Christian vs Mormon Debate If They Believe in the Same God

<b>Do Christianity and Mormonism teach the same beliefs?</b>

There's a lot of people telling Latter-day Saints, "Well, you guys believe this." And I think it'd be good for us to be able to say, "Well, this is what I believe." Fundamentally, I'm a Christian before I'm a Latter-day Saint.

Today on Maybe God, we're kicking off our first debate-style conversation. And whether and what, how much we think. Exploring where Christians and Latter-day Saints agree and where they fundamentally part ways.

In the historic Christian community, there's a rock-solid existential, beautiful, unifying belief that God was always God. He was never a sinful mortal. He never had to become a God. In the Latter-day Saint tradition, it's negotiable.

Could I interject there? Jacob Hansen is an LDS apologist and prominent voice on Mormonism, recently known for his debate defending Christianity against atheist Alex O'Connor. Can you be stone for blasphemy for doing something other than claiming to be God? Why should I trust the Protestant canon over the Catholic canon or any other canon? Like, who's determining what books here are the infallible God breathed and who is not? I think that the Latter-day Saint tradition actually resolves a lot of those issues.

And representing evangelical Christianity is Aaron Shafovalofff, who has spent years engaging Latter-day Saints in conversations on the streets of Salt Lake City. Evangelicals have a very high view of prophets. I don't think prophets fundamentally, publicly and persistently misrepresent God. And I think what the Latter-day Saint tradition has done in order to make sense of its own history is they've had to create a category for true prophets that can be wrong prophets, good prophets that can be disasters.

What is it about Joseph Smith in particular as a man that gives him that sort of credibility? Everything for me starts with Jesus Christ. What did he say about future prophets? First of all, he never said there weren't gonna be any more prophets. He said there will be true prophets and there'll be false prophets. And he said by their fruits, you shall know them. I think Joseph was actually telling the truth.

What would each of you say from your own perspectives about how someone is saved? Aaron Shafovaloff and Jacob Hanson, welcome to Maybe God. Thanks for having us. Nice to be here. So glad to have you. I'm really excited about this conversation.

Before we start diving into some of the similarities and differences between the Church of Latter-day Saints and Protestant Christianity, let's get to know each of you just a little bit on a personal level. Jacob, you've been a well-known defender of the LDS faith on YouTube, and you've even talked to famous atheists like Alex O'Connor. You've really been out there, especially recently. What experiences originally led you to this place where you are today, to Mormon apologetics?

So yeah, it's kind of a long story, but it had to deal with some of my own faith journey. And just so everyone's clear, the name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I got involved in sort of defending my faith and things mainly because I had myself, it was funny because it was atheism actually that really I was confronted with. It wasn't really so much the specific doctrines of my own church that were the hard thing. It was why should I believe in God?

It actually, ironically, William Lane Craig is one of the people who I consider one of my heroes. Even though obviously theologically, him and I would have plenty of debates to have. But watching him debate Sam Harris, watching him debate Christopher Hitchens, that made a big impact on me. It showed me that the Christian faith, just in general, is not something that is intellectually shallow. And it kind of engaged me into leaning deeper into it. I watched other debates, like John Lennox is another one of my heroes in the work that he's done. And I saw that the new atheist movement was a lot more bluster than substance. And when that happened, and then there were a lot of other things that went on, it's a huge long story. But eventually I came to where I was very, very comfortable in my own faith as a Latter-day Saint. And I began to go online and kind of talk about the things that I had learned. And it just kind of grew from there. More and more people started to listen. And all of a sudden I was being offered to do debates. And so I did them and they went well. And anyway, it kind of rolled into all of this. So that's how I ended up in this situation.

How interesting. I did not expect you to bring up William Lane Craig and John Lennox in your story. That's really awesome. You had both those guys on the show before and there are a couple of heroes of mine as well. That's fascinating. Were you raised, LDS?

Yeah, I was raised as a member of the church. I actually, interestingly though, so I'm one of eight kids. My parents are still active in the church, but I'm actually the only member of my family who is still a Latter-day Saint. And really who is, I think, I'm the only member that's seriously religious still. And so it was my confrontation with that situation of sort of my own siblings sort of losing their faith that caused me to have to seriously reflect on mine. And like I said, it wasn't so much about like quote unquote Mormonism per se. It was way more fundamental than that. And so I had to go to the very roots of belief and kind of rebuild from that point.

Fascinating. I love that. I love to add a little texture and color to your story in that way. That's really fascinating. As you've become a more public LDS spokesman of sorts, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because we've never had this kind of conversation specifically about your branch of faith, let's say. And I know there are misconceptions, you would call them definitely misconceptions on the part of guys like me and Aaron. You feel like it's mischaracterized, the LDS faith. And maybe you would even say there's been, you know, persecution that you face. I'm just curious what that's been like for you. Have you faced that kind of mischaracterization, judgment, persecution even from Christians like me, let's say?

So I actually, well, first of all, are there misconceptions? Yes, 100%. Like that's, now here's the thing. We also have very meaningful differences in our theological sort of outlooks between Latter-day Saints and sort of Protestant Christians, right? However, I like to say, like, let's focus on the real like differences and not create differences that aren't there or misconceptions that are there. As far as like persecution, there can be animosity that exists. And I know people that have been mistreated, you know, Latter-day Saints that are kicked out of homeschooling groups when people find out that they're Latter-day Saints, or, you know, I know someone who had an apartment complex that really only wanted to have Christians, and they're like, well, Latter-day Saints aren't Christians, and so they weren't able to get that.

Personally though, I've had fairly positive interactions, and I actually went to Catholic schools growing up. And so I have a lot of Catholic friends. And so I've seen kind of both sides of it. I've seen the kind of vitriolic and not so great side of interactions between Latter-day Saints and other groups. And I've also seen people that really do it well. And I'm gonna plug my friend who has a YouTube channel. His name is Jeff McCullough. He has a channel called Hello Saints. He lives in Utah. He's a pastor. And I think he does a very good job of representing us accurately while still being very, very fair about the differences.

Yeah, great. Well, thank you for that plug. I'm gonna look that channel up as well. And you were talking with me about it before we started rolling. I wanna look Jeff's work up. Just to be clear, you consider LDS yourself, others like you to be Christians. And I know I'm gonna fumble the language throughout this interview where I say there's the Christian version of the story, and then there's the LDS or Mormon version. And I'm sorry in advance for fumbling some of that language. But we have to be able to talk about these things. You would say for sure that you are a Christian, even though most Protestants like me would say, people that believe what you believe specifically wouldn't qualify as Christians. Is that correct?

Yeah, but I would say this, to be fair to your point. I do not consider myself a creedal Christian, meaning we do not, where we make a distinction, because the creeds, sort of the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the creeds of the-- Apostles Creed. Fourth century. Well, the Apostles Creed, actually, no. We would probably, I don't think there's anything in the Apostles Creed that we would take issue with. It's sort of those later formulations that get into the nature of God that we distinguish from. And so when I say that I'm a Christian, I don't mean that I'm a creedal Christian, because we do reject the creedal formulations of God. And for the church kind of early on, within the Orthodox and Catholic traditions at least, that was the litmus test for Orthodoxy. So if you were outside of the creedal formulations of God, you were considered a heretic. And so that's sort of the historical reason, at least so far as I can tell, that distinguishes a Latter-day Saint from sort of the traditional, they'll use the word traditional, and what that means is the creedal formulations that were made of God that we reject, and therefore people say, well, if you don't accept the Trinitarian formulation, then you're not a Christian. So that's sort of the line there that I see.

Okay, that's helpful. And then one more question for you, Jacob, before we get to Aaron's backstory. LDS is not monolithic. There are different variations and groups, sects within it. Where do you land in the spectrum of LDS? Where do you fit into that stream?

Hey, maybe God Family, if you're finding this conversation thoughtful, challenging, or even a little uncomfortable, that's intentional. We believe that real growth happens whenever people with deep convictions are willing to sit at the same table and speak with honesty and respect. Conversations like this one between Jacob Hansen and Aaron Shafawalif aren't about winning arguments. They're about understanding what we believe, why we believe it, and how those beliefs shape our lives. So if you value hearing from people like this, explaining their faith clearly, then maybe God is here for you. So please take a moment to subscribe. That would help these kinds of conversations get out there and reach more people, and it helps keep you connected to future episodes where we wrestle with the biggest theological questions. Now let's get back to the conversation.

So the first thing to keep in mind is that there are smaller restorationist branches that have sort of broken off, but the core group that went with Brigham Young West after the death of Joseph Smith, the one that has 20 million members, the other groups are pretty small. I think the biggest one may have a few hundred thousand members that are breakoffs. But I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And so we are not the fundamentalists who continue to practice polygamy. They are not part of our church. They are excommunicated if anyone practices polygamy in our church. We're not part of the Community of Christ, which is a smaller group that broke off after Joseph Smith's death. I'm part of what would be considered sort of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And within that church, I would say, because you have people that can be a little bit more progressive or a little bit more fundamentalists, I'd say I'm right down the middle. I think maybe that's the reason that I resonate with people is because I'm pretty representative of the majority of Latter-day Saints.

Okay, you're a centrist in that way, got it. All right, that's very helpful. Right in the middle. Okay, Aaron, now you live in Salt Lake City, which is, we were joking again before we started rolling that our Christian Protestant representative in this conversation ironically lives in Salt Lake City. Of all places, you're a computer programmer by trade, but you spend your free time in conversations with, largely with LDS people and others about the Christian faith. How did you start having these conversations, specifically with the Mormons and LDS folks?

I took a seven week mission trip to Utah when I was in college. It was an internship with Utah Partnerships for Christ. And as a part of that, I got on a bus and I went down to Temple Square and I had my first stranger evangelism encounter with Latter-day Saint. And I just fell in love with sharing the gospel with the people here, I fell in love with the people. I love the Intermountain West. For geography alone, I wouldn't want to move anywhere else. It's a great place to live. And anyway, as a part of those discussions, I started to grow in my own faith, of course, inescapably. And I started volunteering with an evangelical missionary apologetics organization called Mormonism Research Ministry. And I volunteer there. And at the Utah Christian Research Center here in Draper, Utah, which is a suburb of Salt Lake City. So we're doing a lot of equipping of evangelicals to talk to Latter-day Saints. And we're trying to keep an accurate purview of sort of the landscape of Latter-day Saint thinking and have better informed relational discussions or on the street discussions with Latter-day Saints with respect to the differences of theology. And we have an evangelistic impulse. So there's interfaith dialogue that can be a part of that, but we're definitely proclaiming the Protestant gospel.

Got it. And from your vantage point, you would say that most or all LDS people are not categorically Christian. Is that correct?

I think if somebody is holding to the historic mainstream typical beliefs of the Latter-day Saint faith, it at the very least calls into question whether their profession of faith is credible. So whether we would see them as being of the same spirit, of the same church in the spiritual sense, or worshiping the same God or having the same gospel. So though they would have very similar terms and use at the linguistic level, they would use a lot of the same terminology. There's a lot of work that has to be done in conversations to unpack the definitions of those terms.

Got it. Okay. We'll get more into the weeds in a minute, but I'll ask you the same question I asked Jacob in terms of the multiplicity of Christian expressions and denominations. Where do you fit and what tradition are you a part of as a Protestant Christian?

I'm a Baptist, which means that the local church is the fundamental governing church unit. And it has an autonomy though it seeks to cooperate with other churches and express unity and catholicity with other churches. I'm of the Reformed Baptist tradition and I hold to the the creeds, the ecumenical creeds in terms of the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed. And I love the Chalcedonian definition of the two natures of Jesus. So I dig that stuff. So you could call me a Catholic evangelical with respect to those historic, creedal beliefs.

Interesting. And if you want to call me a creedal Christian, please do. (laughing) I'd stand that on me with, you know, chat to that. (laughing)

Well, both of you sound like fascinating guys that I'd love to just get a cup of coffee with and go deep with. So I'm really looking forward to getting into it today. But first I just want to make clear what my role is in this conversation. I understand I am, you know, I am a Protestant pastor. Aaron, you and I are both Protestant Christians. And so Jacob, I don't think either of us want to team up on you or make it a two V one kind of debate. I'm going to try to play the role of objective moderator. Forgive me when I step out of that role. I'll try not to, but what do each of you hope to get out of a conversation like this one?

I guess I'll go first. So for me, it's just clarity, you know? I want to make sure that people understand what we actually believe. There's a lot of people telling Latter-day Saints, "Well, you guys believe this." And I think it'd be good for us to be able to say, well, this is what I believe. This is what my church teaches. And you can accept it or not. And ultimately, you know, we don't have to have consensus here. There's not going to be consensus because we have very different theological models here. But I think understanding accurately what that is, I think would be, is very helpful.

Great. What about you, Aaron? It's a great answer, clarity. I think that is a great starting point. Awesome. Would love to have great interfaith dialogue. And of course, I'm inescapably hoping that people will come to know the Jesus of the Bible and have their sins forgiven and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost freely. And so I mean, yeah, conversion. I prayed for Jacob before this, and I prayed for the audience before this.

Yeah. Awesome. Cards on the table. Yep, cards on the table. No poker evangelism. I love it. That's great. Now, let's start with what we share in common. Aaron, I'd like you to take this question first. We can spend all day talking about the differences, distinctions between sort of mainstream Christianity and the LDS views. But what fundamentally do you see that we share in common in terms of our beliefs?

At an ethical level, I really appreciate the family friendliness of the Latter-day Saint culture. People make fun of religions that get married early and have a bunch of kids, and I'm all there for it. And one thing I've appreciated about Jacob in particular is that he seems to have, please tell me if I'm misrepresenting you, you seem to take a strong position on male-female marriage and normative heterosexuality, basic traditional Christian ethics with respect to gender and marriage. So, you know, pro-masculinity, pro-femininity. So I really appreciated Jacob's strong stances that he's taken on same-sex marriage, homosexuality, that aren't necessarily in line with a larger progressive culture. So he seems to be swimming upstream against culture on that. That among evangelical apologists in this space, we look at Jacob and we say, oh, thumbs up on that. That's actually neat to hear someone taking a stand on that. Yeah, so a lot of the fruits of what you see among LDS people are positive, good fruits, and that's not nothing that's important.

What about you, Jacob? Would you, what would you agree with what Aaron's already said, or would you add to your response to that question about what we share?

Yeah, I just would say, you know, commonalities, first and foremost, all of us here believe that there's a God, that there's some sort of a higher power. None of us are atheists, right? So we're at least at that level. And then we all believe, you know, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that we all ultimately want to follow him. We have different beliefs about him. But, you know, like, for example, Joseph Smith said the following, I have this quote from him. It says, "The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the apostles and prophets concerning Jesus Christ, that he died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven, and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it." And so I just look at that quote and I say, you know, I'm pretty sure you guys believe that, you know, the apostles and prophets concerning Jesus Christ, what they said, we have different ideas about the nature of Jesus Christ, maybe the nature of the way that salvation works. We have our theological differences for sure. But I hope that, you know, you guys believe me when I say, I'm genuinely trying to follow Jesus Christ. And I tell people this, fundamentally, I'm a Christian before I'm a Latter-day Saint. I genuinely want to find the Jesus who rose from the dead because I believe he's the only way out of this mess, right?

Now, then I see the options in front of me, right? There's sort of the Protestant model, there's the Catholic model, there's the Orthodox model, there's sort of the Eastern Orthodox model, there's the Jehovah Witnesses model, there's the Latter-day Saint model. So there's all these different people that are coming to me and saying, look, if you want to follow Jesus, sort of here is the methodology and way to do it. And I'm there for that conversation. And I'll tell everybody this, I would, if I were to find, for example, that the Trinity was true, like I'd convert. I would, I would, like I would change. So I'm not someone who is, even though I'm a defender of my point of view, I defend it because I think it's true when I compare it to the other models available, but I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.

Yeah, Aaron, any response to what you just heard from Jacob?

Well, we use a lot of the same terms, but I think it's important for us to dig deeper into the definitions of those terms. I think at the heart of the Christian faith, and even in light of the creedal traditions of the Christian faith, we care a lot about the substance behind those terms. So what was happening, for example, around the time of the Council of Nicaea, is that the Arian position was using the language of Scripture, and they were sort of hiding behind the language without defining clearly what they were saying. And so what it did is it forced a conversation about the meaning of the same terms being used. When we say that Jesus is begotten, do we mean that he's sort of this super creature, you know, where he's this inferior deity? Does this entail? And so a lot of that discussion was obscured by the use of biblical language. And because we love the Bible so much, we want to have clear discussions about what we mean when we use the biblical language. So it's kind of like that all over again when it comes to the evangelical LDS discussion.

Yeah, and a lot of it comes down to just what is authoritative in terms of Scripture. And it's so fascinating to me that a lot of these conversations share similarities with conversations Protestants might have with Catholics, for instance. There's obviously not, it's not one-to-one, but we have the same conversation about authority. And Catholics obviously want to pull from tradition as they pull from Scripture. And most Protestants are higher on the Bible itself as even sola scriptura and things like that. Jacob, what do LDS people like yourself generally think about the Protestant way of understanding the Bible and Christ more specifically? We all know the sort of things that Protestants say and think about Mormons that's all out there, you know, the many wives and the secret revelation of Joseph Smith with the tablets and the angel Moroni, all that stuff. What do LDS people think of guys like Aaron and I and what we believe?

Well, first and foremost, we appreciate that you guys have such a deep love for the Bible. We do believe that the Bible is the word of God so far as it is translated correctly or rendered correctly or produced correctly. We also believe that same thing, by the way, about the Book of Mormon. We do not believe in inerrancy of Scripture. However, with that in mind, you know, what I struggle with when I see sort of the Protestant model for the Bible is I look at it and there's this question, it's like, well, first of all, the Bible isn't one thing. The Bible is a library. That's kind of what Bible means. It means, you know, and I speak Spanish as I live in Argentina and La Biblioteca is the library, right? So the Bible is a collection of books. Each of these books were written to a different audience in a different time for a different purpose. But I also have to ask the question, well, who decided what books go in the library? And when I look at the Bible in history, it appears that the Bible emerges as the product of a tradition and specifically a tradition in a church that kind of produces that Bible. And so one of the challenges that I have is, you know, we want to get down to that sort of what is the ultimate authority? Well, it's the Bible. But then if I go, well, let's say the library, right? To be more precise. If the library is the ultimate authority, well, who chose what books go into the library? And then it would seem that whoever chose what books go into the library, that that would be the ultimate authority. And so when I view that, but then I have to ask, well, how did those people come up with what books should be in the library? Like what was the metric that they were using? And from what I can tell, they were looking for books that were given through revelation to people who had authority to produce binding public revelation to the world. And so it seems to me that authority to produce binding public revelation to the world is the very basis of sort of the way that God works with mankind, because that is what is ultimately at the root of what the Bible is and why the Bible is what it is. So that's my quick take on that.

Is that how your community would justify the inclusion of other texts, let's say, because it seems like you referred to the Book of Mormon earlier as scripture. Is that accurate? The Pearl of Great Price and other texts?

So we don't believe in a closed canon. I don't see anything in the Bible itself that would suggest that revelation was supposed to stop at some point. And the pattern that God has laid out in scripture, the ecclesiastical pattern, kind of from start to finish, is that there are people that he calls to lead the people of God through revelation, binding public revelation.

But you would agree that there are texts that claim revelation or claim inspiration that should not be considered scripture. What would you do with the Gnostic Gospels, for instance?

Yeah, I would say that those don't meet the, yeah, those are not, for a variety of reasons, they'll claim that, but they are not that. They don't align with the truths that have already been revealed. So I do believe that revelation can be given, new revelation, but it does have to be tested against some sort of a standard of reality, and if it comports to what Jesus Christ taught. So I do utilize the revelations that have been given in the past as a sort of test to see if they're consistent with them. Now they don't have to be, it's a little bit of a nuanced subject, because they don't have to be like the exact same, like God can reveal new things, but they shouldn't contradict the things that God has already revealed. And fundamentally, we believe in personal revelation. So I believe that for me, and in my life, God can reveal to me that the Bible is His word. Because at the end of the day, there's the question, why do you believe in the Bible at all? Like why do you think that this library is there? And for me, the answer that I have to give is that God has revealed such to me, that this is His word, and it manifests in certain fruits in the world, and Christ is the one who taught that, by their fruits, He shall know them. That which leads people towards greater levels of light, and knowledge, and truth, and brings them closer to Him, as sort of the central linchpin of all of this. Those things are that which should be considered inspired in some way.

All right, that's interesting. Let's get Aaron's take on this. Aaron, when you hear Jacob describe his view of Scripture and revelation, what comes to mind? How do you wanna respond?

I think the most important thing to note is that our views of God are going to shape our views of Scripture. And historic Christianity has taken a transcendent view of God, which affects our view of inspiration. So we believe as historic Christians, that God has verbally inspired Scripture as His own speech. So when Scripture speaks, God speaks. And because God is infallible in His essence, I think that's an important point, is that God is not merely optionally or practically infallible, He's essentially and necessarily infallible. He is who He is because of who He necessarily and essentially is. He is light, He is truth, He cannot lie. And so what He says substantially and materially reflects His character. So we take Scripture as God's various speech. When Scripture speaks, God speaks. So we don't believe merely in solo script or we believe in tota script or all of Scripture should be received as God's very word.

When Jacob quoted Article 8, we believe the Bible in so far as it is translated correctly. I do squint at that today. I mean, even Jacob publicly has taken issue with parts of the Old Testament. And I would submit to you, Jacob, that if I had to poke a bit here, it would be that I think in the LDS apologetic space, it's no longer true that just because a biblical text is translated correctly, that it's necessarily believed. I think that there's a more robust LDS apologetic framework right now appropriating higher criticism and some more progressive views of the Old and New Testament, which become more selective about which parts of the Old and New Testament are received as God's very speech on account of more than just translation issues or transmission issues. There's more of a principle. Even in Jacob's model, as I understand it, sorry to talk over you. As I understand Jacob's model of approaching what seems to be official doctrine in his view, and please correct me, Jacob, I'm not trying to foist positions onto you, but he takes a view, as I understand it, called the collective witness model, wherein there's no finally binding revelation that suffices by itself to be determinatively authoritative. In other words, it gets put into a model where multiple sources are cohering to approach something that's more official. Jacob, I'd love for you to respond to that if I've misrepresented, please.

I would say that it's somewhat accurate. The problem that you run into, at least, again, I'll take off my Latter-day Saint hat and I'm just seeking Jesus. I'm trying to evaluate the Protestant model. One of the challenges that I have as I look at this model that Aaron would produce is that God breathed every single word, every syllable of the Bible, is as if it's from God's own mouth, is that I find in the text contradictions. And that even things that the Christians and Protestants no longer practice, for example, in Leviticus, it very explicitly says that homosexuals who practice homosexuality are to be put to death. And then I'm also told that, well, the Bible also teaches that God doesn't change. And I say, okay, well, if God doesn't change and he's commanded that homosexual behavior is punishable by death, and this is God's very speech, it would seem that if people don't want that, it's just because of their own progressive things. But now granted, those who disagree with it, I say they have good reason, because they read the New Testament Jesus, and they say this doesn't seem to align, like Jesus never told people to kill those people. And so when I go with the, I mean, if we really wanna take every word as God breathed, there are too many things that Christians rightfully reject because it contradicts with what Jesus taught. And so I always read the scripture, first of all, through the lens of what I believe Jesus Christ taught. And I evaluate what I think Jesus Christ taught by sort of the collective prophetic witness. So if I took every single prophet that God had ever called all the way through history, and I put them all into a room, and 99 of them said one thing, like love other people, do this. And then one of them was like, we need to stone gay people to death. I'm gonna stick with the 99 over the one that seems like the anomaly here. And so when he talks about the sort of collective witness model, that's my reconciliation to the problem of contradictions that I find within scripture.

Yeah, just to be very clear, it wasn't just same sex relations that were deserving of the death penalty and the law of Moses, it was murderers, rapists, and other kinds of crimes as well. So just to make that point clear, Aaron, how do you respond to that line of criticism about our interpretation of the Bible?

One of the things that I've noticed about evangelical Protestants that hold to the infallibility and inerrancy of scripture is that it causes you to pause, and it causes you to patiently reflect on scripture in a way that synthesizes the whole. So again, you have totescriptor. So when we take, for example, civil laws and the penalties given under Israelite law, we're going to zoom out and look at the covenantal structure perhaps of what's going on or the dispensation, if you're a dispensationalist. And we're gonna make sense of that in the framework that the Bible itself gives us, noting that just because something is, say, a ceremonial law, for example, in Leviticus, doesn't mean it's binding on New Testament Gentiles, for example. And that's not because we're being selective, it's because of the very structure of the covenants that God is giving. So, I mean, I would encourage my Latter-day Saint friends that if you embrace all of the Bible as God's very speech, as God's own word, you might call it God's own testimony of himself, what it causes you to do is it causes you to patiently reflect on scripture, many times not knowing how to piece things together, but seeing God prove over and over again that his Bible is to be trusted. I'm reminded of when Jesus resurrected, he says to his disciples, "Oh, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken." And so we want to have as high of a view of scripture as Jesus himself had. And Jesus had a high view even of the grammar and the, was it the Johnson titles of scripture? Jesus had a higher view of scripture than I do. And I want to seek to have as high a view of scripture as Jesus does.

Yeah. And obviously when we say scripture as Protestant Christians, we're talking about the canon, all the New Testaments and LDS tradition seems to, correct me if I'm wrong, elevate other texts to the same level. Do you view Jacob the Book of Mormon on the same plane as the Old and New Testaments? Are there other texts as well and talk to us about it?

Yeah, so we don't hold to a closed canon. I mean, for example, if you were to find one of the lost letters of Paul, we could include it in the canon, I would think. I mean, the Bible talks about books that are, Gad the seer and other books that would have been God's revelation. And so I've always found it, again, hard to understand why there's the idea of a closed canon. When the canon itself never claims that it's closed, it implies that there are missing books. And with certain additional scripture or whatever, Latter-day Saints are willing to include those if we believe that it has been revealed by God. And that is something that's determined authoritatively by the, when we believe that there are living prophets today, like if Peter was around today and Peter had a book that he said, "Hey, this is inspired scripture." And that was brought to the church to kind of ratify that, the church would have good grounds to do so. So if you believe that there has been a restoration of that original church structure that has that sort of authority and that the canon is not closed and that God has continued to speak, that he's spoken to people in other lands, this all opens up the door to something that is sort of accepted on the basis of tradition that the canon is closed. And I mean, oh, go ahead.

I'm sorry, I just didn't wanna interrupt you. I just wanna get even more specific on the Book of Mormon about the origins of it. What makes the Book of Mormon then authoritative in the LDS tradition? And where does it come from, even for those of us that might be less familiar with your tradition and give us its origin story, if you will.

That's a tall order. The basic notion of the Book of Mormon is that there were a group of pre-exilic Israelites, a family who prior to the Babylonian captivity escaped from the old world and were sort of led on a divine sort of journey or a journey that was inspired by God on where they should go and what they should do. And that they, through a series of miraculous events, ended up on the American continent. And that that people ended up producing a series of records. Those records were buried, and then they were brought forth by the prophet Joseph Smith under divine sort of guidance. And he then rendered that text through Revelation to sort of give the understand, and so he rendered that text into what is now the Book of Mormon today. And it is considered a Book of Scripture because it's a book that's given by revelation from God to help people to draw closer to Jesus Christ and to understand God better.

Okay, so pre-exilic meaning like seventh century BC, sixth century BC?

Yeah, so it would have been around, I can't get the exact here, yeah, but just prior to the Babylonian captivity, the time of Jeremiah.

Okay, these were Jews then that somehow a series of miracles you said, they ended up on the American continent and they hid or buried some tablets or a message of some kind in, it wasn't in Hebrew, I can't remember what language it was in originally.

So the language is only described, the word that Joseph felt best captured it based on sort of the revelation he received is Reformed Egyptian.

Reformed Egyptian, okay, lots of questions there, like why would they have written, but anyway, that's beside the point. How did Joseph interpret or receive that language and know what those messages said?

Through revelation. So ultimately the Book of Mormon is not a word for word translation that is given in a typical fashion. He received it, I would equate it probably the most analogous thing. So in the Bible, Joseph of Egypt, when he interprets Pharaoh's dream, it talks about a divining cup, which is a cup where he'd look into a cup of liquid and certain things would be revealed to him to help him interpret Pharaoh's dreams. Or also the, I know that the ancient Israelite priest had the stones which were on the breastplate that he would use to help to receive revelation from God. That was sort of a physical medium by which it was done. The accounts are that Joseph Smith used some sort of a physical medium. There's some debate on exactly what that medium was. It may have been a stone. It may have been like a set of, what they called them interpreters, which also were like, almost like glasses that he utilized in the process as he rendered the text of the Book of Mormon, which one of the more fascinating things about that story is that Joseph rendered the entirety of the Book of Mormon in about a little over two months, like two and a half months roughly, dictating like 4,000 words a day into a complex narrative that has multiple author voices, that it contains deep theology, poetry. It has inner woven timelines. It has, I mean, it's a very complex and rich book. And one of the reasons that a lot of Latter-day Saints find Joseph's story compelling and the earliest converts was that they knew Joseph. And for someone to produce a book like that in that amount of time is a pretty fascinating thing. And then the book also contains, I mean, it contains locations of places in the Near East that weren't discovered until in the 20th century, it contains like pretty detailed geography of where Lehi's family went in the old world in into locations that, you know, again, wouldn't have been known to Joseph Smith. So it's a pretty fascinating story. At the end of the day, it is a miraculous story. So to kind of just be incredulous about it, like, yeah, a guy rising from the dead and a talking donkey and a 900 year old man with every, you know, with every animal on a boat, those sound pretty crazy from the outside. But when you actually look into it, there's more to the story, I think, that a lot of people realize.

Yeah, but you can understand then how, you know, at least at first glance, someone that's unfamiliar with LDS and doesn't have a level of trust there would sort of look at that story objectively and go, really? You know, I think that's a fair sort of reaction to it, but I wanna be as, I wanna steel man this as much as I can from my vantage point and try to get inside your head. What is it about Joseph Smith in particular as a man that gives him that sort of credibility that you would believe a story like this when it seems so fantastical?

I don't know that it is Joseph Smith himself. In fact, I'm with you. You look at this from the outside and you're like, what in the heck? I mean, let's turn this around on a Christian standpoint, right? You're talking about a guy that was born of a virgin, like real convenient, like, oh yeah, I didn't get pregnant. I was a virgin and I'm pregnant. And then that guy ends up rising from the dead and walks on water. And, you know, if we wanna just play the sort of atheist incredulity game, you can do that. But it's the same with the Bible. Like, why do I believe the Jesus story? It's because there's a spiritual power in it that I can't deny. And when I read the, and so everything for me starts with Jesus Christ, okay? I believe he really rose from the dead. And so when I read the Book of Mormon, that book brings me closer to Christ. It makes me a better person. It makes other people better people. Like when you look at the fruits of Mormonism, which people talk about that are good, you have to remember Jesus Christ himself, what did he say about future prophets? First of all, he never said there weren't gonna be any more prophets. He said there will be true prophets and there'll be false prophets. And he said, by their fruits, you shall know them. And the fruits of the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith, both in the lives that I've seen touched by and my own life, are what ultimately convinced me to say, I think Joseph was actually telling the truth.

Okay, super helpful. Aaron, you wanna get a word in?

Yeah, a couple things. One, Jacob spoke of the canon being expanded, but I think it's good to pause there and realize that when Protestants use the word canon, we mean books of the Bible which are the infallible and inerrant binding word of God, which is the very speech of God, which have a finally binding authority for all of faith and practice in the Christian life. So if one were to expand the canon in Protestant terms, it would be adding a book that has the infallible speech of God without error. I don't think that that's the sense in which the Latter-day Saint tradition is expanding the canon. If I could be bold, I would say that they have emptied the canon, they've deconstructed the canon. It's an empty canon of any infallible books. So for Protestants to have a canon means to have infallible books that are very speech of God. It doesn't mean that in the Latter-day Saint tradition at least as I've interacted with it, it means that there are authoritative books, but they're not finally in binding in the ultimate infallible sense.

Secondly, I would say that I would encourage evangelicals who are curious about the Latter-day Saint faith to go to a project that we have here at Mormonism Research Ministry called BookOfMormon.com. And it's the text of the Book of Mormon. It has the 1830 text. Most significantly, what I would recommend evangelicals do is just read a couple chapters, start in first Nephi or skip to second Nephi, and look at the books that were written approximate to say 600 BC. And note through the color-coding highlights where Joseph Smith is essentially taking at times almost like a copy paste from the New Testament. So you'll have first Nephi quoting from the book of Revelation, for example, or the book of John. Or go to the front of BookOfMormon.com and scroll down to influences, and you'll get a list of biblical books. And you can tell that Joseph Smith had his favorites. The big deal here is that it really looks like Smith was appropriating in some direct fashion the King James Old and New Testament, even when he's translating texts that preceded the New Testament. And I just have to note that from, in the space of LDS scholarship and apologetics, there are different Latter-day Saint attempts at explaining this. So for example, Royal Scousin, an LDS scholar who's an expert in the text of the Book of Mormon, he argues that the Book of Mormon was translated around the time of the Protestant Reformation in the early modern English era prior to Joseph Smith. And so that when Joseph Smith dictates the Book of Mormon using the seer stone and whatnot, he's dictating an already translated work done by a person or persons who are reflecting proto-Protestant or Protestant ideas. So you have questions.

Could I interject there? Cause I do think this might be a misrepresentation.

of Scousin's work. Scousin does say that the English that is finally rendered in the Book of Mormon does reflect an earlier English. He does not hold to the position that Joseph Smith was rendering this from some other text that Joseph had, which doesn't exist in the history. That's not my claim. My claim is that when he dictates through the instruments, he's dictating an already translated work that God is supplying through supernatural needs. Royal Scousin does not hold to that position. I just want to make sure that you're not misrepresenting Scousin's work.

Now, one thing we could debate back and forth, obviously translations and whether, how much of it came from the New York. I'm sorry, Aaron was finishing this point. We'll circle back, I promise. If I've misrepresented Scousin, then I apologize, but there is public discussion. People can look up on Book of Mormon intertextuality. Other LDS scholars have argued that maybe this translation was done in the spirit world already. And so the big question, I'll throw this out. The big question is why is there so much Protestantism in the Book of Mormon? Why weren't ancient Native Americans discussing controversies that looked very peculiar to 19th century folk Protestant sensibilities? And one of the attempts at explaining that is that of Blake Osler, where Joseph Smith is given a kind of creative license as a creative participant in the translation of the Book of Mormon to add his own stories, his own thoughts, and that's his, this is a Mormon scholar arguing, this is why we have so much 19th century Protestant theology and thinking and sensibilities that end up woven into the text. So I would just encourage people to read the text of the Book of Mormon yourself. Go to First Nephi, go to Second Nephi, go to BookMormon.com, look at the color coding of where Joseph Smith is essentially appropriating the text of the New Testament around 600 BC.

Okay, yeah, Jacob, why don't you go ahead and respond and then we'll move on to another topic. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this does go back to a couple of things. The first being the translation method by which, like I have no doubt that Joseph Smith was using the lexicon that was familiar to himself when he rendered the text of the Book of Mormon. I don't hold that the Book of Mormon is a tight word for word translation. I hold that it is a functional dynamic translation. And so if Joseph is using language that's familiar to him, I have no problem with that. But it goes to, there's a bigger point here because ultimately we have to argue about this idea or we have to confront this idea of a closed canon and that revelation is ceased. Because if revelation has not ceased, then you're in a very different kind of set of circumstances. There's sort of a presupposition that Protestants bring to the table. And this is one of the, again, as I'm looking at the Protestant model trying to evaluate it that I really struggle with. And that is that there's nowhere in the canon of scripture that it gives the list of the books that belong in the library. And so why should I trust one version of canon, which is the Protestant canon over the Catholic canon or any other canon? And so the lines about which books are being brought into this, like who's determining what books here are the infallible God breathed and who is not? And if there is no ultimate authority on that and if that authority isn't ultimately being guided by revelation, then I mean, the core of all of this goes back to the need for revelation. And to say that revelation has ceased is to, when the canon itself doesn't say that, it seems to be an inherent contradiction. So I guess my question is sort of like, well, why are the books that are in the Protestant canon the only books that can be considered scripture?

Yeah, that's interesting. And I think that what's so fascinating about that to me before we move on, I wanna talk about the nature of God and salvation as well. But is I think one thing I appreciate about what you've shared about your views as a member of the LDS is that you have a high view of apostolic era Christianity and it's when the creeds and other things sort of started to be formulated and enforced, you would say that Christianity lost its way and became corrupted. But that's what Protestants would look at and go, well, that's where we get our canon is from the apostolic era. And the books that were chosen were, New Testament books at least were largely chosen based on their proximity and authorship to Jesus himself. Either they were eyewitnesses or they were second degree connections like Luke. And so, that's where we would draw the line. And I would think on some level that would make sense in the LDS framework. Like we hold that era in high esteem. Those writings were unique in their revelatory power. And so when we started getting other gospels written centuries later, like the Gnostic gospels, we dismissed those. And obviously we would say the same thing about the Book of Mormon, for instance. But when you described the Book of Mormon and what it means to you earlier, I can't distinguish that from what a faithful Muslim would say about the Quran. That it makes them feel God, they see God in it. It makes them a better person. And all that stuff is fine, but does that rise to the level of canonization or respect in terms of it being scripture? I don't think you would say that about the Quran necessarily.

No, but I would wonder, but isn't that what a Christian says about the Bible? Why do you believe in the Bible? If not ultimately because of its spiritual power. Yeah, Aaron, I'm trying to play moderator here. Aaron, you wanna respond to that? You know, I've been reading and listening to Gavin Ortland lately and Michael Kruger. They were very helpful to me on the question of canon. One of the examples I heard was when Moses heard God at the burning bush, he didn't need a second voice in his ear saying, this is the voice of God. When Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice, it's not as though we need other sheep whispering in our ears or another shepherd whispering in our ears. This is the voice of the shepherd. When a Christian reads the gospel of John, it bears the marks of divinity in terms of its beauty and its power. And we receive it. We don't, the church never stamped it with authority or conferred authority upon the books of the older New Testament. Rather, Christianity is a religion of radical receiving. So the church receives the books of scripture, recognizes them for what they are. There's this complaint that revelation never stopped. When I would say in the Latter-day Saint framework, as I understand it, infallible revelation never started. So if we're going to add to the canon, we need to add infallible books to the canon, as in the Latter-day Saint framework, especially the Latter-day Saint apologetic framework, there are no infallible books. So again, they've emptied the canon. They have not expanded the canon. One more point here is that there's a discussion of the fruits of the Book of Mormon. For traditional Christians, it's extremely hard to divorce the Book of Mormon from the person of Joseph Smith. And here I would just point Latter-day Saints to the work of a Latter-day Saint scholar named Brian C. Hales. Brian C. Hales is an extremely pro-LDS scholar. He's a faithful LDS scholar. He loves the Latter-day Saint faith. He loves Joseph Smith. So he's defending Joseph Smith. He gives Joseph Smith an extreme benefit of doubt. He has an extremely positive view of Joseph Smith. And I would just look at Brian C. Hales, his work on Joseph Smith's intimate relations with the young women that were living in his own home polygamously. 19-year-old, in some cases, kind of like a foster kid or a maid. And just read the list from Brian C. Hales yourself of the moderate to likely evidence that he lists for Joseph Smith having intimate relations with these young ladies.

I know Brian Hales' work. I've read his website. I've interviewed Brian many times. I'd like to ask you, Aaron, how many children did Joseph Smith have with any other woman except for Emma? None that we know of, but if you just look at-- I just wanna be careful that we don't run off into a different topic here about Joseph Smith's polygamy. I mean, ultimately, the Bible has polygamy in it. David receives his wives, as the Bible says, and it's infallible word, from, Samuel says in the name of the Lord, that the Lord had gave David his wives. So I would just, again, there's sort of this double standard that goes on, is you wanna say, well, this is God's infallible word, but then there are things in there that say that women need to keep silence in the churches, that they need to cover their heads when they pray, and you don't do those sorts of things. So again, if we're going to hold the Bible to this infallible standard, this is one of the reasons I reject infallibility, which is something that you're kind of saying is a sort of core thing. It's because that is an indefensible position when you actually do biblical scholarship and you understand the contradictions that exist within the text, both theologically and historically. And I get that maybe kind of, to Protestants here talking to a Latter-day Saint, wanna kind of dig into challenges that I have here, but if we're going to assume that the Book of Mormon can't be true simply because of... Because of the Canon's quote. Because of the Partridge sisters, because of Lucy Walker and the Partridge sisters.

Yeah, I think the question is... Because, so real quick, Aaron, you're saying that a prophet, if a person is engaged in polygamy, they can't be a prophet of God? If they're doing the polygamy in the name of God, telling young women that God told them to do that, and they're using the religious power to manipulate people, unrepressively, and persistently. Well, you're presupposing that he's using it to manipulate people, because again, polygamy is something, the house of Israel was a polygamous household. In the infallible word of God, the prophets of the Old Testament were polygamous. In fact, Martin Luther, he even said that polygamy was something that could be acceptable at times. He encouraged King Henry VIII to take on a second wife.

Well, I think the polygamy question is one we're probably not going to get a lot of headway on. I think, obviously, your views, Jacob, you're not a polygamist, you don't... No, in fact, and in fact, the Book of Mormon, just so everyone knows, if people think that Joseph was after polygamy, the Book of Mormon and Jacob too, condemns polygamy explicitly, and then it has one little line that makes, says it can be justified in some circumstances. And so our position that we have today is that of people like Aquinas, people like Martin Luther, who said that polygamy is not the norm, it is not right, but that it could be justified in certain circumstances. So that is the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I think the more I propose critique of Joseph Smith as a prophet isn't about his personal track record, obviously everybody's a sinner, but the question of his, the validity of his prophecies, did he or did he not have prophecies that were false, that didn't come to pass, that are on the record? I mean, Jacob, how do you respond to that? I know you've probably heard that line of criticism before. The Bible says that one false prophecy disqualifies the prophet. So what do you say to that?

Well, I'd ask, is Jeremiah a false prophet? Is Jonah a false prophet? Because they made false prophecies in the Bible itself. Are prophecies ever contingent? What false prophecy is just out of curiosity, did Jeremiah make? So Jeremiah, let me look it up here. I had it right here. Would you mind if I just spoke a word while you're looking that up? Hold on one second, sorry. I have it right here. Oh shoot. I thought I had it right here. Well, let's use Jonah then for the example. He talks about the prophecy of Nineveh being destroyed, and then it isn't. And so again, the problem with the, if you're going to say that no prophecies are contingent or are conditional, well then you have a problem. And I believe I would even go further to say that all prophecies is ultimately contingent because man has free will. And so therefore it's impossible to have a prophecy and free will that is not ultimately contingent on the free will of man. Joseph's prophecies in question were about the return of Christ in his lifetime. I mean, there were others, but that's the main one I hear about. Do you have a specific quote on that? I wish I did. Of what he said? I have it handy. It said within 60 years. If my understanding, yeah, and even if you get the exact quote, he doesn't say that it is like, this is what's going to happen. And even I think he says something along the lines of like, maybe I'm wrong on this, but this is what I'm sort of feeling. It's not given as some in the name of the Lord, this will happen at that time. You have to get the exact quote.

If I could make a principled point here, it's that evangelicals have a very high view of prophets. So any of these accusations against Jonah or Jeremiah for giving a genuinely false prophecy, that shakes out differently for I think the Protestant tradition and the Latter-day Saint tradition. In the Protestant tradition, we're going to pause again and reflect and synthesize and look for ways to make sure that we're holding onto an infallible word, which is the very speech of God. In the Latter-day Saint tradition, there's more of an escape hatch for, well, maybe they're just wrong. And I would just point out, there's a very prominent LDS philosopher today named Blake Osler. And one of the statements he made that I've never forgotten is that he says that the theology of Brigham Young was a disaster. And I think this really helps crystallize it for me, is like, do we believe that true prophets can be theological disasters? Do we believe that they can be not just mistaken here or there, but do we believe that they could lead hundreds of thousands or millions of people, even temporarily astray, by claiming something is the very revelation and voice of God, the prophecy of God? Do we fundamentally and principally believe that true prophets can be theological disasters? I would say that in the evangelical tradition, even in the Catholic Eastern Orthodox tradition, the answer is no. In the Latter-day Saint apologetic space, the answer is yes. There's more leeway.

I would say that to a certain extent, then if you wanna hold that high of a standard, then you have to believe that God did literally command the armies of Israel to hack up five-year-old girls with swords in the slaughter of the Amalekites. And what do you do with that, Jacob? Do you think that God really commanded the slaughter of those little girls, Aaron? Because that was given by a prophet in the Old Testament. Yeah, I don't like the way you're framing that. I would pause and reflect and revisit Scripture about the language that Scripture itself uses for that. Well, it says, I mean, we can-- But to finish that thought, to finish that thought, I'd say that the posture I'm taking with respect to the hard passages of the Old Testament is to pause and reflect and have a special sense of reverence and devotion to the authority of God's word, taking the total of the context into account, and then looking at what other Christians have said about that text to think carefully about it. I don't have as an option, as an evangelical Christian, a kind of blanket rejection of whole swaths of the Old Testament. I don't have the option of saying that prophets can be disasters with respect to theology. I don't think prophets fundamentally, publicly and persistently misrepresent God. And I think what the Latter-day Saint tradition has done in order to make sense of its own history, of its own Latter-day Saint history, is they've had to create a category for true prophets that can be wrong prophets, good prophets that can be disasters.

So should I very quickly, I just wanna respond to that because I'm gonna take off my Latter-day Saint hat. What I'm pointing out is that the issue that Latter-day Saints are dealing with is not an issue just for Latter-day Saints. The problem is that the prophets in the Old Testament, if you're going to take the word of the Lord, they believe that there are times when it is appropriate to murder or to hack up little girls with swords. In history, that happened, okay? In the slaughter of the Amalekites. You also have to deal with the fact that that means that God actually at one time wanted people to throw rocks at gay people until they were on the ground bleeding and dead and doing things that we think the Taliban are reprehensible for. Now, I can reconcile that because I can say, look, the people of the Old Testament were doing their best to approach God and that what we have are the remnants of the records, and this is what the history shows, that what we have are the fragmented records that are left from a people that were trying to describe God and that did, I believe, have real prophets, but the records we have aren't even written by those prophets a lot of the time, such as the books that are attributed to Moses, and this is all just basic scholarship. So I could, I could reject the scholarship. I could embrace an abhorrent moral system that thinks that God is actually okay with people hacking up little girls to death, or I can say, you know what? The Lord's prophets are men and mankind is fallen, and therefore, we can never think that any human being is infallible except for Jesus himself.

So were those parts of the Old Testament mistranslations or misunderstandings, or what would you chalk that up to? I would say that not every word in scripture is even given by God, necessarily. It isn't just that they were mistranslated. I don't think that, I think that much of the Old Testament records were legal codes that weren't inspired at all. So it sounds like what we have in liberal Protestantism, the three buckets, what I call fallacy, which is, I understand where you're coming from now, I think, which is that there was the original-- But there is a difference. There's one difference. If you have a prophet of God living on earth today who can decide through revelation what parts of the Bible should or should not be emphasized or lived out in the faith and practice of Latter-day Saints, then you're not just left to man's interpretation of the Bible. One of the other things when I look at Protestantism that's very difficult is that Protestantism doesn't have any sort of an authoritative structure. Everyone is their own pope. And then what you have is just, you don't have a church. You have different Bible study groups that all have different interpretations. Everything from radical, you know, liberal who have female pastors preaching gay marriage and performing gay marriage ceremonies, all the way to preachers in Arizona that are like, we need to stone gay people today. And so it ends up devolving into where it's not even a church. It's just a bunch of people who love the Bible, but they can't agree on what it means. And so the need for binding revelation and authority, for me, again, I'm approaching this as an outsider looking, not with my Latter-day Saint hat on, but like if I wanted to come to Protestantism, I look at it and I go, these are the challenges that I just can't reconcile. I can't reconcile contradictions in the Bible. I can't reconcile a lack of ecclesiastical, ultimate authority. And I think that the Latter-day Saint tradition actually resolves a lot of those issues. Now, granted, I have to believe in some pretty miraculous claims. I have to believe that plural marriage in the Bible actually was restored for a time in the modern era. But when I compare all the options, I mean, everyone has their hard things to deal with.

For sure. And I think you're part of your critique about Protestantism is valid. And I share some of those same concerns, but I think you would say, let's not straw man the other side and pick out the extreme elements of a movement because the same could be done with the LDS tradition. And you've mentioned some of the French elements as well. And you don't want all of LDS to be judged by those. And I would say the same thing about Protestant Christianity. And I agree there. And my critique is more from, the issue is that there's no mechanism to adjudicate, ultimately, which interpretation of scripture is binding upon all believers.

Yeah, I think that's fair. I think it's intentional actually because human institutions have failed again and again. And that sort of human adjudication body has proven itself, corruptible. And so I think there is a natural resistance to that sort of centralization among Protestants. And I think it's got good and bad about it. Let's move on though to a more theological issue before we run completely out of time, because we could keep talking about scripture and authority and things like that forever. For sure. Yeah, the nature of God is similar but different, at least in terms of how God is described as a person or a being. One being versus, one being three persons versus the LDS tradition, which is a different understanding of God and Jesus in particular. Maybe Aaron, let's start with you. Could you just walk us through Protestant understanding of God and who God is relative to the Father, Son and Spirit? And in your view, how that is distinguished between the LDS view of God.

First of all, God is transcendent. He's not a big one of us. He's not a Superman. He's not us amplified or us to a greater degree. So he's in a different category. He's the great I am. Isaiah gives a great stretch of text from I think Isaiah 40 to 48. Describing God as the most high, who's incomparable, he's never learned, no one's ever taken God by the hand and taught him the path of justice. He's unique. He does what he does for his own glory. He says he will not share his glory with another. He says he's the first and the last, he's the rock. So Christians worship God as the most high. And as someone who in his very being is worthy of worship, he's not doing optional things that then make him worship. His Godness isn't something that emerged from something. He's categorically unique. So in Revelation four, when the angels say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was and is and is to come." We're not merely worshiping him for who he is today, we're worshiping him for who he always was. So who God is today is who he always was. And he's worthy of worship because of who he is in himself and because of what he does and says, all of what he has done in history and all of who he is in himself. And the Bible reveals God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father begetting the Son and the Son begotten eternally of the Father, I would say. And the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son is how Christians have sort of crystallized that in a creedal formulation. But I think that's a faithful representation of a synthesis of Scripture. And when we look at the sort of the zoomed out synthesis view of Scripture, God is one being in three persons, but the Son is not an inferior or separate God. The Father is God begetting the Son, the Son is God begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is God proceeding from the Father and the Son. So we worship, we pray to, we give equal honor to all three persons of the Trinity. And lastly, I would say that God is unsearchably and incomprehensibly great. So this is a beautiful doctrine, it's called the incomprehensibility of God. And the big idea I was reflecting from Psalm 145 this morning, it says, "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, His greatness is unsearchable." So we don't, it's kind of like, I'll give you an example and I'll hand it off, but it's kind of like the Son, if I stare at the Son, my eyes are burned, I can't peer into the inner part of the Son, the Son's too bright, it's too beautiful. God is a bright and beautiful mystery, and for us to know Him, He must reveal Himself to us in a way that graciously accommodates to us creatures. So He's like lisping the little babies, Calvin says. So everything we know about God is what He tells us, we can't inspect Him under our microscope, we can receive what He says about Himself, but we can't find Him out through a kind, you might say His essence is outside of our intellectual jurisdiction, so we're completely dependent on what God reveals to us through His Word.

Okay. I didn't provide any contrast there with the LDS View. No, it's fine, I think it's fair to let Jacob speak for that side of it. Now, Jacob, what would you say to that? Let's strike some distinctions here between the view of God you just heard and your view of God as an LDS.

So it's, we believe that God is one, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have one nature. They share the same nature, but they are individual persons and individual beings because, and again, I'll just put on my, take off my LDS hat and just say, okay, I'm trying to figure out the different models here. How can a person, how can two people be the same being? For example, Jesus, when He's asked, if you were to ask Jesus, who is the one true God? In John 17, He says it's the Father. And so, in addition to that, if Jesus is the same being as the Father, how is it that Jesus in His life has things that the Father knows that He doesn't know, right? So the issue that I come into with the doctrine of the Trinity, which is three persons, one being, is that that is a, it's like saying that, and also the fact that Jesus was a mortal human being. If Jesus was fully man and fully God, but there's an unbridgeable ontological gap between God and man, that's a contradiction. It's like saying that, you know, a frog is both a frog and the number seven at the same time. It's like, you can't be a frog in the number seven. If God is something so other from man, then the incarnation is an impossibility. But that isn't what you find in Scripture. What you find Paul saying, for example, in Acts 17, is he says, quote, "And God hath made of one blood "all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth, "for we are also his offspring. "For as much then as we are the offspring of God, "we ought not think the Godhead "is like unto gold or silver or stone." So in the end, my issue with the Trinitarian doctrines is that you can't make sense of God being three persons that are all the same being and then reconcile that with Scripture, because it's very clear that Jesus has his own will, has his own mind that's separate from that of the Father. And so if you want to say they all share the same nature, that's fine, because like my father is a man and I am a man. We both share the male nature. You can have multiple persons who share one nature, but to say that they are the same being, to me is totally incomprehensible. And so I have a very hard time with any of the creedal formulations of God or any of the traditions that emerge from it, because I just think they have a conception of God that's incoherent.

Well, of course, the Trinity is perplexing. No one says it isn't. It's a mystery in some ways. I think it is biblically defensible, but that's at this point in our conversation beside the point, I'd like to hear more specifically about your understanding of God than if he is not what Protestant Christians claim him to be exactly, then what is he? And what do you say to the idea or the criticism you hear a lot about LDS that God is basically a super man. He was once like us and we can grow to be like him. And so was God human? Was God in your view created? The father God of the LDS church created by another preexistent God. And can we one day become like he is today? In essence?

We definitely, so we say that God and man are the same ontological type. Okay? We're the same species, okay? Now, here's the thing that we reject creatio ex nihilo. So no, we do not believe God is a created being. We don't believe humans are created beings in the sense of out of nothing, right? So in our fundamental essence, we believe that we and God are co-eternal. And that is what, you know, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is a late creation to deal with Gnostic heresy. It is not the early view of the Hebrews. And so that's a huge game changer. Because if God is not creating out of nothing, because creation out of nothing is an impossibility philosophically, which I do indeed believe, then that changes the entire game. So what it means, what that boils down to is that God is incomparable to man. I agree with that, totally. Incomparable to a mortal man, 100%, in terms of glory. The distinctions that are made between God, in the Bible, between God and man, are never, there's no explicit verse that makes an ontological distinction. What they make are differences in degrees of glory. Kind of like an acorn to an oak tree. Like if you see an acorn, and then you were to see an oak tree, you'd be like, oh my gosh, these things are so different. They are totally different. They're wildly different. But are they of the same kind? But was God once an acorn? I guess it's the question. God the Father. In LDS theology, so there is nowhere in our scriptures where you will ever find that God became God. In fact, you can find the exact opposite. In our sacrament prayer that we say every Sunday over the bread and water, it is God the eternal Father. The notion that God has always been fully divine is what Latter-day Saint Scriptures teach. Now there have been LDS leaders who have theorized otherwise. There are Latter-day Saints who believe in an infinite regress of gods, but that notion is not reconcilable with Latter-day Saint Scripture. And even in the famous King Follett discourse that was given by Joseph Smith, Joseph talks about this idea of a head God of all gods. So you can find a debate, a theological debate amongst Latter-day Saints about this, but it is not, and I would say even a large majority of Latter-day Saints during a particular period in our history held to sort of an infinite regress model. I appreciate you saying that. But that is not what our scriptures teach. And ultimately I go with what, with scripture as the more authoritative voice on who God is.

Okay, Aaron, how about your response to what Jacob shared? I think one of the biggest differences here is what our respective communities are willing to tolerate diversity over. So I'll give you the starkest example I can give you. If I were to ask 100 Latter-day Saints, was Heavenly Father perhaps a sinful mortal prior to being exalted as a God, you would get quite a bit of diversity on that question. In 2014, I did a documentary project called God Never Sinned, and I asked Latter-day Saints this very question, and about two thirds of them were in the scope of yes or maybe, and about one third were more like Jacob, I presume here, who would say God never was a sinful mortal, and some would even say He's always been God. But the difference here is that in the evangelical community, if I were to ask 100 uneducated and simple seven-year-olds, in the evangelical community, I'm just trying to make it real simple here, was Heavenly Father maybe a sinful mortal before being exalted as a God? You would get answers like no, no, no, and, huh, no. And so there's, I'll put it positively, in the historic Christian community, there's a rock-solid worshipful, emotionally invested, existential, beautiful, unifying, zero-divergent, zero-diversity belief that God was always God, He was never a sinful mortal, He never had to become a God, there's no heavenly grandfather, there's no higher than the most high. We love, together as Christians, worshiping God as the most high. So it's not something, if my pastor got up and said, well, I believe in the infinite regress of God's, it's not as though we would just sort of have a polite discussion about internal diversity of views. And I do wanna acknowledge here that Jacob here, as I understand him, represents a thought stream within the Latter-day Saint community that is rejecting this regress of God's idea that, and I would just, to close it out, I would encourage people to go to mrm.org forward slash regress and just read the variety of Latter-day Saint prophets and apostles and thinkers and apologists and philosophers and just see what they're saying in their own words about this issue of whether there's a heavenly grandfather or whether Heavenly Father himself has a Heavenly Father.

Jacob, you wanna briefly respond to that, yeah. Yeah, real brief, real brief. So a diversity of opinions exists in every tradition. Okay? Justin Martyr was a subordinationist. He said Jesus was a second God. You have Tertullian that was also, you have Clement. You go to the early church fathers. In fact, the majority of the early church fathers and the New Testament teach a subordinationist model when it comes to Jesus's relationship to the Father. So the reality is that these sort of diversities of opinion exist in all traditions. I mean, I don't think Aaron can identify any denomination of Christianity prior to 1400 that he would consider himself to be in full communion with. So a diversity-- I can't think of any Christians that are diverse on the issue of whether God was perhaps a sinful mortal or whether he was once not God. I would say that it's a theory that emerged amongst Latter-day Saints that I reject ultimately, but you can find Christians who have a variety of opinions about all sorts of things like gay marriage. You have Protestant denominations that are marrying gay people that are part of the historic Protestant movement. And so all I'm saying is just because there's a diversity of opinion within a movement doesn't mean that that movement, like that we need to throw it out here. And I agree. I think that the arguments for an infinite regress are really bad. So ultimately, it's not supported by LDS scripture. And one thing that I, if Aaron wants to go and debunk people that hold to an infinite regress within the Latter-day Saint tradition, like I'm all for it. I don't think it's a good model.

Did Joseph Smith buy into that theory or perpetuated it all? Did he believe that God was once like us? So the only-- not in any of the revelations that he gave. 100% no. And even in the one sermon that they talk about that's known as the King Follett sermon, which was a sermon that Joseph gave, he talks in that specifically about the notion of a head god of all gods. I could also quote-- I don't know if we have time, but Parley Pratt-- Jacob-- He's one of the first philosophers who talks that. Jacob, sorry to interrupt you, but the sermon in the grove maybe mention that. The follow-up sermon to the King Follett discourse where he takes Revelation 1.6 and argues that the father has a father. I don't have to go into the details of it. But if he did propagate that idea, it isn't consistent with the scriptures that he gave through Revelation. And I believe fully that Joseph Smith had his own ideas, and he may have been wrong. So it's one of those things that, again, it's neither here nor there. For Latter-day Saints, what's binding on us is sort of what is revealed in scripture and what is taught by the current church. And the current church does not teach an infinite regress, and it does not teach that God was once a sinful man, and it does not-- and our scriptures don't teach that either. There are theories, though, that exist around this verse that Jesus said. Jesus says that I only do that which I have seen the father do. And so there is a real question that I don't see a lot of Protestants dealing with, which is the question of what does Jesus mean in that passage? If he's talking about something that he saw the father do past tense--

Not saw. You're misquoting the verse. What does it say? What was that? What does it say? Am I misquoting? You're using the incorrect tense. I only do what I see my father doing. And that is pivotal to the discussion around John 5.19. It's a really common Latter-day Saint mistake. I don't mean any offense by this, but-- No, no, no. And if I'm mistaken, then I'm mistaken. But regardless of him seeing what-- Let me see. It's present. It's essentially-- His father doing-- Doing. OK, OK, OK. And that's fine. If it isn't past tense, then you're correct. But regardless, a lot of people are theorizing to understand, what does it mean if Jesus and the father are separate beings and they're not the same being, then you have to take a new interpretation on this verse. And some people have tried to interpret John 5.19 that way. So I don't agree with that interpretation, by the way. I'm not here to advocate for an infinite regress. But I don't hold-- the theories of church leaders and others don't constitute binding doctrine for Latter-day Saints like myself living in 2025.

OK. We've got to land a plan here. And I hate it, because we've got so much more time to carry. And I don't want to devolve into rapid fire answers. But we've got to talk about Jesus really quickly, and just specifically where Jesus fits into your understanding of God in the LDS tradition. Obviously, Christians the world over would say that when Jesus said, I and the father are one, He meant it in that way that we understand it, and that they are of the same substance, different persons. But nevertheless, was Jesus in the LDS understanding created being, a lesser God or a lesser being than the father? How does that flesh out?

Jesus, no one's-- so when you say created, do you mean out of nothing? I mean, not eternal. No, Jesus is an eternal being, 100%. We believe that. And-- Just like we are, though, right? It's the same as us. Correct. Brother-- We don't-- so we don't de-elevate. We don't bring God down. We say that humanity-- hey, you actually all are children of God. So you guys don't hold it the idea that everyone is a child of God, correct? Correct. Hold on. Well, if I could interject there. You quoted Acts 17 earlier about us being the offspring of God. Just a verse or two prior to that, Paul in that very sermon said, for in Him we live and move and have our being. So when we say we're not children of God, there's a sense in which that's true. We don't have a heavenly mother. We don't-- we're created. We're not begotten in the same sense that human beings are begotten. But in the Pauline sense of being offspring of God in Acts 17, what he meant there was that we owe our very being to God. In Him we live and move and have our being. So this is why Christians can think and worship-- we can thank God and worship God for giving us our original being. So if I'm eternal, if I'm a little I am, if I'm a self-existent eternal being that was not created by God, not even begotten by God in that original existing way, then I cannot say and I'm an offspring of God in the sense in which Paul was using it in Acts 17. I would-- but I would say that you could say the same thing about your earthly father. Did he create you? Not ultimately. He did not create my spirit. OK, OK. So your spirit-- but do you see what I'm saying? You could say about your earthly father that because of him you exist. God is more of a father to me than my own early father. That's fine. I owe more of my existence to God than-- I'm just using the analogy here that is perfectly valid to see this as I owe my existence to another being. You can say that about your earthly mother and father as well because without them you wouldn't exist. But only a relative sense, right? OK, but you're reading something onto the text that isn't there. The text does not explicitly say that-- what the text is essentially saying is that we owe our very existence to God. And I could say the same thing about my earthly father. That doesn't mean that my father had to create me out of nothing.

Yeah, so I mean, if I could just zoom out real quick. I think the big difference here is that for historic Christians, Jesus is uniquely self-existent in his sharing the very eternal being of God. Whereas in the Latter-day Saint tradition, it's a little difficult to talk about because I know that. I don't want to foist you onto Jacob here. But since pioneer modernism through the turn of the 20th century, there's been a dominant model that we are self-existent eternal beings that were begotten in some pre-mortal sense of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother through spirit birth. This is sort of a dominant model popularized by B.H. Roberts and Truman Madsen and others. And I think that Jacob, if I understand him correctly from elsewhere, he rejects this sort of LDS prophetic apostolic traditional teaching since pioneer Mormonism that were spirit birth by Heavenly Mother. And he would, please correct me if I'm wrong, Jacob, but for more of the Blake Osler model, where we are co-eternal with God and in pre-mortal existence, we were adopted by God into the family, so to speak. Is that fair?

So the doctrines of spirit birth and what that entails and what the disagreements are, I think that may go beyond the scope of this conversation. I'm not sure most people even know or understand what we're talking about. I'm not sure I do. [LAUGHTER] But what it has to do with is-- but I will say this. When it comes to the nature of Jesus and his relationship to the Father, Jesus in John 17, you're right. You were right to point out, he says, that he and the Father are one. And then in that same chapter, he turns and says to his disciples that he desires that they be one in the same way that he and the Father are one. So at the only time in scripture when Jesus explains what he means by his oneness with the Father, he says it's a kind of oneness that his disciples are able to enter into. And the early church fathers actually taught this. One of the really interesting things about the doctrine of theosis is the notion that, for example, Athanasius said, "God became man so that man may become God." Cyprian of Carthage says, "What man is, Christ was willing to be, so that man may become what Christ is." I mean, people would think that this LDS notion that man can become as God is blasphemous, yet we find it in the earliest Christians. Now, did they hold to an ontological distinction? A lot of the early Christians, yes, they did. But what happens when you erase the ontological distinction? Because the ontological distinction doesn't exist in scripture, only a difference in glory.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's enough in the scripture to say repeated commands about be holy as your Father in heaven and it's holy to be perfect, because he is perfect. And I think that's what I think is true. I think that's what the Bible says through Christ and the Holy Spirit's work attempting to make us more like him, but to say that we can be or that we are in some way of the same-- in the same category as the eternal God. I think that's where the bridge too far is for Protestant Christians. Now, the question about Jesus specifically is we look at John 1, we look at Colossians 1, and we say that Christ pre-existed all things, my understanding of the LDS position is that there's a little squishiness there about Christ's role in creation. And he seems to have been at some point on the same plane or level as the angels, and specifically Lucifer, that he is-- I think there's some confusion among Protestants about this, but I think Jesus is seen as the embodiment of the Archangel Michael, if that's not wrong. Sorry if I'm misquoting you. I've heard that before. That's incorrect. I've heard Mormons say that before, but I think that the idea of Jesus and Lucifer being brothers is maybe more mainstream. And so--

Yeah, so the idea is that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers in the same sense that they are of the same ontological type. OK? But we have another issue that I look at is, OK, well, Jesus in Protestant Christianity, again, if I'm evaluating that model, it's saying that God created Satan and he created a torture chamber called hell to put people into, right? And so an all-loving God, why is he creating Satan in the first place? As far as Jesus and what's harder to believe,

that Satan is one of the fallen sons of God, like it talks about in the Old Testament? Or is it harder to believe that God created Satan when he didn't need to and created a torture chamber called hell to put people into eternally when he didn't have to?

I've never understood why the critique of ontological similarity between man and God is such a radical thing when in the Old Testament itself, in Genesis, there isn't one God creating. It says that we will form man in our image and likeness. Again, suggesting that whoever these beings are that are doing the creating have an image and a likeness. And then it says that when they partake of the tree of the fruit of knowledge, they've become as one of us, knowing good from evil. So there is even the Old Testament, the notion of multiple gods, the notion-- I mean, if you just read the text without any of the presuppositions of later sort of theologians, the text itself is that there's multiple gods creating people that are in their image that are becoming like them. Like that's the earliest stories in the Bible. So I've never found the sort of appeal to just incredulity over this, anything more than appeal to incredulity because the text itself bears out LDS sort of ideas about this.

Would you describe LDS as polytheist? No, I wouldn't. What's the distinction between-- Polytheism holds-- So polytheism is a belief in multiple gods and that they're all sort of able to be worshiped. And the Bible just so you know is not a hard monotheistic text. It's more like a monarchical theistic text. In other words, the Bible clearly talks about multiple divine beings, but then it places one at the top as the head god of all gods in the same way that it talks about in the Psalms when that God rules in the counsel of the gods. Now there are different interpretations to try and get around that, but in the New Testament, you have Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, you have the gods creating the world. Like the idea of hard metaphysical monotheism is not a biblical origin. It's a philosophical creation.

Aaron, your response? Oh, man, there's so much there. [LAUGHTER] In the Christian tradition, it's a non-negotiable that God is most high. In the Latter-day Saint tradition, it's negotiable. I would not say that. I would point people again to the mrm.org forward slash regress article where we're just quoting the Latter-day Saint prophets and apostles who are publicly-- Let me finish the thought if you don't mind-- who are publicly teaching that Heavenly Father has a Heavenly Father. So it's at least tolerated, welcomed, condoned.

Can I read what the church doctrines are literally on the LDS website? Because here's the thing. I would like to finish the point. Well, hold on one moment, Aaron, because you're saying what we believe. I would like to say, as a Latter-day Saint-- I'm quoting what you believe. Jacob, fairly, you've done that as well. Not you personally. Let me pull this back, because Jacob, you said some things that I know Aaron would love to have interrupted and disputed. But I'm giving Aaron the chance to get his-- I'm not quoting what Jacob believes. And I fully affirm and acknowledge and actually appreciate that Jacob rejects what his prophets and apostles have taught about the Father having a father. And all I'm saying is that when I talk to Latter-day Saints, there is a very robust variety and diversity. It's a very agated Mormonism. There's no monolithic stereotypical position of the Latter-day Saint faith. So it's more responsible for me to say that when I talk to Latter-day Saints and when I survey LDS apostolic and prophetic tradition in terms of what they're publicly teaching from the general conference pulpit and so forth, it's been a dominant interpretation of the Kingfowl at Discourse and the Sermon in the Grove, that there is a backwards lineage of other deities with other jurisdictions and other worlds and other spirit children who are worshiping other gods properly in other generations of the gods. That's been a dominant position of the Latter-day Saint faith. And I say that not wanting to stereotype people like Jacob as holding to what his own prophets and apostles have taught. It's hard to say this because it even sounds snarky, but I just mean it straightforwardly. I fully appreciate the fact that there are Latter-day Saints today who think Brigham Young's theology on this kind of thing was a disaster. And there's a kind of retrieval effort to go back to the Mormonism prior to Brigham, going back to its foundational documents, and trying to affirm something more proximate to this idea that God has always been God. That's a real thought stream within the Latter-day Saint culture today. I would say it's a minority position. It's not the dominant historical position. But when I talk to Latter-day Saints generally, and when I equip evangelicals to talk with Latter-day Saints, I can't use the apologetic positions of people like Jacob as the stereotypical monolithic position of Mormonism at large.

Jacob, your brief response, and then we'll finish. Yeah, I just want to read what it says. If people want-- you can go to Aaron's website to see what Aaron says. But if you want to see what our actual doctrines are, right here from the Church of Jesus Christ.org website, our church's website, it says, God the Father is the supreme ruler of the universe. Parley Pratt, by the way, who was probably the first apostle appointed by Joseph Smith, said of this idea of multiple gods, he said, quote, "All these kingdoms which together with their kings are in subordination to the great head and father of all, and to Jesus Christ the firstborn, the first heir among the sons of God. All these kingdoms with their intelligences are so many acquisitions to his dominion, who is Lord of Lord and King of Kings." So while Aaron takes issue with a particular theological model that has been espoused by certain people, to say that it was the original is not true, it does not align with our scriptures, and furthermore, it just is contradicted flatly by what the church's website says. And I would recommend that what people do, if you want to learn about Latter-day Saints, there are a lot of people who talk about what we believe, but we have official sources, theologians, like come talk to us and we'll tell you what we believe.

What do you make just real quickly about, you've mentioned it a couple of times, Aaron, I'm curious Jacob, what you make of it, and I think you mentioned the "Brigum Young's Theology being a disaster," what do you do with the, "Brigum Young is obviously a huge figure in your tradition"? Certainly, certainly. So Brigham Young, first and foremost, produced, I think we have one canonized revelation from him, I think. Brigham Young, in what it actually produced in canon revelation for Latter-day Saints, talked very freely and openly about his ideas. He was someone who would just, "Hey, this is what I think." And the thing is, is that there's a big difference in the Latter-day Saint tradition between that which is given by revelation from God claimed as such, and then accepted by the church's binding upon them, versus the ideas and theories that every man is entitled to. And so yes, we do have a variety of opinions within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I would say that we have far less variety of opinions than exist within the Protestant tradition, which is even more fragmented.

All right, I just wanna give you a chance to respond to that, because I know Auster's important to you and Brigham Young's obviously important to the tradition, and it's come up a couple of times. Last question, guys, again, sorry if we're running long, but this last question is pretty important. In terms of salvation, someone's listening to this, like, "How can I be saved? I feel God's calling me to some greater life." What would each of you say from your own perspectives about how someone is saved? Let's start with you, Aaron.

Let's think of salvation like a Christmas gift basket. You know, those baskets that our wives get, our friends with the plastic wrapping, and you open it up, and there's a bunch of gifts inside. The gift basket of salvation biblically includes forgiveness of sins, the gift of eternal life, the gift of the Holy Ghost, union with Christ, being sealed and anointed and gifted with the indwelling Holy Ghost, and giving us a security that we have eternal life with Christ forever, not just resurrection, but resurrection with and into the very presence of Jesus Christ. That gift can be received the same way that King David received it. King David received the forgiveness and remission of sins, even for his murder and even for his adultery with Bathsheba. The same way that the thief on the cross received it, if you call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I'll give you one verse and I'll close it out. When I was in high school, 17-year-old, lusty, proud, punk kid, very arrogant, I read Romans 4, Romans 4 verse 4 says, when a man works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. So if you get a paycheck, it's not a gift, you earned it. And to the one who does not work, but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works. So God counts righteous, unrighteous people, he counts ungodly people and we receive that not by bringing to God our own works in our hands, but rather by emptying our hands and coming to him with a kind of broken, desperate bankruptcy and receiving that immediately as a gift, unmerited, and enjoyed for the rest of our lives such that it starts to transform us in powerful ways. And I can now say that I've been forgiven, like King David has been forgiven, and I will enjoy the presence of Jesus forever, like King David will enjoy the presence of Jesus forever.

All right, thank you, Aaron. So salvation is a gift, a gift of grace, I assume received by faith, all right. Now, Jacob, what does salvation amount to from your perspective? How is one saved?

So a person is saved by grace through faith and not of works, lest any man should boast. That is how it works. I'll give you the analogy. This is the way a Latter-day Saint would understand it. Imagine you're in a car and it's going downhill, the brakes are cut. That's the fallen nature of the world. We're going off the cliff, you're in trouble. Now, you haven't done anything to merit being saved, but Jesus shows up with a helicopter and he's reaching out to you and he's saying, "Take my hand, I'll save you. Like I'll get you out of this mess." And so we then have to reach up and take his hand. And we do that by faith. Now, he is freely saving us. We didn't do anything to deserve it. In fact, we're rebellious children who have been driving our car around the cliff when he told us not to. And, but he offers the gift of salvation if we will take his hand. Taking his hand is, we do that through covenant. That's us taking his hand. That's what it looks like in the Latter-day Saint tradition. So we trust in him first and foremost. We have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We trust that this person can save us. And then as a product of that faith, we repent. And as a sign of our repentance, we are baptized in which we enter into a covenant relationship with him. And that is, that's what it looks like to take his hand. And then through his grace and enabling power, we're able to be pulled out of this mess. And so that is the way that we look at it. We don't believe in, for example, unconditional grace. We don't believe that God will reach into the car and he just, like God is just choosing who he's gonna pull out of the car and who he's gonna leave in to go off the cliff. I know people who believe in predestination. It's sort of like God chooses you, you don't choose him. So we reject that. Our view is that God offers a gift and that through covenant relationship, baptism, repentance, we accept that gift. We're not saved by our works. We don't earn our way to heaven. What we do is we obey the laws and ordinances of the gospel. And that's what it looks like to accept the gift is to obey Christ and follow him.

Yeah, you understand, like that's a, it's a little bit confusing on the years to hear that we're saved by grace. And it's not about our works, but what taking his hand means when pulling us out of the car is baptism, you mentioned repentance, obedience, are those prerequisites to salvation, I guess. Someone who's not baptized, can they be saved? Someone who's not obedient, can they be saved? Yeah, so a person who doesn't wanna take Jesus' hand, like if you're going, like what's the alternative? The alternative is that God picks people out of the car and then he also leaves some people in the car. And he, so he just chooses his preferred people. Well, I think the distinction though, not to interrupt you, sorry, but the distinction is between, isn't between, you know, staying in the car, getting out of the car, it's what it means to grab his hand. Does grabbing his hand mean calling on his name and putting faith in Jesus Christ in the finished work of the cross? Or does grabbing his hand mean being baptized the right way and going to the right, into the right covenant and being sufficiently obedient? What does exactly that mean? I think that's the distinction. So faith without works is dead, as James said. So the question is, what are those works that are a manifestation that you really actually have faith? And none of us are gonna be perfect in this life. I often say it's not about how far along the path you are, it's about are you pointed in the right direction? I can go astray, but as long as I, if I ever give up on Jesus, if I never repent of a particular sin, and I just am like, no, I'm gonna keep this sin, like at that point, now the difference is, we don't believe that we only have this lifetime for this journey, we believe it's an eternal journey. And so in this eternal journey, we believe that as long as you put your faith in Christ and don't ever give up on him, he'll never give up on you. And so that's what really ultimately matters is that you're willing to follow Jesus wherever he'll take you.

Obviously some similarities in terms of terminology and ideas, but some differences as well. I encourage everybody watching and listening to do your own homework, do your own research. We'll put some links in the description of this episode so that everybody can do their research on their own time. But guys, I just wanna thank you for this conversation. I know it's been a little testy at times, I don't know how you can avoid that sort of thing with topics of this magnitude. I admire your restraint and your respect for each other. I admire both of you as men and I'm grateful for you. Thank you for making the time today and joining us on. Thank you, Eric, and thank you Jacob. No problem, thank you Eric, very much. All right guys, talk to you soon.