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.