Gospel Topics Chapter 2 Sherlock Part 1

Unprepared to engage Mormon missionaries when they knock on your door? In 2009, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. The LDS Gospel Topics Series, a scholarly engagement.

It's a book that came out towards the end of 2020, edited by Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst. The reason why we want to take a look at this book is because, for one, it allows us the chance to look again at the Gospel Topics essays, which were a series of essays produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and posted over a period of time between the years 2013 and 2015. If you are interested at all in engaging your Latter-day Saint friends, I would strongly recommend that you read the Gospel Topics essays because they are much more transparent, and we've used that word a lot when talking about the essays. They are more open, more honest, I would say, than a lot of the statements coming out of the LDS Church in years previous.

They were forced to. We talked about that when we looked at the introduction of this book, but whether they were forced to or they did it really totally voluntarily, I don't care, because they do have a lot of good information, and because you can find them on the official website of the LDS Church, ChurchofJesusChrist.org, that makes it for me, for Eric, and those of us who are trying to reach Latter-day Saints, this becomes gold for us, because we can point them right back to their own material, and it doesn't have to go to a source that a Latter-day Saint could easily brush off as being nothing more than critical of the Church. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, about how many people have had a huge turnaround when they've read these essays. Many people have left the Church. Many of them leaving for atheism, agnosticism, or nothing at all.

But many of them also considering Christianity. So these essays have had an impact on the total Church numbers in these past few years, and so anytime, like you said, Bill, we can talk about these and bring up the information that the Church is now allowing to be put onto their website, I think we're going to take advantage of that. Now, this chapter that we're looking at today is chapter 2, Becoming Like God, a critique, and it was written by a gentleman by the name of Richard Sherlock. Now at the bottom of page 51, he explains his background very briefly in one sentence. He says, I converted to Roman Catholicism from the LDS Church in 2010. Now Eric, you did a little bit of research into Richard Sherlock, and so the question I want to ask you is, from what you read, do you get the impression that when Mr. Sherlock was a member of the LDS Church, that he would come under the category of what we call here in Utah a TBM, or a True Believing Mormon? I wouldn't think so, and just from the limited research I did do, he is a professor at Utah State University in philosophy, seems to be very popular, students seem to really like him, but he had been LDS for many, many years. And in fact, he had some Catholic education, including teaching at Fordham University, which is a Catholic school. So he had a Catholic background, and in 2010, he went to Rome for a conference and ended up going to a mass, had a huge experience spiritually that caused him to become a Catholic. And two years later, he gets confirmed into the church. But I would not say, as you mentioned, Bill, that he would be a True Blue Mormon from before 2010. His wife died a few decades before, and she was apparently very LDS, and for him to have left the church during her lifetime probably wouldn't have worked so well in his marriage, but he did eventually converge.

So he writes this as a Roman Catholic. But at the same time, I did not find a whole lot that I would disagree with him on this issue, because we are talking about the doctrine of men becoming gods. And of course, the chapter title is Becoming Like God, and he tends to take exception with that phrase, as we have too, that when a Mormon usually is confronted with this doctrine of becoming gods in the next life, some, apparently in an effort to show their embarrassment for this doctrine, will tend to back off and say, well, we believe you can become like God, but not necessarily become gods, which of course is not true.

And I think Mr. Sherlock does a very good job in this chapter showing why that is not true. He cites a lot of primary sources, which tends to prove his case, and for that I commend him. Before the show started here today, I mentioned that we could have written this chapter, and you mentioned we really have, because we've talked about the Gospel Topics essays, we've talked about this particular one, but what's interesting, some of the quotes that he uses, many of them we have used on this show before. So that's kind of fun to see that this guy seems to be on the same page as we are.

Let's begin. On page 52, he starts off the first paragraph with, in recent years, the LDS Church has sought to confront its more controversial beliefs in essays designed to present them in their most favorable, yet still honest light. He continues, other contributors to the present compilation assess the credibility of others of the Church's recent Gospel Topics essays. The subject of this chapter, the Gospel Topics essay, Becoming Like God, however, is, in my opinion, a misleading remake of one of Joseph Smith's most important and, for Christians, most heretical documents, the so-called King Follett sermon. The sermon was given orally on April 7, 1844, two months before a mob murdered Smith and his brother Hiram, and has been published officially by the LDS Church twice since 1970.

In the Church's magazine for adults, the ensign, in 1971, Smith's sermon was called, quote, one of the classics of Church literature, end quote. Let's go back and explain for our listeners what is the King Follett sermon. King Follett was an individual who died.

His name was King. It was not an office that he held, but that was his name. Smith gives this sermon, and this is a message that he gives where I'm sure many of the people listening to this sermon, even if they were LDS, which I'm sure all of them probably were when they were listening to Smith speak, I would venture to say most of them were probably shocked by some of the things that Joseph Smith said. So when Mr. Sherlock says that for us as Christians, it's probably one of the most heretical documents, I would tend to agree. Joseph Smith said a lot of off-the-wall things, but the King Follett discourse was certainly, I think, one of his worst when it comes to the LDS truth claims.

But as he says, it was given on April 7, 1844, and it would be two months before he would die. It was one of the latest of his messages before Joseph Smith's demise. An interesting part that he gives in this paragraph that I think needs to be emphasized, because a lot of Latter-day Saints that we have spoken with tend to look at the King Follett discourse or the King Follett sermon as not being doctrinal. And this is always a stumbling block that we face when we talk with Latter-day Saints. If it's not in the standard works, the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants or Pearl of Great Price, you have some Latter-day Saints that are quick to dismiss something like the King Follett discourse because it's not a part of the standard works.

But he brings out a good point at the end of this paragraph. He says in the church's magazine for adults, the end sign, he says in 1971, Smith's sermon was called one of the classics of church literature. So a Latter-day Saint could still argue it's not a part of scripture, but if it's a classic of church literature, does that really matter? If Latter-day Saints are encouraged to believe what's in it, wouldn't that be important?

I would think it would be. And he continues and says, the problem with the Gospel Topics essay begin with the title Becoming Like God. There is a long Christian tradition articulating the telos or deification of human existence as quote unquote, uniting with God or in another vocabulary, quote unquote, becoming like God. This may be what the LDS church wants members and non-members to believe that they teach.

If so, they should at least admit that this is not what they have taught for over a century. To quote Joseph Smith in the King Follett sermon, quote, you have got to learn how to become gods yourselves, end quote. There is no hint here that humans only become quote unquote, like God.

The LDS telos is to become a God just as all gods have done. Now what he's going to do is he's going to give some examples that are found in the essay Becoming Like God produced by the LDS church. And one of them happens to be Genesis 1 26 and 27. What does he say about that at the bottom of 53?

The foundational passage is Genesis 1 26 or 27 where God is said to create man in his own image. The LDS interpretation of this passage is grounded in the deep preference of Mormons for a univocal understanding of language used to describe God and humanity. Some in the Christian tradition have preferred an equivocal use of language in these cases such that when we refer to God's qualities, these cannot be anything like qualities we understand in the temporal world.

God's goodness, for example, cannot be anything like any goodness we recognize in this world. Now in this chapter, he loves that word univocal. He uses it over and over, which basically means one meaning. And what he's trying to emphasize here is that many times the LDS church will look at a word or a phrase, and they will stick with this more literal understanding of it. And that's one thing that Mormons often brag about, that Joseph Smith reads the Bible more literal than others. Because I've been asked that question myself, do you believe the Bible literally? I says, well, the verses that are to be taken literally should be understood literally. The verses that should be taken figuratively should be understood figuratively.

It all depends on which verse you're talking about. Unfortunately, Joseph Smith tends to make literal things that we would argue can be understood a little bit differently. But when he says the foundational passages, Genesis 1 26 and 27, that is actually one of the first arguments that is used in the Gospel topic essay, Becoming Like God. Several biblical passages, it says, intimate that humans can become like God. The likeness of humans to God is emphasized in the first chapter of Genesis. God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. Personally, I think you have to do an awful lot of eisegesis or reading into that passage to come up with the idea that this means that men can become gods.

More often Mormons use it to try to imply that God has a body of flesh and bones. The argument that we have often used whenever a Latter-day Saint brings up Genesis 1 26, ask the Latter-day Saint, who's involved in this conversation? Because it is a conversation.

Let us make man. Who's speaking? Who is the individual speaking to?

And how do we understand it based on that? Joseph Smith himself said that it's the Father speaking to the Son. If Elohim, the God, the Father of Mormonism is speaking to Jehovah, the Son asked the Latter-day Saint if Jehovah at that time had a body of flesh and bones.

They will have to say no. If Jesus did not have a body of flesh and bones at that time, then it would be erroneous to assume that when it talks about let us make man in our image, that that's referring to a body of flesh and bones. It's a very simple way of showing that this argument is not a good argument when using Genesis 1 26 and 7. Tomorrow we're going to continue looking at this chapter by Richard Sherlock, Becoming Like God.