Response to a Christadelphian Critique of Mormon Theology

Leslie Johnson, a Christadelphian, wrote a popular pamphlet against “Mormonism,” An Appeal to Mormons. As I am well-informed about certain aspects of the Christadelphian movement (mainly its Christology and Satanology/Demonology), I will offer a critique of this tract.

On whether a man can see God, Johnson writes:

The usual, immediate, Mormon answer is to quote Exodus 24:9-18 and Acts 7:53 But this is counter effective since if the Mormon explanation is correct then it involves making God contradict His own principles. Let God be true is important in every interpretation of both Scripture and experience.

With respect to Acts 7:55-56, there is no exegetical doubt that Stephen did see God the Father, not merely a person acting as a "God-manifestation" (a popular concept in Christadelphian theology; see John Thomas' Phanerosis, for instance).

With respect to Acts 7:55-56, the KJV reads as follows:

But he [Stephen], being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. (Acts 7:55-56 [KJV])

It is common for Latter-day Saints to cite Acts 7:55-56 as evidence of (1) that the Father and Son are separate persons and (2) that the Father has a “bodily form.” Point number 1 is something Johnson and other Christadelphians will not dispute, being Socinians in their Christology. Point no. 2, however, is something most within the broad Christian spectrum will disagree with Latter-day Saints, Christadelphians included. Some may claim that Stephen only saw the “glory” of God (v.55), but only if one isolates this verse from the proceeding verse that speaks of Jesus being at the “right hand” of God (the Father). 

A typical response to LDS usage of this verse as evidence for our theology is that the term, “right hand” can be used in a metaphorical sense. Therefore, they argue, it is being used in a metaphorical sense in this passage. There are a couple of things wrong with this approach, most notably it is the fallacy of undistributed middle—

First premise: Some instances of “right hand” are metaphorical.

Second premise: “Right hand” is used in Acts 7:55-56

Conclusion: Therefore, the use of the term, “right hand” is metaphorical in Acts 7:55-56.

The predicates in both the major and minor premises does not exhaust all the occurrences of this term and would therefore not necessitate such an interpretation in Acts 7:55-56. A more non-dogmatic and accurate conclusion would be that Acts 7:55-56 could have a metaphorical meaning, but such should be said with much caution as the argument for such a meaning is not nearly as simplistic as critics would like it to be.

It is true that the term can be used in a sense of authority (e.g. Biden is Obama’s “right hand man”). However, to claim that this is how it is to be interpreted in Acts 7:55-56 is eisegesis. This passage is describing what Stephen saw in vision; it is not a metaphorical for the relationship Jesus has with Father vis-à-vis authority. Indeed, what is being described is the spatial-relationship between the Father and the Son. Those who critique the LDS understanding have to ignore the literary genre of this pericope. Furthermore, the author of Acts 7:55-56 is alluding to a Messianic text from the Old Testament, Psa 110:1 (109:1, LXX). The LXX of this verse reads:

τῷ Δαυιδ ψαλμός εἶπεν ὁ κύριος τῷ κυρίῳ μου κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου

Psalm of David: The Lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool (my translation)

Here, the first Lord (in the Hebrew, Yahweh) says to a second lord (adoni in Hebrew, meaning “my lord”) to sit at his right hand. The only meaningful, and exegetically sound interpretation of this verse is that the second lord is sitting at the right-hand of God, and not that he is the “right-hand man” of God (though he does indeed serve as God’s vizier, to be sure).

Indeed, all of this refutes Johnson in her (lame) attempt to get around Acts 7:55-56 when she writes that:

In the case of the second quotation (Acts 7:53) we should note that it does NOT say Stephen saw God. It says he saw the glory of God and this is explained by scripture in Exodus 24:17 and many other places in a way which does not make God contradict Himself as Joseph Smith's claim to have seen God would do.

LDS apologist, Jeff Lindsay, provides a good LDS interaction with this pericope and common objections to its use here.

On man being able to see God, and the eisegesis critics have to engage in with respect to John 1:18, see James Stutz, Can a Man See God? 1 Timothy 6:16 in Light of Ancient and Modern Revelation.

Johnson tries to argue that LDS Scriptures are inconsistent with one another. On the time-worn argument that D&C 132 and Jacob 2 contradict one another, she writes:

Yet a revelation was alleged to have been received by Joseph Smith in 1831 and publicly proclaimed in 1852 referring to "celestial marriage" or "marriage for eternity" which contradicted a "revelation" recorded in the Book of Mormon in Jacob 2:24-28. This new revelation was to be involved in a new and everlasting covenant and rejection would bring exclusion from glory. When the American Congress prohibited polygamy after 1852 the then Mormon President Wilford Woodruff in 1890 declared his intention to submit and to use his influence with the Mormon Church to do likewise. Polygamists were then excommunicated.

 What is often overlooked in this discussion is that Jacob 2: 24 is based on Deut 17:17, a text dealing with the ideal king from the perspective of the Deuteronomists:

Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. (Jacob 2:24)

Neither shall he [the king] multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. (Deut 17:17)

The Deuteronomy text warns against a Davidic king “multiplying” the amount of possessions he has, including gold, silver, and horses (see v.16). Contextually, it should be obvious that what is being condemned is not a linear increase of such things, including wives, but an exponential and/or forbidden increase thereof. In the case of King Solomon, he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kgs 11:3 [which also resulted in his embracing their idolatrous practices]), while David had an adulterous affair with Bathsheba, whom he would later marry as a polygynous wife, after murdering her husband to cover his tracks. Combined together, they truly had “many wives and concubines,” something condemned by Deut 17:17 and Jacob are unbecoming of a true Davidic king. That is what is abominable vis-à-vis the polygyny of David (and Solomon), not their polygyny per se, let alone the practice of polygyny in general.

In an attempt to refute the LDS claim that marriage can last forever, not simply until death, she writes:

But apart from that tangle, we ought to notice that the Lord Jesus refuted the carnal idea of "celestial marriage" or "marriage for eternity" by his statement that "The children of this world marry and are given in marriage: but they that shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world (the future Kingdom of God on earth) and the resurrection from the dead NEITHER MARRY NOR ARE GIVEN IN MARRIAGE. (Luke 20:34,35)

Matt 22:30, which is the most commonly-cited text used against LDS teachings on this issue has Jesus addressing the Sadducees, saying:

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

Firstly, it should be noted that the Sadducees rejected belief in angels and the resurrection. Furthermore, when one examines the Greek, it refutes the argument.

“[Neither] marry” is [οὔτε] γαμοῦσιν, the present indicative active of the verb “to marry” (γαμεω). “Given in marriage” is γαμιζονται, again, the present indicative active of the verb γαμιζω “to give in marriage.” Jesus is not speaking of there being no marriage bonds in the hereafter, but that, in the age to come, there will be no performances or marriage. One’s opportunity to be married is something that can only take place on this side of eternity, to borrow the common phraseology. Matt 22:30 is therefore addressing the act of being married; nothing is said, for or against, marriages performed in this age continuing into the hereafter.

As Kevin Barney wrote in a blog post addressing this topic:

If Matthew had wanted to report that Christ had said in effect “Neither are they now in a married state (because of previously performed weddings),” the Greek in which he wrote would have let him say so unambiguously. He would have used a perfect tense [gegamēkasin] or a participial form [gamēsas] of the verb. He did not, so that cannot be what he meant. Jesus said nothing about the married state of those who are in heaven. By using the present indicative form of the verb, Matthew reports Jesus as saying in effect “In the resurrection, there are no marriages performed.” Jesus goes on to compare those in the resurrection to the angels of God, for unlike mortals they will never die and, according to Jewish tradition, they do not need to eat. The key point is that, contrary to the misconceptions of the Sadducees, life in the resurrection will be different in many ways from life in mortality. (Jesus then goes on to make an additional argument in favor of the resurrection in the following verses.)

The potential continuation of the marriage state in the hereafter for those married in mortality is consistent with another statement of Jesus, as recorded in Matt. 19:6: “Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

One non-LDS scholar, Ben Witherington, wrote the following, showing that the question of the eternality or lack thereof of marriage is not in view in Jesus' encounter with the Sadducees; commenting on the Markan parallel found in ch. 12, he wrote:

Jesus’ response, which begins at v.24, suggests that the Sadducees are ignorant of both the content of the Hebrew Scriptures and the power of God. Jesus stresses that in the age to come, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say there will be no marriage in the age to come. The use of terms γαμουσιν and γαμαζονται is important, for these terms refer to the gender-specific roles played in early Jewish society by the man and the woman in the process of getting married. The men, being the initiators of the process in such a strongly patriarchal culture, “marry,” while the women are “given in marriage” by their father or another older family member. Thus Mark has Jesus saying that no new marriages will be initiated in the eschatological state. This is surely not the same as claiming that all existing marriages will disappear in the eschatological state (see, for example, Tertullian, On Monogamy 10, who specifically denies that God will separate in the next life those whom he has joined together in a holy union in this one). Jesus, the, could seem to be arguing against a specific view held by the Sadducees about the continuity between this life and the life to come, a view involving the ongoing practice of levirate marriage.

 I would suggest that Luke’s expansion of his Markan source at Luke 20:36 understands quite well the rift of the discussion. In the eschatological state we have resurrected beings who are no longer able to die. Levirate marriage existed precisely because of the reality of death. When death ceases to happen, the rationale for levirate marriage falls to the ground as well. When Jesus saying in v.25b that people will be like the angels in heaven in the life to come, he does not mean they will live a sexless identity (early Jews did not think angels were sexless in any case; cf. Gen. 6:1-4! [Though there is, interestingly, evidence that some early Jews believed that angels didn’t marry—see 1 Enoch 15:7. There was furthermore the belief that the dead became angels after the resurrection [cf. 1 Enoch 51:4; 104:4; Bar. 51:9-10]. On the discontinuity of this world and the world to come [including the assertion that there will be no begetting], see B. Ber. 17a), but rather that they will be like angels in that they are unable to die. Thus the question of the Sadducees is inappropriate to the condition of the eschatological state. I would suggest that Jesus, like other early Jews, likely distinguished between normal marriage and levirate marriage. In Mark 10 Jesus grounded normal marriage in the creation order, not in the order of the fall, which is the case with levirate marriage (instituted because of death and childlessness and the need to preserve the family name and line). Thus Jesus is intending to deny about the eschatological state “that there will be any natural relation out of which the difficulty of the Sadducees could arise.” (Ben Witherington, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001], 328-29)

Finally, on the topic of the Aaronic Priesthood, Johnson wrote the following:

A final example: Mormon teaching has re established the Aaronic/Levitical priesthood though the Bible says this was ended by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Law of God through the prophet Moses established sacrifices and the Aaronic/Levitical priesthood to prepare the people for the coming of the Lamb of God who would save his people from their sins, whereas the sacrifices of the Law of Moses could NOT save them. The Lamb of God would also be the God-appointed High Priest and would replace the Aaronic/Levitical priesthood which could only fail because those priests often sinned themselves whereas the Lord Jesus, though tempted in all points like all men, never sinned.

When the Lord Jesus had lived, died and been raised to life again the old sacrifices and priesthood were superseded by what they had only foreshadowed. Why then do Mormons claim that God re-established by revelation to them what He had removed by revelation in the New Testament?

A common misconception among many is that the concept of priests and priestly actions are part of the Law of Moses, and, further, only Levites, after the establishment of the Levitical Priesthood, engaged in priestly services and sacrifices that were acceptable to God. However, this is far from the case. Before God established the Levitical priesthood, there were priests among the Israelites. For example, Noah (Gen 8:20); Abraham (Gen 12:7); Jacob (Gen 31:54, 46:1) and Jethro (Exo 18:12) offered sacrifices that were accepted by God. In Exo 19:22, 24:4-5, mention of priests and young men offering sacrifices before the establishment of the Levitical Priesthood are mentioned. Even after the establishment of the Levitical Priesthood, other Israelites offered sacrifices and/or were priests. For instance, Micah consecrated one of his sons to be his priest (Judg 17:5), although later he took a Levite to be his priest (Judg 17:11-12). Gideon offered a sacrifice (Judg 6:20-28), as did David (2 Sam 6:13), Manoah (Judg 13:15-23), and the prophet Elijah the Tishbite (1 Kgs 18:30-38). Moreover, David’s sons were priests in 2 Sam 8:18 (the Chronicler altered this in his history, instead giving them the position of chief officials in the service of the king [2 Chron 18:17]), and so was Ira the Jairite (2 Sam 20:26). 

For a book-length study of the Israelite priesthood and its background, see Aelred Cody, A History of Old Testament Priesthood.

Interestingly, there are a number of Old Testament texts that speak of a ministerial priesthood as being part-and-parcel of the then-future New Covenant.

And I know their works and their thoughts; it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the Lord out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. And I will also take of them for priests, and for Levites, saith the Lord. For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. (Isa 66:18-22).

In this pericope, Isaiah, speaking of the last days, has God’s people engaged in priestly, temple ministry, consistent with Latter-day Saint claims, not just about an ordained priesthood, but also temple worship in the New Covenant. Furthermore, God promises to “take of them” “Levites” (the Hebrew כֹּהֲנִ֥ים לַלְוִיִּ֖ם  which means “Levitical Priests”), without regard of their genealogy. Some critics claim that the LDS have an unbiblical view of the Aaronic Priesthood as we don’t ordain people to this priesthood based on their genealogy. However, with the death of Christ, such requirements were annulled, and we see the biblical evidence of this practice in Isaiah’s prophecy quoted above.

Other pertinent texts are the following:

For thus saith the Lord; David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel; Neither shall the priests the Levities want a man before me to offer burn offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to sacrifice continually. And the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah, saying, Thus saith the Lord; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season. Then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne; and with the Levites the priests, my ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me. (Jer 33:17-22)

And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord and offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years. (Mal 3:3-4 [cf. D&C 13]).

In the above pericopes, both Jeremiah, speaking of the New Covenant, and Malachi, speaking of the last days, speaks of there being priests engaged in priestly activity and ministry, consistent with an ordained, ministerial priesthood within the New Covenant, but not the so-called “Priesthood of all Believers” as understood by many groups today. These should also be read in light of Ezek 40-47 which detail the building of the house of the Lord in Jerusalem in the last days, complete with priests after the order of Aaron, and blood sacrifices being offered to God (cf. D&C 13).

While there are many other texts one can point to, it should be clear that the Old Testament contains explicit prophecies of there being future ordained priests, and commensurate with such, a ministerial priesthood as being an integral part of the New Covenant. Critics of Latter-day Saint teachings on the priesthood will have to ignore such texts as their only alternative would be to claim that Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Malachi were all false prophets! Fortunately, Latter-day Saints are not in such a precarious position.

For more information showing how, on an exegetical level, Johnson is way out in left field on this and other issues, see The LDS Priesthoods: Resource Page

While much more could be said, it is clear that, notwithstanding Johnson's claim to having studied "Mormonism" for over thirty years, having conversations with Latter-day Saints, and having studied LDS materials, she would be, to be blunt, totally and utterly clueless about LDS issues and the long-standing responses to the various issues and texts she raised, is amazing. Sadly, it does show that it is not just Evangelicals and Catholics who produce shoddy arguments against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Christadelphians and other groups, too, are guilty of such. Of course, one always welcomes any opportunity to defend the Restored Gospel, as it provides one the chance to show the interested reader some of the evidence for Latter-day Saint claims.