Jonathan Dodson, Resurgence blog, references a book, "God Is Not One," by Stephen Prothero.
The basis of the book is good - but if we are going to compare religions that don't look very much like Christianity, I believe it is even more important to look at religions that DO look very much like Christianity.
On Page 12 of his book, Prothero writes:
And so it goes with all the world's religions. Christians align themselves with Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism, and fast-growing Mormonism may well be emerging as Christianity's fourth way.
This is a problem. Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism have a few things in common, that Mormonism does not share.
- The Trinity
- Christ as eternally existent, not a created being
- the mortality of man (we do not become gods, with our own planets
- God the Father as eternally existent, not a created being
- salvation by grace (compared to "we are saved by grace AFTER ALL THAT WE HAVE DONE."
Mormonism is not Christianity. To blur that line, to put the gospel on that line...believing in a 'different Jesus' - Mormonism's Jesus - could have eternal consequences.
via a post at The Resurgence.
Moonshadow
I've occasionally read Stephen Prothero's articles in various online newspapers and I can't say that I often share his point of view. But I've been wondering whether I ought to read one of his books and maybe get more insight into his perspective.
On this topic, though, I was long ago influenced by C. S. Lewis' appendix in "The Abolition of Man" with his illustrations of the Tao:
"It is at least arguable that every civilization we find has been derived from another civilization and, in the last resort, from a single centre—'carried' like an infectious disease or like the Apostolical succession." (Lewis)
Because Lewis assumes a literal Garden of Eden? He saw in the major world religion's similar enough ethics or morals a singular (divine) inspiration and an affirmation of the truth of the Christian religion.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition4.htm