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| =====Should I Get Baptized Methodist?===== | =====Should I Get Baptized Methodist?===== |
| | I am committed to First United Methodist Church of Salt Lake City. I will help, I will give what and where and when I can. But should I join? This essay is to find an answer. |
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| First off, I call them Mormons. I was actively LDS from birth until about 24 years old. I don't refer to myself as "a former member of the LDS church." I am a former Mormon. If it offends anyone, that's on them. | I don't have much of a distinction between sacred and profane. Don't be fooled by the snark and bad jokes. I mean all of this quite sincerely. |
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| I'm going to use the term "Universal tradition" when speaking of the set of mainline Christian churches who recognize each others' baptism. This is based on my own confusion about the terminology. Correction is welcome, as long as you can make it make sense **and** not complicate the text too much. | ====Agency and Decision-Making==== |
| | Before making a choice, consider all the reasons you can. But the reason that should outweigh all others is what the //consequence// of the choice will be. |
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| | > Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. |
| | > |
| | > Rupertus Meldenius (But almost always misattributed to John Wesley) |
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| ====Re: Sacramental Faithfulness==== | ====Re: Sacramental Faithfulness==== |
| The first thing to clear up is a document by E. Brian and Jennifer L. Hare-Diggs (with a study guide by Gayle C. Felton). The title is //Sacramental Faithfulness: Guidelines for Receiving People From The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints//, and it was adopted in 2000 by the General Assembly of the United Methodist Church (UMC). It is therefore authoritative, and as a former Mormon, I must address it. | This document deserves its own treatment, but I'm not spending that many words in an essay that's about so much else. The short answer is this: Sacramental Faithfulness is not a serious document and while I did learn some things, it's basically "garbage in, garbage out." |
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| ===Seriously?=== | ====My Personal Heresies==== |
| To be blunt, this is not a serious document. It was delegated to a low enough level by both the UMC and LDS churches, and the conversation between them was so obviously unproductive, it's hard to imagine it was meant as a serious effort by either church. Neither party came away with a correct or complete understanding of the others' position. I suspect that nobody involved learned anything at all. | > Condemn no man for not thinking as you think. Let every one enjoy the full and free liberty of thinking for himself. Let every man use his own judgment, since every man must give an account of himself to God. Abhor every approach, in any kind or degree, to the spirit of persecution, if you cannot reason nor persuade a man into the truth, never attempt to force a man into it. If love will not compel him to come, leave him to God, the judge of all. |
| | > |
| | > John Wesley |
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| ===LDS Representation=== | ==Unitarianism== |
| Elder Jay Jensen of the Quorum of the Seventy represented the LDS church. It's worth noting that Elder Jensen was honorably released from the Quorum in 2012, and subsequently granted emeritus status. (Per Wikipedia.) By 2000, he did not have authority to speak on issues of Mormon doctrine beyond his own testimony, personal experience, and individual beliefs. | The most important departure I take from Methodist tradition is that I reject the Trinity. I believe that Jesus Christ, His dad, and the Holy Spirit, are separate beings. I don't recognize the Nicene Creed as authoritative; I see it as a failed attempt to create a theology that includes deification. I see it as blasphemy. |
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| His career, both professional and ecclesiastical, was spent almost entirely in the LDS Church Educational System (CES). LDS church members frequently and pejoratively refer to the CES as "the other church." Its theology is so divorced from anything scriptural... I'm just going to stop there. The point of this essay is not to insult the CES (though it is absolutely worthy of insult.) | There's a long tradition of Christian scholars pointing out that the early Christian church was unitarian, complete with supporting scriptures and other documentation. They've been a small minority since Nicea, and I'm comfortable being part of that small minority. |
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| The point is, if this had been a serious attempt to either gain an understanding of the Methodist position, or to answer questions authoritatively, the LDS church should have sent someone with //current// authority to speak, and whose viewpoint was not so corrupted by CES influence. | John Wesley held that the Trinity was an essential part of Christianity and denounced Unitarian belief. I think that if he saw the same things I've seen, he would come around to my point of view. I could be wrong, and that's fine too. Regardless, we agree that Jesus is the Christ, our Savior, and that his Father is the God we worship above any other. We will all find out the whole truth eventually, hug it out, and then we will go back to singing. |
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| ===UMC Writing=== | **There had better be hugs and singing.** |
| From the first paragraph, I see basic errors of grammar (LDS is an adjective, not a noun) and a presupposition that a baptism into the LDS church is not a "Christian baptism." The question is never even asked. The answer is assumed, and later stated explicitly: the LDS church is not a Christian church; Mormons are not Christians. This is absurd. | |
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| The LDS //Articles of Faith// are a concise, simplified overview of LDS theology, written by Joseph Smith himself. Modern times might call it "The LDS FAQ." They are not a creed; they are a simplification. They're not meant to be parsed. Their use should ensure that, as one studies the doctrines of the church, they are unlikely to be led away from the "plain and precious truths" at the core of Mormon theology. | This is my take. It's a lot of words so feel free to skip to the next section. |
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| //Sacramental Faithfulness// makes no reference to any of them, instead digging into obscure and dubious sources to find anything objectionable. | In Old Testament times, substantial confusion arose because Jesus and His dad had to speak out of the same mouth. Even if you read the Old Testament with this in mind, I don't think you can parse out who is saying what, because the authors themselves didn't always parse it out correctly. As soon as Christ is born, however, the ambiguity is removed. Jesus speaks of His father, and the Holy Spirit, in the third person. |
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| The first Article of Faith is simply this: | If you live in the 18th Century, and the universe you inhabit is built from the essences of things and the relationships between those essences, then yes, you can build a Trinity and it works just fine. But it is the 21st Century, and we live in a universe made of objects, which are made of particles, which are made of wobbles in quantum fields. If this is the substrate on which our universe is built, a Trinity is not possible. There is no set of definitions you can choose for the verb "to be" and the adjective "the same" that allow a Trinity to "exist" without rendering existence meaningless. You can't add dimensions and make it possible. You can't plug it into Einstein's field equations and get a valid result. In our universe, The Trinity is inherently self-contradictory. (I could just say "the Aristotelian argument holds" but I'm indulging myself... thanks for hanging in with me.) |
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| - We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. | Jesus Christ has run the entire race: He began as a non-corporeal being, got a body basically the same way we did, lived as a mortal human just like us, died as we all will, got himself resurrected, and is now an exalted being. Jesus' dad, on the other hand, is immutable. He started out exalted and will be in the same state of exaltation through the end of time. The Holy Spirit is non-corporeal and will remain so until the end of this eternity. My explanation does raise questions but they are outside the scope of this essay. (In particular, anyone who asks me about the carnal implications of a physical God fathering a physical Son gets the same answer: I don't want to think about it.) |
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| The mental gymnastics required to say that such a church is not Christian are almost impressive. | ==Universalism== |
| | (**Start reading again here**) |
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| //Sacramental Faithfulness// confuses salvation with exaltation. Salvation means the same thing for all of us: Jesus Christ was the son of God; begotten, not made. He atoned for our sins, was crucified and died, came back to life on the third day, and is now seated at the right hand of God. Exaltation picks up where Salvation leaves off: once we have been saved from death and Hell, and have returned to God's presence, it tells us what we will be doing for the rest of Eternity. | The Atonement, in my belief, is infinite. Grace extends to literally everyone, eventually. This is controversial enough, but also core enough to my beliefs, that I'm not getting into it here. I also won't bring it up in church settings. I only share details with individuals, when moved upon by the spirit. You may ask me about it, **but only if you have an open mind**. |
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| But I digress. | If you just want to tell me I'm wrong, or hear enough of my position to invalidate it, kindly fuck off. |
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| | That doesn't mean I believe in salvation by grace or any such nonsense. Jesus said that calling "Lord, lord" is not enough. He gave commandments for a reason; works clearly matter. Our actions have consequences and those matter. You have to do what you can. |
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| | A thoughtful reading of Matthew 20 will do more to prepare your heart for understanding this than anything I could write. |
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| ===The Nature of God=== | ==Authority== |
| Mormonism is at its core a Unitarian theology. (This has nothing to do with the modern Unitarian Universalist church, which has almost totally secularized itself.) "Unitarian" in this context simply means that Mormons reject the Trinity in favor of a view that, um... makes sense. | Tertullian eventually left the early Christians and joined the Montanists, not because he lost his faith, but because he recognized that there had been an apostasy. This is my understanding, anyway, and is the same reason I left the church of my youth: it claims divine authority, and yet its prophets consistently make wrong predictions and even wrong observations. (What do you call a prophet that's consistently wrong? Hmm...) |
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| If you live in the 18th Century, and the universe you inhabit is built from the essences of things and the relationships between those essences, then yes, you can build a Trinity and it works just fine. But it is the 21st Century, and we live in a universe made of objects made of particles made of quantum wobbles. In such a universe, a Trinity is not possible. There is no set of definitions you can choose for the verb "to be" and the adjective "the same" that allow a Trinity to exist without rendering the rest of existence meaningless. This is my way of saying that the Aristotelian argument against the existence of the Trinity holds. | Forgive me if I've extrapolated past the end of my data set, but the pattern I see in the scriptures is that God calls a prophet to accomplish some specific task; an authority structure forms; and it apostatizes basically as soon as the prophet is gone. (Paul's lamentation about how people twist his words--"what will they say I said after I'm gone"--is endlessly amusing to me. **Citation needed.**) |
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| John Wesley also held that the Trinity was an essential part of Christianity and denounced unitarian belief. That's fine. I think that if he saw the same things I've seen, he would come around to my point of view. But as I'll explain better later, this difference is mostly academic. We will find out the whole truth someday, and then go back to singing. | As far as I can see, there are no institutions with any authentic divine mandate currently on the earth. I see no true prophets. What authority churches have, therefore, is the same authority all institutions have: that to which their members consent. |
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| There had better be singing. | ===Authority to Baptize=== |
| | The whole concept of "having authority to baptize" breaks down if all the churches are apostate. Where did John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus, get his authority? |
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| ===Authority=== | I guess this is still an open question for me. |
| One important difference between LDS and Protestant culture is how differently certain terms are used; Mormons only use the term "sacrament" in the singular, in reference to the ritual performed (almost) every Sunday. It closely resembles the Holy Communion, with differences large and small, none of which I will get into here. | |
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| What | (As I'm writing this, I feel my blood sugar dropping... I'll call it a draft and be back later.) |
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| As far as I know, the LDS church has always maintained the position that it alone has the authority to administer sacred ordinances. | * Baptism is a fundamentally different thing in Methodism vs. Mormonism. Rejecting the baptism of the other tradition is pointless. We are better served by appreciating them both for what they are. Mormons should do their own baptism as should Methodists. One does not invalidate the other, nor are they in conflict. The merely accomplish different things. (And a few same things.) |
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| * The Nicene Creed must not come before the words of Christ Himself | |
| * Arbitration of who counts as "Christian" is assumed, not real | |
| * Neither tradition actually has authority to baptize | |
| * Baptism is a fundamentally different thing in each tradition. Rejecting the baptism of the other tradition is pointless. We are better served by appreciating them both. Mormons should do their own baptism as should Methodists. One does not invalidate the other, nor are they in conflict. The merely accomplish different things. (And a few same things.) | |
| * Does being Unitarian exclude me? | * Does being Unitarian exclude me? |
| * Does being Universalist exclude me? | * Does being Universalist exclude me? |
| | * Does my acceptance of other scriptures exclude me? |
