Thursday, January 2, 2020

Matthew Paulson Shoots Himself in the Foot about "Mormonism" (and Christianity) being a "Cult"


Matthew Paulson in Breaking the Mormon Code, in an attempt to claim “Mormonism” is a “cult,” wrote the following:

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language provides six characteristics of groups that are classified as “cults”:

1. The followers of such a religion or sect.
2. A system or community of religious worship and ritual.
3. The formal means of expressing religious reverence; religious ceremony and ritual.
4. A usually nonscientific method of regimen claimed by its originator to have exclusive or exceptional power in curing a particular disease.
5. Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing the object of such devotion.
6. An exclusive group of persons sharing an esoteric, usually artistic or intellectual interest. 
(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], 204)

The problem with this definition of “cult” is that Protestantism would fall under the category, and most other faiths too. Paulson, using this definition of “cult” would be a member of such a group. Consider:

#1: Paulson is a follower of Protestantism and claims to follow the person of Jesus of Nazareth
#2-3: He belongs to a group that engages in religious worship and ritual, such as the Lord’s Supper and water baptism
#4: Protestantism believes in the “internal witness” of the Spirit vis-à-vis the self-authentication of the Bible, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith. For more, see the section “A Self-Attesting, Self-Authenticating, Formally Sufficient Scripture?” in Not By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura
#5: Paulson believes one is to worship the person of Jesus Christ; indeed, on p. 198, he condemns as non-Christian anyone who does not worship Jesus en par with, and alongside with, the Father.
#6: According to Paulson, there is no salvation outside his (theologically-driven) understanding of “Christian.” Furthermore, he and others within this sliver of Christianity produce many books, article, tracts, youtube videos, etc., defending tenets of their faith and critiques of tenets of other groups.

Interestingly, Paulson further shoots himself in the foot with the following:

It would be shown that Christianity has the same characteristics of a cult. In fact, Judaism has declared Christianity a “cult” Judaism has the prerogative, because Christianity grew out of Judaism. Likewise, Mormonism grew out of classical Christianity. Thus, Christianity reserves the same right to describe Mormonism as a non-Christian church or cult. (Ibid.)

In other words, Paulson admits that (1) his definition of “cult” can be used to describe any religious movement and (2) being honest and consistent, Christianity (as defined by Paulson) is a “cult” too.

For more, see:

Mormonism as "Cult": The Limits if Lexical Polemics in Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints