14AR19-23

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Apologia Report 19:23 (1,206)

July 24, 2014

Subject: Mouw misjudges Mormonism

In this issue:

MORMONISM - Richard Mouw's ongoing efforts to excuse and exonerate LDS theology

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MORMONISM

Many of us in counter-cult ministry have been watching Richard J. Mouw, president emeritus of Fuller Theological Seminary, in his dubious efforts to engage LDS representatives in theological dialogue. In his review of Stephen H. Webb's book Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints [1], Mouw makes himself perfectly clear in a number of areas that have long concerned us. He begins: "In the Evangelical world in which I was raised, 'Mormon Christianity' would have been treated as an oxymoron. The Latter-day Saints were a devious cult who spoke like Christians but were intentionally hiding the fact that they meant something very different.

"This harsh appraisal is still typical of much of the 'counter-cult' movement, but it is no longer the generally accepted assessment of Mormon life and thought." This last remark strikes us as both wishful thinking, and a lazy attempt to mislead his readers. What support does Mouw offer for the "generally accepted" picture he paints? None; instead, he justifies his claim by arguing: "the 'cult' image of the LDS doesn't fit today's realities. Brigham Young University is a world-class academic institution. Mormon authors write best-selling books. With over half of the 15 million Latter-day Saints living outside the United States, Mormonism has become an important global religious movement." None of these facts exonerates the movement theologically.

In fairness, Mouw hasn't given the LDS church an entirely clean bill of doctrinal health. He reminds us that "Like human beings, the members of the Godhead, Mormonism teaches, have physical bodies. ...

"Mormonism's denial of the unbridgeable ontological gap between God and humankind is deeply troublesome." However, Mouw then makes a deeply troublesome leap of his own by naïvely accepting the obfuscation of the LDS leadership at its highest levels: "There is no good reason ... to doubt that the late LDS president Gordon Hinckley was speaking candidly when he was asked in 1997 by Time magazine <www.ow.ly/zwoiu> about the idea God the Father had at one time been a human being. Hinckley's response: 'I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse.... I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don't know a lot about it.'" GOOD GRIEF! If Mouw weren't predisposed to dismissing counter-cult scholarship, he would have easily discovered that Hinckley was equivocating on a massive scale. (For a detailed and devastating response, see "Dodging and Dissembling Prophet?" <www.ow.ly/zwoni> )

Mouw continues: "Robert Millet <www.ow.ly/zwoz7>, Mormonism's best-known present-day theologian, when pressed to explain how to reconcile the Mormon denials of the 'omni-' divine attributes with their ways of actually talking about God among themselves, suggests that for Mormons the metaphysical distance between humans and the divine is 'almost infinite.' [2] And it is precisely this move closer to the traditional formulations that encourages us to keep pushing our Mormon friends on these matters. ...

"Stephen Webb will have nothing to do, however, with any effort by traditional Christians to prod Mormons toward more orthodox formulations in their doctrine of God. He does not want them to change. Rather, he thinks that it is the rest of us in the Christian world who should do the changing. Webb is convinced that the 'same species' ontology contains profound insights that the rest of us would do well to incorporate into our own understanding of God with humanity." Mouw reports that Webb objects specifically to his approach in urging the LDS toward evangelicalism. Mouw explains: "I have urged them to do some tasting of Reformation formulations regarding the relationship between faith and works."

Webb also criticizes Mouw's emphasis on the historic role of Nicaea when Mouw objects to "Mormonism's insistence that the Council of Nicaea set the Christian movement on the wrong course by imposing Greek philosophical categories onto the simple faith in Jesus set forth in the New Testament."

In his defense, Mouw lauds a Roman Catholic appreciation of how "the classical creedal formulations about 'being' and 'substance' were not impositions of alien philosophical categories, but the result of a necessary search for words that could capture the sense of Scripture and guard against dangerous misreadings of the biblical text.

"There is much in Webb's discussion that I would want to argue with," writes Mouw, "but I can't help but like is book. He may overdo things in his effort to offer a best-case portrayal of Mormon theology. But given all the worst-case portrayals that we have had in critiques of Mormonism for the past century and and a half, it is good to have an account that goes about as far as one could imagine in the other direction."

Mouw notes that more significant is "Webb's insistence that in seeing God as fully contained within this 'material' realm, Mormonism is onto something big. Indeed, that something is so big that it is inadequate simply to welcome the LDS as a subgroup in the larger Christian world. Mormonism should actually be celebrated, he insists, as 'a complete form of Christianity' for the way it 'presents a unique challenge and a breathtaking opportunity for American Christianity.'

"Webb's enthusiasm for Mormonism has, by his own admission, much to do with his own spiritual journey." Webb had a "fundamentalist" upbringing, and according to his Wikipedia biography <www.ow.ly/zwp29> migrated from the Disciples of Christ to Lutheranism before finally becoming a Roman Catholic. Webb allegedly likes how "Mormonism 'combines elements of Protestantism and Catholicism' while being more than just the sum of the two."

Webb's "exhorting us to take seriously Mormonism's 'same species' metaphysics of the divine" is seen by Mouw as so liberal that it goes from seeming "to be straight out of Spinoza" to resembling "slight variations on recent process theology."

Last, Mouw notes Webb's claim that "if he 'had to choose between [Joseph] Smith and [John] Calvin, [he] would unhesitatingly choose Smith.' The dialogue partner that Mormonism needs, [Webb] says, is Catholicism. Both theologies are 'capacious and expansive.' He laments that Mormons are often 'too committed to being part of the Protestant world to recognize just how close to Catholicism they come.'" First Things, May '14, pp51-53.

For an earlier expression of Webb's convictions, see "Mormonism Obsessed with Christ" in First Things, Feb '12. <www.ow.ly/zwppl>

In April of 2013 the leadership of Evangelical Ministries to New

Religions (EMNR) produced a public statement calling Mouw to account for his misrepresentations of evangelical responses to Mormonism - see <www.mrm.org/emnr-mouw>.

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints, by Stephen H. Webb (Oxford Univ Prs, 2013, hardcover, 232 pages) <www.ow.ly/yPYhR>

2 - A Different Jesus? The Christ of the Latter-day Saints, by Robert L. Millet (Eerdmans, 2005, paperback, 232 pages) <www.ow.ly/zwpEC>

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