Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Fellowship with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 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 Aaron Shafowaloff, my colleague at MRM. Last week, we began looking at a statement that was made by a Presbyterian group originally in 1897. They put forth a statement that was titled, Today we're going to be looking at point number 10.
This one, however, did not have a specific title for it. I call it Species in Generation. That's my summary for it, but it reads as follows. So the big idea here is that the way that gods come about in the Mormon system is through procreation and generation by a male and a female. And they include in this idea Brigham's Adam God idea, which for Brigham meant that Mary and Heavenly Father were the parents of Jesus's mortal body. One of the references in order to prove the premise that they list there is wisdom inspires the gods to multiply their species. They're citing The Key to Theology, which was a book that was written by Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt, who was the brother of Orson Pratt.
They have listed as page 52. Now that can be kind of confusing because The Key to Theology, or The Key to the Science of Theology as it's sometimes known, actually came out originally, I believe in the 1850s. Now they are citing a later edition that came out in the 1880s. That would make more sense. It would be the more modern version to the time that this was being written. And they have as a reference page 52.
Then in the next reference, they cite the seer. Now this was written by Orson Pratt, another Mormon apostle in the church, page 37, where it says, That's certainly something that's understood today by modern Latter-day Saints. If a Mormon couple were to be good enough to get into the top level of the celestial kingdom, the male would be given a reward for his faithfulness, the ability to organize new worlds and to populate those worlds. He would be considered the god of that world, and his wife would be the goddess mother, you might say, similar to Heavenly Mother in Mormon theology today. Now, Mormonism today is more ambivalent or undecided on whether Heavenly Father himself is a polygamist. And there's a bit of nuance today about whether our Heavenly Father is the actual father of our intelligent being, our intelligence, or whether he's merely the father of the spirit body that enclose our person, our intelligent being self.
The essential complaint here is that instead of this almighty, powerful, infinite God actually creating creatures, that the gods of the cosmos are essentially sexually begotten by male-female pairs. They also have a reference, again, going to New Witness for God, which was a book that was written by B.H. Roberts. And as we've mentioned last week, B.H. Roberts plays an important role in this because he is going to give a rebuttal to this statement.
But let me just read very quickly what B.H. Roberts said on page 461 that goes along with this accusation that was made in the statement. Roberts said, along with this idea that once this Mormon couple attains their exaltation, they will have the ability to procreate throughout all eternity, just as Mormons believe that their God, Elohim, Heavenly Father, is procreating with Heavenly Mother. And we are the result of that procreation. We once existed as spirit sons and daughters of God in our pre-existence, and then we would later, because we were good enough in that pre-existence, to take on a human body here in this mortality.
And this mortality is a probationary period to prove ourselves worthy to get back into the presence of God. We should mention here that the book New Witness for God by B.H. Roberts, it was issued in 1895, and it was approved by a committee appointed by the First Presidency as, quoting, "...orthodox and consistent with our teachings." So if you are citing something that has the approval of the First Presidency, you have a good source from which you can use when talking with your LDS acquaintances. In mentioning B.H. Roberts, we need to get into his rebuttal. This statement was published in the Deseret News, and within days, B.H. Roberts gives a response to this statement. Yeah, and he delivers that response in the tabernacle, which is then printed again in the Deseret News.
So obviously, the Church took this quite seriously. At the time, B.H. Roberts would be probably one of the bigger guns as far as an LDS apologist is concerned. B.H. Roberts was a pretty prolific writer.
He was a very intelligent guy, there's no doubt about that. The first thing that B.H. Roberts responds to is a statement that we emphasized a couple of times last week, that the purpose of this statement was not to really show any ill will towards Mormons, but to merely respond to the religious aspects of the faith. The writers of this statement were not saying we should not be friends with Latter-day Saints, they were just saying we have to stop short as Christians from fellowship in a religious capacity with members of the LDS Church.
What did B.H. Roberts have to say regarding that statement? He acknowledged that the people who had drafted this statement, 10 Reasons Why We Cannot Fellowship with the LDS Church, were probably just discharging the religious duties, but he felt like he still had to address the claims. He thought they were stated in such a way as to make the LDS faith sound as odious as possible, and he was concerned that the youth that had seen what was published in the Deseret News would be given a false impression based on what the critics have said. He mentioned that he felt that it was given in what he says the most offensive terms as possible, the desire being to make said doctrine obnoxious, and second, there should be some means of determining what Mormon doctrine is.
But he is trying to make the accusation that they're purposely trying to make it sound worse than I guess what B.H. Roberts thinks it is, but B.H. Roberts needs to understand we're coming from a New Testament perspective. He's a Latter-day Saint. Obviously, we're going to have different world views here, and I don't think we have to try and state Mormon positions in an odious manner, as he would say, because it is obnoxious to us.
It's horrible to us. Some people think, well, when we represent Mormonism, we need to do so fairly, and they think, well, that must mean that we steel man it. We let them give their best academic presentation, their most palatable, sort of evangelical-friendly presentation of Mormonism possible. The problem, though, is that we're, like you said, we're operating off of a biblical perspective, which means when we evaluate the fruits of Mormonism, we are going to be looking at what their prophets and apostles have said, what they've taught to their children, what they've published to their people. So Roberts is going to fall back on what we have heard in more recent years, in the past 20, 30 years, namely that official doctrine is restricted to the standard works, and that critics should only aim at that which is in the standard works. Whereas the assumption of the Presbyterians is that if somebody claims to be an apostle or a prophet, and they're publishing public claims about God and the salvation, and they're having influence on the people, that's fair game.
But isn't B.H. Roberts sounding a bit confusing when he makes a comment like that? Because in his rebuttal, he says, we consider the Bible, Book of Mormon, Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and sayings of Joseph the Seer our guides in faith and doctrine. The first four have been adopted as such by a vote of the saints in general conference. Reference to other writings are only for illustration of the subjects. Now, in this, he is quoting from the compendium of the doctrines of the gospel that came out in 1898. To me, it sounds like it's affirming basically the accusation that was made against them, that they certainly do consider the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and sayings of Joseph the Seer as guides in faith and doctrine. Well, if Joseph Smith's statements are considered guides in faith and doctrine, wouldn't that same authority pass on to every leader that comes after Joseph Smith?
Of course it would. Yeah, I've heard from some Mormons that Joseph Smith is a, you might say, capital P profit, whereas subsequent LDS prophets are lowercase p profits, that the sayings of Joseph Smith have special weight among Mormons. It's interesting here that B.H. Roberts says that the sayings of Joseph Smith are in the same list as the standard works. He does specify they need to be well-attested sayings, not the mere repetition of rumor, but it sounds like B.H. Roberts has a much higher view of the sermons of Joseph Smith that are controversial, whereas a BYU minimalist or someone like Blake Osler would downplay the King Follett discourse or the Sermon in the Grove, where Joseph Smith is more polytheistic. Roberts goes on to say in our Articles of Faith, which have been repeatedly accepted by vote of the Church and General Conference assembled as matters most assuredly believed by the Church, we say we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. He says in relation to this, this fixes the status of the Bible and the Book of Mormon as sources of authority on doctrine among us. As to the Book of Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, I give the following account of the official action of the Church with accompanying explanations from minutes of the General Conferences conferred to.
Before I even try to look at that, I don't think he's being quite accurate here, or maybe he's purposely trying to be a little bit misleading. None of those other books that are unique to Mormonism are taken with any qualifications such as, as is translated correctly. They don't say that about the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants or the Pearl of Great Price.
And at that time, the Pearl of Great Price, especially with the Book of Abraham, was taken to be a literal translation from the Egyptian into English, and now the Church doesn't even hold that position. And how many times have we heard from Mormons that the General Conference addresses that they hear from their prophets and apostles are the living scripture under which they live, that that is the conduit of revelation given by God for modern people, by modern prophets? I have an article on mrm.org on official doctrine. My essential thesis is that Mormonism oscillates between maximalism and minimalism. Minimalism when they get in trouble, maximalism when they want to emphasize that they have living oracles that can deliver revelations of greater or equal weight as their standard works.
In tomorrow's show, we're going to continue looking at some of the things that B.H. Roberts said in response to this statement that was released by a group of Presbyterians in Utah, 10 Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church. Visit our website at www.mrm.org where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.
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