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Did anyone catch the July 13 episode of the Glenn Beck Program? He seemed to be saying things about salvation that sound more “Christian” than “Mormon.” To quote some of what he said: “You cannot earn your way into heaven. You can’t! There is no deed, no random act of kindness, no amount of money to spread around to others that earns you a trip to heaven. It can’t happen. It’s earned by God’s grace alone, by believing that Jesus died on the cross for you. This is what Christians believe.”
“I also am wise enough to know that people will say, yeah, but Glenn Beck is a Mormon, He’s not even a real Christian. You can believe what you want. I will tell you that I am a man who needed the atonement more than most people do. I appreciate the atonement. I accept Jesus as my savior. I know that I am alive today because I did give all of it to Him because I couldn’t carry it anymore.”
“salvation is an individual relationship between the individual and God through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. . . Jesus said, John 14:6, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ I cannot be saved for you. I cannot save you. I can’t even save myself. If you’re a Christian you believe that Jesus can save you.”
“Here is traditional Christianity. Jesus died, two thieves over here. He took on the sins of the world by choice. The empty tomb represents that he conquered death. He was not a victim because he did it by choice. He’s not a victim, he’s a victor. He was a conqueror. He conquered death. Got it? To receive his salvation you accept his forgiveness of sin, and live your life, according to his will. That’s what every Christian church in the country, in the world, believes. This is biblical.”
And when quoting James 2:20 he said: “What does that mean? Our works are a demonstration of our faith.”
Glenn Beck is sounding more in more Protestant in my view. We have heard on innumerable occasion that our salvation is earned by our own merits. I’ve always been taught that it cannot be grace alone, as Beck claimed. It must be faith AND works. Both views cannot be correct, can they?
What do you think?
Progressively, Latter-day Saints appropriate conservative evangelical terminology in efforts, both conscious and non conscious, to counter claims Latter-day Saints are not Christian, rely on their works, etc., etc. To a large degree this appropriation is inauthentic or reactionary rather than truly responsive. In understanding the doctrine of Grace, Latter-day Saints need look no further than the Book of Mormon for the most definitive passage in all scripture: “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that is is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved” (2 Nephi 10:24). The question of the role of Grace can be summarized with this question: “What is God’s role in the life of a believer? Is God a distant observer, a casual participant, and cheerleader, or the source of strength, wisdom, humility, and love of all those who obey?” There are vast differences between what Joseph Smith and the preachers of his day taught–but they usually aren’t the differences we expect (such as this).
Next Sunday I will preach at the Protestant service on post, and my family (we normally worship together) will attend LDS services off post. Our five-year-old is giving a talk; he was assigned the topic: “Jesus is a God of miracles.” The first exemplifies the Church’s desire to be viewed as a partner within Christianity (to an extent, anyway) as well as my own, and the second exemplifies the shift in technical language in the Church: increasingly more Christological. It’s not just Glen Beck.
History is replete with examples of the minority attempting to legitimize its faith in the context of the older, larger society. Philo attempts to portray Moses as a former-day Plato; Paul tries to package the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in terms of Stoicism. Early Sikhs, Baha`i, and even Buddhists made similar attempts to appear/become normative. As I see it, Glen Beck is as guilty as the rest of us who want to belong.
That’s a very perceptive analysis. I don’t know much about Glenn Beck. Nobody (including me) has heard of him here.
However he strikes me as another so called Christian right clone. Trouble is that they always forget all those inconvenient left wing teachings of Jesus about peace and the poor. The John Birch Society would have had Jesus jailed.
Nathan wrote:Progressively, Latter-day Saints appropriate conservative evangelical terminology in efforts, both conscious and non conscious, to counter claims Latter-day Saints are not Christian, rely on their works, etc., etc. To a large degree this appropriation is inauthentic or reactionary rather than truly responsive. In understanding the doctrine of Grace, Latter-day Saints need look no further than the Book of Mormon for the most definitive passage in all scripture: “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God,
that is is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved” (2 Nephi 10:24). The question of the role of Grace can be summarized with this question: “What is God’s role in the life of a believer? Is God a distant observer, a casual participant, and cheerleader, or the source of strength, wisdom, humility, and love of all those who obey?” There are vast differences between what Joseph Smith and the preachers of his day taught–but they usually aren’t the differences we expect (such as this).
Next Sunday I will preach at the Protestant service on post, and my family (we normally worship together) will attend LDS services off post. Our five-year-old is giving a talk; he was assigned the topic: “Jesus is a God of miracles.” The first exemplifies the Church’s desire to be viewed as a partner within Christianity (to an extent, anyway) as well as my own, and the second exemplifies the shift in technical language in the Church: increasingly more Christological. It’s not just Glen Beck.
History is replete with examples of the minority attempting to legitimize its faith in the context of the older, larger society. Philo attempts to portray Moses as a former-day Plato; Paul tries to package the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in terms of Stoicism. Early Sikhs, Baha`i, and even Buddhists made similar attempts to appear/become normative. As I see it, Glen Beck is as guilty as the rest of us who want to belong.
2 Nephi 25:23
For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.
It’s the above passage I see most commonly used to justify the idea of your works, then God’s grace. I do appreciate your comments!
This whole grace/works debate is really a chicken/egg proposition. I think Mormons argue this issue unnecessarily. I don’t have any disagreement with anything you quoted from Beck. I don’t care if it sounds protestant or not. Sometimes, I think we Mormons get too tied up in the works argument. I agree with Beck. We absolutely are saved by God’s grace–we cannot earn our way into heaven. But that doesn’t mean we have to ignore works either. We are saved by grace, after all we can do.
I know most of it is semantics but when you say: mormonheretic wrote:We are saved by grace, after all we can do.
What you’re saying is that grace, a free gift by definition, has to be paid for by doing all we can. That means it’s not a gift and that we’ll never really know if we’ve done everything. We’ll always be in doubt and that our good works are at risk of being performed for the wrong reason, to get into the CK and not for the sake of our neighbor.
As to another take on this, Armand Maus’ book “The Angel and the Beehive” is an interesting look at the phenomena of assimilation and the tension in the LDS church between being separate and being acceptable to the larger society.
Will this is a great topic in and of itself, I have a hard time trying to make guesses at what is really in Glen Beck’s mind and heart. He is a performer, first and last, in the costume of a news, culture and political commentator. So you kind of have to keep that in mind. He is a performer playing to an audience. On the subject of works and grace, good luck. It has been debated since the birth of Christianity. Faith is what saves us, and life without action and decision is a non-experience. Faith without works is dead, and by their fruits shall ye know their faith. Salvation, in my current view, is a metaphor for the deeply trans formative experience of making peace with life. Be not afraid.
The LDS is mainstream in some areas by sheer dint of numbers, but not in every part of the world. I gave up on the whole faith vs. works argument long ago, even though I’ve written posts about it. It’s a central Gospel paradox in my mind – and arguing EITHER side of the coin just isn’t perfect (complete, whole, fully developed). Iow, imo, the Atonement encompasses both as integral parts – so arguing about it just doesn’t go anywhere. I don’t have a problem at all with the actual words Beck used, and I don’t think they are un-Mormon is any way. I don’t think he’s denying the need to “exercise faith” or “bring forth good fruit” or “keep my commandments” – but I don’t know him, so that’s just a guess. As long as he’s not saying, “Confess and be saved and you can sin all you want,” (and I certainly don’t get that message from these quotes or others I’ve heard from him) I’m fine with however he wants to word it.
Old-Timer wrote:As long as he’s not saying, “Confess and be saved and you can sin all you want,” (and I certainly don’t get that message from these quotes or others I’ve heard from him) I’m fine with however he wants to word it.
I don’t know of anyone who honestly believes that. If you were saved, and you knew it, is that how you would think the Almighty? Besides, Paul already addressed this in Romans when talking about whether or not we should sin, so that grace may abound. I believe his words were “God Forbid!”
dt, I agree in general – except I do know a few people who really believe they can sin all they want because they’re saved already. It’s not all that different than the historic tradition in Catholcism of receiving absolution in advance upon confession of intent or concern – although I don’t know how many (if any) priests still take that view now. I haven’t done or seen any research at all on that question. That’s why I gave up the argument years ago – except when I hear somebody make the assertion above. (and, often, not even then – since it’s pretty much useless to argue with them)
I think salvation is relative to one’s time, place, and journey through life. If you were a Roman or Celtic warrior that fought in countless battles worshiping Pagan Gods and commiting what a Christian calls wickedness and by modern standards attrocities. Then your idea of coming to Christ, giving up sacrafice, Pagan rituals, and being saved would be a far cry different from an elderly Pentacostal woman giving up tea to beome LDS. The same holds true for many converts today. Frankly the difference between a modern Saint vs. a first generation Saint say in Sidney Rigdeon’s congregation is wildly different. Another good example is somone like Brandon Flowers of The Killers. He says he’s LDS but doesn’t really go out of his way to show it. Who really knows what his depth of knowledge is in the Church. I for one would not test his faith nor anyone else’s, but who knows what level of orthodoxy he or anyone else practices at? Matthew Modine is a big example of that question.
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