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I find the attempt to define what a Christian is to be rather impossible. Think of it this way. For example, you could say that Mormons are not Christians because they do not follow the Nicene Creed. But I would guess that the majority of 1st century Christians did not follow the Nicene Creed either. We cannot even be sure if Jesus or Paul believed in the tenets of the Nicene Creed. Yet surely if Jesus was not a Christian, then no-one ever has been.
Every Christian who professes the Nicene Creed does so because they do know that Jesus professed its tenets. If we didn't believe that we wouldn't profess it.
If you didn't believe that you wouldn't profess it, but how do you know that Jesus agreed with it? I'm no New Testament scholar, but from what I've read from it, I don't see how it would be possible to be sure that Jesus actually agreed with it.
Would it help to go through the Creed line by line?
It seems pretty clear that Jesus believed in one God, the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Did Jesus believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father? Jesus does not offer a programmatic Christology in the gospels, unless you want to go fairly deep into John, but even in the synoptics it seems fair to say that Jesus identifies himself with the Father in a profoundly intimate way, even if he does not spell it out in these terms.
Did Jesus believe that he came down from heaven for us and for our salvation? That seems pretty clear in the gospels - he talks about the Son of Man coming to save sinners. Did he believe he was born of the virgin Mary? Well, certainly he knew who his mother was, though depending on which gospel you read some might argue about the virgin birth. If we accept the Resurrection at all, presumably Jesus believed that he was crucified and rose again and ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father, and in the gospels Jesus mentions the future coming of the Son of Man and judgement of the nations plenty of times.
Did Jesus believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life? Jesus doesn't talk about the Spirit that explicitly outside of the gospel of John, though he does mention the Spirit a few times. I'm happy to give this one a check though I'll admit that a lot of things are a bit hazier if you don't accept John.
Did Jesus believe that the Spirit spoke through the prophets? That one's easy. In one holy catholic and apostolic church? He does talk about the church or the community of his disciples a bit in the synoptics - I think that counts. Baptism for the forgiveness of sins, absolutely, if we accept the Great Commission as historical. That was his idea to begin with. And the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come - yes, Jesus is recorded arguing in favour of those beliefs.
It seems like most of it is pretty safe. If you're interested in the quest for the historical Jesus and you're skeptical of the gospels, especially John but also to an extent Luke (for the virgin birth), you might question whether Jesus believed most of this, but if you do accept the gospels (and surely Christians do), the Nicene Creed seems quite consistent with how Jesus described himself and his Father. It is sometimes more specific or explicit than Jesus himself was, but that doesn't seem fatal to me.
But then why are Mormons not Christians in your view? Granted I don't know much about their views, but from the little I know, it doesn't seem more different from the Nicene Creed than Matthew 24's Jesus quote: "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
Because I think that historically the Christian community has defined and policed its boundaries in ways that place Mormons outside of it - I apologise if that was not clear.
Fair enough. I've probably underestimated the degree to which Mormon theology differs from mainstream Christian theology, cause of how much Mormons and mainstream Christians in the US at least largely seem to me to behave the same and live very similar lifestyles. Maybe I'm not aware of differences in lifestyles, either.
Over the last fifty years or so, Mormons have also made a concerted effort to rehabilitate their image. Mormons used to be widely hated in America, and in turn they explicitly held that all non-Mormon society and especially religion is corrupted and of darkness. Since then Mormons themselves have softened a lot on the supposedly apostate Christian churches, and made a big effort to present themselves as friendly, respectable, and trustworthy - to the extent that nowadays they have a reputation for being clean-cut and nice to an almost Stepford-esque degree.
I'm in Australia, not America, but anecdotally all of my in-person interactions with Mormons have been incredibly polite, and the Mormons have almost been falling over themselves to emphasise, "We're just like you, we believe in Jesus too, Jesus is at the absolute centre of our faith, we have so much in common", and they never bring up any disagreements. That's probably why I overcompensate a little in return, as I want to make clear that I do not consider them to hold the same faith that I do.
I'm probably also biased because, while all my in-person interactions with Mormons have been friendly and kind (and I don't argue "you're not Christians" to their faces, out of politeness), I have also been close friends with a number of ex-Mormons, typically people raised Mormon who got away as an adult, and that has acquainted me with a lot of horror stories from the inside. I'm sure that former Mormons aren't exactly the most impartial people either, but I am at least aware that the sunny, white-picket-fence version of Mormonism is not the most fair representation either.
I'm also conscious that most of those ex-Mormons have had the very idea of Christianity poisoned for them, or loaded with so much negative affect by the way the idea of Jesus is linked with their (frequently abusive or borderline-abusive) Mormon upbringing, that there is no longer any chance of them approaching Christianity on other terms. I don't hold this against them - the Catholics have a concept of 'psychological impossibility' that I find useful, and I applaud the way these friends have been able to find and explore spirituality on other terms - but I can't help being angry at the tradition that did that to them. Matthew 18:6-7. I try not to let that bias me too much - every tradition will have some practitioners who are so fanatical as to be abusive, or to poison the entire tradition, we all know about Protestants or Catholics who are this extreme - but I can't in good conscience deny that the anger is there.
This is my tension with the LDS as well -- the "we're just like you" thing backfires for me, not because I think Mormons are bad people, but because I think it waters down -- quite literally, "milk before meat" -- the elements of Mormonism as a theological tradition in ways that make it genuinely less interesting. A lot of the wild cosmological speculations of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young are really really interesting, really unique, really cool. It just is slightly frustrating when the things that are so distinctive about Mormonism are downplayed.
It very much is like Catholics watering down the cultus of the saints or transubstantiation -- this is your thing, guys, this is what makes you unique, this is what distinguishes you from your competitors in the marketplace of ideas and makes me want to learn more. I think attempts at Protestantizing both faiths weakens them: the only way the Papacy or the Presidency can survive as an institution is by offering unique religious experiences, values, and beliefs that support and validate the intense level of religious authority you're presenting. If what you're offering is equivalent to what they're offering down the street, but joining you comes with a measure of social ostracization from the religious mainstream and asks a lot from me in terms of religious obedience, why shouldn't I just go to the chill southern baptist church down the street, where they'll have a similar service and sing similar hymns?
But obviously the Mormon strategy is working for them in important ways, and I think they're very explicitly going for normie, straight-laced kind of people and not people like me, who are spiritual seekers with high openness to experience. They want to be a church for normal, well-to-do, kinds of people. But when I read the writings, speeches, and accounts of Smith, Young, and the early Mormon movement, they really do strike me as intense spiritual seekers with high openness to experience, and a lot of the elements of Mormonism that seem most fascinating have slowly been pushed to the sidelines or rejected altogether and the idea space of American religion is worse off for it. If you have a mystery cult, don't dress it in khakis and pretend it's just another sermon. Own the mystery.
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