On the nature of Jesus Christ

I have been following evangelical Christian Kyle Beshears’ Substack, in which he posts chapters of a book on The Church of Jesus Christ that he is working on. The book is intended for evangelical Christians and takes on a question and answer approach to explain the beliefs and history of The Church. I love the openness, and I love Dr. Beshears’ straightforward and fair approach. The truth-seeking intellectual honesty is refreshing. 

The most recent post is on the nature of Christ, an essential and fundamental topic. As usual, Beshears accurately describes LDS beliefs about the nature of Jesus Christ. He does a great job of demonstrating the many aspects of our beliefs that overlap with evangelical Christian beliefs- such as the birth, life, ministry, Atonement, and resurrection of Christ as described and celebrated in both the Bible and Book of Mormon. After describing similarities, the remainder of the chapter reasonably focuses on the primary difference between our beliefs in the nature of Christ, which I believe Beshears also gets right.

The only quibble I have with the post, as a member of the Church, is the use of the differences in our Christology to give implicit support to the idea that I am not a Christian: “To say that Latter-day Saints worship an utterly different Jesus is, at once, rashly uncharitable, and yet precisely true.” I do appreciate that Beshears adds the “rashly uncharitable” part. 

By way of analogy, there are fundamental historical disagreements about many historical figures. For example, John Locke - if I were of the opinion that he was actually a devout Christian while many call him a deist or closet atheist, does that mean there were two John Lockes? Do I believe in a different Locke than you do? Obviously that’s absurd, or a meaningless distinction. I believe Christ is my Savior, born from a virgin birth, gave the world-shaking Sermon of the Mount, sacrificed himself for my sins and my salvation, and was resurrected from the dead. But if I have a different opinion about his relationship with the Father, does it make more sense to say that there are two Jesus Christs, or just that we have different ideas about his relationship with the Father? To say that I worship a different Jesus is hyperbolic if not absurd, and yes, “rashly uncharitable.” Especially so given how vaguely we mortals are able to really understand anything concrete about eternity and divinity, charity should be the order of the day rather than putting up unnecessary divisions between us. Anyway, I digress.

Beshears accurately identifies the primary point of divergence from mainstream Christianity’s view of Christ, which is The Church’s rejection of Trinitarian doctrines “clarified” at the Council of Nicea. Where members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that the “Son of God” is in reality the son or offspring of God, mainstream Christianity “understands this title to mean that the Father is eternally the Son’s Father, not by sourcing the Son’s essence, but by mutual loving relationship that communicates essence.”

The eternal question in Judeo-Christian religion is about how literally to take various passages of the Bible. From these differences spring up a wide array of belief systems, and certainly it can’t be said that the most literal always wins. But I find it more than a little bit ironic that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is commonly and uncharitably excluded from the category of “Christian” at least in part because we understand the New Testament more literally on the nature of Jesus Christ. 

[Update 10-1-2022] Thinking about it more, I realize I am being uncharitable in ending as I did originally. Any doctrine of the nature of Christ is forced to accept some biblical statements more metaphorically and others more literally. For example, while my church’s doctrine takes the words “Father” and “Son” more literally than evangelicals, we therefore take more figuratively the statement that “my Father and I are one.” Given the uncertainty that arises from the Bible’s text alone, any understanding necessarily relies on some extra-biblical source. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ are grateful for modern-day revelations to clarify these important truths. But I can understand why other Christians who don’t accept LDS modern revelation would choose to stick with the traditional interpretation chosen at the Council of Nicaea. 

[Update 10-3-22] I was just reading in Christianity Today (which I recently subscribed to, and have found some quality articles), and saw new survey results suggesting that 73% of evangelical Christians agree with the statement “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” In practice, the prevailing view of evangelical Christians might not be so different from the LDS view of the nature of the Father and the Son after all.