Many critics
of the Church have claimed that Bruce McConkie rejected completely the need to
have a personal relationship with Jesus in a BYU Devotional from 1982. You can
read the talk online at:
Bruce R.
McConkie, Our
Relationship with the Lord (BYU Devotional, 2 March 1982)
Representative
of such is from two former Latter-day Saints, Phillip and Cheryl Naugle:
I am now fully committed to helping members
of the LDS Church answer questions they have regarding their faith and how they
can establish a relationship with Jesus Christ. This relationship has been
forbidden by LDS Church authority Bruce R. McConkie in an address to the BYU
devotional audience in 1987, but this
relationship with Jesus Christ is what Christianity is all about! (“The
Testimony of Phillip and Cheryl Naugle” in Christina R. Darlington, Misguided by Mormonism But Redeemed by God’s
Grace: Leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for Biblical
Christianity [2d ed.; 2019], 168, emphasis in original)
Perhaps it
should be enough for someone to read the entire talk that discusses the
absolute centrality of the person of Jesus Christ in our salvation. Here are
some representative statements from McConkie’s speech:
Now, it is no secret that many false and vain
and foolish things are being taught in the sectarian world and even among us
about our need to gain a special relationship with the Lord Jesus. I shall
summarize the true doctrine in this field and invite erring teachers and
beguiled students to repent and believe the accepted gospel verities as I shall
set them forth.
There is no salvation in believing any false
doctrine, particularly a false or unwise view about the Godhead or any of its
members. Eternal life is reserved for those who know God and the One whom he
sent to work out the infinite and eternal atonement . . .
2. We love and serve both the Father and the
Son.
In the full, final, and ultimate sense of the
word the divine decree is:
Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and
strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him. [D&C 59:5]
And Jesus also said:
If ye love
me, keep my commandments. [John 14:15]
These, then, are the commandments of
commandments. They tie the Father and the Son together, as one, so that both
receive our love and service.. . .
7. The Father sent the Son to work out the
infinite and eternal atonement.
As temporal and spiritual death came by the
fall of Adam, so immortality and eternal life come by the atonement of Christ.
Such was and is and ever shall be the plan of the Father. Adam was sent to
earth to fall, and Christ came to ransom men from the fall.
Thus the Father sent forth this call in the
councils of eternity: “Whom shall I send to be my Son, to ransom all people
from temporal and spiritual death, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal
life of man, to put into full operation all the terms and conditions of my
eternal plan of redemption and salvation?”
Christ is the Redeemer of men and the Savior
of the world because his Father sent him and gave him power to do the assigned
work. He said he had power to lay down his life and to take it again because he
had been so commanded by the Father. Lehi said he rose from the dead “by the
power of the Spirit” (2 Nephi 2:8).
The great and eternal redemption, in all its
phases, was wrought by Christ using the power of the Father . . .
10. Christ is the Mediator between God and
man.
Because all people must be reconciled to God
in order to be saved, he, in his goodness and grace, has provided a Mediator
for them.
Paul told us:
There is one
God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
Who gave
himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. [1 Timothy 2:5–6]
To this we add: If there were no Mediator, we
could never be reconciled to the Father, and hence there would be no salvation.
11. Christ is our Intercessor with the
Father, our Advocate in the courts above.
In the process of mediating between us and
our Maker, in the process of reconciling sin-ridden men with a sin-free God,
Christ makes intercession for all who repent. He advocates the cause of those
who believe in him. “Father,” he pleads,
spare these
my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have
everlasting life.
[D&C 45:5] . . .
15. Christ is the Way to the Father.
“I am the way,” he said. “No man cometh unto
the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
Who can doubt that Christ’s mission is to
reveal the Father, to lead us to the Father, to teach us how to worship the
Father, to reconciles us to the Father?
Fellow LDS
apologist Jeff Lindsay, who himself was at the very devotional, when answering
the charge that McConkie rejected any concept of a personal relationship with
Jesus, wrote:
I
was there at that sermon. He was correcting a minor heresy in which some BYU
students felt that their relationship to Christ was so advanced that they could
pray directly to Him, not following the Biblical command to pray to the Father
in the name of Christ (see Colossians 3:17). Elder McConkie was clarifying that
"to us there is but one God" whom we worship (see 1 Cor. 8:6),
"and one Lord, Jesus Christ," our advocate with the Father. He
emphasized that Christ brings us to the Father and that the Father is the
ultimate object of all true worship. He was not demoting Christ from the
Godhead or urging us not to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, whom we follow
and adore, but he was reminding us of the preeminence of the Father, and that
we are to pray to Him in the name of Christ. Depending on just what you mean by
the word "worship," it can be correct to say that we properly worship
the Father in the name of Christ or that we properly worship the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Elder
McConkie's views on Christ are nicely conveyed in a very popular LDS hymn that
he wrote. It's Hymn 134 in the LDS hymnbook and bears the title, "I
Believe in Christ." Here are some verses:
I believe in Christ; he is my
King!
With all my heart to him I'll sing;
I'll raise my voice in praise and joy,
In grand amens my tongue employ.
With all my heart to him I'll sing;
I'll raise my voice in praise and joy,
In grand amens my tongue employ.
...
I believe in Christ - my Lord, my God!
My feet he plants on gospel sod,
I'll worship him with all my might;
He is the source of truth and light.
I believe in Christ - my Lord, my God!
My feet he plants on gospel sod,
I'll worship him with all my might;
He is the source of truth and light.
I believe in Christ; he ransoms
me.
From Satan's grasp he sets me free,
And I shall live with joy and love
In his eternal courts above.
From Satan's grasp he sets me free,
And I shall live with joy and love
In his eternal courts above.
By
the way, a lot of anti-Mormons seem to have never attended an LDS sacrament
meeting and listened to the hymns we sing. If they did, they would immediately
know that we are Christians. And they might even be inspired to join. After
all, some of the most beautiful hymns you'll ever hear about Christ are sung in
Latter-day Saint meetings. Give it a try! (source)
There is
much evidence that McConkie’s Christology was far from low and, moreover, he
had a strong and deep personal devotion to Jesus. This comes out explicitly in his
final talk before his death in 1985, The
Purifying Power of Gethsemane. As he was in the late stages of cancer at
the time, he knew he would die shortly afterwards. With that in mind, here are
the concluding statements (though one should read the entire talk to put the
lie to the claim he rejected a personal relationship with Christ):
And now, as pertaining to this perfect
atonement, wrought by the shedding of the blood of God—I testify that it took place in
Gethsemane and at Golgotha, and as pertaining to Jesus Christ, I testify that
he is the Son of the Living God and was crucified for the sins of the world. He
is our Lord, our God, and our King. This I know of myself independent of any
other person.
I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming
day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his
feet with my tears.
But I shall not know any better then than I
know now that he is God’s Almighty Son, that he is our Savior and Redeemer, and
that salvation comes in and through his atoning blood and in no other way.
God grant that all of us may walk in the
light as God our Father is in the light so that, according to the promises, the
blood of Jesus Christ his Son will cleanse us from all sin.
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.
James E.
Faust, in the October 1976 General Conference, spoke on the topic of “A
Personal Relationship with the Savior” that emphasised the need for a true
and proper personal relationship with Jesus Christ. While the entire talk
should be read, here is one important section:
There is a great humility and timidity in my
soul as I presume to speak about coming to a personal knowledge of Jesus
Christ, the Redeemer of the world and the Son of God.
Recently in South America, a seasoned group
of outstanding missionaries was asked, “What is the greatest need in the
world?” One wisely responded: “Is not the greatest need in all of the world for
every person to have a personal, ongoing, daily, continuing relationship with
the Savior?” Having such a relationship can unchain the divinity within us, and
nothing can make a greater difference in our lives as we come to know and
understand our divine relationship with God.
We should earnestly seek not just to know
about the Master, but to strive, as He invited, to be one with Him (see John
17:21), to “be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (Eph.
3:16). We may not feel a closeness with Him because we think of Him as being far
away, or our relationship may not be sanctifying because we do not think of Him
as a real person.
Clearly, a
true and proper, reverent “personal relationship with Jesus” is clearly taught
in Latter-day Saint theology, and, when read in its historical context (various
heresies among LDS in BYU), McConkie’s talk in no way discounts any personal
relationship with Christ (and one only need to read his 6-volume series on Christ
to know that the opposite is in view!)
As for
Latter-day Saint Christology itself, unlike the false and damnable theology
that the Naugles, unfortunately, embraced, LDS Christology is completely
biblical. For a full discussion, see:
Incidentally,
McConkie, in his 1982 talk, touches upon the "oneness" of God succinctly
in the following paragraph:
Thus there are, in the Eternal Godhead, three
persons—God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the
third, the Testator. These three are one—one God if you will—in purposes, in
powers, and in perfections. But each has his own severable work to perform, and
mankind has a defined and known and specific relationship to each one of them.
It is of these relationships that we shall now speak.
For more articles refuting Darlington's book, see:
Listing of Responses to Christina R. Darlington's "Misguided by Mormonism"