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In this episode, Trent sits down with fellow Catholic Answers apologist Joe Heschmeyer to discuss how to fairly critique the false doctrines of Mormonism such as their anti-Trinitarianism.
Transcript:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers apologist, Trent Horn. Originally I was going to host a debate between Tim Gordon from Rules for Retrogrades and a Protestant apologist on an issue related to solo scriptura or the canon. Unfortunately, that debate, it fell through. Right now we are working on getting another Protestant opponent for Gordon to debate, so stay tuned for that. We might have someone available for October, and I’m really excited about that. I mentioned that in my previous episode about Taylor Marshall and other online traditionalists saying I’d really like to see them engage in critical dialogue and debate with non-Catholics, and Gordon stepped up to the plate. And if he’s willing to do that, I think that’s a good thing. So hopefully we’ll do that in October. In the meantime, because the debate didn’t happen, I decided to invite my friend and colleague, Mr. Joe Heschmeyer, a fellow Catholic Answers apologist, to come back on the show. I really enjoyed having you on earlier, Joe, when we talked about the cannon.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Thanks, it was good to be on the show. I’m happy to be the B-Team.
Trent Horn:
You are not the B-Team. You are a part of the A-Team. Which member of the A-Team do you want to be?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Obviously Mr. T. I mean, just based on the hair alone.
Trent Horn:
B. A. Baracus?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, exactly.
Trent Horn:
“I pity the fool.” What’s funny about B. A. Baracus is it’s basically Mr. T. He’s not really acting. He’s just being Mr. T basically.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Look, it’s kind of like when you have Andre the Giant in the Princess Bride. When you’ve got someone who seems like maybe they’re more prepared for the world of wrestling than the world of theater or movies, you might adjust your expectations accordingly, let’s put it that way.
Trent Horn:
In any case, I love it when a plan comes together. Maybe I should have you on for free for all Friday. We’ll just do retro television shows. I’m thinking A-Team, Knightrider, Airwolf. So many good ones to pick from.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, that was a good list to come up with off the top of your head. I’m impressed.
Trent Horn:
I am the world’s youngest boomer, I’ve been called on Twitter, because of my comments about capitalism and things like that. In any case, let’s get to the topic I wanted to talk about. On your show recently… And also I’m really excited to have Joe on because I want you guys to go and subscribe to his podcast, Shameless Popery. Not shameless potpourri, which would be like some kind of unabashed trivia. Instead, it’s Shameless Popery. I’ll take potent potables, Alex. No, Shameless Popery based on his blog, which is an excellent resource for apologetics.
Joe’s channel is really thriving and he’s just got really solid content. We talked about the cannon of scripture last week. Recently you have been talking about Mormonism, which is very apropos by the way, because Matt Fradd of Pints with Aquinas is trying to put together a debate on Mormonism. He said something, I’ll call it incendiary, about the Book of Mormon and about Mormonism, and some Mormons said they wanted to see a debate on there. So he’s trying to do a debate and then it fell through, so we’re all having bad luck with that. But this is a subject you’re interested in as well because you’ve been covering it a bit on your podcast, right?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, I just finished up a, I guess it was a five-week series on Mormonism, and I don’t normally stick with any topic for more than an episode. But it all started off, the first of the five episodes, I was suggesting that broadly speaking we don’t do apologetics as well as we could because we’re uncharitable in it. And I gave the example, and originally it was just meant to be that, kind of an example of doing apologetics with Mormons, that Mormons are often kind of the subject of mockery and scorn, and that’s not really the Christian way to approach even falsehood. It’s not the Christian way to approach people who are in error, that something greater than that is desired. And so then since I’d kind of thrown the gauntlet down, I spent the next four weeks trying to… you can judge for yourself the level of success… to figure out, okay, how should we do this better? And what would it look like to critically engage with Mormonism in a way that is still charitable and respectful of the people who hold those beliefs?
Trent Horn:
I think that’s fair because people, well, Catholics want our beliefs to be treated charitably. It reminds me of in the debate that the atheist Sam Harris had with William Lane Craig, and this was back in 2009, on God and morality. And Harris completely decided to abandon the original debate topic and wanted to rip into the Bible, even into Catholicism, trying to say religion’s irrational. And he said that if someone prayed over a bunch of pancakes and said that was Elvis Presley you would think they were out of their minds. But Catholics basically do the same thing with the Eucharist. And of course all Catholics would collectively roll their eyes or groan like, “Oh, come on, give me a break already.” But do you think sometimes we have similar ideas about Mormonism?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, I think that’s true. And look, in saying this, I’m not saying what Mormons believe is all true, but that we can approach these things with a greater deal of respect. And this is not just out of respect for other people, it’s also if you’re serious about evangelization, because as a Catholic and anyone listening, whatever tradition they’re coming from, they’ve probably experienced someone coming at them with these kind of ridiculous caricatures that are easily batted away. You gave the example, I think in last week’s episode, when you were talking about Kennedy Hall tweeting about Luther and passing on some kind of probably false information.
Trent Horn:
At least unsupported. At the time of the tweet there was no evidence for it, the idea that Luther killed cats as a kid or other things like that.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And so Lutheran listening to that is going to respond much like a Catholic hearing the pancake thing and just kind of roll their eyes and dismiss the person speaking. And as an evangelist, you never want to be in the position where you’re saying something so provocatively stupid that people are just rolling their eyes at you. And so when you approach Mormonism with just an air of mockery and dismissal, I think it does two things. One, it undermines your own standing. And two, if the person you’re dealing with already has a sense of embattlement or a sense of we’re a persecuted people, then you’ve really doubled that kind of sense. You’ve really legitimated that feeling. What that does psychologically and sociologically, it increases group identity.
My group is being attacked by outsiders and so I feel a greater need to cling to this group. And this is true of everybody in every kind of group setting. It’s that famous kind of like, I can criticize my kids but don’t you criticize my kids. And that kind of thing happens. And so if you have these especially false or really uncharitably construed presentations of Mormon theology, Mormons who know better than you what Mormons believe are going to dismiss you, and they’re going to do it somewhat justifiably because you haven’t shown yourself to be a good faith, well-informed participant in the conversation.
Trent Horn:
To give an example off the top of my head, I know some people, Catholics, when they’ve talked about Mormonism and said, “Oh, it’s a cult. It’s a crazy secret thing with weird sex rituals that are secret and they have to wear this magic underwear,” and they talk about it in a very lurid way. But you could say the same thing about some aspects of Catholicism. We wear scapulars, the Knights of Columbus have secret elements to their rituals, nothing that’s occult but they have elements so that the knights could be something that men could join instead of joining the Masonic Lodge or something like that and still have that sense of fraternal fellowship. So maybe you can unpack that a little bit more that people make these kinds of accusations of the Mormons.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, I think I purposely steered clear of the whole magic underwear thing because I don’t think it moves the ball forward. No one is going to say, “Aha, I guess the LDS religion is false because you told me that we have magic underwear.” That’s not helping, it’s not creating any light it’s only generating heat in a way that’s likely to generate, just like I said, mockery rather than understanding or persuasion. And so in that, look, we live in a culture not just religiously but politically, where that’s kind of the MO, where half of the point of rhetoric isn’t to actually convince anybody else, it’s to fire up your own base. And so you can have anti-Mormon or anti-anybody kind of polemics where it fires up other Catholics, other Protestants, other whoever, but if it’s not actually accurately representing what the other person believes they’re never going to be persuaded by that.
And when I say it falls short of the Christian standard, I’d use the kind of go-to Bible verse on apologetics. Apologetics, from apologia, comes from 1 Peter 3:15-16. And we always like to quote the first part, to always be prepared to make a defense in apologia. But if you read the rest of it, what Peter is saying is be prepared to make that defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you. So that’s the first thing. You should first be living the kind of life that inspires question about what makes you different, and that’s probably not you running your mouth on Twitter or X as we now call it.
But then Peter goes on to tell you how to do this. He says do it with gentleness and reverence and keep your conscience clear so that when you are abused those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. So that’s pretty strong language. He has one line about making the defense and several lines telling you here’s how not to do it and here’s how to do it. And it’s almost as if he knew people aren’t going to have a problem with the I want to argue part, they’re going to have a problem with having rules of doing it well.
Trent Horn:
Right. And to talk about the garments also to a bow on that so to speak, this is something that Mormons receive as part of their endowment ceremony in temple.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Oh yeah, I should’ve explained that.
Trent Horn:
No, that’s fine. This is what the official LDS handbook says about that. They’re not some kind of magical garment. One handbook says this, “The garment provides a constant reminder of the covenants made in a temple. When properly worn, it provides protection against temptation and evil. Wearing the garment is also an outward expression of an inward commitment to follow the savior.” So here, this is helpful for us when we’re talking to Mormons that we can identify a lot of common ground with Mormons. This is not too far off from the idea of a sacramental.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Look, I literally have a bracelet I wear reminding me of Marian consecration and I can regularly tap it or even kiss it just as a physical kind of reminder. And I think what this gets right, in both the case of Catholic sacramentals and in the case of, I mean they probably won’t use the word sacramentals, but in the case of the endowment undergarments, is-
Trent Horn:
Right, like pious objects.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… is that humans aren’t just souls trapped in bodies, that there’s an actual bodily dimension to who you are. And that the relationship between soul and body is a complicated one. There’s all sorts of fun kind of secular studies that point to this. They have two groups of people take a test and the first group of people they have them put on what they tell them is a doctor’s lab coat. And that group actually does better on the test than the second group who’s wearing a painter’s smock. But the great joke here is it’s literally the same white coat. They’ve just told them one is a doctor’s and one is a painter’s. There’s nothing magical about the item itself, but there’s a sort of psychological relationship of mind and body that can have a real impact.
You literally outperform or underperform on a test based on this. There’s all kinds of stuff on this. This is one of the controversial things in kind of the casual Fridays, that workplace productivity can sometimes take a hit when people dress too casually, even at home. That psychologically you have a complicated relationship to your body and to what you wear. All that to say, I think the Mormon thing is totally sound psychologically, whether it actually provides any spiritual benefit is obviously something we could part company on, but it’s not just an absurd kind of idea.
Trent Horn:
I’d also say though that the productivity we lose on casual Friday is offset by the increase in appetizers that are consumed.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Touche.
Trent Horn:
So I think there’s a bit of give and take there. So let’s jump into a little bit more about Mormonism. I do want to say that when it comes to this sort of dialogue, finding that common ground is helpful, especially for helping Mormons to… if there’s any faith they should consider if they’re leaving Mormonism, it should be Catholicism because we actually have a lot in common. We both reject solo scriptura. We both believe in the authority of the priesthood, that Jesus gave us a priesthood. Now Mormons believe the priesthood had to be reestablished in the 19th century, and that’ll get into the whole thing about the great apostasy, which I would definitely want to hear more from you on that. But it does seem like that and baptism and salvation, do you find it’s helpful to be able to focus on this common ground before we get to the meat of the disagreement?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I do. I experienced this in person of a couple that I’m friends with maybe 10, 15 years ago. They lived down the block from the regional headquarters for the LDS in Northern Virginia. And so they just made a habit of having regular dinners with the missionaries when they’d come in town. And they’re both military, they’re both very smart, and the wife, Meg, would always focus on that common ground. And then Cary would just kind of bide his time because he just wanted to talk about where do we disagree. Meg just wanted to talk about where do we agree. And the two of them together really effectively did this tag team, I think, largely unintentionally just based on their personalities. But it meant that there was an actual buildup of goodwill and it was clear this was coming from a place of charity and love and respect and not a place of just kind of like gotcha.
Because everyone’s experienced that, someone just trying to catch you in something and tear you down. It’s not conducive to changing anyone’s mind. I mean, the missionaries would go and play basketball with Cary and they even joined us for Mass once. I mean, really it was a remarkable scene. It wasn’t like, look, they went out and got baptized and confirmed in the church. No, but it was clear the needle had gotten moved in their understanding of Catholicism and probably their sense of being loved by Catholics. And I think that’s really important. You don’t have to, like St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, you don’t have to do all of it. You might just plant the seed, you might water it, but ultimately Christ is the one who gives it the increase. So you do what you can. And I think this is a clear example. Start with where you have common ground because it builds up that mutual respect.
Blaise Pascal talks about this, that people are more persuaded by the reasons they come to themselves than by the reasons put into their head by others. So to take a non-Mormon example, with abortion, when somebody tells you I am pro-life except in cases of rape, incest, life of the mother, whatever their exceptions are, the temptation is to immediately jump in. And I mean this is more… you’re the expert on this so I know I’m speaking to the choir here… but the temptation is to immediately jump in on where do we disagree and why. But it can actually be really helpful to say, “Well, why aren’t you okay with abortion across the board?”
And then once they tell you whatever that reason is, if there’s some recognition that this is an unborn child or whatever’s in the womb with the mother has some kind of rights, now you actually have a basis to have a meaningful conversation. If they just say yes and you just say no, that’s not likely to go anywhere. But if you say, “I notice you say no most of the time and yes some of the time, let’s focus on our shared no and then see if it sheds light on where we disagree.” That way you’re not running from the controversy, but you are creating the framework in which it can be productive.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, I’ve done this as well when someone says, “Oh, I’m against abortion in the case of rape,” the temptation might be here’s why you are wrong about abortion in the case of rape. But to ask a question, “Help me understand why is pregnancy that comes from rape something that is so bad it justifies abortion, but pregnancy from another stressful, difficult circumstance doesn’t justify abortion. Why are you against abortion in non-rape cases?” And if they say, “Well, because it kills a human being,” well, does that happen in cases of rape as well? And when you ask the question, as you said, quoting Pascal, the person comes to that of their own accord and they start to see it.
So let’s jump then into our disagreements that you’ve covered on the podcast with Mormonism. I think probably the biggest disagreement honestly is the understanding of who God is or how many gods there are. So for example, one big difference is that Mormons believe that God is Father. They call him Heavenly Father, just like we believe there is God the Father, but they believe that God the Father is… Now, we believe God the Son is embodied after the incarnation and he will always have a human nature for the rest of time.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right, the Word became flesh, John 1:14.
Trent Horn:
And that’s permanent because he doesn’t change. It’s not like Jesus is going to go back to being disembodied. He will always have a human nature. But they also believe that God the Father has a body and that He is a man, or at least He was a man like you or I. That’s a little bit of a different doctrine, but they would say that God the Father has a physical body. And some Christians might scoff at that and say, “Oh, that’s just so silly. How could you believe something like that?” And yet when you read scripture, especially the Old Testament, there’s a lot of verses that you can take anthropomorphically, God’s right hand, Moses seeing the face of God, and God’s back side. So it’s not too far off someone could read that and say, “Yeah, I think God has a body.” It seems pretty similar here in scripture.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, I mean in Exodus we even hear about the wings of God and Psalms the same thing. So it raises a bunch of questions about what kind of body are we talking about here? And I think most people, Catholic, Protestant, whatever, we would read that and say this seems to be metaphorical language, but nevertheless, it isn’t as if the Mormons have nothing to point to. They can point to plenty of passages that taken literally would suggest that God the Father has a body. And now this of course raises a second question. When we see these depictions of God, who are we talking about there? Because Mormons don’t believe in the Trinity as classically understood. They believe that the Father and the Son both have bodies and the spirit is a personage of spirit, but that they’re not literally one in being, that they aren’t consubstantial. They’re three separate beings on a common mission. This is sometimes called social Trinitarianism or sometimes just [inaudible 00:19:03].
Trent Horn:
They’re one in perfect cooperation but they’re really three distinct beings.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So listening to Mormon theologians on this, it sounds like at any given time they could leave that union with each other, but they wouldn’t because it’s better than not being united. But it’s certainly a different vision of the Godhead than the Fourth Lateran Council talking about the Father pouring out everything that is God into the Son and the Son receiving this and responding, and the fruit of that being the Holy Spirit. That’s a very different image of the Godhead. Even though we’re using the same words, we’re really conceptualizing this very differently. And that’s important, I think, for both sides to realize, because I think there’s actually a good deal of mutual misunderstanding. If you’ve only grown up with one of those two visions of God, the other one can sound strange and pagan frankly, in both directions. And I’ve heard that charge of paganism thrown in both directions.
Trent Horn:
Right, and I would point out also to listeners, when you read things in scripture that could be taken literally, it says things like Moses spoke to God face to face as a man does with his friend, it doesn’t mean he saw God the Father in a literal face because a blind person can speak to you face to face. The language is talking about the intimacy that Moses has with God or God in revealing Himself He’s using this kind of language that human beings can understand. But if God created everything from nothing, including all of space, time, matter and energy, well then God cannot be composed of matter because if He were made of matter He’d have to belong in preexisting space which He created from nothing.
Which brings us to another big difference between Catholics and Mormons because Mormons also deny the doctrine of creation from nothing. They would say no, everything has existed eternally. In fact, doctrine and covenants, one of the Mormon scriptures in 93:29 says, “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” So the idea is that the cosmos are spirits, they’re all just kind of out there in Mormonism. To borrow a line from Saint Athanasius, in Mormonism God is not creator, He is craftsman.
Joe Heschmeyer:
If you’re familiar with the concept of the demiurge, very much that kind of conceptualization of God.
Trent Horn:
Right, so do you think that’s also something important for us to focus on when we’re talking about God and his relationship to creatures, because this also brings another big point, and this can be a sticking point you can help us walk through this, that Mormons can often be very offended when people say they are not Christians. It’s like how dare you say that? It reminds me of, I think it might’ve been Bertrand Russell who said that, or maybe it was Christopher Hitchens… some smart British guy, some smart British atheist… who said that some people equate… maybe it was Lewis, another smart British guy… that people equate Christian with just being a nice chap. And if you deny somebody is Christian it’s like you’re saying they’re a mean or a bad person. But we have a very specific theological point that we’re making.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s Lewis because he points out that gentleman underwent this same transformation, that once upon a time gentleman meant something very specific. It meant that you were part of the landed elite, so you could be a jerk and be a gentleman, you could be a great guy and not be a gentleman. But gentleman just became a term for nice, and we didn’t need that word. We already had it. And so now there’s not really a clear term for someone who is literally a gentleman because unless you make it really clear from context it sounds like you’re just praising them. And he points out that Christian has undergone the same thing, that Christian historically means something very specific.
But we can say, “Oh, that’s very Christian of him,” and we mean something much vaguer where it might not even be applied to a confessing Christian. And I think some of that is more the British usage of the term than the modern American usage, but I think it’s certainly a true thing. So when you say they’re not Christian it sounds like you’re not making a creedal point. It sounds like you’re making a moral value judgment to just say they’re bad people.
Trent Horn:
Or they engage in unChrist-like behavior, which many Mormons, that’s certainly not the case.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So this is something where I think in general, debating the labels is unhelpful. Saying is so-and-so really a feminist or really a Republican or really a Democrat, those debates, they happen all the time. They get people really worked up and they seem to me to be a tremendous waste of time. Debate the actual idea that this person is known for and don’t debate whether they’re really a true member of the party or not. That’s just not the relevant question. And so if it’s false or if it’s incompatible with Christianity or with Catholicism or whatever, then by all means point that out. But don’t just make the you’re not really a Catholic claim. Make the stronger claim of what you believe contradicts this thing the Catholic Church teaches or contradicts this thing that is something all Christians must hold to.
You can make that distinction, but that requires you to actually do a good deal more work. So I tried to show in the podcast approach that you don’t have to say Mormons aren’t Christian. You can just say Mormons deny the Trinity. If you say Mormons aren’t Christian, you have a big fight over labels. If you say Mormons deny the Trinity, they’ll agree and you can move forward.
Trent Horn:
They would agree with you. They would agree with you on that.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right, because they acknowledge that they don’t believe in the Trinity.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, I mean even Joseph Smith argued against the Trinity. He once put it this way, he said… Joseph Smith, by the way, being the founding alleged prophet of Mormonism, author, alleged translator of the Book of Mormon… saying of the Trinity, “Three in one and one in three, it is a curious organization. All are to be crammed into one God according to sectarianism. It would make the biggest God in all the world. He would be a wonderfully big God. He would be a giant or a monster.” I sort of miss 19th century criticisms of things. They had a certain wonderful whimsy and snootiness about them.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I mean it is remarkable. And I got in some trouble for quoting Brigham Young, his successor, of saying that the Methodist God is the Mormon devil because he has a body. And some Mormons were offended by that. But I was like, “Look, I’m literally just quoting a guy you regard as a prophet explaining the difference between the Mormon and the Christian or Protestant, Catholic, understanding of the Godhead.” So it is difficult. I mean, it’s difficult to have a constructive conversation here because understandably people’s feelings get hurt if you say I don’t regard what you’re talking about as Christianity. And the same way that I think we would kind of grimace at the term sectarian to describe Catholics, or even for that matter Orthodox, people who can plausibly claim to go back to the apostles, to say it’s a sect is a really dismissive kind of label and intentionally so.
Trent Horn:
Why don’t you break down a little bit of how Mormons disagree with Christians, or at least how Mormon anti-Trinitarianism differs from classical Trinitarianism. I will note though that in dialoguing about Mormonism and the arguments, when these things come up, it ends up posing a few problems for Protestants. We won’t get into it in this episode actually, but I’m going to encourage people to go to your channel to talk about the great apostasy. You have an episode, I’m sure, jus on that, right?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I do. I can give a two sentence version if you want.
Trent Horn:
Go right ahead.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Many Protestants argued that the church fell into a total apostasy, that Christ established a church on earth and it got wiped out. Mormons argue if that’s the case, a monk like Luther or a lawyer like Calvin wouldn’t be sufficient to restore it. True restoration would need a prophet. And guess what, we’ve got one. And so there’s actually a tremendous amount of agreement between Catholics and Mormons in terms of what the stakes are. To say that the entire church fell into apostasy is a really serious claim and it would seemingly create a position that’s impossible for Protestantism. Now, some Protestants don’t hold to the great apostasy. That was more than two sentences, but that’s the [inaudible 00:27:23].
Trent Horn:
No, I understand what you mean, is that some Protestants will try to argue against Mormons that there was no great apostasy to which Mormons will counter, “Fine, then where is this authoritative hierarchical church that we see in the New Testament that’s apostolic? Then where is it?”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes. And they’ll even ask specifically about the priesthood and about the keys, which is like, hey, you’re asking exactly the right questions. And so in that sense, I think Catholics and Mormons, we’re often focusing on the same passages and on the same kind of concepts and saying, okay, this seems to be a really important thing. When Jesus says I will build my church He seems to really mean something bigger than some people are going to follow me. There seems to be something structured and organized and visible about that. So what happened?
Trent Horn:
Right, and so that’s where another point I’m wondering over the Trinity is that for Protestants they’ll say, “Well, look, scripture is sufficient to equip the man of God for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:17. One of my replies is, “Does scripture define who is a Christian and who is not?” Because Protestants will make a case and be challenged by anti-Trinitarians and engage in debates. You’ll have people like Dale Tuggy, a very, very smart guy. Maybe one day I’ll debate him on the Trinity, but he’s a smart guy. He’s debated different people, I think Michael Brown was one, not necessarily it was the Trinity. But they’ll debate about whether the Bible teaches the doctrine of the Trinity. So if the fact that Protestants will debate that with non-Christians, does the Bible teach the Trinity or not, the Bible then certainly does not teach the proposition in order to be a Christian you must believe in the Trinity.
That’s certainly not explicit in scripture and Protestants might have to admit, yeah, I guess it’s not in scripture so scripture can’t tell us whether you need to believe that or not. But that seems absurd to me that if the Bible is the sole and fallible rule of faith of the church, wouldn’t it tell us what you must believe and what you can’t believe in order to be a Christian? And you can’t really get that. More, the traditional definition of a Christian was do you have a valid baptism? And it was the church that determined which of the heretical sects had valid baptisms and which ones did not.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, exactly. Just like you could be a bad gentleman, you could be a bad Christian, and you could be someone who is trying to follow Christ, but you weren’t an actual baptized Christian. That actually meant something very specific, very explicit, you could see it and determine it. It wasn’t just a value judgment one person’s making on another. Because once you put it in that category, if are you a Christian means something like are you a good person, I’ve got no right to make that judgment about anybody else. And so that puts it in a really dangerous category where we can’t say what is and isn’t Christian. I was watching-
Trent Horn:
So let’s break down then the anti… Go ahead.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Well, I was just going to say I was watching a Q&A with R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur and someone asked, “My whole family is Catholic and they pray to saints, are they going to hell?” And Sproul said, “Probably, but hopefully not.” And then one of the two, I think it was Sproul, said, “Everybody gets theology wrong but some errors are graver than others.” And it seemed to me that the question this was raising was a huge one. Who determines which errors are so grave? If everybody’s theology falls short on some points, as he’s believing, he doesn’t believe in an infallible church and nobody believes that every individual is infallible, well then what level of error is acceptable where we can just live with each other? Because the question’s not is the Trinity true? It’s the trinity of the level that everyone must agree on that in order to be a Christian?
I think the church has historically said yes for reasons of baptism, that in Acts 2 the way you join the church is through baptism. When they say what must we do to be saved? Peter tells them to repent and be baptized. And then this is a formula for salvation, Mark 16:16. And so in that sense, you can say the Trinity is really crucial because of its sacramental role, but if you reject sacramental baptism and think of baptism just as an ordinance, it becomes much harder to, I think, make that case.
Trent Horn:
Right. So it’s interesting though the difference in theology and where it goes really completely off the reservation or not with Mormonism, there’s an interesting quote in a 2001 article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Father Luis Ladaria was writing in there about whether Mormon baptisms are valid, because we believe that Orthodox and most Protestant baptisms are valid, but Mormon baptisms are not valid, even though they use the same formula as Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes, this is really striking.
Trent Horn:
So Father Ladaria said this, “One cannot even consider that this doctrine,” Mormon doctrine, “is a heresy. The teaching of the Mormons has a completely different matrix.” So it’s something so far off, it’s not just a heresy, it is something that has completely gone beyond what the [inaudible 00:32:36] is.
Joe Heschmeyer:
In the same way that you would not describe Islam as a Christian heresy, even though it claims some kind of relationship to the Old Testament and the New Testament and to the person of Jesus Christ. There’s some sense in which there’s a following of Jesus, but something greater than that is necessary for it to even be in the realm of a Christian heresy.
Trent Horn:
So what do you think about Mormonism, especially about the Trinity, that warrants this kind of description?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Well, again, the idea that it’s three Gods who are one Godhead puts it in a different category. Judaism is fiercely monotheistic. Christianity is the fruit of Judaism. And so in as much as you have something purporting to be Christian, not just a Christian denomination but the church of Jesus Christ restored, teaching something that doesn’t fit with the Shema Yisrael, “Listen, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone,” that notion of the oneness of God is really built into the whole thing. And it is critical. It is the distinguishing factor between Israel and all of its neighbors, that Israel believes there’s one God and all the Canaanites are polytheists.
And so this is something that just gets driven home again and again and again and again. And so if it’s that important, if it’s this kind of make or break where it’s the kind of overarching narrative in the Old Testament of this backsliding into idolatry, into the worship of other gods who aren’t really gods, to go back on all of that and say actually there’s three gods, which I understand this is what people think the Trinity is saying, but it’s not. That’s where some actual sophistication is required.
Trent Horn:
Right. And so I think one of the problems here is that I would almost say that both Islam and Mormonism are non-Christian religions, but I would say that Islam is closer to a Christian worldview than Mormonism, at least to a classical Christian worldview, because Islam still affirms the existence of one infinite God.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s true.
Trent Horn:
It affirms monotheism fanatically, and to their credit that’s good.
Joe Heschmeyer:
They’re seriously monotheistic and in the way Judaism and Christianity would say, “Yes, you’re right to affirm that.” I mean, it leads to the other extreme of denying the Trinity because they think we have too many persons, where the Mormon response is you’ve got the right number of persons but not enough beings. And so it’s the three in one, one side disagrees with the three, one side disagrees with the one. That is the critical kind of question. But notice another area that there’s actually a difference between Islam and Mormonism. Islam and Mormonism have a fascinating number of similarities, although I find both Muslims and Mormons get kind of annoyed by anyone pointing that out. But one difference is, as you say, there’s a real notion not just of there being one God, but of God the creator of everything, and there’s a belief in creation from nothing in some sense.
And so the atheist apologetics, we could answer them from a Catholic perspective in much the same way you could answer them from a Muslim perspective. I mean, even the history of the Kalam argument, it pretty famously is largely a Muslim argument that Christian’s adopt. And so the apologetics dimension, the strange place Mormons find themselves is that they frequently… The depiction of God as kind of a demiurge makes it fall victim to many of the new atheist arguments. As David Bentley Hart points out, there’s not any reason to believe in a demiurge any more or less than a flying spaghetti monster because they’re the same type of being. It’s just a powerful thing out there in the universe somewhere. So it falls victim to a lot of the atheist arguments, but it also falls victim to a lot of the Christian or theistic arguments against atheism that you can’t have an infinite regress.
And so if the argument, and here I want to be really clear, not all Mormons believe that God the Father has his own God, but that is certainly what Joseph Smith taught. It’s certainly what Brigham Young taught. And so there is this notion of an infinite regress of Gods that the reason God the Father has a body is because He used to live on a different planet and had His own God, and seemingly His God was also an exalted man. And so it would create this logical, infinite regress. And so it’s a strange position to fall into where both theists and atheists would say philosophically that worldview doesn’t make sense and kind of here’s why.
Trent Horn:
And there was a recent Mormon statement on this that talked about, oh, Mormons don’t believe that we get our own planet when we die. Well, the statement, it said, “While few Latter-Day Saints would identify with caricatures of having their own planet, most would agree that the awe inspired by creation hints at our creative potential in the eternities.” And here’s where I think it gets to probably the biggest difference of why Mormonism and Father Ladaria calls it belonging to a completely different matrix, in Christianity and Islam the difference between man and God is one of kind with an infinite separation. So creator and creature are separated by an infinite gulf that man can never cross fully. I’ll qualify that in a second. However, in Mormonism, the difference between man and God is one of degree.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, and one in some ways of time, that God is just like being a senior when someone else is a freshman. The seniors look giant and magnificent, but you know in time you’ll get there yourself.
Trent Horn:
So in 1909, the Mormon first presidency, it said this… because it talks about Jesus being our elder brother in Mormonism, and what they mean… so the Father and Jesus and the Spirit are not divine beings different and kind from us. So the fathers begetting of the Son is hardly any different from how He would beget the creation of the rest of us, because in Mormonism all human beings are embodied intelligences that have existed for all eternity. So in 1909 the Mormon first presidency said this, “The father of Jesus is our father also. Jesus, however, is the firstborn among all the sons of God, the first begotten in the spirit and the only-begotten in the flesh. He is our elder brother and we, like Him, are in the image of God. And we also have the idea that along with Heavenly Father there is a heavenly mother through which we are all begotten.”
So there’s just this difference in degree rather than kind. Now of course, we talk about us being divinized, we become holier like God. We can have those qualities, but we’ll never become omnipotent or omniscient. But in Mormonism, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, I mean, what I think might be the case is really that when they speak of divine omnipotence and omniscience they don’t mean that literally seemingly.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, it’s not classical.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Trent Horn:
Their God is still very, very limited.
Joe Heschmeyer:
There are a lot of limitations on God. So even if they can talk about divine omnipotence, certainly… I’m going to again flag this is something that is not the official church teaching… but Brigham Young, the second prophet, describes the creation of the cosmos, and that the Father and the Son, so he thinks that Adam is ultimately our God. The Adam God doctrine is not believed by the LDS today, but in that sermon it’s striking because he talks about them waiting for the cosmos to shift with an earthquake so they can have space to create a universe. And so it’s really telling there that it’s like they have a nanosecond in which to do it. That is not omnipotence. If you’re waiting around for a train or waiting around for a cosmological earthquake so you have space to create a universe, whatever that is is not what everybody else means by omnipotence. And so that’s another one of those words to kind of flag. I pointed to the kind of atheist connection. I know you’ve done a video on this.
In as much as the LDS belief that even spirit is material in some way, although it’s not really defined what that means or how, the idea that there’s a powerful spiritual being, excuse me, a powerful material being that’s just bigger and stronger than us that didn’t create the cosmos but can create things in the cosmos out of preexisting matter, an atheist could affirm all of that. They would just say it’s an alien rather than… there would be a difference of label. They would say alien rather than God, but it wouldn’t be contrary to an atheistic worldview that you’ve got an infinitely old material cosmos, matter is all that exists. All of that stuff seemingly is there. Now you have something like an immaterial intelligence, which is probably going to be the thing that distinguishes Mormonism from atheism, but it is-
Trent Horn:
Well, I think the term we could use here would be naturalism.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes.
Trent Horn:
So the idea is that if you say you’re a naturalist, what does that mean? Oh, well, only nature exists. Now, there are naturalists who believe that we have immaterial minds that are ultimately dependent on physical matter, for example. So what is interesting is that you could be a naturalistic philosopher and believe only the natural world exists, but that in the natural world there are just these beings with greater levels of power than others. Though for me as a critic of naturalism, I would say that even though that’s a richer view of naturalism, it ultimately is just as unexplained as more minimal forms of naturalism that just have mundane things like atoms and nothing else super special [inaudible 00:42:11].
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s what I meant when I said a lot of the criticism of atheism are also the logical shortcomings seemingly within LDS theology about the [inaudible 00:42:20].
Trent Horn:
I also appreciated that you brought up about Brigham Young and Joseph Smith. This is important for us when we’re… and maybe we can close on this… I’ll give you an opportunity if there’s anything else you want to throw out… but I just want to say I appreciate you saying this isn’t what Mormonism teaches. This is the opinion of Brigham Young or Smith, that many critics who criticize Catholicism will point to a church father, or they’ll point to something in the canons of Council of Trent, papal airplane interview, even older documents, or the writings of the fathers or imagery that’s used at a council or a disciplinary canon, and say, “Oh, yes, well, the Catholic Church currently teaches this right now, de fide.” You say, “No, no, no, no. What we teach has different levels of authority and understanding.” And Mormonism is similar so we have to take that care when we’re sorting out what Mormon doctrine is and what it isn’t.
Joe Heschmeyer:
This is actually an area in which I have a good deal of appreciation for the LDS really clarify this is how we know when something is a doctrine. But nevertheless, if you’re a non-Mormon, probably your best bet is to not go in guns blazing saying, “You believe X, Y, Z.” But to really start off saying, “I’ve read that Joseph Smith taught X, Y, Z, is that something you believe in?” And put it as a question, find out is this something that’s church teaching or is this something that… because not every word that came from his mouth is considered scripture. Fair enough. St. Peter can be rebuked by St. Paul in Galatians 2. There’s no contradiction between believing that and believing in the inspiration of first and 2 Peter or believing in papal infallibility.
So we don’t have any principled objection to any of that, but it can be helpful in terms of the dialogue to really hammer those things out because this is an area where what Mormons claimed their church taught maybe a hundred years ago was much broader, and it’s been kind of, I would argue, maybe paired down. And even if you’re reading an older source that says the LDS Church, the Mormon Church teaches this, the LDS Church teaches that, you should still probably check before you just kind of declare that to be true.
Trent Horn:
Right. Very good. All right. Is there anything else from the series you wanted to touch on? Otherwise, there’s so much good content and we only scratched the surface of it. I’m going to post some links below so people can check it out at Shameless Popery. Is there anything else?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, just another scripture maybe as encouragement?
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Joe Heschmeyer:
In Ephesians 4:14 St. Paul warns us not to be tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness and deceitful wiles. And so it’s a very strong kind of admonition to avoid false doctrine. He doesn’t pull his punches. But in the next verse he tells us what the solution to that is, which is speaking the truth in love. And so the two ways we fall short of that are being jerks where we’re not speaking the truth in love, we’re speaking it in contempt or in hate or whatever, or by thinking it’s unloving to tell the truth. And so then we just avoid the truth out of a false sense of love. We want to avoid both of those extremes. And it’s much harder, and you might have to apologize more, to do your best to humbly, reverently, gently say, “It sounds like you’re saying X, and if that’s what you’re saying, here’s why I disagree,” and hear all the arguments against it.
Trent Horn:
Perfect. Joe Heschmeyer, Shameless Popery. Check out the links below. He’s got a wonderful YouTube channel that is growing if you want to see more content from there. And thank you guys so much for listening. If you want to help us grow, we’re getting close to a hundred thousand subscribers, everyone, we are just a few thousand away. So if you could subscribe to our channel, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you guys so much. I hope you have a very blessed day.
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