Mormon beliefs attacked as "non-Christian" are actually more Christian than modern Protestantism
 First Things is a monthly journal, published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, concerned with the interaction of religion with public discourse.  This is a letter to the editor I recently sent. 

The June/July issue of First Things had a kind of synchronicity for Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). First, N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, responded to Richard John Neuhaus’ comments on his new book, Surprised by Hope, which had included a criticism that its “concrete eschatological expectation” of a physical resurrection on a perfected Earth was “more suggestive of Joseph Smith than St. Paul”, by noting that the Mormons were simply taking seriously the relevant passages in the New Testament at the very time that “the Western Protestant church . . . was eliminating the ancient concrete eschatological expectation.”  

 

Then writer Joseph Stanford, commenting on Robert Louis Wilken’s discussion of Christological interpretation of the Old Testament, noted that the Book of Mormon is replete with the affirmation that the Old Testament prophets actually foresaw Christ.

 

Finally, RJN takes note that the long-held Orthodox doctrine of theosis or deification—paraphrasing Irenaeus, “God became man so that man . . . might become God”, is “getting serious attention from evangelical Protestant theologians” as evidenced by the new book Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions.  “And yes” he says, “Mormons also have what appears to be a version of the idea.”  

 

All three of these ideas—the ultimate possession of the transformed earth by the physically resurrected saints, the explicit prophecies about Christ by pre-Christian prophets, and the deification of man as the ultimate goal of salvation through Christ—are ideas for which Mormons are still roundly criticized as “not Christian” because they are distinct from the teachings of most Protestant denominations.  Yet, as is evident from the pages of First Things, these very “Mormon” ideas are ones with a long Christian pedigree, dating back to the original saints of the New Testament period, a fact which is noted by scholars like Wright, Wilken, and the contributors to the book edited by Christensen and Wittung.  

 

RJN and others writing in the pages of First Things have taken up the question “Are Mormons Christian?” a question which was renewed with the past candidacy of Mitt Romney for the presidency.  Since these three ideas are now identified as within the spectrum of legitimate Christian belief, a Mormon can hope that the next time the question is raised in these pages, these three beliefs held by the Latter-day Saints will be moved from the minus side to the plus side of the answer.