Friday, December 27, 2019

Matthew Paulson: Patristic Scholar Extraordinaire!


In his book, Breaking the Mormon Code, Reformed apologist Matthew Paulson claims that LDS apologists and scholars abuse the patristics. To see how ignorant Paulson truly is about theology, including early Christian theology and history, consider the following comment:

In AD 313 Arius of Alexandria began to teach that Jesus did not exist before his incarnation. (Matthew A. Paulson, Breaking the Mormon Code: A Critique of Mormon Scholarship Regarding Classic Christian Theology and the Book of Mormon [Livermore, Calif.: WingSpan Press, 2006, 2009], 62)

Arius did not claim Jesus came into existence at the Incarnation. Instead, Arius (and his followers, both ancient and modern vis-à-vis Christology) believed that Jesus did not eternally pre-exist, but he did pre-exist his conception/the incarnation. This is theology 101. It would be the Socinians and others who would argue that Jesus came into existence at conception (though they would not argue for Incarnation as they reject Jesus’ divinity). Regardless, this is the type of amateur “scholarship” that is part-and-parcel of Paulson’s book. If a theology student reproduced such a comment, they would get a "F" grade. For more, see:



As an aside, the following refutes the common claim that Latter-day Saints hold to an "Arian" Christology:

Is Latter-day Saint Christology "Arian"?