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The Argument

Callister compares Richards’s argument to C. S. Lewis’s most memorable argument, the classic aut deus aut malus homo (Latin, “either God or a bad man”) dilemma argument for the deity of Jesus Christ.[2] According to Lewis, a merely decent or nice man, a “good teacher,” who was not God would not claim the sorts of exclusive, divine prerogatives that Jesus did, forcing us to choose between viewing him as a very bad man—“a madman or something worse”—or the divine Son of God.

According to Callister, “Likewise, we must make a simple choice with the Book of Mormon: it is either of God or the devil.” This choice is forced on us by the fact that “it is either the word of God as professed, or it is a total fraud.” The Book of Mormon “claims to be the word of God—every sentence, every verse, every page,” and if it is not, “it is a sophisticated but, nonetheless, diabolical hoax.”

To determine which of these viewpoints is correct, he tells his listeners, “Ask yourself if the following scriptures from the Book of Mormon draw you closer to God or to the devil.” He then quotes Book of Mormon texts urging people to “feast upon the words of Christ,” to “build your foundation” on Christ, to “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him” (2 Nephi 32:3; Helaman 5:12; Moroni 10:32). Callister asks, “Could these statements from the Book of Mormon have possibly been authored by the evil one?” He argues that they could not, because Christ’s teaching that Satan would never be divided against himself (Matt. 12:24-26) proves that Satan would never encourage people to turn to his arch-enemy, Jesus Christ. Since scriptures that teach people to worship, love, and serve Christ cannot come from the devil, the Book of Mormon “must be from God.”[3]

This argument presented by Callister takes the following logical, deductive form:

• Either the Book of Mormon is from God, or it is from the devil.
• It is not from the devil.
• Therefore, it is from God.

The argument is a deductively valid one, which simply means that the form of the argument is properly structured or ordered such that if the first two statements (the premises) are both true then the third statement (the conclusion) must also be true. When assessing a deductively valid argument, the only relevant way to challenge the truth of the conclusion is to critique one or both of the premises. I will consider each of the premises in turn.

God or the Devil: The Argument’s First Premise

Is it true that the Book of Mormon is either from God or the devil? Dilemmas like this can be and often are oversimplifications, but some logical dilemmas are, after all, quite reasonable. One of the most common fallacies is the false dilemma, and it is important that we be able to recognize true logical dilemmas from false dilemmas. Here are some good examples of true logical dilemmas:

• Either Jesus Christ rose from the grave, or he did not.
• Either Joseph Smith saw Jesus Christ in 1820, or he did not see Jesus Christ in 1820.
• Joseph Smith was either a true prophet of God or a false prophet.

Here are some examples of false dilemmas; note how these differ from the ones just stated:

• Either Jesus Christ rose from the grave, or the disciples stole the body.
• Either Joseph Smith saw Jesus Christ in 1820, or he experienced a demonic deception.
• Joseph Smith was either a true prophet of God or the Antichrist.

The first three statements are true logical dilemmas because in each case the two choices express the only hypothetical possibilities, either by definition or by accepted facts. The first two are proper dilemmas by simple definition: one either rose from the grave or one did not; Joseph either saw Jesus in 1820 or he did not. The third statement is a proper dilemma by accepted facts: it is an undisputed fact that Joseph explicitly claimed to be a prophet of God, and in such cases one either is a true prophet of God or one is a false prophet.

The next three statements are all false dilemmas because in each case significant hypothetical alternatives are overlooked or ignored. For example, if Jesus did not rise from the grave, any number of other things might have happened. The disciples may have stolen the body, or the Romans may have moved it, or the body might have been buried in a different place, or the reports of the empty tomb may be false…all of these hypothetical scenarios and more have been put forward and defended by non-Christians. The statement is therefore a false dilemma. This doesn’t mean the conclusion that Jesus rose from the grave is false (it turns out that all of the many proposed alternative theories are seriously flawed), but it does mean this dilemma is not a good premise to use in an argument for Jesus’ resurrection. In the next statement, Joseph Smith may have seen Jesus, or he may have experienced a demonic apparition, or he may have made the whole thing up (and there are still other possibilities). Finally, if Joseph Smith was not a true prophet, he must (since he claimed to be a prophet) be a false prophet, but it does not follow that he is the Antichrist.

In order to assess the first premise of Callister’s God-or-devil dilemma argument, we need to be clear as to its meaning. By themselves, the expressions “of God” and “of the devil” are somewhat ambiguous. However, in context Callister evidently means that the Book of Mormon was supernaturally inspired either by God or by the devil. One reason for concluding that this is his meaning is the fact that by “of God” he clearly means inspired by God supernaturally as the very word of God, which suggests that “of the devil” in the same context means supernaturally inspired by the devil. Furthermore, Callister introduces the dilemma with the words of his great-great-grandfather, “That book was either written by God or the devil” (emphasis added). Posed in that way, the dilemma would seem rather clearly to mean that the Book of Mormon must either be inspired by God or be inspired by the devil.

Assuming this is Callister’s meaning, the dilemma is clearly a false one. A fraudulent scripture certainly could be concocted by a false teacher without needing to have it supernaturally inspired by the devil. Mormons do believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and it is quite correct to say that this claim is either true or false. Thus, we could easily agree that either the Book of Mormon is the word of God, or it is not the word of God. But if it is not the word of God, it might not be the word of the devil, either. It might be the word of man.

Consider the following genuine logical dilemma posed by Jesus Christ: “The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” (Matt. 21:25 ESV). Since John the Baptist obviously was a man, Jesus’ dilemma is logically valid: if his baptism was not of heavenly origin (i.e., from God), then it was of human origin. These two views exhausted the hypothetical possibilities in that context. Notice that Jesus’ dilemma does not exclude a role for Satan in a religious practice not mandated from God, nor does it need to say anything about the devil at all, since to say that John’s baptism was of man would in no way exclude a demonic aspect if such were involved. On the other hand, if Jesus had asked if John’s baptism was “from heaven or from the devil,” Jesus’ critics might plausibly have responded that these two views ignored a third possibility, namely, that John was simply doing his own thing.

We should probably say the same thing about Callister’s first premise. Perhaps the Book of Mormon is neither of God nor of the devil; perhaps it is of man. In order to make the God-or-devil dilemma work, Callister would need to show that a book that claims to be the word of God but is not would have to be inspired by the devil. Callister points out that Joseph claimed that an angel of God gave him the Book of Mormon plates and that he translated them by the power of God. If Joseph’s claims on these points were false, that would be very bad indeed, but would it require the conclusion that the book was a production of Satan? Not necessarily. Joseph may have made up the story about the angel appearing to him, or he may have been suffering from delusions. Likewise, Joseph may have mistakenly thought he was inspired to translate the plates, or he may have knowingly claimed to have a divine gift of translation that he did not. Again, Callister poses a valid dilemma when he says, “It is either the word of God as professed, or it is a total fraud,”[4] but a “total fraud” need not be a Satanically inspired fraud.

To salvage the argument, one might suggest reinterpreting Willard Richards’s and Tad Callister’s dilemma so that “of the devil” did not mean inspired supernaturally by the devil. To do this, however, one would need to interpret “of God” to mean something other than supernaturally inspired by God. For example, someone might suggest that the Book of Mormon must either be something God approves or something the devil approves. Such an approach to the first premise, however, actually makes it far less plausible as a true logical dilemma. After all, God might approve of or like some things in the Book of Mormon but not others, and the devil likewise might be happy about some parts of the Book of Mormon but not other parts. All sorts of religious writings may be regarded as good books with some significant errors, or as bad books that make some good points.

The “God or a bad man” dilemma that C. S. Lewis and other Christians have posed with regard to the identity of Jesus Christ is a genuine logical dilemma once one understands that Jesus did make the divine claims reported in the Gospels (a point not at all lost on Lewis, by the way). If I were to claim in all seriousness that I would be sitting on the throne of God on Judgment Day deciding who lived forever in God’s kingdom and who did not, dispensing condemnation to some and forgiveness to others at my own discretion, you would rightly conclude that I was a menace. It would make no sense to reject such divine claims from me and at the same time to suggest that I was a pretty decent guy or even a good theologian! Lewis’s argument works because his dilemma, properly understood in context, does present two mutually exclusive possibilities regarding someone (anyone!) who claims to exercise the prerogatives of the Creator of the universe. The “God or the devil” dilemma with regard to the Book of Mormon does not, however, hold up, because a book that falsely claims to be inspired by God might be inspired by the devil or merely inspired by human creativity and ambition.

Not of the Devil: The Argument’s Second Premise

The second premise of the Richards-Callister argument is that the Book of Mormon cannot be “of the devil” because it draws people “closer to God” and teaches them to come to Christ and build their lives on him. The devil, Callister explains, would “be divided against himself and thus be destroying his own kingdom” if he were to encourage people to align themselves with the kingdom of Christ.[5]

It is true that Satan would never deliberately undermine his own dominion or control over people’s lives, as Jesus taught in his famous comment denying that his exorcisms were merely “Satan driving out Satan” (Matt. 12:25-26; Mark 3:23-26; Luke 11:17-18). However, Satan is not above pretending to support the cause of Christ for his own diabolical purposes. Simon Peter thought he was defending Jesus’ divine calling as the Messiah (Christ) by denying that Jesus would be rejected by the Jewish authorities and put to death, but Jesus responded to Peter by saying, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matt. 16:21-23; Mark 8:31-33). Paul, in the context of criticizing those who “preach another Jesus, whom we did not preach,” warns that “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:4, 14). John, likewise in the context of warning about false teachers who claim to represent Jesus Christ, described those who follow the sinful path of such false teachers as “children of the devil” (1 John 3:10). Both Jesus and his apostles warned about “false prophets” and “false teachers” who claimed to represent Christ (Matt. 7:15-23; 24:23-24; Mark 13:21-22; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 4:1-6). Although we should not make such judgments lightly or carelessly, the sad reality is that some people who talk in glowing terms about Christ and profess to follow him are, according to New Testament standards, really working for the kingdom of the devil.

I have already argued that there is no need to claim that the Book of Mormon is either directly inspired by God or directly inspired by the devil. However, the Book of Mormon might be “of the devil” in the more general sense of contributing to the cause of the devil’s agenda. We cannot assume that if a book such as the Book of Mormon speaks in pious language about Jesus Christ, then that book cannot in some sense be “of the devil.” After all, even the Book of Mormon itself describes what it calls “this great and abominable church” and claims that “the devil…was the founder of it” (1 Nephi 13:6; also 14:3, 9, 10, 17; 22:22-23). Clearly, then, the Book of Mormon itself acknowledges that some people who claim to believe in Christ and to follow Christ are deceived by the devil. If this is so, then it is not impossible for the Book of Mormon to be “of the devil” in some sense, even though it contains many pious statements about Christ.

Consider the following statements, each appearing in writings regarded by many as scripture:

• “When Jesus appeared on earth, he performed miracles and great wonders for the salvation of humanity.”[6]
• “His name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honour in this world and the Hereafter.”[7]
• “Jesus established in the Christian era the precedent for all Christianity, theology, and healing. Christians are under as direct orders now, as they were then, to be Christlike, to possess the Christ-spirit, to follow the Christ-example, and to heal the sick as well as the sinning.”[8]
• “Never have I read in the works of the philosophers anything that can compare to the maxims of Jesus…. He could convert water into wine; he could change death into life, disease into health; he could calm the seas, still the storms, call up fish with a silver coin in its mouth.”[9]
• “And as you go and preach, baptize the people in the name of Christ. They who believe and are bap­tized shall rise up in the newness of the life of Christ….”[10]

The above quotations come, in chronological order, from the Gospel of Judas (late 2nd cent.), the Qur’an (7th cent.), Science and Health (1875), the Archko Volume (1884), and the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ (1908). Each of these writings makes respectful and honorable statements about Jesus and encourages people to believe in him. Three of them are in effect alternative “gospels” or books focusing directly on Jesus. Yet each also makes highly controversial and clearly unbiblical statements about Jesus and about the gospel of Christ. Are these books “of the devil”? A Christian could easily justify such a conclusion, without necessarily suggesting that any of them was inspired supernaturally by the devil and without denying that there are good and true statements about God and about Jesus in each of them. That is, a Christian could argue that such books, despite their laudatory statements about God and Christ, work against the cause of Christ (and therefore in support of the devil’s agenda) by teaching confusing and contradictory ideas about Christ. The fact is that each of these books, in different ways, calls into question the reliability and adequacy of the New Testament writings’ teachings about Jesus Christ. Sometimes subtly, and sometimes blatantly, these pseudo-scriptures attack the biblical foundations of the Christian faith, challenging the historic Christian view of the person of Jesus Christ.

The Book of Mormon, from an orthodox Christian perspective, falls into this same category of pseudo-scriptures that undermine confidence in the trustworthiness of the revelation of Jesus Christ found in the New Testament. It is one of a long list of supposedly inspired writings appearing in modern times that claim to “restore” the true understanding of the teachings and life of Jesus. In some cases these are supposedly new, modern scriptures or inspired writings, such as Heaven and Hell (by Emanuel Swedenborg, 1758), Doctrine & Covenants (mostly by Joseph Smith, 1828-1844), Science and Health (by Mary Baker Eddy, 1875), or A Course in Miracles (by Helen Schucman, 1976, supposedly dictated to her by Jesus himself!). In other cases these writings are modern fictions purporting to be rediscovered ancient scriptures, including the Book of Mormon (1830) and the Book of Abraham (1842), the Archko Volume (1884), the Life of Issa (1894), the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ (1908), and the Secret Gospel of Mark (1973).

While the Book of Mormon is probably the most subtle of these pseudo-scriptures in its deviations from the biblical teachings about God and Jesus Christ, it still falls into this category. The Book of Mormon questions the completeness and integrity of the Bible, teaches that Jesus started a separate church in the Americas and that the church there and in the Old World had become apostate, and directs its readers to view Joseph Smith, its modern publisher, as the divinely chosen instrument of the restoration of the true Christian faith. The fact that it generally uses traditional-sounding Christian language about God and Christ makes it all the more potent as a means for drawing people from traditional Christian churches away from a faith resting solidly on the foundation of the Bible.

We have good reasons, then, to dispute Callister’s second premise. It may very well be that the Book of Mormon is “of the devil” in a loose sense. That is, it may be a tool or instrument supporting or helping to advance the devil’s agenda of undermining confidence in the Bible as the fully trustworthy and reliable word of God and of leading people away from a biblically sound understanding of the Christian faith.

Conclusion

I have argued that the first premise of the Richards-Callister “God or the devil” argument is false: the claim that the Book of Mormon must be either of God or of the devil ignores the possibility that the Book of Mormon might simply be the work of man, a product of human deceit and ambition. It does not follow that if the Book of Mormon is not directly inspired by the devil then it must be directly inspired by God. In a broader or looser sense, a book might be “of God” in some respects but “of the devil” in other respects; that is, it might be a mixture of truth and error, of good and evil.

With regard to the second premise, namely, that the Book of Mormon cannot be of the devil because it encourages faith in Christ, I have argued that many books purport to encourage faith in Christ but undermine a sound, biblically authentic faith in Christ. To the extent that the Book of Mormon is such a book, it might very well be described, in the looser sense, as “of the devil.” Thus, the second premise of the argument is also highly questionable.

Since the first premise is false and the second premise is at least highly questionable, the God-or-devil dilemma argument for the Book of Mormon fails. From an orthodox Christian perspective, the Book of Mormon is a mixture of truth and error. After all, much of the Book of Mormon is copied, often nearly verbatim, from the Bible! Where the Book of Mormon repeats what the Bible says, it is true. Where the Book of Mormon makes statements that reflect biblical truths and values (as it often does), even though it is not quoting the Bible, here again the Book of Mormon may be viewed as containing significant truth. Unfortunately, the Book of Mormon presents these true statements in the framework of a false historical narrative designed to undermine the integrity and trustworthiness of the Bible, to indict traditional Christianity as apostate, and to present Joseph Smith as a modern channel of divine revelation through which true Christianity is being restored. For that reason, despite all of the true and good things one can find within the Book of Mormon, we cannot accept its claim to be a restored scripture. Without going to the extreme of denouncing everything in the Book of Mormon as of the devil, we therefore conclude that as a whole the Book of Mormon is not of God.

NOTES

[1] LeGrand Richards, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, rev. and expanded ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1976), 79; see also D. Michael Quinn, “They Served: The Richards Legacy in the Church,” Ensign, Jan. 1980, 25.

[2] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 55-56; see also The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 23-24; Miracles: A Preliminary Inquiry, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1978 paperback ed.), 109; and especially “What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 156-60. The cogency of the argument is currently the subject of vigorous debate among philosophers and theologians.

[3] Tad R. Callister, “The Book of Mormon—a Book from God,” Ensign, Nov. 2011, 74-75.

[4] Ibid., 74.

[5] Ibid., 75.

[6] Gospel of Judas, trans. Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst (National Geographic Society, 2006).

[7] The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an, trans. ‘Abdullah Yusuf ‘Ali, 11th ed. (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 2004), 3.45.

[8] Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: First Church of Christ, Scientist, numerous editions [orig. 1875]), 138.17.

[9] “Pilate’s Report,” in The Archko Volume, or, the Archaeological Writings of the Sanhedrin and Talmuds of the Jews [by William Dennes Mahan] (Philadelphia: Antiquarian Book Company, 1913), 132, 146-47.

[10] Levi H. Dowling, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ (London: L. N. Fowler; Los Angeles: Eva S. Dowling, 1911), 180.8-9.

An Annual Observance?

The Watchtower article reasons that since Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper on Passover and since the Passover was an annual festival, the Memorial also ought to be observed once a year (21). This seems plausible enough on the surface, and we should acknowledge that the Lord’s Supper does indeed have a function parallel to (and in some ways built on) the Passover, which commemorated Israel’s deliverance from Egypt in the Exodus. Craig Keener points out, “As the Passover annually commemorated (and allowed new generations to share the experience of) the first redemption…so the Lord’s Supper regularly did the same for the climactic redemption” through Christ’s death (Craig Keener, 1-2 Corinthians, New Cambridge Bible Commentary [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005], 98-99).

However, Jesus did not actually specify that the Lord’s Supper was to be observed once a year. Luke and Paul both report that Jesus told his disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24), but Jesus apparently said nothing about how often they were to do so.

Paul, however, provides some indications that Christians observed the Lord’s Supper more than once a year. Paul also quotes Jesus saying with regard to the drinking of the cup, “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:25, emphasis added). He follows this quotation by saying, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (v. 26, emphasis added). The Greek words hosakis ean, which may be translated “as often as” or “whenever,” express the sense of the action being done at “indefinite and multiple points of time” (Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. [New York: United Bible Societies, 1989], 67.36; see also any of the other standard lexicons). Anthony Thiselton cautions against understanding “as often as” to express any specific “frequency or regularity” and emphasizes the indefiniteness of the expression in Greek (Anthony Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000], 886). In other words, the expression indicates that the rite was observed many times but without specifying how often or even that it was done on a regular schedule.

Paul’s wording in 1 Corinthians 11:25-26 is difficult to explain if the Corinthians observed the Lord’s Supper only once a year. Correlating the data from 1 and 2 Corinthians with the narrative in Acts 18-20, it appears that Paul left Corinth late in the year 51 and wrote 1 Corinthians early in the year 55. (See, for example, the articles on “Chronology of Paul” and “Corinthians, Letters to the” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph P. Martin [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993], 115-23, 164-79.) This leaves at most three occasions after Paul’s departure for the Corinthians to have observed an annual Lord’s Supper on Passover, if that had been the Christian practice.

We can be reasonably sure that the Corinthians observed the Lord’s Supper far more often than once a year from the context in which Paul discusses it in 1 Corinthians 11. The Corinthians were making a mockery of the Lord’s Supper, which took place within the context of a church fellowship meal, because some were eating their own food while letting others go hungry, and some were actually getting drunk (1 Cor. 11:20-22). These things happened, Paul tells the Corinthians, “when you come together as a church” (v. 18), which suggests that the abuses were occurring repeatedly at church gatherings. “They treat the Lord’s meal like any association’s banquet, which means that, despite the Greek and biblical ideals of equality, their seating and treatment highlighted their social stratification” (Keener, 1-2 Corinthians, 96).

In this context, Paul states, “When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk” (vv. 20-21 ESV). When he says, “it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat,” Paul does not mean that the Lord’s Supper was not supposed to be observed at these gatherings but that their divisive, class-conscious behavior negated the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. In effect, they were failing to observe the Lord’s Supper because they were acting as if the rich among them were the hosts, rather than acknowledging that the Lord himself was the host. “Is it the Lord’s [own] Supper which is being held, or that of the host and his most favored guests? Who is the focus of attention? For whose benefit is it being held? Indeed, to put it most sharply: Who, indeed, is ‘hosting’ this meal?” (Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 862, emphasis in original).

As historians commonly recognize, in Corinth and likely elsewhere during the first decades of the Christian movement, the Lord’s Supper was a rite of remembrance of Christ’s sacrificial death that took place whenever the church gathered corporately for fellowship around a meal. In fact, it is probably correct to say that in 1 Corinthians “the name ‘Lord’s Supper’ embraces the entire event, including the main meal, together with the concluding rite of the bread and wine” (Hans-Josef Klauck, “Lord’s Supper,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 4:363). This simply could not have been the case had apostles such as Paul regarded the Lord’s Supper as strictly an annual observance.

Given the lack of any definite instruction or commandment in the New Testament on the question, and the evidence from 1 Corinthians 11 of the association of the Lord’s Supper with church fellowship meals, we should resist any dogmatic teaching that the Lord’s Supper must be observed according to any specific schedule. Observing it once a year on Passover is one option, but it is not a biblically normative rule, nor was it the first-century church’s practice.

An Evening Meal?

The Watchtower article also asserts that Jehovah’s Witnesses observe the Lord’s Supper on Passover evening after sunset “because according to the Bible, this is to be an ‘evening meal.’ (1 Corinthians 11:25)” (22). 1 Corinthians 11:25 does not, however, say that the rite is to be an evening meal. In that verse, Paul simply reports that Jesus instituted the rite of the bread and wine “after supper.” The word “supper” here translates an infinitive verb form, to deipnesai, “supping” or “dining,” and is related to the noun deipnon, “supper” or “dinner,” in verse 20. Thiselton comments that deipnon “usually designates the main meal of the day in the Graeco-Roman world. Like the English dinner, it usually denotes an evening meal in formal circles, but as in the case of the English phrase ‘Christmas dinner’ the emphasis concerns the major event rather than the specific timing. It need not always be an evening meal, although in practice it usually was” (Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 863-64). Thus, the rendering “evening meal” in the New World Translation at 1 Corinthians 11:20, 25 is an overtranslation that makes the timing of the meal specific in a way that the Greek wording does not (cf. Mark 6:21; 12:39; Luke 14:12-24; 17:8; Rev. 3:20).

There is no basis, then, for dogmatically claiming that the Lord’s Supper ought to be observed in the evening. Doing so made sense in the first-century context when it was commonly (though not universally) observed as part of a church fellowship meal. Once the rite was separated in practice from such church meals, it was natural for the rite to be observed at whatever time the church met for corporate worship. Again, Paul’s terminology in 1 Corinthians 11 is not time-specific, and no New Testament text legislates a time of the day when the rite is to be observed.

The article repeats some of the stock Jehovah’s Witness claims regarding the divine name Jehovah. It accuses “apostate Christendom” of “manifest hatred of God’s name” (4). Religious leaders have “hidden the identity of the true God from millions upon millions of worshippers” (5). By contrast, “Jehovah’s Witnesses honor and glorify the divine name” (5). This remains part of the mythology of Jehovah’s Witness religion in its demonization of practically every aspect of traditional Christianity. Anyone who has spent much time in evangelical churches, for example, knows this is a myth. The name Jehovah and such Old Testament (OT) compound forms as Jehovah-jireh are part of evangelical piety and hymnody (even in contemporary choruses). The American Standard Version (ASV) of 1901 used Jehovah throughout its OT, and the Holman Christian Standard Bible, one of the newest evangelical English versions of the Bible, uses Yahweh in its OT.

Quoting Romans 10:13 in the New World Translation (NWT), “Everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved,” the article comments, “There is a connection between calling on Jehovah’s name and the resulting salvation by him” (4). What the article does not mention, and Jehovah’s Witnesses will not acknowledge, is that the original Greek text of Romans 10:13 certainly said, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord [Greek, kurios] will be saved.” The libraries and museums of the world house hundreds of manuscript copies of Romans in Greek, hundreds if not thousands more manuscript copies of Romans in other ancient languages (such as Latin), and none of them use any form of the Hebrew name YHWH; all of them say “Lord” in this verse. One of the earliest and most important of all New Testament (NT) manuscripts, the Chester Beatty papyrus (P46), dated about AD 200, contains Romans 10, and it has kurios just as do all of the other copies of that passage. The Greek NT consistently uses kurios (or occasionally theos, “God”), never YHWH in any form, when quoting OT texts that have YHWH in Hebrew. In context, Jesus is identified as this “Lord” (compare Romans 10:13 with Romans 10:9-12). Probably the main reason why the Watchtower uses “Jehovah” selectively in the NT portion of its NWT is to obscure the fact that in passages like this one Jesus is identified as the Lord Jehovah.

Ironically, despite its citation of Romans 10:13, nowhere in the article is anything said about faith in Jesus Christ or what he did for salvation. Of course, Jehovah’s Witnesses do affirm (elsewhere) that they believe in Christ, but the omission is telling. The main point of Romans 10 is that faith in Jesus as Lord is the way to salvation that unbelieving Jews in Paul’s day missed. While belief in Jesus (or at least beliefs about Jesus) is in some sense part of the Jehovah’s Witness religion, salvation is essentially found by “calling on the name of Jehovah,” engaging in the “true worship” of Jehovah separate from that of “apostate Christendom,” and “serving as his Witnesses.” To serve as his Witnesses means “to preach the good news of the Kingdom” and “share with others the correct understanding of God’s Kingdom and how it will sanctify his name” (3-6). In short, one’s salvation is the result of being a practicing, active Jehovah’s Witness. This is “salvation” by religion.

The omission of any reference to faith in Christ or to what he has done for our salvation is all the more significant when one considers how the NT understands what it means to “seek refuge in the name of Jehovah.” The NT does not directly quote Zephaniah 3:12, but it has much to say that echoes what Zephaniah says about how people must respond to Jehovah. In particular, language and themes regarding Jehovah found in Zephaniah and other OT prophets are applied in the NT to Jesus Christ. This is sometimes less clear in the NWT because of its use of “Jehovah” in the OT and its selective use of that name in the NT, as is the case in Romans 10:9-13. However, the connections are often clear enough even in the NWT or in any other version:

(1) Zephaniah’s message is “the word of the LORD” (Jehovah, 1:1; 2:5). The message of the apostles was “the word of the Lord” Jesus (see Acts 8:25; 13:44, 48-49; 15:35-36; 16:32; 19:10; see also 1 Thess. 1:8; 4:15, cf. 4:16-17; 2 Thess. 3:1).

(2) Zephaniah, like the prophets Joel (1:15; 2:1, 11, 31; 3:14) and Isaiah (13:6, 9), spoke repeatedly of “the day of the LORD” (Zeph. 1:7, 14), a day of his wrath and anger against the wicked (1:18; 2:2). Paul understands this prophetic motif to speak of “the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:8; 2 Cor. 1:14), “the day of (Jesus) Christ” (Phil. 1:6, 10; 2:16). This is what he understands to be “the day of the Lord” (see also 1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Thess. 2:1-2).

(3) Zephaniah’s message was that God’s people could be saved from that Day of Judgment by turning to the Lord in faith: they “shall all call upon the name of the LORD” and “shall not be put to shame” (Zeph. 3:9, 11). These statements also echo the prophecies of Joel and Isaiah. Joel had prophesied, “Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD [Jehovah] will be saved” (Joel 2:32), the very verse that Paul quotes in reference to Jesus in Romans 10:13 (see also Acts 2:21). Paul also describes Christians as those “who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:2). Isaiah had written that God was laying a foundation or cornerstone in Zion, “and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame” (Is. 28:16). Paul also applies this statement to the Lord Jesus (Rom. 9:33; 10:11; see also 1 Peter 2:6-7).

These three points show us that from a NT perspective, we are to interpret the message of Zephaniah in the light of Jesus Christ, as pointing forward quite specifically to him as the ultimate, eternal Savior and Judge. This is, of course, what we should expect based on Jesus’ explicit teaching that the whole OT pointed forward to him and finds its fulfillment in him (Luke 24:25-27, 44-47). Yet Christ is at most tangential to the Watchtower’s interpretation of the message of Zephaniah. Yes, judgment is coming, on those who are really apostates (who have abandoned faith in Christ) and on the whole unbelieving world. Deliverance from that judgment is to be found, however, in appealing to the Lord Jesus, calling on him for salvation, and trusting in his mercy. He is indeed the Lord on whose name we must call, the Lord in whom we must take refuge. To miss this is, according to the NT, to miss what the book of Zephaniah and the rest of the OT are really all about.

This explanation of Luke 24 receives interesting confirmation and support from a new article by Dane C. Ortlund, a Bible editor at Crossway Books. The article, “‘And Their Eyes Were Opened, and They Knew’: An Inter-canonical Note on Luke 24:31,” appears in the new issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (Vol. 53, No. 4, Dec. 2010), pages 717-28. Ortlund shows that the quoted statement by Luke alludes to Genesis 3:7, where the same statement is made about Adam and Eve’s eyes being “opened” when they ate of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Ortund’s conclusion is worth quoting:

“The first eye-opening with its attendant knowledge ushered humanity into a new moral universe of darkness, exile, sin, and death. The second eye-opening with its attendant knowledge pulled back the eschatological curtain to allow Jesus’ distraught disciples to perceive that he himself had inaugurated the long-awaited new world of hope, resurrection, restoration, and new creation” (728).

Christians know that the gospel is true, not because they have a “burning” feeling in their hearts (something they may or may not experience), but because they perceive the truth that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.

First up is an article in the January 1, 2011 issue of the Watchtower entitled “Did God Know that Adam and Eve Would Sin?” (13-15). The article answers its question in the negative. According to Jehovah’s Witness theology, God has the “capacity” to know everything ahead of time, including Adam and Eve’s sin, but “does not have to use this capacity” and “wisely uses his ability of foreknowledge selectively…when it makes sense to do so and fits the circumstances.” God’s ability to foreknow some things and to refrain from foreknowing other things is likened to a sports fan choosing to watch a prerecorded game from the beginning instead of jumping forward to see the end (14).

We agree with the theological premises to which the Watchtower appeals in making its case for this doctrine of selective foreknowledge. Specifically, we agree that God made everything good, that Adam and Eve before the Fall had the ability not to commit sin, that the first humans were not “preprogrammed to please God” (13), that God does not tempt people to try to get them to sin, that God is not to blame for Adam and Eve’s sin (14), that God is love, and that Satan “initiated the rebellion in Eden” (15). However, from these biblically correct premises it simply does not follow that God did not know that Adam and Eve would sin.

For example, from the premise that Adam and Eve had the ability not to sin it does not follow that God did not know they would sin. The truth is that Adam and Eve had the ability not to sin or to sin—that is, they had the ability to choose either path. Suppose that instead of choosing to sin, Adam and Eve had chosen not to sin. Would God knowing that ahead of time somehow rob them of their responsibility for making the right choice? Of course not. God could know what they were going to do without compromising their responsibility in doing it. Likewise, God could foreknow the fact that they were going to sin without causing their sin.

The Watchtower article reasons that it would have been “hypocritical for God to warn them against a specific sin while already knowing the bad outcome” (13-14). Assuming God is omniscient, however, the real injustice would have been for God not to have warned them ahead of time against committing the sin. God’s justice required that he give Adam and Eve fair warning of the consequences of disobeying him. It makes no sense to claim that he needed to be ignorant of the outcome in order to be righteous in issuing the warning!

The article asks if it would “make sense for a wise God” to make creatures that “he knew were bound to fail” if other creatures (the angels) were watching (14). This rhetorical question suggests that God would be restrained, as it were, by public opinion. God has the absolute right to make whatever world he chooses, even if he knows that some of his creatures in that world will abuse their God-given abilities.

Virtually the entire article consists of this sort of a priori reasoning about what would make sense for God to do or know. The one supposed example it cites of God not knowing something falls short of proving any such ignorance. The article points out (14) that after Abraham demonstrated his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, God said, “Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Gen. 22:12). Yet years earlier God had told Abraham, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years,” after which they would escape “with many possessions,” but that Abraham himself would be “buried at a good old age” (Gen. 15:13-15). How could God know all these things about Abraham and his descendants and not know whether Abraham would pass the test that was coming? Those future events depended on Abraham being the patriarch of promise. The traditional and best understanding of a statement like Genesis 22:12 is that God was accommodating himself to human language by speaking as a human parent would to his child.

The Watchtower’s notion of selective foreknowledge is completely unbiblical. The concept as explained in the article presupposes that it would always be immoral for God to know ahead of time about any specific acts of sin by his creatures. Yet the Bible is full of references to God knowing ahead of time that various individuals and nations would do all sorts of bad things. God knew that Abraham’s descendants would be enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years (Gen. 15:13-14), that Pharaoh would resist letting Israel go (Exod. 3:19-20; 4:21; 7:3-5; etc.; cf. Rom. 9:17-18), and that Israel would become corrupt after Moses’ death (Deut. 31:16-21, 27-29). Jesus knew that people would hate his disciples (Matt. 10:22; 24:9; etc.), that the authorities in Jerusalem would put him to death (Matt. 16:21; 20:18-19; etc.), and that Judas would betray him (Matt. 26:21-25). These are just some of the more prominent examples out of the dozens of such statements throughout the Bible.

Jesus’ foreknowledge of Judas’s betrayal is an especially interesting and important case study. Jesus chose Judas to be one of his apostles, knowing from the start that Judas would end up betraying him (John 6:70-71; 13:10-11, 18-26). Had Jesus not chosen Judas to be an apostle, Judas would not have had the opportunity to commit the infamous act of betrayal for which he will forever be remembered. Yet Jesus chose Judas, knowing what he would do. This example, which is associated with the core events of the gospel, refutes the pious reasoning that God would never put someone in a position to do evil if he knew the person would make that choice.

Selective foreknowledge is not only unbiblical, it is unworkable. If God did not foreknow that Adam and Eve would sin, then he could not have foreknown any of the subsequent events in world history, because that whole history is shaped by their act. The whole history of human conflict and struggle, of villainy and heroism, of sin and redemption, of death and resurrection—all of it presupposes the first sin of Adam and Eve. If God didn’t know that event would happen, he didn’t know anything else that would happen in human history. God’s “selective foreknowledge” would be limited to knowing the future movements of astronomical bodies and the times of sunrise and sunset for the rest of earth’s history.

The argument that it would be immoral for God to know about sin ahead of time has things backwards. Suppose God could have known, but chose not to know, that Adam and Eve would sin. Would God not have been negligent to blind himself to what was about to happen? We are not talking about a sports fan avoiding hearing the final score of a football game so he can enjoy the action. We are talking about the Creator of the universe supposedly avoiding knowing what would happen in the creation for which he was responsible.

The New Testament teaches that God knew that his Son, Jesus Christ, would die as a sacrifice for sins before the first sin was committed. Christ, as the “unblemished and spotless lamb” by whose blood we have been redeemed, “was foreknown before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:18-20). God also knew before the foundation of the world that he would redeem his people in Christ. God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). The names of believers in Christ have been “written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain” (Rev. 13:8; 17:8; see also Matt. 25:34). The expression “the foundation of the world” in these passages refers to the creation of the world and thus to a time prior to the first sin (see Job 38:4; John 17:24; Heb. 1:10; 4:3). Obviously, for God to foreknow the sacrificial death of his Son for our sins, he needed to foreknow that sins were going to be committed.

We may confidently conclude, then, that God knew that Adam and Eve would disobey him and plunge the whole human race into sin. He knew, because he already had a plan in place for dealing with sin—a plan that would bring good out of evil (compare Gen. 50:20; Rom. 8:28) and bring glory to him because of his grace (Eph. 1:4-6). It is because God knows all things ahead of time that he is never caught by surprise and his plans for his creation can never be finally thwarted.

Soon after I was called to be a stake president, our stake presidency received training from an Area Seventy. During the training, I asked a question to which he responded, “That is a good question. Let’s turn to the Church Handbook of Instructions for the answer.” We then went to the handbook, and there was the answer to my question. A little later in our training, I asked another question. Once again he responded, “Good question. Let’s turn to the handbook.” I did not venture to ask any more questions. I thought it best to read the handbook.

I have thought since that the Lord could give a similar response to each of us as we go to Him with concerns or questions. He could say, “That’s a good question. If you will review Alma chapter 5 or Doctrine and Covenants section 76, you’ll remember that I have already spoken to you about this.”

Brothers and sisters, it is contrary to the economy of heaven for the Lord to repeat to each of us individually what He has already revealed to us collectively. The scriptures contain the words of Christ. They are the voice of the Lord. Studying the scriptures trains us to hear the Lord’s voice. (Ensign, Nov. 2010, 14-15)

Some obvious questions come to mind in reflecting on these statements by David M. McConkie. Has it always been “contrary to the economy of heaven” for the Lord to respond to questions already addressed in scripture? If it has always been so, then (assuming the accuracy of the official account of the beginning of the LDS faith), did not Joseph Smith err by asking the Lord questions on doctrinal matters already addressed in the Bible? Should he not have gone to Scripture for his answers instead of asking the Lord to provide these answers to him individually? Had Joseph Smith believed what David M. McConkie asserts, then the LDS religion would never have gotten off the ground.

If it has not always been “contrary to the economy of heaven” for the Lord to answer such questions, what has changed? One possible answer is that the LDS Church now has reliable and comparatively complete scriptures in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. The traditional view among Mormons appears to be that while these scriptures are reliable, the Bible is reliable only where it agrees with (current) LDS teaching. Many if not most Mormons view the Bible as less reliable than the other three “standard works” of the LDS Church. Another possible answer is that the LDS Church now exists, so that there is a collective organization with the priesthood, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and so forth, whose members now have the spiritual ability to read the scriptures and understand them. I suppose Mormons might accept both answers together.

What I would say to Mormons on this issue is this: When we who are evangelical, Bible-believing Christians have questions, or are asked questions, about doctrinal and practical matters, our answer will sound very similar to what David M. McConkie says: “Good question. Let’s turn to the Handbook.” For us, the Bible is the Lord’s Handbook of Instructions (among other things). It is contrary to the economy of heaven for the Lord to repeat to each of us individually what he has already revealed to us in the Bible. The Bible is the word of God—the written revelation of the loving heart of God, the holy standards of God, and the merciful works of God by which he reconciles us to himself through Christ and empowers us for life and ministry through the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, we hear the voice of the Lord. In the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, we find Christ.

Thus, when someone asks us, “Do you believe that all worthy males can hold the Aaronic priesthood today?” we reply, “That’s a good question. If you will review Hebrews 5-8, you’ll remember that God has already spoken to you about this.” When someone asks, “Will all of the redeemed live together in one glorious kingdom of God or will they be separated into three different glorious kingdoms?” we reply, “That’s a good question. If you will review Colossians 1:12-14 or Revelation 21:1-7, you’ll remember that the Lord has already spoken to you about this.” If someone wants to know if there is any God other than Jehovah, we reply, “That’s a good question. If you will review Isaiah 43:10 and 44:6-8, you’ll remember that Jehovah has already spoken to you about this.”

If LDS doctrine simply went beyond the Bible to provide additional revelations that agreed with and supplemented what the Bible teaches, that would be one thing. If, however, we find that LDS doctrine repeatedly conflicts with the teaching of the Bible, then our stance needs to be uncompromising. If you’ll study the Bible, you’ll find that the Lord has already spoken on a number of subjects on which the LDS Church claims to have the truth. Time and time again, a careful comparison of LDS teaching with the Bible turns up disconnects, discrepancies, and deviations of LDS doctrine from what the Lord has already said on these issues. I present just such a comparison in the Gospel Principles Scripture Study Guide, a resource on the website of the Institute for Religious Research. The method of that study guide can be summed up in five words: Let’s turn to The Handbook.

• Only one God who has forever existed as a single tri-personal being of Father, Son and Holy Spirit — rejected.
• God the Father as a personal being who as spirit cannot be bounded by a body or any other space-time limitation (it’s what allows him to be all-powerful, all-knowing and simultaneously everywhere present) — rejected.
• Jesus Christ who existed prior to his virgin birth as God, the eternal creator and Logos, and who while condescending to become fully human and image the invisible God and make him visible to us, continued to be also completely and fully deity — rejected.
• The only way we escape the just and eternal consequences of our sin and daily selfish, egocentric choices is to exchange our sinfulness and unrighteousness for the perfect righteousness of Jesus, which God offers to us as a gift, we receive by faith – believing that God out of his goodness and grace will just give to us for the asking — rejected.   For more information IRR.org has several articles on Mormon-Christian differences.

So does Glenn Beck inspire a return to Christian and conservative values? Yes. Does Glenn Beck use imagery and terminology that resonates with evangelical Christians?  Sure looks that way. Do other Christian leaders seem to be welcoming Glenn Beck as a fellow Christian and expressing a certain level of comfort with how he articulates his personal beliefs and faith? Mmm hmmm.   Does any of that make Glenn Beck a Christian?  Not if we are going to use good hermeneutics and a historical and biblical definition for “Christian.”  Until the LDS Church changes the articulation of its core doctrines and stops rejecting what Christians have affirmed for the past 2000 years, we are all going to have to continue to choose – Mormon or Christian – but not both.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that “good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered” (The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949; New York: Collier, 1980], 50). As with other doctrinal matters, ecclesiology may not seem very important–until you encounter bad ecclesiology. Then the need for good ecclesiology becomes a felt need and not just an abstraction. I first discovered this fact when working through the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who claim to be the only true religion on the earth today. Despite their confident assertions that everything about their religion is Bible-based, the bureaucratic structure of the religion, led by a “governing body” that runs “Jehovah’s organization on earth,” does not fit at all with what we find in the New Testament. Studying Watchtower ecclesiology forced me to think through that the Bible teaches about ecclesiology. One gains a different perspective on ecclesiology when one is confronting a heretical religion than when one is caught up in skirmishes among evangelicals over, for example, congregational polity versus presbyterian (elder-based) polity.

The same principle applies when dealing with the ecclesiology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons confidently claim that the LDS Church is the only true church on the earth today, and one reason they give in support of this claim is that their religion is supposedly organized in the same way as the New Testament church. Superficially, Mormons can make a plausible-sounding case for this claim: the New Testament church had apostles, and the LDS Church has apostles. Hey, my church doesn’t have apostles! Maybe we’re missing something. The LDS Church has other offices that sound biblical but that your congregation or denomination probably doesn’t have: patriarchs, for instance, or high priests. Do Mormons really have a “restored” church that corresponds in its organization and offices to the church of the New Testament era? I discuss this question in a new article on the website of the Institute for Religious Research. That article, entitled “Church Organization and Apostasy,” is a response to chapter 16 of Gospel Principles, a doctrinal manual that Mormons around the world are studying throughout 2010 and 2011. The thesis of that article will surprise some people: my contention is that the apostles did not have an “organization” to run Christianity in the first century. That is, there was no hierarchical institution that directed the activities of Christian missionaries, evangelists, and other church leaders throughout the world, or that dictated doctrine and policy from the top down. I also show that the offices of the LDS Church have little or no connection to the ministries of Christian leaders in the first century. The article also offers a response to the LDS claim that early Christianity became so corrupt that the church ceased to exist for some seventeen centuries (what they call the Great Apostasy) until Joseph Smith came along. Understanding where these claims go astray biblically will not only help us be prepared to confront the errors in the LDS religion, but they will help us have a better appreciation for what the Lord Jesus Christ intended when he founded his church.