A Different Jesus, Part 3: Salvation and the Nature of God

 

Stained glass window of Jesus' suffering in Gethsemane from the Cedar City, Utah Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Because of the belief in salvation by grace alone, Latter Day Saints have often been accused of “working their way to Heaven” by Protestants. Often we respond by saying that we believe in the Atonement and that we don’t believe our works alone can give us salvation. This doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory answer for some Protestants. Here is what I think (PERSONAL OPINION WARNING! THE FOLLOWING ARE MY OWN HYPOTHESES! TAKE THEM HOW YOU WILL! I AM NOT AN AUTHORITY) is going on. I think that some Protestants, especially Evangelical Christians, might feel like Latter Day Saints are devaluing or diminishing the Atonement and aggrandizing ourselves by saying that works are necessary for salvation (though that could lead into a discussion about salvation vs. exaltation, that’s another discussion). I remember when I was around eight years old seeing a pamphlet that was distributed by a small Bible Baptist church in my hometown in Utah. It showed a bloody picture of Jesus dying on the cross with the title, “All this, I did for thee”. I was a little disturbed by the picture and very puzzled by the title. Did they think that we didn’t know that Jesus died on the cross for our sins? What were they trying to accomplish by telling us something we already believe in? As I have learned more about Protestant theology and Evangelical Christian beliefs and culture, I think I understand better what they might have been thinking. They might feel that when we say that people need to receive ordinances and follow the commandments that we are taking credit for the most painful and important events in all of human history. By saying we contribute to our own salvation— let alone believing that we could possibly become like God— we are trying to exalt ourselves like Satan. And once you start connecting people to being like Satan, it becomes very easy to start justifying all kinds of behavior, like protesting with signs in front of houses of worship, distributing pamphlets with false information, hosting events at your church to show movies with false information, and even crashing a car into a worship service and opening fire on the congregation. If Latter Day Saints were to treat Evangelical Christians the way many of them have treated us, they would be outraged, and rightfully so. Because these kinds of actions don’t reflect Christ’s teachings.

Another thing that I think might possibly feel offensive to some Protestants is that sola fide demands that a person accept Jesus’s grace in this life or suffer eternal conscious torment (Roach Lees, 2022). That means that this life is the only time anyone can reach salvation and that when we go about doing missionary work and people join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, some Protestants might possibly feel that we are preventing these people from accepting grace and thereby consigning them to eternal conscious torment.

The concept of salvation by faith alone though is extremely problematic in many practical respects though, and I don’t think that Protestants do a good enough job of adequately addressing these issues. For many Protestants and especially Evangelicals, being saved means saying the Sinner’s Prayer in which you accept Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior (Roach Lees, 2022). The need for this single act is dramatized in the movie God’s Not Dead when the atheist professor is hit by a car and in his last moments of life accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior and is saved. But there are so many situations where this model of salvation doesn’t seem to work or at least be fair. While Protestants believe in doing good works (though not for salvation), the logic of being saved from saying a prayer once seems to mean (at least on its face) that as long as a person has said the Sinner’s Prayer that they could willfully sin and still be saved or that one could simply live life how she or pleases and then say the Sinner’s Prayer on their deathbed and be saved. It doesn’t really provide answers for the billions of people who have lived without hearing about Jesus through no fault of their own. And it doesn’t provide an answer about very young children who die before being able to even talk and say any prayer. It also goes against several passages in the Bible James 2:14, James 2:17, James 2:20, James 2:22, and 1 Corinthians 3. And from an Orthodox Church there is this statement:

“Moreover, both churches reject many of the same novel Protestant doctrines like salvation through Faith Alone (because faith without charity and words is dead; James 2:14-26), and Sola Scriptura, which denies the authority of the Church, sacred Tradition and the consensus of the Church Fathers” (10 Differences Between Orthodox and Catholic Churches).

In other words, the Protestants are in a bit of a contradiction with regards to the Nicene Creed. On the one hand, they take the position that the Nicene Creed is foundational to being a Christian and the authority of the early Christian fathers to frame the Nicene Creed as doctrine doesn't seem to be in question by Protestants. On the other hand, some Protestant sects, don't support baptism as necessary for salvation, though the Nicene Creed specifically states that it is a rite for the forgiveness of sins and reject the idea that any other authority than the Bible is necessary-- the very kind of authority other than the Bible that allowed the Creeds to be framed in the first place.. 

Latter Day Saints have a very different conception of God and our relationship to Him than other Christian religions. Since we believe that God is the literal Father of our Spirits, we regard our relationship to Him in a different way than if He were a being of a completely different substance that we could never be like. Just like we want to see our own children mature and become responsible and have their own jobs, houses and families, we believe that God wants the same for us in an eternal and divine sense. If our children go onto be good, mature adults with their own households and families, that doesn’t diminish us as parents, in fact it reflects well on us. When our children grow in wisdom and knowledge and virtue, it’s a glory to us. What kind of parent wants their child to be forever subservient to them and never progress to adulthood? It’s an important question to ask ourselves when we consider the nature of God.

A Different Jesus, Part 2: The Nicene Creed

 

First Council of Nicaea by Theophanes Strelitzas

Latter Day Saints reject the concept of creatio ex nihilo, the idea that the universe was created from nothing, instead embracing a creatio ex materia, that the universe was organized from existing materials, because creatio ex nihilo is not found in the Bible and it also doesn’t fit with revelation given to Joseph Smith. (PERSONAL OPINION WARNING! THE FOLLOWING ARE MY OWN HYPOTHESES! TAKE THEM HOW YOU WILL! I AM NOT AN AUTHORITY)  I think, perhaps, the reason that our belief in creatio ex nihilo offends other Christian denominations is that they feel that we are diminishing God’s greatness by saying that anything could have existed before Him or that there could be any other Beings like Him and that we might possibly become like Him ourselves. I think this might also be the reason that Muslims don’t accept Jesus as the Savior because they feel that it would diminish God. I remember pondering on this one day in a GNC parking lot not long after my husband and I got married. He asked me what I was thinking about because I looked lost in thought and I explained the aforementioned musings to him. He had a very good response: “God is God. There is nothing we mortals can do that would diminish Him.” And he made a very good point. I remember hearing this interpretation of Moses and the burning bush. When Jehovah appeared to Moses and said “I AM that I AM”, He meant that He is eternal. He created us, not the other way around. What we say or think about Him does not change His nature because He exists independent of our belief. We may choose to believe in Him or not or we may choose to believe He has a body or not, we can choose to believe any number of things about Him or not believe things, but none of that changes His nature. This is why He is called Unchangeable.

Moving on, consubstantiality refers to the concept that God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are of the same divine substance and are one God, whole and entire. Of course, Latter Day Saints do not hold this view and believe the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to be separate beings who are one on purpose— and that it might be possible for humans to one day become Gods themselves. The Trinity is not something Jesus taught in the Bible, which is why Latter Day Saints can’t accept it as doctrine. It comes from the Nicene Creed. It seems to have been a way to find some kind of compromise about questions of whether the Son was subject to the Father— the question that really kicked off the Council of Nicea. 

The concept of the Trinity is a little complicated. It’s tricky to understand for me, even after looking up several sources on the subject. I’m an amateur at this though, so my abilities are more limited. Former Evangelical Christian and Anglican pastor Jennifer Roach Lees in her FAIR Come Follow Me series On Latter Day Saint and Evangelical Christians and the New Testament from 2022 walked through the concept of the Trinity and consubstantiality and said according to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father and the Son are of the same substance and that substance is different from humans and isn’t something humans could ever become. But this issue of consubstantiality is where especially many Evangelical Christians start to feel like Latter Day Saints are not understanding who Jesus really is. Lees (2022) said that to Evangelical Christians, it is important that you “get Jesus right” in order to be saved. So if we as Latter Day Saints don’t “get Jesus right” (have the proper understanding of His divine nature), it doesn’t matter how much we talk, preach about or rejoice in Christ, we can’t be Christians. 

And that takes us into salvation. Doctrinally, Latter Day Saints have more in common with Catholics when it comes to salvation (Harline, 2017). Like Catholics, we believe that works are necessary and that one can’t receive God’s saving grace without living a life in accordance with His commandments. Protestants have a very different view. They believe in sola fide, that salvation comes by grace alone and that there is nothing humans can do that could ever contribute to their own salvation other than to have faith in Jesus Christ and His saving power. Like the doctrine of the Trinity, this is also not something Jesus taught in the Bible. It comes from Martin Luther. It seems like Martin Luther struggled with scrupulosity (Harline, 2017)— a type of obsessive compulsive disorder that focuses on religious or moral obsessions with anxiety, fear or guilt about violating religious or moral beliefs (International OCD Foundation, 2026). Luther felt a great deal of anxiety because he felt that there was no way a person could ever receive an assurance that he had done enough good works to receive God’s grace. And so he concluded that the only thing a person had to do is have faith that Jesus would save him (Harline, 2017). Growing out of this was a belief that the only thing you had to do to receive grace was to say the Sinners Prayer and affirm that you accept Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior (Lees, 2022). Much Protestant doctrine ascribes to a belief in eternal conscious torment for those who do not say the Sinner’s Prayer, no matter how many good works they did during life. Of course, this wasn’t something Jesus or His apostles taught, which is why Latter Day Saints don’t accept sola fide. 

There is a certain way of logic that, in my opinion (PERSONAL OPINION ALERT), forms the basis of many Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant doctrines and it is inherently at odds with Latter Day Saint theology. It starts from a conclusion— that God is all powerful and mighty to save— and then works from there to deduce what the character of God and the nature of salvation must be. If God is all powerful and mighty to save, then nothing could have existed without Him. If God is all powerful and mighty to save, then there is nothing we can do to procure salvation, etc. Many tenants of the Nicene Creed were also the product of trying to find an agreement about the competing ideas circulating about the nature of God in the 4th century, such as the relationship between the Father and the Son. Instead of having to decide whether or not the Son was subject to the Father, it seems like the Council agreed on a compromise that They were consubstantial. (Lincoln Blumell said in his 2019 interview on Latter Day Saint Perspectives podcast that the higher concern, particularly from Emperor Constantine at the time, was on finding an agreement on Christian doctrine, rather than what was true.) Latter Day Saints approach theology differently. From its beginnings in the Sacred Grove, Latter Day Saint theology has been concerned with what God has revealed and will reveal about Himself, through the scriptures and through prophets, rather than trying to figure out God’s nature through human ideas and philosophies.

A Different Jesus, Part 1: The Beginnings of Christianity

 It was a series of strange and unexpected circumstances that led me to answering a question about the doctrine of the Trinity one Sunday. My ward’s building had been vandalized and our meetings were cancelled while the meetinghouse was cleaned up. The bishopric suggested going to the ward that meets at the stake center, half an hour from where I live. When I got to Relief Society, a male investigator who identified as a woman walked into Relief Society and sat down a few seats away from me. The teacher split us into groups to discuss a question for the lesson and the male investigator was in my group. At one point, he suddenly asked, “Do Mormons believe in the Trinity?” I waited a second to see if anyone else wanted to answer him, but there was just an awkward silence. So I responded, “We don’t accept the concept of a Trinity because it’s not biblically based and Jesus never taught it.” He was satisfied with that answer and the lesson continued on. I suppose by some unexpected plan, I was in the right place at the right time to answer a question that might have otherwise gone unanswered.

As Latter Day Saints we’re not obligated to have a deep knowledge of other Christian faiths’ beliefs and doctrines. Our Sunday school and other meetings should be devoted to teaching our own doctrines so we can become better converted to the gospel ourselves. However, having a basic (or even detailed) understanding of what our Christian brothers and sisters from other faiths believe can help us understand them better and can help them understand us better. Especially since the Michigan church shooting, I think that being able to explain why we as Latter Day Saints don’t accept some of the foundational teachings of Catholicism, Protestant denominations, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith. It can also help strengthen our own testimonies as well. 

“You believe in a different Jesus”

This statement is probably very puzzling for many Latter Day Saints. Which Jesus do they think we believe in? Isn’t there only one Jesus in the Bible who is the Son of God and atoned for our sins and rose from the dead? Latter Day Saints might find it even more puzzling if a Protestant says something like “Mormons need to accept the true, biblical Jesus”. If you’re a Latter Day Saint and someone says this to you, you might be thinking, “We believe what the Bible says about Jesus!” Without understanding what other Christians mean by “a different Jesus” or a “true, biblical Jesus”, it can be very difficult to reach across the aisle and have productive conversations with our brothers and sisters of other Christian faiths. So what do other Christians mean by “a different Jesus”? 

When other Christians say “You Mormons believe in a different Jesus”, they don’t mean a different person, but rather they seem to feel that we are misunderstanding Jesus Christ’s divinity or what He accomplished through the suffering in the final hours of His mortal life and that their beliefs are the original form of Christianity dating back from the early Christian church in the time of the Apostles.

 

So what did early Christians believe? This is an interesting question because most people probably think ancient Christians’ beliefs are pretty self-evident. “Just read the Bible! That tells you what ancient Christians believe!” Or someone with a little more theological background

might say that ancient Christians believed in the creeds. But ancient Christians didn’t have the Bible and they didn’t have the Creeds. This is where the “Who is a Christian?” question gets tricky if your definition depends on the Bible (particularly the King James Bible) or the Creeds.

Christianity’s Earliest Beginnings

Catholics, Orthodox Christian and Protestants believe in a tenant called the Nicene Creed which was created by a council of Nicea in the 4th century— 300 years after the Ascension and about 200 years after several Christian congregations had significant conflicts about authority. As described in an early Christian letter called 1 Clement from somewhere between 75 and 90 CE, the congregation in Corinth that earlier had been full of faithful followers of Christ’s gospel had now forced out their priesthood leaders and replaced them with new ones of their own choosing. They weren’t alone in doing this. 3 John 1:9-10 says that a man named Diotrephes who had once been a member of a congregation of believers and had begun spreading malicious lies about the priesthood leaders and seems to have cast them out of the congregation: 

I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.

Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church.

In his epistles John repeatedly warns against antichrists (people teaching apostasy) among the early Christian congregations. After the epistle of Clement, conflict, opposition to ordained authority within the early Christian church continued. The epistles of Ignatius repeatedly said to be unified with bishops. In other epistles, the congregations at Magnesia and Philadelphia were admonished for taking on Jewish customs. The Trallians and Smyrnans started ascribing to a belief that Jesus wasn’t human. Polycarp addressed the same issue with the Philippians.

In his epistle, Papias said Christians should believe in a literal Millennium and resurrection despite opposition. Furthermore, changes to the rites of Christianity were creeping in around 100 AD (end of first century to beginning of 2nd century). The Didache, an early Christian church handbook states that baptism by sprinkling of water is acceptable if a large enough amount of water isn’t at hand, though it still sets forth baptism by immersion as the first option. (Ehrman, 2003). So doctrinal issues were a problem from almost the very beginning with Christianity. 

I remember always hearing that the early Christian church had fallen away because the apostles had been martyred and the priesthood was lost when they were killed, but looking at the early Christian epistles I think the greatest threats were coming from members falling away and casting out their ordained leadership to replace them with more popular individuals who were teaching ideas that were more popular. Catholics often point to a line of continuous authority as the reason why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints can’t have God’s authority (or Protestant denominations for the matter), but it is indisputable though that by the end of the 2nd century AD, a number of doctrinal controversies had arisen among the early Christian congregations and I think that claiming a line of unbroken authority from this time period is questionable. And I’m not alone in my opinion either. Orthodox Christians point out that the basis of the Catholic Church’s line of authority is whoever was bishop of Rome, starting with Peter, but the Bible never states that to be the case (“10 Differences Between Orthodox and Catholic Churches”).

The conflicts didn’t stop in the 2nd century and competing ideas about Christ’s divinity, the relationship between the Father and the Son, the Second Coming and a host of other doctrinal controversies continued to circulate. And that’s where the Council of Nicea comes in. Arias, an early Christian, preached a sermon that espoused the idea that Jesus was subservient to God the Father— something many other Christian bishops disagreed with — and this seems to have been something like a straw that broke the camel’s back. In 325 A.D. two hundred Christian bishops gathered in Nicea (in modern day Turkey) to decide what Christians would believe. They deliberated and decided on a set of beliefs about the Godhead that would define Christianity for the next 1,500 years. The Nicene Creed states that God the Father and the Son are of the same substance and that nothing could have existed before God (creatio ex nihilo). This is the origin of the doctrine of the Trinity, that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are one essence but three Persons. The creed also stated that anyone who did not ascribe to the beliefs decided upon in the Council of Nicea would not be accepted as a Christian. Arius and other Christian like Secundus and Theonas refused to adhere to the Nicene Creed and were excommunicated and their written works burned. 

Most of the tenets of the Nicene Creed are things that Latter Day Saints agree with: we worship one God the Father— not a pantheon of gods; God created the universe through His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ; Christ was human, conceived through the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; He came to work out our salvation; He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried, rose on the third day, ascended to Heaven, sits on the Right Hand of the Father and will return to Earth one day; He will judge the living and dead and His Kingdom will be eternal; the Holy Spirit is from God and that the prophets have spoken through the Holy Ghost; the dead will be resurrected and there is a life after death. With so much in common with Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants, you might be wondering what about our faith could possibly be so divisive and contentious to preclude us as Christians? When we agree on so much, what could possibly prompt some people to think it’s appropriate to protest in front of our houses of worship, distribute pamphlets with false information about our faith, and even crash into one of our meetinghouses and shoot a congregation of worshipping Latter Day Saints because we are supposedly “the antichrist”? The answer to those questions starts with some small and, at first glance insignificant, parts of the Nicene Creed, one is creatio ex nihilo and the other is the doctrine of consubstantiality.