Section 35: Finding Common Ground

The LDS Statement

We love Jesus. We believe in the Bible. We believe in families. We try to follow God's commandments. We think faith and family and community are the most important things in life.

What Is True in This

All of it is true and should be acknowledged. LDS families are often genuinely strong. LDS communities are often extraordinarily warm and supportive. The moral seriousness of LDS life — the commitment to sobriety, chastity, family stability, and service — is real and produces real human goods. The love of Jesus that many LDS members express is genuine, even if the Jesus they have been given is not the Jesus of the New Testament.

The Honest Complication

Shared vocabulary does not mean shared meaning. The Jesus you love and the Jesus they love need to be introduced to each other before the conversation can go anywhere useful. The productive opening is not to challenge the love but to ask about the object of it: "Tell me about Jesus — who is he to you?" Let them describe. Listen without interrupting. What you hear will tell you where to begin.

★ Disciple Tip: Many LDS members will describe a Jesus who is warm, present, and genuinely their savior. Don't challenge the warmth. Ask about the nature. "Is Jesus eternal — has he always existed as God? Or did he exist before as a spirit-child?" The nature question, asked genuinely, opens the theological conversation without requiring you to challenge their sincerity. The sincerity is not the problem. The object is.

Section 36: The Scripture Question

The LDS Statement

We believe the Bible is the word of God as far as it is correctly translated. We also have additional scripture — the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price — that clarifies and restores what was lost. God has continued to speak through living prophets.

What Is True in This

Scripture transmission involves genuine challenges. The LDS acknowledgment that translation is a human process is not wrong in itself. And the genuine hunger for ongoing revelation — for a God who continues to speak — is a legitimate spiritual instinct that the New Testament actually addresses.

The Honest Complication

"As far as it is correctly translated" is not a claim about translation accuracy. It is a mechanism for institutional authority over the biblical text. The LDS church does not identify specific mistranslated passages using manuscript evidence. It reserves the right to discount any biblical teaching that conflicts with its system as a potential translation error — a right exercised by the living prophet, not by textual scholarship. The result is that Scripture functions as a reference document in a system where the living prophet holds final interpretive authority.

How to Address

Ask: "Which specific passages do you believe were mistranslated? What manuscript evidence points to the error?" The question reveals that the "correctly translated" clause is not doing textual work. It is doing institutional work — keeping Scripture subordinate to prophetic authority. Then ask: "If a living prophet's word supersedes the biblical text, what protects a member from being taught error? What is the mechanism?" The answer to this question — in LDS theology there is no external check — is the point of entry for discussing the prophetic failures already covered in Part One.

★ Disciple Tip: Hebrews 1:1–2 is the New Testament's own answer to the "continuing revelation through a living prophet" claim: "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son." The era of supplementary prophetic word has been replaced by the Word Himself. Not because God stopped caring about His people — but because the Word who was with God in the beginning has now been heard directly.