Every other post in this series has been about differences between Christians. This one isn't, and I want that said in the first paragraph instead of built up to. Everywhere else I've been able to write "not better, just different." Here I can't. The difference in this post is about who Jesus is, and that isn't a difference of practice or emphasis or church government. It's the whole thing.
Now the second thing, and it matters as much as the first. There will not be one word of mockery in this post. The two young men riding bicycles down a Michigan street in February in a dress shirt and a tie gave up two years of their lives and paid for the privilege of doing it. The couple who knock on your door on a Saturday morning are doing something most of the Christians I know would rather do almost anything than do. They are sincere, they are disciplined, they know their material cold, and a great many of them are more serious about their faith than most of us are about ours. If your first reaction to any of this is a joke, you've already lost the point of writing it.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Authority. The Bible, held as the word of God "as far as it is translated correctly," plus the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price — and, on top of those, ongoing revelation through a living prophet and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. That last piece is the live wire, because a current word can carry the same weight as an ancient one.
The nature of God. This is the load-bearing difference. Latter-day Saint teaching holds that the Godhead is three separate beings who are perfectly one in purpose rather than one God in three persons; that God the Father has a body of flesh and bone; that He was once a man and progressed to godhood; and that faithful people may themselves become gods, which is called exaltation. The formulation most people have heard came from an early leader: as man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be. That isn't a hostile summary. That's the teaching, held sincerely and taught openly.
What sends us elsewhere is Isaiah. 43:10 — before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. That sentence closes both directions at once, the past and the future, in nine words. 44:6 — beside me there is no God. 44:8 — is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any. And Deuteronomy 6:4 — the LORD our God is one LORD. If God has always been God and there is no other, then a God who used to be a man and men who are becoming gods both fall outside those sentences.
The apostasy and the restoration. The claim is that after the apostles died, the true church and its priesthood authority were lost from the earth entirely, and were restored through Joseph Smith beginning in 1820 and formally in 1830. Everything else rests on that claim. If the great apostasy happened, you'd need a restoration, new scripture, and restored authority. If it didn't, you don't need any of it.
Matthew 16:18 — I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Matthew 28:20 — lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Ephesians 3:21 — unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages. A church that disappeared from the earth for seventeen centuries is a church the gates of hell prevailed against for seventeen centuries, and He said they wouldn't. And Ephesians 2:20 has the church built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself the chief corner stone. You lay a foundation once.
Grace after all we can do. 2 Nephi 25:23 — it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. Be fair here. Latter-day Saint writers have argued at length that this does not mean grace begins where your effort runs out, and some read "after" as something closer to "apart from" or "in spite of." Recent teaching has leaned harder on grace than it used to, and that deserves to be granted honestly rather than ignored. But the practical shape of the system is still covenant obedience plus ordinances performed by proper priesthood authority, with the highest destiny reserved for those who keep them.
Set that beside Ephesians 2:8-9 — by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. Romans 4:5 — to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Titus 3:5 — not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. There's no "after" in any of them. Grace with a schedule attached isn't grace. It's an arrangement.
Jehovah's Witnesses
The Trinity and the deity of Christ. Witnesses hold that Jehovah alone is God; that Jesus is His first and greatest creation, identified with Michael the archangel; and that the Holy Spirit is God's active force rather than a person. They regard the doctrine of the Trinity as a pagan import that entered the church after the apostles died. They are consistent about it and they will show you their reasoning, which is more than a lot of people who believe the right thing can do.
John 1:1. Their own New World Translation renders the last clause "the Word was a god." The grammar question is narrow and I'll keep it short, because word studies aren't the point of a blog post. In that clause the word for God carries no article and stands ahead of the verb, and Greek regularly uses that construction to say what something is by nature rather than to identify which particular one it is. That's why every major translation committee outside the Watchtower renders it "the Word was God." And John settles it himself three sentences later: all things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. If everything that was made was made through Him, then He is not one of the things that was made.
Then the rest of it. John 20:28 — Thomas says to the risen Jesus, my Lord and my God, and Jesus does not correct him. He commends him. Colossians 1:16-17 — by him were all things created, and by him all things consist. Colossians 2:9 — in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Hebrews 1:6 — let all the angels of God worship him, which is a strange command to issue about an archangel. Hebrews 1:8 — unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever. John 8:58 — before Abraham was, I am.
The resurrection. Witnesses hold that Jesus was raised as a spirit creature and that His body was disposed of. Luke 24:39 is the verse He seems to have said on purpose for exactly this: behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. John 2:19-21 — destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, and John tells us plainly that He spake of the temple of his body. And 1 Corinthians 15 stakes the entire faith on it: if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins.
The 144,000 and the two classes. Revelation 7 and 14 are read as a literal count of anointed ones who go to heaven and reign with Christ, while everyone else is the great crowd with an earthly hope. In practice this produces the annual Memorial, the one occasion in the year when bread and wine are passed, at which almost nobody in the room partakes, because almost nobody in the room is of the anointed. Set that beside Luke 22:19-20 — this do in remembrance of me — and 1 Corinthians 11:26 — as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come. It was given to the church, and the church took it.
And the New Testament has no two tiers. Romans 8:17 — heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. 1 Peter 2:9 — ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation — written to an ordinary scattered congregation, not to a reserved class.
The Governing Body. It is held to be the faithful and discreet slave of Matthew 24:45, the channel through which God directs His people, and its doctrinal rulings are binding on the conscience. That is a claim of authority Scripture never hands to any body of men. And the human cost is real: a person who leaves, or is disfellowshipped, is formally shunned, including by family. I'm not raising that to score a point. I'm raising it because if you're reading this and that's what you're weighing, you should know that the door at a church like this one doesn't work that way.
A word about Community of Christ
It gets lumped in, and it shouldn't be. Community of Christ is the successor to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and it is not the LDS Church. Over the last half century it has moved decisively toward mainline Protestant theology. It affirms the Trinity. It rejects the teaching that God has a body and that human beings become gods. It ordains women, practices open communion, blesses infants and baptizes at eight, and sits comfortably in the ecumenical mainline world. It still uses the Book of Mormon and its own Doctrine and Covenants.
Fairly described, TheWay's differences with Community of Christ look far more like our differences with a liberal mainline denomination than like anything else in this post — the authority of Scripture alone, those additional books, baptism, and the questions of biblical authority that run through the mainline generally. Those differences are real. They are not these.
Why the identity of Jesus isn't a secondary matter
Somebody reasonable is going to ask why this can't be one more item on the long list of things Christians disagree about. The answer isn't complicated.
Jesus said it Himself, in the starkest words He ever used: if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. John 8:24. Not "you'll be less mature." Die in your sins.
Paul warned the Corinthians that a man could come preaching another Jesus, and another spirit, and another gospel, and that they were putting up with it far too easily — 2 Corinthians 11:4. He told the Galatians that if he himself or an angel out of heaven preached another gospel, let him be accursed — Galatians 1:8. That is not a man with a casual view of precision.
And John made it the test: whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father — 1 John 2:23. Acts 4:12 — neither is there salvation in any other. 1 Timothy 2:5 — one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
There's a mechanical reason underneath all of that. The debt is against God, so only God can absorb it — a creature, however exalted, can only ever pay a creature's price. And the debt is a man's debt, so a man has to pay it. Take away either half and the cross stops working. That's not a technicality about vocabulary. A bridge anchored on one bank isn't a bridge. It's a dock.
And the door is open
Now the part I actually care about.
If you're a Latter-day Saint or a Witness and you got this far, thank you for not closing the tab. I have no interest in arguing with you on a porch and I'm not keeping score. If you want to sit in the back row on a Sunday and listen, nobody's going to point you out or corner you in the parking lot. If you'd rather sit at my kitchen table and bring the hardest questions you've got, bring them, and I'll tell you when I don't know. And if coming costs you something — for some of you it will cost a great deal, including people you love — you should know going in that a church that can't carry that with you isn't worth walking into.
Jesus spent His time with the people the religious crowd had already written off. He was patient with sincere people who were sincerely wrong, and hard on people who were certain they were right. Everybody in these groups is precisely the kind of person He came for.
So was I.
One bank or two
I said a bridge anchored on one bank is a dock. Here's the other side of it. The bridge is finished. Jesus is fully God, which is why He could carry the weight, and fully man, which is why He could stand in your place. He died with your sin on Him, they buried Him, and on the third day He walked out with the same body He went in with. Nobody earns a place on that. There's no list to complete first, no ordinance to qualify for, no organization to be approved by. You call on Him and He saves you, and the whole transaction happens between you and Him.
If you've already done business with Him, here's your week. There are missionaries in this county and there are people who will knock on your door, and most of us have been short with somebody at that door at some point. Next time, don't argue and don't hide behind the curtain. Open it. Learn a name. Offer a glass of water and ask one real question about their actual life. That's the whole assignment.
Nobody has ever been argued into the kingdom. Every person I know who came in came in because somebody was decent to them first.