I am not sure that this sort of definition is useful. What is the meaning of a word that means what ever the speaker chooses. How does the word convey meaning? A word without agreed upon meaning is hardly a word at all.
So are you saying that Mormons believe that Jesus stayed on earth after he rose to Heaven?
Luke 24:51 says, "While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into Heaven. Acts 1:9 says, “After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.”
I believe that the Bible is literal truth. Saying that, I believe that Jesus was caught up into Heaven, where I can’t wait to see him.
What’s the thing about Thomas’ preaching to India’s Indians?
Love, Phil
dropzone is not giving an accurate account of Mormon belief.
Here’s a free question mark for you: ?
Nobody ever said that the word means whatever the speaker chooses. What Der Trihs said was that anyone who considers himself Christian–ie, tell themselves that they believe in Jesus as the savior–is a Christian, and that no individual Christian has the authority to determine who else is or isn’t a Christian.
All three of these comments merit the same basic response: there only is one Christian church, as per the Apostle’s Creed (among other sources.) The majority of Christians believe in one community that needs reconciliation or, depending on individual denominations, are already reconciled. The notion of all of us being one group (one I’m pretty heavily into, being a convert to Anglicanism, I might add) does, however, cause some problems, in that the group must have boundaries, or else we end up acting communally in ways that we shouldn’t. Sure, Zoe, we can’t judge people, but Paul gives us the explicit instructions to decide who is in the church [citation needed, can do it tomorrow]. Naturally this goal of reconciliation brings discord in practice – the RCC thinks of Protestants as Christians but their church as invalid, for example – but we’re working on it. Christians just have to do the best they can and try to avoid killing each other in the process.
Of course, one could simply refer to ostensible Christians with incompatible beliefs as “heretics”, but I think that’s probably not a good solution. :eek: Regardless, FriarTed and a couple others upthread have listed a few fairly compelling reasons to consider Mormons incompatible with the rest of the Christian Church, and those arguments must be addressed on their own terms.
What shameless bigotry. Exactly what kind of kick do you get out of anointing yourself the official arbiter of who does and doesn’t get to be Christian? It’s not like you have to bake a cake for the Mormons every Sunday if you concede that they believe in Jesus as the Christ and savior and are therefore Christian.
In light of your description of Christianity as “bullshit”, an accusation of bigotry in response to the categorization of two set of beliefs as “incompatible” is amusing, to put it mildly.
ETA: If you have a response to that comment, it likely belongs in the Pit.
It doesn’t, except in the statistical sense ( ie, “what do the majority of people calling themselves Christian believe about something” ). Calling yourself a Christian or that you have Christian values says pretty much nothing about you personally; if an organization calls itself Christian that tells you little or nothing about it specifically. Name an issue, and there will be Christians and Christian organizations on both sides of it.
Nope. I can attack your position without attacking you, the position holder. I would get no kick from attacking you, anyway; I find you an intelligent and able debater, and have no dog in this fight anyway.
Once again, you are conflating my attack on positions with an imaginary attack on people. I have no reason to attack Christians as a whole, finding them to be, on the whole, no better or worse than any other similarly massive group of people grouped by any other metric. Disbelief in the validity and viability of a group’s position(s) is the result of a difference in opinion, not bigotry.
My issue, anyway, is not with the categorization of any two sets of beliefs as “incompatible”, although such vague wording leads me to wonder what, exactly, that entails. What I take issue with is the vigor with which certain (most?) Christian sects attempt to define “Christian” in a loaded way which specifically excludes groups whose dogma they don’t like. I contend that the only meaningful definition of “Christian” is “believing in Jesus as the Christ and savior”. This refusal to let Mormons (or whoever) play betrays a provincialism which fails to recognize that all Christian sects (yes, including Mormonism, Catholicism and Messianic Judaism) are more alike than different. Compare, say, Episcopalianism, Lutheranism, Mormonism and Hinduism and then try to tell me with a straight face that the Salt Lake contingent doesn’t start to look pretty Christian.
The other problem with this sort of exclusionary grouping is that it implies that belief in the Christian godhead is only valid when attached to a sect. That would mean that nobody is allowed to define their own personal relationship with Jesus/God. Let’s say Sam is an Anglican, Jane is a Lutheran, and Todd is a devout believer who reads the Bible daily and has his own mainstream belief system which he nevertheless does not feel belongs to any particular Christian sect. We’ll also say that Todd attends his nearest local church every Sunday out of a sense of duty to God, even though he does not necessarily agree with the whole of that church’s sectarian belief system. Would Sam consider Jane a True Christian, and if so, why not Todd? If Christian belief systems differing from one’s own are acceptable, why are they only acceptable when vetted by a substantially massive number of followers?
ETA: My point is that “Christian” is an adjective, not an exclusive club whose membership policy is determined by any one member.
To answer the OP, I don’t think they can be reconciled. The only way I could think of would be for other Christian denominations to accept the revelation told about in the Book of Mormon, and I don’t see that happening.
As far as whether the LDS is right in calling themselves “Christian,” I think is their call to make. But, on the other hand, I don’t see why it’s wrong for other denominations to not consider them Christians if the doctrine or theology is different enough.
What Chief Pedant says here is true, but ony partially:
While it is true that the various Christian denominations differ on various points of doctrine, there is a core doctrine that more or less “defines” what is a Christian. Probably one of the most important is that of the Trinity. The RCC, for example, accepts baptism from all Christian churches that hold this doctrine the same way they do. They consider the LDS teaching on it to be different enough that they can’t accept their baptism as a valid one. It’s not so much a “nyah nyah, you can’t join our club” so much as it is an acknowledgement that the RCC has held a particular doctrine for 2000 years, and the LDS doesn’t hold it the same way (and, of course, as dangermom points out, the LDS feels the same way about baptism…they don’t hold other denominations’ rite as valid, either). But I think that there is more of a tie-in between the validity of baptism and considering whether a person is Christian or not than I think she does. If baptism is what makes you a Christian, and you don’t consider anyone else’s baptism valid, how can all these other not-really-baptized people be Christians?
So a Christian is someone that believes in Jesus as the savior? That is a pretty specific definition. A lot more specific than a Christian is anybody that says they are a Christian.
Nor do we take it to be a ‘nyah, nyah’ thing as you put it. 
I think any Mormon would be confused if any other denomination did accept an LDS baptism–that would be very very weird. To us, that would be an acknowledgement that the LDS are correct in saying that they’re the only ones with direct authority from God–in which case, why aren’t they Mormons? The whole idea of agreeing to consider a baptism valid despite disagreement on basic theology is very strange to us. (Indeed I was very confused to learn here on the Dope that the RCC accepts a bunch of other baptisms. Why in the world would they do that?)
I guess I wouldn’t say that baptism is what makes you a Christian (and I suspect that many Protestant denominations would agree, though we would differ on the details). For Mormons, baptism does some very specific things:
–You enter into a covenant with Jesus Christ, promising to take his name, remember him, and keep his commandments
–You are washed clean of sin (this is renewed at communion)
Then the baptism must be sealed by a laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, which also incidentally makes you an official member of the LDS Church. (Young children aren’t members!)
All this is invalid, however, if the heart isn’t there. A physical ordinance doesn’t mean anything without the person’s faith, so a baptism is a combination of a physical act, a person’s faith, and God’s seal on the ordinance. Otherwise it’s just words and water.
You can be a Christian without that. From the LDS POV, a proper baptism is necessary, but it doesn’t have to precede faith or following Christ to the best of one’s ability. There are millions of good Christians who believe in Christ and do their best to follow him. I don’t have to agree on every detail of theology to acknowledge that there are lots of people that I have a lot in common with, and that we can work together to accomplish something.
The LDS 4th Article of Faith (closest thing we’ve got to a creed) states that “The first principles and ordinances of the gospel are: first, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, repentance; third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and fourth, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.” I think we would say that if you’ve got the first two, you’re a Christian, even if you haven’t got the second two yet.
The Catholic Church says that any baptism is valid so long as it is done:
- With water, either by immersion, the pouring of water, or sprinkling (baptism by sprinkling is unlawful, but it’s still valid)
- In the name of the Trinity
and - With the intent to baptise
I figured that was the case! 
That’s a good question. I think they do it because to the RCC, baptism doesn’t make you a Catholic, it makes you a Christian. As I said, the RCC has a broader definition of “Christian” than just those who belong to the RCC. They consider all religions who believe in a few certain points of doctrine to be Christian religions. The key to having a Christian baptism is that it was done in the name of the Trinity (with the same theological understanding of the Trinity as the RCC holds), and that’s all. If it was, then it’s valid. The RCC believes in one baptism, and if you had a valid one, then that’s all you need (“ONE baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” as it says in the Nicene Creed). There’s another sacrament that actually makes you a Catholic, which is called Confirmation.
I thnk you are right that different denominations disagree on what baptism means exactly, and how it is done. Some denominations require baptism to be done as an adult, for instance. But the difference there is that some believe that there has to be a knowlege and understanding by the baptized person…but I don’t think their theology of what happens to you spiritually is different (someone correct me if I’m wrong). In the Catholic view, the effects of baptism are essentially to cleanse one of original sin, and to become part of Christ and His church.
Confirmation doesn’t make you a Catholic, in the Catholic Church.
I would like to thank you for this lucid, intelligent, well thought-out contribution to this thread. I’m sure you will convince many of your position.
I didn’t explain that right, at all. What I meant was that in the RCC, we don’t wait until a person is at the age of reason to baptize, but we do have another sacrament that allows a person to “choose” to continue to be a Christian, once they are old enough to know what that means. I suppose it also gives you a chance to decide if you are going to be Catholic, as opposed to some other denomination, although I don’t think that’s the point of the sacrament.
Typically, though, one recieves Communion before the age at which one is confirmed, and it’d be hard to argue that a person who’s receiving the Eucharist in a Catholic church is not Catholic. When an adult converts from another sect to Catholicism, Confirmation is typically part of the process, but it’s not really about conferring Catholicism on the subject.
Quoth dangermom:
Basically, Catholics don’t view baptism as being the most important of the Sacraments: the Eucharist is. The few sects which hold the same theological beliefs as us concerning the Eucharist are considered to be almost the same as us, despite any other theological differences.
Confirmation doesn’t do that either. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, anyone who’s had a valid baptism is a Christian, and most people who haven’t, are not (There’s an exception made both for those people who deisre baptism but die before they receive it (“Baptism of desire”), and for those people who were never baptized, but were martyred for the faith (“Baptism of blood”)
In the United States, that’s true now, but that’s a fairly recent development, and still not true universally. Traditionally (and still in most places), people who were baptized as infants were confirmed around the age of 7, and started receiving Communion soon after.
This is another area where Mormons don’t quite get everyone else–the Trinity. We baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost–but we’re not Trinitarians as in the Nicene Creed. We don’t accept any creeds or councils. And I can quite see why the RCC would regard that as a problem, sort of, but I don’t get why Protestants who insist on sola scriptura do. We believe in the Bible, but we don’t think the Bible has much to say on the Trinity question (indeed, it seems totally uninterested in the exact composition of the Godhead). I think that question might be for another post.
Yep. And some denominations don’t baptize at all, or consider it optional. So would the RCC not consider those folks to be Christian? Because I would, because to me faith in Christ is the deciding factor. (And most of them would consider me to be not Christian at all, at which point my brain starts to hurt.)
Yes, this is a point of difference indeed. Mormons don’t believe in original sin and consider babies and young children to be innocent and alive in Christ (that is, saved) until such time as they become old enough to be accountable for their actions–you can’t sin if you don’t have knowledge. We really don’t approve of infant baptism. And I just had a long discussion on another MB in which Protestants argued quite a lot about whether children could be sinful or not, so there’s a lot of difference there–even though AFAIK we’ll mostly all agree that baptism washes one clean of sin. (Even so a bunch of people will say that baptism is a dead work and unnecessary.)