God?????s grace in Mormonism question

[_msnobody]

I can’t find the thread where I was going to post this; a thread about word counts in church leadership talks where the word grace was one of the words with an increasing word count.

Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing from persons who have been church members elaborate on how Latter-day Saints understand God’s grace. I’ve understood it to be pretty much the opposite of what I was taught being raised in a non-LDS church, which is God’s grace is his unmerited favor.

Recently, as I’ve talked to a couple of people who are formerLDSs, and have trusted in Christ alone, their faces light up and the first thing out of their mouth was profound thankfulness for God’s grace. This has got me thinking that maybe I have somewhat taken this for granted myself.

With that being said, is God’s grace in LDS theology different from enabling power to merit Heavenly Father’s favor by one’s behavior or do I understand it incorrectly?

[_Gadianton]

msnobody,

It's not that you don't understand the Mormon position, but I wonder if you understand the Christian position. The two positions at the end of the day aren't all that different.

Yes, in Mormonism, works are said to demonstrate faith, and it's the faith+works formula, that born agains despise, that triggers grace, for Mormons.

Christians respond, isn't 'earning grace' a contradiction in terms? Shouldn't grace be independent of what the person does? I think there's a real point here. But read on.

I like the way Ed Decker put it, actually. He said, "Mormons work to get saved, while Christians work because they are saved." I think that's a pretty clever summary. But although it sounds great on paper, there's just one problem. People are idiots. You can talk until the cows come home about saying the salvation prayer as a woeful sinner, and then God steps in and saves the person, washes the person in the blood of the lamb and then transforms the person into a new creature. But the reality is that people are morons who are easily manipulated, and can feel really passionately about something for a short time and then lose steam.

And so how do you explain the saved Christian who either gives up on the whole thing, or gets saved and then lets "grace abound" by continuing a straight-up "sinful" lifestyle?

There is only one logically consistent answer that I've seen from Christian ministers, but while it's logically consistent, on a practical level, it's bat-crap crazy.

The Calvinists are the only ones with a consistent answer. For grace to be truly grace, predestination must be true. Any other conception leaves grace as slightly Mormon. For grace to be strictly grace, the actions of the person must be totally irrelevant, and God's decision to step in must explain the transition of the person in its entirety. And so, here is a guy who just read the Chick pamphlet "Holy Joe" and decides to say the salvation prayer and get saved. And then, three days later, is doing a line of cocaine and shrugging off church.

How does that happen?

Simple: He was never saved in the first place!

Those who are elect of God who say the salvation prayer really are saved, and the chances are greater that they "work because they ARE saved" as Decker reminds us. But as the great Calvinist theologian Jonathan Edwards explained, we might be able to generalize, but there is no guarantee that the actions of a Christian tell us anything about his/her election.

That's really disturbing. Imagine, here I am a Christian, I've said the salvation prayer, yet I am forever in turmoil over whether or not I am really elect or not. One who is not elect who says the salvation prayer actually isn't saved, but puts on a works-based personal performance that ultimately will be doomed to fail.

And so at the end of the day, if I'm Mormon, I must "work" hard to earn grace. But if I'm a Christian, I must "work" hard to convince myself that I really am God's elect who really was transformed, and not just a non-elect person who made some flippant choice -- one that wasn't grace inspired -- and doomed to fail. Because as Edwards (and others) explain, even a ultra right-living Christian isn't 100% guaranteed to be elect, it's possible that such a person is consigned to hellfire but made an extraordinary attempt otherwise. Yet, that scenario is rather unlikely, even if possible, and so if I'm a Christian who understands that the non-elect will ultimately backslide, then I will work my ass off to convince myself that I was elect in the first place.

And so both Mormons and Christians who take their faith very seriously end up putting about the same stock in "works", it's just the theory driving the works for either is slightly different. Some Mormons wonder if they will ever be good enough to achieve something, while the respective Christians wonder if their goodness is evidence enough of prior election.

[_moksha]

When I think of Grace alone, I picture John D. Rockefeller lobbing high-velocity dimes at street urchins, not for Good Works, but to see if he could put their eyes out. That is why grace and good works should go together. Hope that helps.

[_Physics Guy]

Yes, in Mormonism, works are said to demonstrate faith, and it's the faith+works formula, that born agains despise, that triggers grace, for Mormons.

Christians respond, isn't 'earning grace' a contradiction in terms? Shouldn't grace be independent of what the person does? I think there's a real point here.

I think your perspective on grace in mainstream Christianity is skewed by emphasizing Calvinism way too much. Calvinists are only a couple of percent of mainstream Christians, and moreover they're more of an outlier than an end of a tail. They take a step that nobody else has ever seen any reason to take.

The Calvinist step is to make grace completely independent of what a person does—or thinks or says or feels. Everybody else seems to allow that grace does depend, at least in a sense, upon something that we sinners have to "do"—for some values of "do". Most Christians consider it important, however, that the something is only a particular kind of something, and is furthermore slight. Salvation is like a weird promotional product that you can't buy with any ordinary currency but can only obtain in exchange for a specific coupon—and the coupon is downloadable to print out for free.

You have to repent, or invite Jesus into your heart, or desire a relationship with God, or something like that. It's something you could in principle fail to do, either by not attempting it at all or by failing to do it properly. I mean, if somebody says or thinks the words, "I want a relationship with God", but they are using those words in an idiosyncratic sense and what they really mean by them is only what most people would express with, "I want a lollipop", then that person might or might not get a lollipop but they would not be eligible for salvation in any mainstream Christian terms that I know.

Whatever the requirement is, I think it's generally taken to imply a genuine intention to live more righteously, albeit perhaps with a 12-step-like caveat from the penitent sinner that righteousness is likely going to be more than they can manage without miraculous help from God. How well that intention translates into actual behavior can depend on a lot of things. It is the mere intention that matters, not its success.

And so, here is a guy who just read the Chick pamphlet "Holy Joe" and decides to say the salvation prayer and get saved. And then, three days later, is doing a line of cocaine and shrugging off church. How does that happen?

I think the overwhelmingly predominant Christian answer is first of all that the guy skipping church for cocaine may well still be saved, but just be backsliding in behavior. We are all sinners, and remain sinners even once we are saved; even the most holy of anchorites find sins to confess, every day, all their lives. I'm not familiar with any assumption, in any mainstream Christian denomination that I know, that being saved means being morally perfect—or even morally adequate. As long as this line-snorting sinner retains that one minimal spark of faith in Christ, he remains saved, no matter what his behavior.

Everyone agrees that his current choice of Sunday morning activity is less than ideal. Denominations differ about exactly what his trouble is and what he should do about it. Maybe he's piling up a lot of time in purgatory. Maybe he's slowly quenching that minimal spark that he needs. Just because he's sinning now, however, is no proof that he is no longer saved.

Secondly, as far as I know all the mainstream Christian viewpoints allow that someone who has at one time been saved can slip back into being unsaved, and that this may even happen many times. The minimal spark can be lost—and regained.

In summary, as far as I know all the mainstream Christian denominations consider that the criterion for salvation is something which is completely undetectable from a person's visible behavior. A prostitute or a tax farmer may be saved and a priest or Pharisee not, even though one transgresses visibly every day while the other obeys every visible rule.

Salvation may perhaps not even be reliably detectable from conscious thoughts and feelings. The Calvinists locate the crucial criterion entirely outside the sinner themselves, in the sovereign will of God alone. But they're a tiny minority. Everyone else considers the one necessary thing to be something within a sinner's own heart and soul, albeit perhaps quite deep down.

Yes, there's a fair amount of craziness here. This is supposed to be a religion, and yet it literally preaches, as a central tenet, that behavior doesn't really matter. In practice there's a lot of backpedaling to try to get everyone to c'mon guys, let's all try and do better, huh, because aw gee, you know, we really should. That's the part that's shifty and shaky, though—the cajoling people to try to be good even though God has put the gun down. Trying to explain why Christians should be trying nonetheless to do good works has been an exercise in razzle-dazzle rhetoric ever since Romans and James. The basic insistence that grace and faith are all that matter for salvation, not works beyond that minimal spark of faith itself, remains pretty solid and consistent in all the forms of mainstream Christianity that I know.

[_huckelberry]

,

It's not that you don't understand the Mormon position, but I wonder if you understand the Christian position. The two positions at the end of the day aren't all that different.

The Calvinists are the only ones with a consistent answer. For grace to be truly grace, predestination must be true. Any other conception leaves grace as slightly Mormon. For grace to be strictly grace, the actions of the person must be totally irrelevant, and God's decision to step in must explain the transition of the person in its entirety. And so, here is a guy who just read the Chick pamphlet "Holy Joe" and decides to say the salvation prayer and get saved. And then, three days later, is doing a line of cocaine and shrugging off church.

How does that happen?

Simple: He was never saved in the first place!

Those who are elect of God who say the salvation prayer really are saved, and the chances are greater that they "work because they ARE saved" as Decker reminds us. But as the great Calvinist theologian Jonathan Edwards explained, we might be able to generalize, but there is no guarantee that the actions of a Christian tell us anything about his/her election.

That's really disturbing. Imagine, here I am a Christian, I've said the salvation prayer, yet I am forever in turmoil over whether or not I am really elect or not. One who is not elect who says the salvation prayer actually isn't saved, but puts on a works-based personal performance that ultimately will be doomed to fail.

And so at the end of the day, if I'm Mormon, I must "work" hard to earn grace. But if I'm a Christian, I must "work" hard to convince myself that I really am God's elect who really was transformed,....

And so both Mormons and Christians who take their faith very seriously end up putting about the same stock in "works", it's just the theory driving the works for either is slightly different. Some Mormons wonder if they will ever be good enough to achieve something, while the respective Christians wonder if their goodness is evidence enough of prior election.

Gadianton, I think you make a good point. People proud of not relying upon works seem to be able to sneak all sorts of works in the side door. Some think you must believe in literal inerrant Bible to be a true Christian. That is a work which would break the back of Atlas if actually thought about.

I wanted to take a moment to clarify something before I say anything further. You once referred to me as a Calvinist , something I think I bare some responsiblity for. I am one only in the broadest sense. On some issues I can put a Calvinist hat on. I have spent a little time doing close study of Calvinst views. I do not share the fundamentalist and legalistic directions in Calvinism. I view Mr Calvin with suspicion. I view the tulip as very approximately related to reality but a theory inviting some thought.

What I view as most problematic is something in common with Mormon ,armenian and or Calvinist views. Each of these seem to view Gods purpose here as primarily separating saved from enemies to be damned. In extreme Gods glory is filling hell with people suffering so badly that all the bored unhappy people in heaven can think, well at least I am not down there.

I think it is better to start with the observation that people find meaning in friendship love and community. Even our sense of individual accomplishment functions in that context. I think Gods grace is clearer if thought of as Gods establishing community, both with each other and with God. First iwe were created in community. Grace and forgiveness are the life blood of keeping that community alive and growing.

Looking at people as a community and not students taking final exams I see the vast variety of human experience as contributing. Some people believe with lots of enthusiasm. Others plod along. Some believe and some do not. Some live in Gods light in societies without Christian belief. Some wave a Christian flag and abuse its hope.

I should advise I believe is some sort of purgatory to bring all the disparate threads of human life together. I also believe forgiveness with God and new life now and afterdeath are based only upon Jesus atonement. That atonement is applied at Gods will to whom he wills not just by way of sinners prayer. I just see that predestination as operating in Gods Love and promise to create community not an arbitrary trick to screw people up.

To contradict a horrid Calvinist who debated Kwaku, I believe Ann Frank is in heaven even though she did not to my knowledge offer a sinners prayer but because God can apply the grace of Jesus to whomever he chooses and he chooses to love people not screw with them.

[_mentalgymnast]

I can’t find the thread where I was going to post this; a thread about word counts in church leadership talks where the word grace was one of the words with an increasing word count.

Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing from persons who have been church members elaborate on how Latter-day Saints understand God’s grace. I’ve understood it to be pretty much the opposite of what I was taught being raised in a non-LDS church, which is God’s grace is his unmerited favor.

Recently, as I’ve talked to a couple of people who are formerLDSs, and have trusted in Christ alone, their faces light up and the first thing out of their mouth was profound thankfulness for God’s grace. This has got me thinking that maybe I have somewhat taken this for granted myself.

With that being said, is God’s grace in LDS theology different from enabling power to merit Heavenly Father’s favor by one’s behavior or do I understand it incorrectly?

I am a current and active church member...so you may not want to hear from me...but here goes anyway. It’s all rather simple when this grace thing is stripped down to its essence.

Faith without works is dead and we are saved by the grace (of Christ) after all we can do.

And that just makes sense. Without all the gobblygook people want to attach to it. Grace and works need to be simple and straightforward enough for the ‘least’ saint to understand and abide by.

We try the best we can to live a good life knowing that this brings happiness now and in the hereafter. If we’ve been truly repentant, Christ will take care of the rest. But we have to trust Him at His word.

I think this pretty much encapsulates the LDS position.

Regards,
MG

[_Physics Guy]

If I'm Mormon, I must "work" hard to earn grace. But if I'm a Christian, I must "work" hard to convince myself that I really am God's elect who really was transformed, and not just a non-elect person who made some flippant choice -- one that wasn't grace inspired -- and doomed to fail.

The tiny minority of Christians who are Calvinists may often think that way. The overwhelming majority of Christians who do not believe in Calvinist predestination do also behave in a similar way, though. They try by good works to reassure themselves that their intention to follow Christ is really sincere.

In principle one doesn't need to do any good works at all to be saved, in mainstream Christianity. The catch is, though, that one does have to have some subtle minimal contribution of desire to repent or will to love God, however one puts this. And it has to be genuine.

Don't I myself always know, without having to convince myself, whether I genuinely want something? Well, no. In fact I think even many non-Christians would acknowledge that it's not easy to know what we ourselves really want. But within western Christianity, anyway, there is a long and centrally important tradition of suspecting oneself of insincerity and fearing that at some fatal level one is only pretending to repent and not really doing it. If this major theme of self-doubt didn't start earlier, it certainly kicked off with Augustine, who included in his autobiography the famous belated self-diagnosis that although he had prayed for many years, "Lord, make me chaste," his heart had always been unconsciously adding, "but not yet!"

The most popular way to reassure oneself that nothing like that has been going on in one's soul is to try to get a bunch of good religious intentions carried out in practice, because that's a pretty convincing indication that the intent to do them was real. It's not an airtight proof. Warnings about subtle hypocrites who perform good works for selfish ulterior reasons, rather than out of genuine love or grace or whatever, have been sermon tropes for centuries; the idea presumably goes back to Jesus's comments on the widow's mite. The consensus seems to have been, though, that if you're worried about whether you're really saved then it can't hurt to get in some good works—not because the works themselves will help to save you one iota, but because the fact that you've actually done some selfless deeds can reassure you that you have repented sincerely and are being sanctified by God's grace.

And although that may sound kind of crazy in some ways, I think that in other ways it makes sense. If I'm honestly wondering whether or not someone truly means to do something then the evidence that's going to count for the most, even if it isn't completely decisive, is whether or not they do in fact do it.

[_kairos]

I can’t find the thread where I was going to post this; a thread about word counts in church leadership talks where the word grace was one of the words with an increasing word count.

Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing from persons who have been church members elaborate on how Latter-day Saints understand God’s grace. I’ve understood it to be pretty much the opposite of what I was taught being raised in a non-LDS church, which is God’s grace is his unmerited favor.

Recently, as I’ve talked to a couple of people who are formerLDSs, and have trusted in Christ alone, their faces light up and the first thing out of their mouth was profound thankfulness for God’s grace. This has got me thinking that maybe I have somewhat taken this for granted myself.

With that being said, is God’s grace in LDS theology different from enabling power to merit Heavenly Father’s favor by one’s behavior or do I understand it incorrectly?

I am a current and active church member...so you may not want to hear from me...but here goes anyway. It’s all rather simple when this grace thing is stripped down to its essence.

Faith without works is dead and we are saved by the grace (of Christ) after all we can do.

And that just makes sense. Without all the gobblygook people want to attach to it. Grace and works need to be simple and straightforward enough for the ‘least’ saint to understand and abide by.

We try the best we can to live a good life knowing that this brings happiness now and in the hereafter. If we’ve been truly repentant, Christ will take care of the rest. But we have to trust Him at His word.

I think this pretty much encapsulates the LDS position.

Regards,
MG

So MG does the "after all we can do" mean like BYU's Steven Robinson's parable of the little girl wanting a bike- she/sinner does what she can and earns $10, then her dad/Christ "makes up the $70 difference/ atonement" OR is it like Bob Millet at BYU says "after all we can do" means "in spite of what we can do/no matter what we do, nothing we do matters"- he says in terms of salvation by grace -it's all Christ/Atonement. Millet tells me in email, he has worked 30 years trying to have Mormons accept the second case- he has been influenced by John Macarthur a Calvinist evangelical minister who has sat down with millet and other BYU scholars many times to wrestle this issue.
for me it is Charles Stanley version- we submit totally our will to God having been convicted in our mind and heart of our sinfulness and accept Christ as our personal Savior in an authentic conversion relying totally on Christ' substitonary sacrifice for all the sins, past present and future of all mankind- having done that with a sincere heart our names are written in the lamb's book of life never to be erased- thus assuring us of eternal security/salvation. Stanley is on "in touch" radio ministry and macarthur on "grace to you". for me people in many denominations are born again as stanley relates.

thanx
k

[_Gadianton]

Huck made the point that he is Calvinist in the "broadest sense". None of the source I recall who explained the "backsliding Christian" phenomena identified as Calvinist. The first that I recall was prior to my mission, a ministry show that came on after 10 PM on a SLC tv station; then a little while later, an Ed Decker pamphlet a co-worker at a temp job gave me. I didn't realize what the source was until later, during my mission and I'd ran into the idea a couple more times. Another source, a lay minister for one of those giant "Christian Centers". I'm also pretty sure I heard this on the radio from Calvary Chapel as well, but that's my least distinct recollection. Is it possible that some of these places take bits and pieces from here and there, and this is one of Calvin's more popular ideas? Or could it be over-represented in Christian discourse because it's proponents tend to talk about backsliding more often because they think they have a good explanation? Maybe I have selective hearing.

Anyway, I could be entirely wrong about how popular that explanation is among Christians.

Salvation is like a weird promotional product that you can't buy with any ordinary currency but can only obtain in exchange for a specific coupon—and the coupon is downloadable to print out for free.

The FARMS guy turned Mormon fluff scholar, Stephen Robinson, wrote a book on Mormon grace that boiled down to: a little girl saves pennies in a penny jar to buy a bicycle, but it's nowhere near enough, and so dad pays the rest.

There is a difference in these two competing explanation. If Robinson is correct about Mormonism (I actually don't think there is an official Mormon explanation) then the pennies counted at least a little toward salvation, whereas in the coupon example, pennies don't count. Well, I could pay somebody to download and print the coupon...

Oh, another point about "works" is that the term covers not just "being good" but ordinances. Specifically, the born-agains I've known go after Catholics for their beliefs in rituals. That's the most relevant point about grace, I think, that gives it some legitimacy in my mind. I can certainly understand the concern over any given organization having complete dominance over whether a person suffers in hell for eternity or gets bliss, and so salvation is tied to loyalty and financial contributions to the organization. That's also true for Mormons, and is just as relevant for Mormons as Catholics, but I've rarely heard it put that way for Mormons, where the complaint is mostly that they "try too hard to be good".

I think PG's last post covers pretty well alternative versions of the point and saved me some work.

[_Gadianton]

What I view as most problematic is something in common with Mormon ,armenian and or Calvinist views. Each of these seem to view Gods purpose here as primarily separating saved from enemies to be damned. In extreme Gods glory is filling hell with people suffering so badly that all the bored unhappy people in heaven can think, well at least I am not down there.

I think it is better to start with the observation that people find meaning in friendship love and community. Even our sense of individual accomplishment functions in that context. I think Gods grace is clearer if thought of as Gods establishing community, both with each other and with God. First iwe were created in community. Grace and forgiveness are the life blood of keeping that community alive and growing.

An admirable way of looking at it Huck, maybe you should start your own congregation?