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“Transparently Loopy”

Not even Sullivan of the low, broad Church of Doubt who sings the praises of the Gnostic “Gospels” can take Mormonism seriously as a kind of Christianity.  Granted, I wouldn’t take the judgements of the theologically illiterate too seriously, but it must mean something that even the wobbliest and least doctrinaire of Christians cannot bring himself to accept […]

Not even Sullivan of the low, broad Church of Doubt who sings the praises of the Gnostic “Gospels” can take Mormonism seriously as a kind of Christianity.  Granted, I wouldn’t take the judgements of the theologically illiterate too seriously, but it must mean something that even the wobbliest and least doctrinaire of Christians cannot bring himself to accept the Mormon claims to being Christian. 

He writes this in response to a reader (a self-described “atheist ex-Mormon”), who notes that one reason why Christians deny that Mormons are Christians is that Mormons have a “different view of the Trinity.”  That’s putting it rather mildly.  That’s like saying Areios, Eunomios (no relation to Eunomia!) and Sabellius had “different” views of the Trinity, when by definition their doctrines compelled them to reject anything resembling the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as Nicenes and later Orthodox Christians have understood it.  (This is why I would object to referring to the Arian controversy as a Trinitarian controversy, since one party to the controversy was incapable of acknowledging that the Trinity existed in the first place, to say nothing of how the Persons of the Trinity related to one another.)  So Mormons do not have a “different view” of the Trinity, but do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity itself and so do not confess One God in Trinity as Christians around the world have done for ages.  That is actually not a small thing, or at least it isn’t a small thing to serious Christians.  It would be much better, at least for the clarity of the argument, if Mormons were willing to defend their theology as it is and state clearly why they believe it to be true rather than play this game of “can’t we all just get along?”

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