Mormonism, Grace and Works

Posted on August 3, 2010
Filed Under Religion | 14 Comments

The other day there was a rather longish set of comments in response to a post about misunderstandings of grace in Mormonism. As I tried to make clear I’m anything but an expert in Protestantism. In the comments though one of the interlocutors, Darrell, seemed to attack the Mormon concept of grace precisely because it was resistible. That is for a Mormon grace is always a free gift and typically is an enabling condition. That is it allows for choice but does not determine choice. The Mormon view then leads to a condition where humans progress grace for grace. That is from blessing to blessing. We don’t deserve the further blessing since our free acts are themselves made possible by grace.

Now my confusion on all this arises because I think a lot of Mormon beliefs aren’t that different from the Arminians or even Catholics. That is we accept a “prevenient grace” which can be resisted but which draws us toward God. While Calvinists of course reject this idea I confess I just can’t see where the LDS concept of grace significantly differs from prevenient grace.
Typically Mormon critics point to 2 Nephi 25:23 as indicating Mormons reject prevenient grace. However Blake Ostler noted at LDS-Phil,

I would suggest that [2 Nephi 25:23] relates to the larger picture in the Book of Mormon that prevenient grace, or that grace that we are given prior to any act of willing or doing, is the necessary condition for the exercise of free will at all. In other words, without grace we are not free to act for ourselves but are merely acted upon and we remain unable to choose to accept what is given to us. Thus, “after all that we can do” means that even considering all that we can do, it is by grace that we are saved because all that we can do is enable by grace in the first place. Thus, grace is the foundation of salvation, but we must be free to accept or reject the gospel when it is present, free to accept or reject Christ when we learn of him.”

One of the better discussions of Mormon conceptions of grace can be found at Feast Upon the Word. (One of my favorite LDS blogs) There a discussion of Ephesians and Grace clarifies a lot of issues. It’s probably a must read for non-Mormons curious about the LDS conception.

Related posts:

  1. Grace
  2. Speculative Grace
  3. Death, Embodiment and Grace
  4. Beck, Mormonism and Evangelicalism
  5. Evolution and the Categories of those who Believe
  6. Responsibility, Ignorance and our Duty

Comments

14 Responses to “Mormonism, Grace and Works”

Clark:

I have often thought that our free will was a thing with an eternal past. I have believed that our eternal intelligences had free will and always had it.

How does this mesh with the idea of prevenient grace – if at all.

Also, if free will were absolutely given at some point in time, does this not functionally short circuit our rejection of creatio ex nihilo?

As I read the sequence of comments you mention, Clark, I found myself wondering exactly which tradition Darrell comes out of. I wish he would have stated a position on the sacraments. And Eric, I think you see prevenient grace in Joseph Smith’s idea of adoption of spirits (or, in your case, intelligences).

WVS:

But is such ‘adoption’ of intelligences coerced or freely chosen/accepted? (Is this the basis of a Brigham Young/Orson Pratt debate I have heard about but not read)?

Oh, and I believe Derrell is an angry ex-Mormon who is now an Evangelical.

Eric (2) I think freedom in the Book of Mormon is not the same as free will as discussed in philosophy. Now some, such as Blake Ostler, argue that libertarian free will is a necessary component of freedom as discussed in the Book of Mormon. I’m far, far from convinced of this. However it is ultimately an orthogonal issue to creation ex nihilo. The Arminians (who were very influential on early Mormons via Methodism) actually felt God created libertarian free will for each individual at the moment of their creation. So relative to freedom creation ex nihilo is primarily an issue only relative to the issue of foreknowledge and God’s responsibility. It does have other implications in other areas of theology though.

It’s interesting that a common Calvinist criticism of Arminianism is that they try to have it both ways and don’t acknowledge the implications of their position. I’ve read Calvinists arguing that if Arminians were logically consistent they’d have to become Open Theists or the like. I actually think the Calvinists have a pretty strong argument here. The problem is that even if the Calvinist position is much more coherent the implications of Calvinism are pretty disturbing to most people and seem more problematic as an exegesis of scripture. (IMO) Obviously Calvinists disagree.

W.V. I found Darrell’s comments on the sacraments confusing since he suggested that the Catholics had moved towards the Calvinist view here. That goes against everything I’ve read which is why I raised the Council of Trent. As I said the Catholic view seems very, very similar to the Mormon view. Darrell’s never replied to that though. However as I’ve been at pains to note I’m hardly well versed on these subtle aspects of Catholicism or Protestantism. So I may simply be wrong here.

Eric (4) I don’t think the issue of adoption vs. spiritual creation was ever cast into terms of freedom that I can recall. It’s a good question. But probably not really answerable given that even the proponents of either theory don’t have a sufficiently fleshed out ontology of souls. Well, I guess Pratt did. And he’d say anything a monad (atom) does is freely chosen.

Perhaps Derrell refers to the “joint declaration” of a Catholic ecumenical body and the Lutheran federation about 10 years ago (which I find rather confusing on its face) that goes something like this: by grace itself through faith in Christ’s work without any personal merit, we’re accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit. And that calls to good works. Some of the Methodists signed on more recently, though it appears that there are lots of factions who haven’t agreed. I think you could read into this (and I can’t seem to find the actual statement) what you wanted to. I don’t think the Pope is going to announce that Luther was correct by any stretch.

Interesting. I vaguely remember something about that. I found the document. The focus seems to be on justification (forgiveness). Interestingly it quotes the scripture Mormons often quote about working out your own salvation. (Phil 2:12) This as part of something that sounds very Mormon and very unlike what Derrell spoke of:

But since the justified are assailed from within and without by powers and desires (Rom 8:35-39; Gal 5:16-21) and fall into sin (1 Jn 1:8,10), they must constantly hear God’s promises anew, confess their sins (1 Jn 1:9), participate in Christ’s body and blood, and be exhorted to live righteously in accord with the will of God.

So I don’t think it says what he thinks it says.

Eric, I think where you are going wrong here is in claiming that Ostler’s read of 2 Nephi 25:23 requires that free will be “absolutely given.”

I don’t think that conclusion is required. That scriptural passage also talks of humanity being fallen in this mortal state.

So the argument would instead be that we have ALWAYS had free will. However, the EXERCISE of it in this FALLEN world is only possible by grace.

So to say that our exercise of free agency here on earth is only by grace is in no way to deny that we had free will prior to birth. And it certainly doesn’t require an ex nihilo view of creation.

Clark (8). Ok, definitely not Calvinist there. Certainly sounds Wesleyan.

Seth, I’d need to break out Blake’s books and I just don’t have time today. But my sense is that Blake would be willing to talk about two aspects of freedom. One is the ontological issue of libertarian free will which is necessary for there to be responsibility. The second is reasonable choices which is the freedom talked of in 2 Ne 25. Now maybe I’m misrecalling, and of course he sees both of these as part of freedom (ontological openness & real choices) but definitely sees the latter as given by Christ. That is ethical responsibility requires the atonement for God to justifiably hold us responsible.

W.V., I don’t think he was presenting a Calvinist view. (Indeed he sounded pretty critical of Calvinism) However to my admittedly naive ears it sounded like he bought into an idea of the “when” of justification and sanctification that was more Calvinist than what I understand the Catholics and Arminians to hold. Once again though while I’ve read on this I don’t claim to understand all the nuances. Although to me if you reject works in any sense including the sense in (8) then I don’t see many coherent alternatives to Calvinism. But perhaps a Protestant will chime in and correct me.

I’ve had dealings with Darrell before and I don’t think he’s a Calvinist. I think I remember him saying he was Lutheran of some sort once, but that could be completely off-base.

My experience however is that most of the “Mormon Coffee” crowd (and people who employ a similar approach) don’t appreciate it when Mormons start exploiting the rather significant theological differences in their camp.

It endangers the myth of the “united front” that they want to maintain against Mormonism.

I just got the impression from his comments that he was at least sympathetic to some form of milder Calvinism, no hard-line five points. But perhaps he was just being generous or something.

Leave a Reply