THAT’S JUST HIS OPINION?

Mormon doctrine is often hard to grasp, not just intellectually but in trying to understand what is and isn’t a legitimate tenet.

From its inception, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been overrun with evolving revelations, scriptural alterations and theological contradictions. The late prophet and president of the sect, Ezra Taft Benson, sought to reduce the confusion by decreeing, “The Living Prophet is more vital to us than the standard works” (i.e., The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price, and the Bible).

Anyone who discusses with an LDS missionary the theological edicts issued by their leadership eventually will hear the retort, “That’s just his opinion!”

Gilbert Scharffs, in his 1986 book, The Truth About “The God Makers,” used this evasive technique when he wrote, “Church leaders are entitled to their own opinions like everyone else. Official doctrine in the LDS church is determined by canonization of scripture and official statements by the First Presidency or the prophet himself when he speaks for God” (pg. 243).

Yet, at times, even the “prophet himself,” speaking for God, is not immune from this tactical diversion. Take, for example, the overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that Brigham Young taught that the pre-mortal Adam of the Garden of Eden was none other than God the Father (Elohim). This teaching, denounced in 1978 by then-president and prophet Spencer W. Kimball, has become known as the “Adam-God” doctrine. While not directly stating Young’s declarations were “just his opinion,” a publication by Mormon apologist Van Hale purported to debunk this unscriptural belief by calling the doctrine a “theory.”

Another example is the LDS teaching on the birth of Jesus Christ. While the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus’ physical body was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit (i.e., through a virgin apart from any human relations or agency) and born of the Virgin Mary (Matthew 1:18), Mormonism rejects this fundamental doctrine.

In the Mormon system, the first “spirit child” born to the Father (Elohim) and one of his goddess wives was Jehovah (Jesus). When the time came for Jesus to receive a mortal body, Elohim (who himself is a man exalted to godhood) came to Earth and took the Virgin Mary as his wife, had sexual relations with her, thereby personally begetting a physical body for his firstborn Son.

Mormon Apostle Bruce R. McConkie acknowledges this teaching in Mormon Doctrine. Under the heading, “Only Begotten Son,” he writes:

“Beloved Son, Christ, Son, Son of God, Christ is the Only Begotten ... the Only Begotten Son ... the Only Begotten of the Father ... These name-titles all signify that our Lord is the only Son of the Father in the flesh. Each of the words is to be understood literally. Only means only; Begotten means begotten; and Son means son. Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers” (pp. 546-547, italics in original).

Under the heading, “Son of God,” in the same book, he writes:

“God the Father is a perfected, glorified, holy Man, an immortal Personage. And Christ was born into the world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal, real, and literal sense that any mortal son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events, for he is the Son of God, and that designation means what it says” (pg. 742).

When this writer has confronted Latter-day Saints with these statements, he repeatedly has been told, “That’s just his opinion!”

There seems to be little hesitation by Mormons to distance themselves from awkward areas of theology proclaimed by their church leaders. Yet one of the LDS church’s tactics to buttress its claim as the only true church is an appeal to the Bible.

A small cardstock handout used by Mormons is said to contain the “Seventeen Points of the True Church.” This circular says its author consulted the Bible to identify the characteristics of the first-century Christian Church, thereby allowing him to discover which is the one true Church upon the Earth today. The circular goes on to say that he found 17 distinctive characteristics of this true church, all of which the LDS church possesses. Some of them were: a restored church, a foundation of apostles and prophets, the teaching that God (the Father) and Jesus Christ (the Son) have bodies of flesh and bone, and the practice of baptism for the dead.

Absent from the list is the principle that the first-century believers “continually devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42). Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, writes the Church’s response to the apostles’ doctrine: “They received it, retained it, and acted on its principles” (pg. 962).

Early believers subscribed to the apostles’ authority on the teaching of Scripture and accepted it as the very Word of God. In Christ’s true Church there is nothing optional about believing the apostles’ doctrine. We do not find any record of early Christians dismissing the apostles’ clear teaching with “That’s just Peter’s opinion!” or “That’s just Paul’s opinion!” Those who opposed it, such as Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Timothy 2:18), were branded heretics.

Equally troublesome for Mormons is the extent to which one can apply the rationalization of “that’s just his opinion.” Does it apply to Joseph Smith Jr.’s claim that God and Jesus Christ told him that all the churches were wrong and an abomination? Can we apply it to Smith’s teaching that God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man? Or can we apply it to Spencer W. Kimball’s 1978 proclamation that allowed black people to join the Mormon priesthood?

Utah Mission’s Robert McKay highlighted this error in Mormon logic recently:

“Do you see where this leads? If statements that a Mormon doesn’t want to accept can be brushed off as private opinions without authority, so can other statements. If declarations that make the church look bad are mere opinions, so are statements that make the church look good. If a General Authority said something that the Mormon doesn’t believe and it was just that man’s opinion, then the things that the Mormon does believe are also just someone’s opinion” (The Evangel, January/February 1996, pg. 8).

Christians need to be aware that in Christ’s Church, adherence to the apostle’s doctrine has never been an option. Their divinely inspired teachings were far more than “just someone’s opinion.”

—MKG

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