ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 58 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Mormonism is a uniquely American religion and one quite common in my area. I think I know the answer to this question but I would appreciate hearing you articulate it. Is what Mormons believe about Jesus different than what Lutherans believe? >> DR. DAVID SCAER: Well, Lutheran theology never takes Mormonism, whether religion of the Church of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ, very seriously. But to -- in some way to modify that particular response, Mormonism has a great attraction for the American people. It might not be that difficult to explain its attraction. One, it is -- it's a heresy of a heresy. It's a heresy of the Reformed religion or Calvinism in that it puts a strong stress on the work ethic which is very appealing to the American mindset. At the same time, it has a strong emphasis on male sexuality, which has also an appeal to the image of what Americans should be. Now, Mormonism is making every attempt to be understood as a Christian religion. Even though it calls itself a church, it's really a sect. And for as liberal as some Protestant denominations are, no Protestant denominations to this date have recognized Mormonism as a Christian religion. See, they believe actually that God the Father and God the Son have the bodies almost like human beings. They are physical beings. God is not a spirit in Mormonism. The Holy Spirit -- the Holy Spirit is a spirit and has no body. But the Father and the Son have bodies. And they also believe that the Father and the Son are married and continue to produce children. Now, they can speak about Jesus as God. However, they also hold out the hope to their followers that they also will become gods and that in the next life, they will continue to propagate. And if they follow the proper rules of living, they will be given various planets on which to live. And on these planets, they will become their own gods and they will propagate. Christianity is based upon -- it's a historical religion in that we -- we tried to indicate that. For example, Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. That there are Apostles, various things which are recorded in the Gospel like the Sea of Galilee and Bethlehem and Jerusalem. These are things that really happened. And Mormonism is based upon an immediate revelation given to Joseph Smith when tablets were brought down to him by the angel Moroni and then translated. These tablets are not available. They have been flown back to heaven. I do not have the answer to what is the best way to approach Mormons. There are many books which have shown that the religion has been a hoax. And some of these books have come from within the Mormon community themselves. And many of these people have been excommunicated by the Mormon church. I'm not sure that's been the most effective way. Mormonism's Achilles heel is that it is a religion of the law. It's extremely regimented. On that account we said it really seems to be a heresy of the Reformed faith in which you also had regimented churches and a regimented society. If you're going to find yourself in that kind of community -- and that kind of community is found in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah -- obviously this is going to take a lot of additional research on your part. But I think the most difficult thing in handling Mormons is that they really are not like Christians at all, even though they use some of the same language. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***