In what way is our church the true church? A conversation with Patrick Mason
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- ** More from the Faith Matters podcast here: www.buzzsprout... **
This episode is part of our Big Questions project, and in it, we discuss our Big Question #12 - “In what way is our Church the true Church?”
For this conversation, we asked Patrick Mason to come back on - Patrick is the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. Bill Turnbull, one of the founders of Faith Matters, also joined us for the conversation.
We know that this is a really big question for many Latter-day Saints, ourselves included - and if you’d like to explore more of what we’ve published on this subject, you can check out our website here:
faithmatters.o...
Thanks so much, as always, for listening, and we hope you enjoy the conversation.
4:22 Is the concept of a “one true church” still relevant?
12:00 The problem with total exclusivity
18:12 In what sense is the Church true?
27:18 The Body of Christ today
31:29 A Methodist reads the Book of Mormon
38:01 The Gift of Saving Ordinances
43:58 Why the Church is as True as the Gospel
That was a terrific and nuanced discussion! Thank you for all that you do to promote a more expansive view of religion and society. I am a relatively new convert from Catholicism by way of long-time atheism and my journey came from asking questions.
Excellent discussion. Thank you!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for this discussion. I appreciated that there was a high level of inclusion and respect for other faith traditions. When I think of what makes this question important or not I think about life after death. Should I care if my faith tradition is the most true tradition if it has the potential to change my level of happiness after this life? The interesting thing about the Mormon tradition is that even the lowest kingdom in heaven is believed to be greater than Earth. So, if I decide that I'm happier in this life NOT living as a Latter-day Saint but I'm still going to be extremely happy in the next life regardless, then the logical decision is to follow the path that makes me most happy in this life even if it's outside of the Church. There's no stick in Mormonism, only carrots.
This was so good. Thank you so much!!!
I had a thought about the “exclusivity of temple blessings” and found myself wondering, just how exclusive they are on the other side of the veil? They are offered to many, who I believe readily receive them and then utilize the endowments of power they receive to come back to their families and loved ones, with a greater capacity to lift and love and bless from a new place of purity and power. Maybe the work we do in our temples appears exclusive from the “outside” but from the “other side” it may well appear very inclusive in its ability to invite, entice and bless the lives of so many of Heavenly Fathers children, just not the ones we can see, or in ways we easily see the dots connecting.
Yay! First comment :) I love you guys.
'The one and only church' works much better for me. An authorized priesthood is my central interest. 'Church' is really the body of saints in which the priesthood works - bodies of saints can be, and are, found anywhere in the world.
The church that Jesus started was ended when the apostles died. The church Jesus started was restored back on the earth, by Joseph Smith.
In The Book of Mormon Alma the younger talks about - oh that I were an angel and then goes on to to say that The Lord has given truth to all people according to their...etc.
Adam and Eve had the Gospel truths and taught their children. Not all of them embraced The Gospel. I emagen that as their children grew up and left home - some of them took with them only that part of The Gospel that they liked. So that parts of The Gospel were found all over the world after the time. Abraham had The truth but not all his children lived it perfectly. The same thing happens in The Savior's day.
People have always selected what they like & kept it and today there is truth scattered all over the world. And meanguled with those favorite truths are their favorite philosophies of men.
Some things are inspired by The Lord and some things are not.
In the Articles of Faith we are told that - not if, but when - we learn truth we are to embrace it. All truth is part of The Gospel.
How can we tell if something is true - when we are Baptized by The authority of The Presthood, we receive The Holy Ghost.
We have The Book of Mormon and The Standard Works
And we can study and pray. The Lord will help us know what is true.
Are we the only people who can know the truth, no. That is why we send Missionaries into the world.
In our Church we have The Presthood, Baptism and Confermation, Presthood Blessings, The Sacrament and Temple Work, we have Eternal Marriage etc. Prophets and Apostles, were else can you find these blessings ?
We all have our agency, God will never force the human mind and we have not been asked to force the human mind either. We teach correct principles and let people govern themselves.
If people don't choose to join The Church, that's fine. But it's sad because they don't have all the true - we are continuing to receive more truth all the time and the Church continues to improve all the time - because we have a Prophet.
Let's get back to the Primary Children's basics including the Articles of Faith.
And let's remember The Presthood and Temple Marriage and The Prophet and The Book of Mormon etc. Everything that is true is part of The Gospel, and there is more truth that is yet to be revealed. Love you all ♥️ 😇
I really appreciate this comment.
As a Secularist I find this conversation very insightful but has some fatal flaws.....
I thought for Mormons "truths that are not very useful". Wouldn't the "only true church," the only church recognized by the one true god, have the most simple, basic answers for proving its truth? Why would an all-loving father want trickery and obfuscation when dealing with humans and proving his truths to them? Why would it be his way to muddy things and then have humans, to whom he gives logical-thinking brains, use convoluted arguments, with low probabilities of being the real answer, to make things clear? This is a serious problem you guys must deal with when trying to prove your truth claims. This is why you have to claim that god does not require proof, but rather faith. When you begin arguing on behalf of some idea, and you have no empirical evidence, you just resort to pulling out the old: "With God all things are possible." For the LDS, it does not matter how improbable something is because God is omnipotent and can do all things. If Faith is only required why do the LDS spend so much time and effort trying to track down empirical evidence to prop up your positions? If the BOM is "the most correct book," why does you spend so much time searching for archaeological evidence to support it? You need to apply more of an "Outsider's Test of Faith" when evaluating your faith and apply occam's razor. Perhaps the Church is simply based on fraudulent claims. This creates the fewest problems needing resolved using only natural explanations.
As an example, you were talking about Emma and you accept, JS practiced polyandry with at least seven married women. Why wouldn't you simply conclude he married these women for the simple purpose of having sexual relations with them? You accepts a priori that JS was a man of god and that all of his motives were from god to help him further god's purposes. So you MUST make cases like this favorable, which is just a dishonest position to explain away this behavior. When I look at the RESULTS of your Faith (not your definitional understanding of Faith) I see Irrational Trust born out of a cognitive bias that causes you to overestimate any confirming evidence and underestimate any disconfirming evidence (counting the hits and ignoring the misses), which in turn results in an overestimation the probability of the claim in question. I am hoping those watching this can take a step back, truly evaluate the evidence, and appropriate their confidence in truth claims to the probability of the evidences presented. You'll never look back!!
Hi! A lot of discussion between the religious and atheist is built on talking over and past one another. I think the reason is that the sides have premises and vocabulary that are very different. For example, you use all-loving in a way that is designed for logic traps. One of the more common atheist syllogisms begin with "how can an all-loving (knowing, powerful) God do or allow X?" and then drop the mic. The problem here is that there are many, MANY religious thinkers that have grappled with and answered these questions, and their process of answering them reveals very attitudes and conceptions about God. I tend to agree with atheists (having been one myself), that the God I attacked was not a God worthy of belief and reverence. I think you are attacking that strawman God.
The LDS church makes claims about its truthfulness, but never claims access to the fulness of truth. The truth it holds on to most dearly is the plan of happiness. The fulness of truth grows and unfolds, and it most often unfolds in contradiction, tension, scandal, and debate. A loving parent doesn't keep a child in a box and given them only what is best for them. That is abuse. Easy answers are also a form of abuse because it lacks the formative power of lived experience. The idea that capital T truth has to be easy and free from controversy is not the state of existence. Our entropic friction-filled reality forbids it. I would argue that an all-loving God presents what is necessary for each of us to be the best version of ourselves while allowing us the agency to make choices and grow from them. The LDS church itself is proof of this as much has changed, grown, evolved, and sometimes taken massive steps backwards over time.
You make other claims about BOM apologetics and Joseph Smith apologetics. Yes, there is certainly a wing of the LDS church that practices a hypermaterial and rose-tinted apologetics to justify the reality of the first and the sanctity of the second. I propose that the truth of both are a lot more nuanced, yet also worthy of respect and, yes, faith. Joseph Smith was a prophet and was also a human being that made mistakes which should not be whitewashed. And yes, the BOM has a lot of issues with what translation means and its historicity, yet is also the most profound and insightful spiritual text I have ever read. Reality is complicated.
Finally, realize that the ethical principles that animate secular humanism are very much dependent on the WWII era religious ethicists that drafted the universal declaration of human rights. Individuals like Jacques Maritain. The roots of humanism are entirely dependent on a reality that values human life as sacred. In a godless universe, how does one derive value from an individual human being? The fact is, humanism has no ethical answer to the forms of nihilism developed by Dostoevsky, Neitzsche, or Schopenhauer. Perhaps there is common ground in how humanist and religionist think about life and its inherent value. I think that is a much better place to begin a conversation instead of reflexively picking apart churches based on your a priori assumptions about what we think and how we live.
@@dagbertwilliams1681 I am using terms that are acceptable in Philosophy of Religion and Comparative studies (and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philo) which is my academic background. I have no doubt the LDS are sincere in their truth claims and the “mysteries of faith.” To say the BoM has a lot of “translation issues” is quite an understatement. I guess my point is the rank and file laity of the faith really are not exposed (or willfully self-deceived) to the serious theological misrepresentations of scripture (Tanakh and NT), historical early America anachronisms, white-washing of atrocities in the early the 19th century Church, and on and on that simply cannot be hand-waved as “nuanced.” Again….employing an Outsiders Test of Faith or common Street Epistemology is a methodological approach I don’t see a lot of LDS willing to undertake and are actively encouraged not to critically think by the Church (not as bad as JWs…but close.) It is really a simple question to ask oneself - “what is more likely?”
As far as Objective Morality or Normative Ethics as derived only from the divine…..it doesn’t exist (or there would be no bases for moral progress which we clearly see.) Presuppositionalism or “God” as a pre-requisite for the intelligibility or morality of man is a resoundingly rejected position in Philosophy (without getting too much into Divine Command Theory or the Euthyphro Dilemma.) First, it is completely unclear whether moral facts must be transcendental in nature. Most major theories of ethics that have been developed (i.e. Aristotelianism, Kantianism, utilitarianism, contractarianism, and ideal observer theory) posit that there are moral facts, but that they are not transcendental in nature. It is incumbent upon believers to refute all of these theories if they wish to show that even materialism, much less atheism, is inconsistent with the existence of moral facts. Second, it is uncertain whether there are such things as moral facts at all. I, for one, see no reason to believe there are such things. Nor do I think they are an especially useful fiction; the vast majority of people would, I think, behave exactly the same as they do now even if they believed there were no such things as moral facts--they would continue to be guided, as they are now, by their deepest cares and concerns.
Doc, Romans: 8:6 For to be carnally, minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Before I even finish the video I will summarize the answer to the church being the only true and living church. 1) it has the authority to give the ordinances necessary for salvation. 2) it has living oracles aka living apostles and prophets today.
Around 39:00 is when they start talking about ordinances.
You mention a survey in this video about why people leave the church. Is that survey posted somewhere? I would be very interested in the results
Hi Darin! It's Jana Riess's "Next Mormons" survey, which is summarized in her book The Next Mormons: www.amazon.com/dp/B07MTGMC7K/
“Only true and living” means not static. Constantly changing via revelation and growth. Prophets and apostles and the power of the priesthood are only in one church. Others have parts of truth… but the priesthood power isn’t in any of them. A careful study of 2nd Corinthians will help with the understanding of “true and living”.
Jesus’s apostolic church was the true and living church? It was restored to the earth? If this truth was your focus, and your foundation the video would have been full of truth, very interesting, instructive, uplifting. The scripture says the only true and living church, why do you jump to tear that scripture down? Tearing scripture down, you’re trying to be popular? This comment I believe is 3 years after it aired . Rewatch it and see where we are now.