The following are interesting excerpts from:
Paul James Toscano, Gospel Letters to a Mormon Missionary (Orem, Utah: Grandin Book Company, 1983)
Of course, a caveat lector for the following:
While Paul (and his wife, Margaret) are way out in left field these days, the book was originally slated to be a manual for missionaries, a project which was eventually rejected; some of his booklets introducing the Restored Gospel to Jews were also published around this time, albeit without attribution. The following are insightful and one is not advocating his material done after this time. Indeed, for a good beat-down of the Tocanos recent material, see, for e.g., my friend Bill Hamblin’s review of their The Sanctity of Dissent book, The Return of Simon and Helena.
The Eternal Nature of Man and Christ:
Joseph Smith taught that man’s intelligence—the irreducible seed of the human personality—consists of Spirit matter and is co-eternal with God. That means that the spiritual point from which each human is developed was not created, nor can it be totally destroyed. (p. 4)
. . . Christ’s own eternal nature . . . (p. 6; cf. Is Latter-day Saint Christology "Arian"?)
Justification is both a process and transformational:
For the candidate, baptism is a point of contact with the eternal world. It makes the beginning of a new relationship with God it is a rite of passage. It memorializes the death of the old man of sin and the birth of the new man of Christ. At the same time, it is the means by which actual divine power is transferred so that the person baptized can be transformed into a new creature of the Spirit. The ordinance both makes and marks the moment when the sinful man gives his sins to Christ, and is, in turn, clothed in Christ’s righteousness. Let me expand on this.
Not only do the ordinances serve as channels of divine power or points of contact with Christ, but they serve other functions too. For example, an ordinance is a sign we make unto God that we are willing to take upon ourselves his grace and Spirit. The Lord, knowing we are desirous of doing something to express our faith in him, gives us the opportunity to participate in an outward ordinance. By this sign we demonstrate to God, to ourselves, and to all the seen and unseen world that we freely surrender ourselves to Christ, that we die with him and are raised by him into a newness of life.
With regard to the specific ordinances of baptism and confirmation, there are some important distinctions to be made. Baptism is part of the process of justification (the means by which our sins are remitted and divine justice is satisfied). This process begins when we have faith in the Lord. There has been a great controversy in the Christian world surrounding the question of justification. Are we justified by faith? Or by works? The truth, I believe, is that we are justified of faith and of works through grace, the grace or Spirit of Jesus Christ (Rom. 4:16, Joseph Smith Translation). In other words, the power that forgives us, remits our sins, purifies us, and transforms us is the Spirit of God given through Jesus Christ. It is God who justifies. We cannot justify ourselves either by works or by faith. We are saved by grace. It is a gift. We cannot transform ourselves into new creatures. We cannot remit our own sins. It is by grace that we are saved after all we can do. But what is it we must do? That’s where faith comes in.
We must first believe in Christ and be willing to receive his Spirit. We must willingly accept his gift of justification, for God will not force anyone into heaven. The only way we can be saved is voluntarily to have faith in Jesus, to turn our hearts to him (to repent), and to allow him to transfer into us the redeeming, justifying, life-giving powers of heaven. (p. 48, emphasis added; some might point to the use of “being clothed” as evidence for imputation, but in context, such is an outward sign of an inward reality. For more, see Clothing Imagery, Psalm 109:29, and Romans 5:19: Further Proof that the Reformed Understanding of Imputation is Unbiblical and the other articles linked therein)
