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.