board. And I think that's what I struggle with as a Latter-day Saint, you know, like I was kind of. Kind of under the belief that the Trinity was like, didn't even exist until then. The ideas were there, but as R.C. Sproll teaches, he's one of my favorite modern theologians, he says, you know, a lot of times heresy or, you know, quote-unquote heresy.

Controversies within the church, if you want to put it that way, force the church to look at it deeper and say, How can we clarify this? How can we make this? Know how can we make this reconcile these different terms? You know, the humanity of Christ, the deity of Christ.

So, yeah, those were just thoughts I had on this section. Do you have any comments on that? Yeah, well, you know, I'll just add as well that, yeah, it is quite interesting with respect to Christian history how these particular historical contexts or perhaps challenges that the early Christian church faced, these controversies that arose, being removed from these contexts ourselves by several thousand years potentially, it causes you to take for granted kind of where Christianity might be at today with respect to its theological and intellectual and historical developments and enrichment, right? And it's once you step into these kinds of contexts again, you can see how some of these issues that arise were threatening to cause massive You know, internal disruptions to the Christian community, you know, the depth of some of these controversies. And historically speaking, you know, some of them did indeed lead to schisms or historical splits between various branches or denominations.

And so they are quite significant. I also want to point out too that, so I guess two more thoughts I'll share. One, it's interesting to see how some of these heresies, quote-unquote heresies, as they would be perceived by Orthodox Christians, kind of repeat themselves over time, right? That the Aryan debates around the fourth century, that wasn't the only time that the Christian church, broadly speaking, had to deal with Arianism. Around, I would say, the 14th century or so, there's a resurgence of Aryan thought, or in contemporary times, during the Second Great Awakening, out of the 19th century.

Jehovah's Witnesses very much espouse a theology that might be considered Aryan.

So it's interesting to see how some of these things continue to spring up in other contexts. And Mormonism will be included in there in certain ways as well. And then finally, I also wanted to add: oh, geez, might have escaped me. Oh, when it comes to the themes of some of these controversies and their respective disputes, it's interesting to me to see how thematically they might be centered, right? Where some have to deal with Christology, others ecclesiology, or the theology of the spirit.

What is that? Pneumatology or something like that. And I think right now, one of the most pressing questions for the Christian church at large is one of anthropology, one of, you know, that deals with the intersections of gender and sexuality and the kind of the social roles of Christians as believers. You know, that's where we're seeing many Christian churches experience tension around today. I mean, the Methodist church right now, right, you know, is very close to formally dividing along.

the issue of human sexuality.

So it's interesting to see. I guess my point with that is, like you said, Matthew, that sometimes it takes a particular fire or a particular these things to heat up in some way for the Christian community itself to really try and zero in on what these issues are and hammer them out and refine them in a more specific way. Yeah, thank you for that, Jackson. I also liked your point that you made about how, since we're so removed from these contexts, These controversies that we just don't quite understand. We don't understand it, or a lot of times we just don't care.

So, yeah, so that's why we don't study history because it's like, well, why does it matter to me? I've got it all figured out. Kevin. Yeah. So, yeah, I think for your comments.

All right, let's go on to the next clip. Yeah, that's really helpful. And one of my favorite parts from your chapter, and I'm going to read it with a warning that it's a little bit longer of an excerpt, but I think it's well worth it.

So, this is what you write, and then I'd love for you to maybe take it whichever direction you want after this.

So, this debate was not purely intellectual pursuit, this debate about Christology. While early Christians certainly brought all of their intellectual resources to bear on these questions, their concern was far from academic. In fact, for them, the salvation of humanity was at stake. Were Jesus Christ not sufficiently human, how could he have the ability to rescue humanity? Were Jesus Christ not sufficiently divine?

How could he have the power to rescue humanity? The debates about the nature of Jesus Christ were debates about the relationship between humans and God, as well as about how humans might be saved and what they might be saved from. The Christological debates of the second century represent, in Latter-day Saint terminology, the work of the early saints to understand the central role of Jesus Christ within the plan of salvation. And I love this because it underscores that the stakes are high, we might even say eternally high in the minds of these early Christians, just as they're eternally high for us. All right.

So, Jackson, would you agree with Dr. Combs when he's talking about the divinity and the humanity of Jesus that the stakes are as high as he suggests?

Well, I mean, like he said, it certainly might be contextualized with the Christian community that you're dealing with, right? I think it's safe to say historically speaking that these questions were of very crucial and high importance to the respective Christian communities that debated them and tried to reach some level of orthodoxy on. When it comes to Latter-day Saints, though, I'm not at all trying to suggest that Christology or some of these questions aren't important to Latter-day Saints, but the ways that Latter-day Saints approach them, in my opinion, are often different than how early Christians might have approached them themselves.

So, you know, one thing that I think is important to say is that at least with respect to early Christians who are trying to hammer out and reach some type of consensus or common understanding or a position of orthodoxy on these issues, that's very much their intended goal, to take a given dispute or controversy and come to a conclusion about which position is orthodox, which position is best supported by scripture, by the apostolic tradition. Tradition, et cetera, and which ones should be considered heretical or outside the scope of the Christian community. And in comparison to that, there are various areas of high importance to the LDS church or its leaders or its membership that are often also approached as perhaps, I don't know, let's say like deal breakers, for instance, these lines of orthodoxy that determine one's position within a given community. But then there's also other things that within LDS circles that to many Christians would be considered questions of high importance, but to Latter-day Saints might not be given the same kind of weight, or there might be more, I don't know, theological flexibility there internally within the community. And those things can change over time too.

You know, so for instance, I would say that, let's say, during the administration of Brigham Young, one's kind of attitude and acceptance of the practice of plural marriage was considered a much more important. You know, personal belief than it might be considered today. Not just because Latter-day Saints today don't practice plural marriage in the same way, but because very much in Brigham Young's time, where there's other competing restorationist traditions that formally reject Joseph Smith practicing polygamy or that polygamy is of divine origin or any kind of commandment, or it's very much tied to Brigham Young's own claims to leadership, right? And so, if one does, you know, very vocally reject plural marriage within the context of Brigham Young's administration, that often was perceived as setting them outside the bounds of that respective LDS community.

Now, of course, there were still people that were uncomfortable with the practice, but vocally preaching against it would position oneself probably closer to Sidney Rigdon or perhaps some other competitors. Competing successors in the mid to late 19th century. And then today, I can personally say that opinions regarding plural marriage and whether or not it was ordained of God or things like that, I encounter a lot more diversity of belief. The context has changed a bit. I don't know if that makes sense.

That one's more practice-oriented, one that I think. We'll be able to dive into a bit more. But, you know, along the lines of Christology, I've encountered various forms of LDS Christology that, I don't know, I would say there's flexibility there in ways that there might not be flexibility for someone who's a Protestant or someone who is a Catholic or Orthodox. Latter-day Saints haven't quite, I don't know, delineated what those boundaries and what those official kind of lines of orthodoxy are in certain spaces.

So it certainly depends. Yeah, thank you. And I like the point that you made early on where you said that it seems like historic creedal Christianity has kind of placed a lot of importance on certain topics. And less so on other ones, maybe. Whereas in LDS belief and culture, there's a lot of emphasis on other things.

And I think one point is just Christology in general. We look at it differently because historic Christianity didn't just want you to affirm that Jesus was God and man. That's not really good enough because he talks about the various early quote-unquote heresies that were declared by the church, like Apollinarianism. You know, where Jesus didn't really have a human mind. He just had a divine mind in a human body, basically.

And so that's one, as well as Nestorianism, where Jesus, because he has both a human nature and a divine nature, He must also have a human will and a divine will, and a human person and a divine person.

So it's not just one person, it's two persons. And that was declared a heresy. And so it wasn't simply enough to just say that Jesus is God and man, you know, historically. It says, okay, what are the implications of that? What does that actually mean in terms of nature, will, and person?

And even for there was the monotheolitism versus diotheolitism, the idea that did Jesus have two wills, a human will and a divine will? Or did he have a single will? And ultimately, the majority chose diotheotism, the idea that will is tied up to nature.

So Christ had both a divine and a human nature. And to me, I find that fascinating. And I think, and I think most of it makes a lot of sense. You know, if you just study, you know, the reasoning why they came to these conclusions, it kind of makes sense.

Well, how could Jesus be two persons? Because it's not like there's four persons in the Trinity, you know, God the Father, God the Son, you know, God the incarnate, you know, God the Spirit. You know, there's only three persons.

So a lot of it makes sense. But in LDS theology or LDS, they don't, it doesn't seem like that's much emphasized, like all of these logical deductions of what it means for him to be God. Yeah. Yeah. And just to kind of strengthen that point even more, right?

For Latter-day Saints to be declared worthy to enter the temple, right? There's the temple recommend interview process. And the theological questions that are asked there, you know, there's questions that I would say pertain to orthodoxy or right belief. And there's far more questions that pertain to orthopraxy or right practice, right? There's maybe three or four questions that have to deal with one.

Beliefs versus, you know, how one is living. And the one that has to deal with Jesus is simply, you know, do you believe, essentially, like, you know, do you affirm Jesus as your Savior and accept his atonement? And it's a yes-no question, right? There is no, you know, fine print of, okay, so how many wills does he have, or how many persons, or, you know, some of these details that were really emphasized at various times in Christian history. These yes-no questions can potentially be pretty open-ended, in my opinion.

And I've encountered various Latter-day Saints who appreciate that flexibility, given that their perhaps respective views on God or on Jesus might differ from other views in their own congregation, from other members of the ward.

So yeah, it's kind of interesting to see how these things play out within LDS circles. Yeah, so. Just to kind of piggyback off of that, one of the things that The podcast episode with Dr. Combs that the host kind of brings out, and I think it's in, you know, towards the end where they're kind of plugging a book, I think from, or an upcoming book from the Maxwell Institute, where they kind of quote, the title of the book is kind of a quote from DNC 93, you know, know what you worship, right? Yeah.

So I think the stakes are high, as Dr. Combs and the host kind of point out. And I, you know, I was reminded that I was recently talking with, you know, a gentleman that I talk frequently with on Facebook, who's also a Latter-day Saint. We were talking about the peculiarity of Christ. And for those of our listeners who don't know what those theological terms mean, we were discussing whether or not it was possible for Christ to sin when he was here on earth.

And that question, you know, whether or not it was possible kind of goes directly to Christ's nature as fully divine. Right, because if Christ is fully divine, fully God, then he would not be able to sin. Right, because God is incapable of sin. But in response, this friend of mine that I discuss often with, he said, anyway, I guess I'm not highly concerned about it. Seems like another philosophical debate with almost no practical consequence.

But I would argue that that question does have practical consequence for what we worship. And so I think even though there are disagreements and places of divergence within LDS theology and Orthodox Christian theology, I think we can agree that the stakes are high. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. Though, of course, it is important to point out that perhaps Christians and Latter-day Saints will feel the severity of those stakes differently. They'll perceive them differently.

I do think that the LDS practice of vicarious ordinances and the belief in the gospel being preached in the afterlife. and the potential for salvation, you know, coming to saving faith beyond just mortality. I think that changes the dynamic of how that sense of urgency might be perceived by Latter-day Saints at times. Yeah, I think you're probably right about that. Yeah, I think that's correct.

I'm also reminded of John chapter 8, where Jesus says, where it says, so he said unto them, he, Jesus, quote, I am going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.

So the Jews said, will he kill himself since he says, where I am going, you cannot come? He said to them, you are from below. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world.

I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.

So, you know, we can take from scripture that, you know, from Jesus that the stakes are high, right? Understanding who he was, what his work was. What he accomplished in the incarnation is vitally important, eternally important, as the host of the Why Religion podcast said. Yeah, yeah. And I'm reminded of a statement that Joseph Smith made in the King Fallout discourse as well.

That, you know, this is a rough paraphrase. I don't have it in front of me, but you know, just also emphasizing the importance of people comprehending the being and nature of God correctly. Right. Yeah. Which is, you know, statements like that are why I emphasize that.

I think. that this is an area where we can agree that the stakes are high. Mm-hmm. You're listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post-Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. Outer brightness, outer brightness, outer brightness, outer brightness.

There's no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here. We were all born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, more commonly referred to as the Mormon faith. All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on biblical teachings. The name of our podcast, Outer Brightness, reflects John 1:9, which calls Jesus the true light which gives light to everyone. We have found life beyond Mormonism to be brighter than we were told it would be, and the light we have is not our own.

It comes to us from without. Thus, Outer Brightness. Our purpose is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in drawing us to His Son. We have conversations about all aspects of that transition, the fears, challenges, joys, and everything in between. We're glad you found us, and we hope you'll stick around.

The Faith After Mormonism Conference is an annual conference that provides encouragement and insight for people leaving Mormonism to explore a new faith home in historic biblical Christianity. Through speakers, workshops, exhibitors, and individual interactions, you will receive helpful resources and meet others on a similar journey. This year, the featured guests are going to be the folks from Adams Road Ministry. Adams Road is a Christian nonprofit ministry dedicated to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ through song and testimony. Its members are former Mormons who have been brought into a saving relationship with Jesus through the grace of God.

This year, there will be two events. The North event will be held at Alpine Church in Leighton, Utah on September 10th and 11th, and the South event will be held September 24th and 25th at Center Point Church in Orum, Utah. For those of you who are in Utah, I encourage you to make a trip either to Leighton or Oram to these events. I think you'll be greatly blessed by them and I just wanted to share that information with you. All right, let's go on to the next clip.

Yeah. That's right. What what's at stake is is the atonement of Jesus Christ. How Jesus Christ saves us.

So, early Christians, as we do today, acknowledge that there is a great gulf between us and God. And they would explain that in different ways. We of course would think immediately of our sinfulness. Our sins separate us from God. But even before we were sinful, we were not exactly like God.

God is more glorious, exalted, and powerful than we are. And so, how do we bridge that gap?

Well, the answer is Jesus Christ. And so early Christians struggled to understand how exactly Jesus Christ accomplished this for us. And one of the answers seems to be in his very nature, in his nature of even though he was. Even though he is God, even though he is part of the Godhead, he condescended. And took on humanity.

He took on human flesh. And with human flesh, all that comes with that, human weakness, a veil of forgetfulness, we would say as Latter-day Saints, and all the struggles and pains of humanity, with one exception, that he was without sin. That, of course, doesn't mean that he wasn't tempted. In fact, in the Gospels, it makes it quite clear that he was tempted, but he resisted those temptations.

So he experienced fully what it was to be human. At the same time, he retained his divinity. Jesus Christ. Was and is God. And so, Christians throughout time, and we even today sometimes struggle with how to describe that.

Where does the emphasis fall?

Sometimes we tend to emphasize more his divinity, but But if we don't emphasize enough his humanity, then we can forget that he really knows us. He really knows what it means to be human. Of course, if we emphasize his humanity too much, we forget that he, in fact, is our God and Savior and has the power to overcome all weakness. and and trial and sin. And death.

All right, so let's explore this idea of a gulf between God and humanity. Dr. Combs takes the typical Mormon view that the gulf is one of sinfulness and mortality, not one of nature or ontology. Do you agree, Jackson? Has God the Father eternally been God, or did He progress to be God?

Has God the Son always been God or did He progress to be God? Yeah, those are great questions, and I think ones that Latter-day Saints themselves are still seeking to work out. And before I comment on them further, just in terms of chronology, I think I like pointing out the fact that Mormonism is a religious tradition or the LDS church as an institution. One, its current leader is half the age of the church itself down to basically the year. And two, in terms of chronology, the LDS Church, if Put on some type of like line compared to the early Christian church, they haven't reached their council of Nicaea yet.

And so, where are some of these areas that I often encounter various Christians who might say that this is a question that Latter-day Saints should be able to answer confidently and unanimously and with a level of confidence? There's certainly, I don't know if you want to call them perhaps just undeveloped areas or holes or blind spots, even. But this is one area about the nature of God and the eternities. And I would say likely with Jesus as well. That there isn't a level of formal doctrine from the LDS church as might be given to various other issues or subjects.

So I'll be speaking personally here in terms of my own beliefs, but let's see.

So, with respect to Dr. Combs's kind of positioning of Jesus, I would agree with him that the gulf between humans and God within LDS theology is more a question of progression. Or moral perfection or mortality as well, mortal corruption, let's say, and not necessarily one of strict ontology in the same way that we might see within traditional Christianity.

So, yeah, I certainly believe that there are huge differences between humans and God. both in terms of knowledge and power and authority and all kinds of different areas. But yes, those differences exist more along the lines of a spectrum, a trajectory, than a strict binary or a dichotomy, a creature-creator binary that we might see in traditional Christianity.

So, yeah, I basically agree with Dr. Combs. I liked one of his earlier comments that he said that God is more exalted than we are. He used a couple other statements. Statements.

But yeah, I think the key difference there is one of progression and not necessarily one strictly of nature or ontology. Although both of those things are impacted in some ways by the differences in our own, I don't know, let's say ontological progression compared to God within LDS thought.

So the next question: Has God the Father eternally been God or did He progress to be God? At least for me, the reading that I find or understanding that I find most consistent with Joseph Smith's kind of King Follette theology and the majority of LDS thought that's preceded since then has been a God that progresses to be God.

So, you know, this question: Has God the Father eternally been God or did He progress to be God? You know, I certainly affirm that God the Father eternally has been, you know, Himself has possessed His same, you know. Individual, let's say, nature or personality. But I'd also lean towards affirming that in terms of eternally being God, eternally existing in the same state of glorification and exaltation and perfection, I think that Joseph Smith's theology towards the end of his life leans itself towards a God that had to progress or advance to that state. And then for the next question, has God the Son always been God or did He progress to be God?

I'd also affirm that Jesus progressed to be God or to occupy the state of exaltation that he currently is understood as occupying in LDS thought. Although I should point out, I recently had a Facebook friend who is Catholic. She posed the question in an LDS discussion group I was a part of. She also does Mormon studies, but she posed the question: at what point did Jesus become divine, or at what point did Jesus become God? And she asked that to Latter-day Saints.

And I mean, I was even a little bit surprised by the diversity of answers that were generated as a result of this question, which I think underscores again the lack of kind of formal unity or theological orthodoxy created around some of these questions. But with that one in particular, I saw people answering that Jesus has always been God because in Latter-day Saint thought, and broadly speaking within Christian thought as well, right? Jesus is identified with Yahweh or Jehovah of the Old Testament, of the Hebrew Bible. And so various Latter-day Saints said that, well, Yahweh is God, therefore Jesus has always been God. Others saying that Jesus didn't take on this divine nature that we would recognize today until perhaps the time of his baptism, where they, you know, they seem to describe a kind of, let's say, adoptionist theology, or others saying that it wasn't until Jesus' ascension to heaven following his resurrection that he became fully exalted.

That's actually the position that I feel is best supported by LDS scripture, one in which Jesus achieves his full exaltation following. His ascension and resurrection. But I'll completely admit that. I, in a lot of these areas, some of the questions that you've posed to me today or we'll ask later, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around myself and work them out in terms of how to best reconcile scripture and see which answers are best supported within my own tradition.

So, yeah, Christology is something that I've probably been wrestling with since my mission. That's when I first started trying to crack that nut in a serious or critical way. And it's been an interesting experience since. But yeah, at least those questions, those are some of my thoughts. Yeah, thank you, Jackson.

Appreciate that. I would title the view that you espouse in terms of Jesus' exaltation. I would espouse that as the matrix Christology. Elaborate on that. Just because Neo, you know, it wasn't until he died and kind of like resurrected him and all that that he kind of actually achieved his full power, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, that's funny. That's funny. I like those that trilogy. Like watching it as a Mormon, you know, as a Latter-day Saint versus now, you pick up on a lot of things, you know, a lot of ideas that are sprinkled in there. Yeah.

But yeah, thank you for sharing that. We can talk a lot about even what it just means to be God. Yeah. You know, so we're not going to get into everything in super in-depth, but hopefully we can talk a little bit more about these clips.

So let's move on towards like the LDS view of the human nature.

So which definition of intelligence or intelligences do you hold to? Intelligent beings called intelligences existed before and after they were given spirit bodies in the premortal existence, or intelligent beings were organized as spirits out of eternal intelligent matter that they did not exist as individuals before they were organized as spirit beings in the premortal existence. Yeah. So first, I think it's just important to say that in some of Smith's early writings or Just throughout the course of his life, he certainly wasn't a systematic theologian. And so sometimes he would use certain terms interchangeably.

And intelligences and spirits were among some of those terms that sometimes can get a little bit confusing for contemporary readers and trying to parse out, you know, which ones he might be, like, you know, what was what kind of theological definition he was holding for both. But at least out of the paradigms that you shared as examples, I definitely lean towards one in which intelligences are, let's say, the most base or primitive form of like sentient being, and that there is a level of individuality or even agency that's possible among those intelligences. And then from that, I would hold there's kind of two main schools of thought. Within LDS theology, historically speaking, about the nature of spirits. You know, one in which spirits are created in a kind of, let's say, process that mirrors biological or mortal reproduction, where it very much is, it requires a, let's say, like a male and a female deity to produce spirit children in a way that's quite comparable to how children are produced in mortality.

Or there's a paradigm of more adoption than spirit birth, as it's called, but spiritual adoption, where these intelligences enter into a kind of covenant relationship with deity and therefore are able to undergo a change in nature to become adopted as spirit children. And so that's the one that I would view, that I would personally espouse myself. I find more literal Depictions of spirit birth to not just verge into a territory that most Christians or often modern, I don't know, readers or seekers might be not just perplexed, but potentially scandalized by. But I think it was also very much entrenched within a view of deity that was impacted by plural marriage, where plural marriage, the raising of seeds, of righteous posterity, those were understood in very literal terms. The Pratt brothers, for instance, in LDS thought got quite inventive even with some of these paradigms of spirit birth, where they might be opining on the particular amount of time it takes to gestate a spirit child, right, in a spirit womb or whatnot.

And so for Latter-day Saints, That might be, I don't know, a bit scandalized themselves if approached by evangelicals and asked, for instance, like, you know, if you believe that God has, you know, plural wives, you know, and they engage in, I don't know, the sensationalized term that I've heard in some evangelical circles is like celestial sex. You know, that's not one I've ever heard in LDS circles myself, but that kind of reproduction. I don't know, I lean towards spiritual adoption myself.

So, anyways, yeah, to answer your question about like intelligences and, oh, and I should also say too, that view of intelligences as eternally uncreated by God. And having agency that precedes God, at least for me, solves various theological issues, such as, or it helps to solve them, such as the so-called problem of evil or suffering.

Okay, thanks for that, Jackson.

So, would you say that you hold a view similar to or the same as Blake Osler's like eternal personalism view? I'd have to revisit Blake's specific view to, you know, kind of affirm or deny that. But Blake has definitely impacted my views in this area. I will say, though, that with respect to the earlier question about has God the Father eternally progressed to be or eternally been God or progressed to be God, this is an area where Blake Osler himself, you know, kind of stands in a unique space relative to most historical LDS theologians or thinkers on the subject, where I'm Pretty sure that Blake does affirm that God the Father is an eternally uncreated God in a more unique sense that might philosophically resemble classical theism more closely than other Christian theological or Mormon theologies might.

Okay. All right. So in the next clip, Dr. Combs is asked to kind of Of explain where he sees LDS theology fitting within the framework that they've been discussing on the podcast.

So let's listen to. That clip. You mentioned this kind of proto-Orthodox position. Help us situate where Latter-day Saint theology fits into this. Yes, so we absolutely, regarding Jesus Christ, I think, accept this proto-Orthodox position that Christ is both fully human and fully divine.

I think there are ways in which we would differ from early Christians. I mentioned before that we see the primary distinction between us and God being one, our sinful nature, and two, even before our sinful nature, we would describe God as being more exalted and glorious and perfect. Right. Some Christians come to describe the gulf between us and God as even wider. They describe us.

Humans as creation, as creatures, and God as God the Father as uncreated, as the one who has always existed, as eternal and therefore uncreated. And therefore, they see an even wider gap there. And for them, for Christians who emphasize the gap in that way, as not seeing us being like God from birth, but seeing us as utterly different in our very natures from God, for them, that emphasizes even more strongly the importance of Jesus Christ coming down and taking on flesh, because Jesus Christ in his incarnation, incarnation literally means him being in fleshed. taking on flesh, that bridges the gulf. It's a way of thinking about the beginning of the atonement, the beginning of making us at one with God by Jesus Christ overcoming that gap and becoming one with us.

Irenaeus, who I also talk about here, Irenaeus is one of the first Christians that describes the necessity of Christ coming down and taking on flesh in this way. He says that Christ became man so that men might become God. All right. So, Jackson, what do you think of Dr. Coma's statement that Latter-day Saints accept the proposition that Christ is both fully human and fully divine at birth?

Do you think he's equivocating at all? Yeah, I mean, one thing I will say is I think this is an area that probably could have used a bit more elaboration. I would have, you know, appreciated perhaps a more careful definition of some of the terms that he's using, because especially in comparing them to, you know, how those same terms might be understood and used within various Christian circles presently or historically, it's, you know, we run into the classic issue within kind of these interreligious conversations amongst Latter-day Saints and other Christians of using very similar vocabulary, but often perhaps meaning different things and using those same words.

So at least for my purposes here, when he says that That Latter-day Saints accept that Christ is both fully human and fully divine. I would have appreciated perhaps an elaboration of what he means by divine and how that relates to perhaps the LDS view of exaltation. The other thing, as well, is with respect to being fully human. And this too is an area where, I don't know, I'm sure there's been perhaps similar points of confusion or concern amongst Christians, especially as these matters have been worked out. But, you know, even though, like, in terms of a personal affirmation, I would certainly say that Christ was fully human.

When I try and reconcile that with the belief that the three of us here would share as well, that Christ was also without sin. That's an area where I cannot relate to him on, right? That my, you know, to me, what mortality or my human experience has been characterized by, in part, is my sinful nature and by, you know, committing sinful actions. And that's something that Christ himself did not participate in, right?

So I guess sometimes I even struggle a little bit in using terms like fully human and fully divine because. It's hard for me to fully relate to his humanity and how he experienced it. There's plenty of areas where I can relate to that. But then his divinity as well, especially within LDS theology. I think I would have appreciated a bit more elaboration from Dr.

Combs in that area, because I think it can potentially lend itself to a misunderstanding that, I don't know, that Latter-day Saints view him as fully divine in the same terms that Christians themselves might consider Christ fully divine when they use those same phrases, right? Or if they speak perhaps of like the hypostatic union specifically. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I totally agree with you on what you said. It's an area of the podcast and his article, too, that I was left wanting a further explication of how he views the idea that.

Christ was fully divine at birth, because I do sense that perhaps it's different than the way that an Orthodox Christian would view that statement. And I do wish he would have expounded on that a bit more.

So that's what we're going to do here. We're going to move a little bit into a lightning round of about four questions for you, Jackson. And we'll try to kind of tease out some of these differences.

So as you understand LDS theology and specifically LDS ontology, are we humans of the same nature as God the Son? Yeah, it certainly depends on how you view that, right? If we're just speaking about ontological kinds, then it would be a point of LDS theology in my understanding of it that humans and deity are of the same ontological kind. We exist on the same ontological spectrum. But certainly, as I said earlier, that humanity and deity or divinity.

There's going to be differences not just in progression, but in how that progression is manifested in their natures as well. And so I would be inclined to see the nature of Christ as not just being more holy or sanctified compared to us, but more refined spiritually, that he possessed qualities that indeed set him apart from the rest of humanity, such as a sinless state of being. You have me thinking on the spot now, actually, if I would refer to his nature itself as sinless or if he just chose not to sin, right? We may have mentioned this earlier. And that's another area that I've been doing some thinking in terms of Christology.

But yeah, I mean, generally, if I was to make the statement. That humans are of the same nature as God the Son. That's one that I wouldn't be uncomfortable saying perhaps in church circles. I would just, I don't know, I would be compelled to elaborate on that and kind of break that down a bit to specify exactly how I'm meaning when I use that phrase. Right.

Yeah, thanks for that. You know, as I think about the podcast and Dr. Cohn's article, I've mentioned a few things I appreciate it, but again, I wish he would have been a bit more clear. One of the things that came to mind was Doctrine and Covenants section 93. And this is a section in particular that I recall a Facebook discussion I was having with the Latter-day Saint years ago, in which I was kind of making the case that on LDS teaching, Jesus was not always divine and we're not always fully divine.

The LDS gentleman that I was discussing with, you know, pointed out DNC 93, verse, let me find it. I guess verses one and two, which say, Verily, thus saith the Lord, it shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am. And I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one. The Father, because he gave me of his fullness, and the Son, because I was in the world and made flesh my tabernacle and dwelt among the sons of men. And the LDS gentleman that I was discussing with was focused particularly on verse four and kind of was making the case that because the father gave the son of his fullness, and he was making the argument that that happened eternally, that therefore, you know, Jesus was always fully divine.

But if you keep on reading DNC 93, it's an interesting section of the doctrine. Covenants because Joseph Smith kind of switches over into where he claims to be giving the full record of John the Revelator, right, or the beloved disciple, and kind of reworks some of the passages in John chapter one. And in particular, let's see, where is that? Yeah, so verses 12 and 13, and I, John, saw that he received not of the fullness at first, but received grace for grace. And he received not of the fullness at first, but continued from grace to grace until he received the fullness.

So that kind of goes along with the more traditionally Mormon view of eternal progression, that Christ kind of worked out his own salvation and exaltation when he was here in mortality, as Bruce Armakonke put it. But if you look at the way the verses in John's gospel read that were reworked. It says, you know, and I, John, bear record that he received a fullness of the glory of the Father, you know, and that from Christ's fullness, you know, we have received grace for grace, right?

So it kind of comes back to this idea that the stakes are high, right? If Christ isn't fully divine, then as Dr. Combs put it, how would he have the power to? You save us, right?

So, what's your thought on that? I know you touched on it a little bit before. I think you kind of affirmed the idea that Jesus progressed to be God. How would you understand the claim that Latter-day Saints could affirm that? that Jesus Was fully divine at birth.

Yeah, this is one of those things that I've been specifically wrestling with since my mission, I would say. And I think there's other related questions that can be asked that kind of play into this, right? That if Latter-day Saints are asking themselves, what qualities or attributes or You know, things like that characterize the state of being divine of deity, right? Yeah, there's kind of a range there.

So, like, for instance, I think many Latter-day Saints would affirm that having a physical body is necessary to obtain Godhood, to be exalted or be considered divine, right? But that certainly, you know, by admission of Latter-day Saints' own theology, if you have the Holy Spirit considered a separate being and personage within the Godhead, Latter-day Saints are pretty explicit in affirming that the Holy Spirit does not have a body, right? It's a personage of spirit. And yet, is this a state of God? Godhood or divinity that doesn't require some type of physical body or a glorified body akin to what Latter-day Saints would believe the Son and the Father have?

Or perhaps did the Holy Spirit possess that at some point and is kind of in some type of state of not having it temporarily for our purposes? I think that's an area that could be asked as well. Yeah, so one way that I've thought about this potentially is if we set up within LDS thought this kind of like spectrum right of like progression from intelligences to spirit, spirit children to humanity mortality to resurrected beings or temporarily spirits and then eventually to Godhood that perhaps there's a way That we could break down these kinds of sections along this line of progression where beings that exist within this kind of state of progression can be considered human, whether they're more sinful or more holy or more or less sanctified. Or a being can be considered still divine, but not yet fully exalted in the way that the Father is. This is an area that I'm still trying to parse things out more clearly.

But at least to me, it does seem to be the case that Latter-day Saints, I don't know, at least implicitly affirm that our definitions of deity and what kind of being can qualify as divine are perhaps a bit more broad than we often admit to ourselves or recognize. That particular point about the Holy Spirit, for instance. is one that I've posed to various Latter-day Saints and maybe gotten confused looks.

So I don't know. Maybe that's an area. Certainly fundamentalist Mormons have dealt with some of these issues in more direct ways where they could at least give clear theological answers from a more confident doctrinal position. But yeah, at least for now, I'm still trying to think of that. I also just want to point out, I really appreciate Paul that you noted that in DNC 93 that there's this kind of textual reworking of the Gospel of John.

And I just think it's important to point out, right, that at least within this paradigm in DNC 93, of course, you have this commentary about Jesus progressing from grace to grace and eventually obtaining a fullness, meaning at one point he did not have that fullness. And if you compare that to John's gospel and his theology of Jesus as the pre-incarnate Lagos, there's certainly this strong assumption there within the Gospel of John that, at least in my opinion, Jesus eternally existed as this creative force or entity identified as the Lagos and also identified as God.

So those differences should certainly be noted when comparing those two texts. Thank you for that.

So, to kind of play off of what you were kind of saying there about Different gradations of divinity and maybe an analogy too.

So, but first, first kind of to touch on some of the LDS theology there, right? LDS theology conceives of a multi-tiered heaven. celestial kingdom which within which uh is it is also three are also are also three levels and the highest level of which are is reserved for those uh humans who are exalted right and then you have the terrestrial kingdom and the telestial kingdom and and lds scripture dnc 76 talks about um you know the the inheritors of each of those three kingdoms uh having uh differences uh difference in gradation in terms of the glorification of their bodies um and also kind of keys in on the idea that um a terrestrial body cannot withstand the glory of a cell of the celestial kingdom and a telestial body cannot withstand the glory of the terrestrial kingdom and so on and so forth. And so to the analogy, like I like to think of like, you know, a couple of weeks ago, I was at Myrtle Beach, you know, swimming in the ocean. In some sense, I could share a space with ocean dwelling creatures, right?

But there is a portion of the ocean, the deep ocean trenches, where I cannot go. My body will not survive there, right? And likewise, the creatures that can exist in the deep ocean trenches can't come up to the surface where I was splashing around and sharing space with small fish and perhaps some sharks and dolphins. They would die up on the surface. But the fish that live closer to the shore and closer to the surface, likewise, if they were to get out of the water like I can, they could not live, right?

So, like, it's kind of like a similar concept to the way Latter-day Saints view heaven. But I wouldn't say that, like, an angler fish that lives in the deep trenches is the same nature as I am, right?

So, it's on one sense, Latter-day Saints theology kind of says, well, we're all of the same nature, we're all of the same species. But then, when you talk about heaven, it talks about these different gradations. And even that a body terrestrial could not withstand the glory of the celestial kingdom.

So, so how is there not a difference in nature there? I guess is the question I'm kind of left with when I think about LDS theology. Yeah, I really like that metaphor, though. You got me thinking of, I don't know, people from the celestial kingdom, you know, wearing diving suits and going to temporarily visit the lower kingdoms, right? You know, in which case, maybe the outer darkness would be like the Marianas trench or whatever that big trench is called.

Yeah. So, kind of continuing our discussion on Christology, on the Lagos, you kind of explained earlier that your view is, or understanding, is that we're all, that humans are kind of on the same spectrum of ontology. And for those, maybe we should have defined it at the beginning, I don't know if we did. There's probably a lot of listeners that are confused, but ontology just is the study of being or what something is.

So if we have the same, if we're on the same spectrum of being or ontology as God, does that imply, or is it possible, at least hypothetically, that you or I or any other human being being of the same nature as God could have theoretically carried out the atonement? Or is that something that's completely unique to Jesus that only he could have done and why? Yeah, well, I think it's worth pointing out, of course, that Latter-day Saints do perceive Jesus, at least within their kind of common cosmology, of occupying a different space than they do. Jesus is considered the firstborn, the first of God's spirit children who in the pre-existence had the capacity, the willingness, the authority to be identified as the Savior. And so already, I think it's safe to say Jesus does exist in a different category.

This is one in which Lucifer also, perhaps there's in different LDS narratives, right, Lucifer competed with him for that kind of position or that responsibility or authority, but was unsuccessful. Successful and rebelled against God as a result.

So there's that. You know, of course, as I mentioned earlier, Latter-day Saints affirm that Jesus was without sin, implying that Jesus perfectly obeyed the commandments of God, something which no other humans are believed to be able to do within LDS theology. Yeah, so I think this combination of a kind of prior authority granted in the pre-existence, and especially from Latter-day Saint scripture that identifies Jesus as Jehovah or Yahweh of the Old Testament, there's a level of divine power there too that would certainly set Jesus apart from the rest of humanity.

So I do think that there are things that make Jesus unique in LDS theology that make it so not just any one of us could have theoretically Carried out the atonement. Oh, you know, and this is an area too, where I think the Book of Mormon has some pretty poignant atonement theology at play, speaking of the need for an infinite atonement, something that could only be, at least within the text of the Book of Mormon, brought about by a perfect sacrifice, which is found in the case of Jesus Christ.

So I should note that historically, some Latter-day Saints, though, Have viewed Jesus' kind of unique life almost exclusively through the lens of his obedience, his moral perfection, and his lived ability to obey God's law to such an extent that some LDS leaders or Latter-day Saints themselves have affirmed that a similar kind of moral perfection is indeed possible for Latter-day Saints themselves or for disciples of Jesus. I'm not sure in any way theologically or scripturally how this is indeed the case. But some Latter-day Saints have kind of gone into that kind of area in a way which I think is problematic and theologically ungrounded. But yeah, those are some of the unique qualities, at least that I would see to Jesus in Jesus.

Okay. You would say that those are Qualities of authority rather than of ontology, correct? I mean, yeah, going back to some of my earlier statements, like, I don't think that Jesus, when he was born, when he experienced mortality, was at the same point of progression as we are. I don't think that that was the case. I think that Jesus is already more.

Was already further along in his personal progression than we were.

So I think that that's a key difference there. But at least within the scope of LDS theology, Jesus would still be perceived as being of the same ontological kind as humanity or as God.

Okay. Yeah, I was just going to say real quick that I posted on my wall on Facebook. I posted a verse, the verse, I think it's in 2 Peter. I forget which epistle Peter it is, where it talks about believers become partakers of the divine nature. And I see personally that we cannot partake of a nature that we already have.

And so I, you know, so that's why I said that, you know, I think it's clear that scripture, that the Bible teaches that the divine nature and the human nature are not the same, because otherwise we would be basically just be partaking of the same nature, but at a higher level, or maybe like a, you know, like a more powerful level. Yeah. Um, and uh, when I had discussions with Latter-day Saints about this, they agreed that we are of the same, you know, they believe that we are the same nature as God. And so then we got to discussions about, well, why, why is Christ the only one who's capable of doing the atonement? And they gave similar answers that you did.

So this idea that God, you know, he's either the firstborn and that's why he's unique, or that God is specifically called and empowered, you know, Christ to do his work as savior. But there's this emphasis of calling. And I think maybe that's a cultural thing, you know, because LDS Church is like, you know, authority and calling and priesthood. And maybe that's why it resonated with them. But yeah, it was interesting that they gave similar answers that you did.

All right. Final question, Jackson. We're going to go to DNC 132. You've touched on a little bit, you know, some ideas around plural marriage and how that touches upon some of these theological questions within Latter-day Saint thought and also in the ways that fundamentalist Mormons would perhaps give deeply theological answers. that are consistent with, you know, kind of maybe in a more systematic way with Latter-day Saint scripture than some modern Latter-day Saints do.

But DNC 132, verse 20, kind of, it's kind of the crowning point of explaining how on a Latter-day Saint view, humans attain to Godhood, right? That it's tied with eternal marriage and that. uh eternal marriage being sealed by the holy spirit of promise and then uh in uh you know talks about that that then they will receive their exaltation and glory in all things uh as has been sealed upon their heads which glory shall be a fullness and a continuation of the seeds forever um so then it goes on in verse 20 to say then then shall they be gods because they have no end therefore they shall be from everlasting to everlasting because they continue then shall they be above all because all things are subject unto them then shall they be gods because they have all power and the angels are subject unto them so Yeah. You know, all those things just kind of described in verse 20 are things that are ascribed to Christ in the Bible already. And so, you know, do you view verse 20 of DNC 132?

Does it pose a problem for kind of viewing humans as of the same nature as God the Son? If, you know, those are things that. That Christ had already attained to prior to his incarnation. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, it's certainly problematic if you see those two.

The category or the space that humans occupy and then are perceived as progressing into, which is the state that Christ himself occupies. Those two places, if you perceive them as two distinct natures themselves or two different points along, like I said, like an ontological spectrum. But at least in this case, I think this also underscores that we are not where Christ is. Christ is not where we are. And yet there's this belief within LDS theology that humans can certainly progress to that point.

But it certainly can complicate some of these earlier questions or points that we touched on, especially if a Latter-day Saint was just to, you know, without much clarification, say that Humans or us have the same nature as Jesus Christ or the same nature that Jesus Christ experienced. I would just want to carefully qualify what we mean by that. All right, Jackson, I think we've teased out some key differences between Latter-day Saint theology and Orthodox Christian theology. We appreciate you coming on and being willing to discuss the podcast episode that you flipped to us. And we'll definitely check out that other source that you sent to us just before we started recording tonight.

So, Jackson, thank you for coming on. Any final words? You wanna share before you? Yeah, yeah, just I'm grateful as well. And as far as that other source goes, I'll just do a quick plug for it.

The Maxwell Institute at BYU has recently announced that they are going to be starting a new initiative called Seek This Jesus, the Maxwell Institute Christology Initiative, which is going to start in 2026.

So it's a couple years out for sure, but I think it's important to mention this given our conversation today, because at least to my knowledge, this is gonna be the first very intensive. Study at this kind of level within LDS circles on the specific question of Christology from the perspectives of different LDS scholars. In a way that's published and presented to larger LDS populations.

So I think that speaks to some of the theological maturing, let's say, or the developments that I spoke to earlier when it comes to the LDS tradition. And Christology is an area that I think we can expect to see increased attention towards from within LDS circles in ways that. Are probably gonna be pretty different than some of the ways that it's been approached historically. All right, thanks for that, Jackson. I appreciate especially tonight your comments on the.

kind of the shifting views of apostasy, at least within scholarly circles within the Latter-day Saint tradition. And I personally welcome any further forays into engagement with historic Christianity and historic theology within the Christian tradition by Latter-day Saint scholars, because I think it's a good thing. I do wonder exactly how far that can go in terms of reaching a unity of the faith, so to speak, because of some of the issues we pointed out with Latter-day Saint scripture tonight. But I appreciate you coming on and having this conversation.

So thank you. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you, Paul, and thank you, Matthew, as well. Yeah, thank you, Jackson. I really appreciate it.

Have a good one. Good luck to your studies. Yep. Thank you. We thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Outer Brightness Podcast.

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You can learn more about Adams Road by visiting their ministry page. at Adamsroad Ministry.com. In the past, I believed in my own. righteousness In hope that I was worthy of the blood that Jesus shed. But now I I know that all the works I did were meaningless.

Compared with Jesus' lonely death on the cross where he bore sin. And now I have Have the I'm just messing. That is What is this? In G. I could settle everything I lost compared to no.

Jesus, for who I have lost all things, oh, because of the cross. On the cross, Jesus took away. The written code of our voice that stood upon. And they'll be there for And through the cross, they put to death hostility. And that is Bye.

reconciled Us to God brought us peace. And I am crucified with Christ. And I no longer live, but He lives in me. I consider everything I lost compared to knowing Jesus for whose sake I have lost all things. Oh, but when I came, Jesus, it was worth the cost.

All my righteousness I count as lost. Because of the Try.

Some demand a sign and some seek to be wise But we preach Christ crucified A stumbling block for some The foolishness of God But wiser than the wisest man the higher up the cross except uh In the cross of our Lord. Through which the word Crucified to me And I to the world, so I take up my crown. And from where Jesus lived, I considered everything I lost compared to knowing Jesus for whose sake I have lost all things. Oh, yeah, but when I gave Jesus, it was worth the cost. All my righteousness I count as lost because of the cross, because of the cross, because of the cross.