Chongxia You: Why for Mormonism\r

Mormonism is a term referring to the religious beliefs and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). There are reportedly 17 million Mormons worldwide—with about 7 million living in the United States. The LDS is said to be the largest new religious movement from the West since Christianity. It is also the first homegrown American\r
religion, and now continues to grow because of its missionary impulse and its commitment to doctrinal\r
and ethical distinctives.\r

The aim of this article is to interpret the LDS \' doctrines, with the premise that God be always there. No matter what religions people believe in or not, as ranging from monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, deism, even to atheism, God is all the same. What we differ with each other does not lie in the object of faith, but rather in the perspectives, approaches,levels, stages or extents of our faith, namely oursubjective side.

Just because we are different from each other and fallible as humans, we have various faiths as a matter of fact. However, we are allowed by God\r
to experience and learn the truth during our mortal life, and capable to repent of our mistakes and sins. In this light, to simply assert whether\r
Mormonism is a form of Christianity is not worthwhile. We\'d rather regard the LDS as an upgraded or updated version of Christianity or, as it claims to be, a restored Christianity. The\r
reasons are as follows:\r

1. Mormon beliefs - Mormons believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and the Son of our loving Heavenly Father; Christ’s Atonement\r
allows mankind to be saved from their sins and return to live with God and their families forever; Christ’s original Church as described in the New Testament has been restored in modern times. Just as the church states in its 195th semiannual\r
conference in October 2025:

The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that He lives and God loves, hears and speaks to His children. His personalized guidance and\r
inspiration may be experienced through the counsel of living prophets, apostles and leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ latter-day Saints.\r

We can say the Church of LDS is a Christian church, though neither Catholic nor Protestant. Rather, it is a restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ as originally established by the Savior in the New Testament of the Bible. The LDS does not embrace the creeds developed in the third and fourth centuries and now central to\r
many other Christian chuch.\r

2. Mormon scriptures -While believing the Bible, Mormons do not consider it inerrant, complete, nor systematically self-justified. They believe in continuing revelation through prophets. So Mormons affirm the inspiration of the Book of Mormon and other Mormon scriptures.\r
Through an elaborate hierarchy of priests, Mormons can continue to receive sacred authoritative interpretations and new authoritative\r
revelations.\r

To Mormons, the Fall of Adam is a necessary, positive event central to God\'s plan of salvation, which introduced mortality, agency, and the\r
opportunity for joy and progression to humankind. Not capable of knowing good from evil, Adam\'s transgression provided physical bodies for spirit\r
children so as to gain experience and choose between good and evil, ultimately paving the way for eternal life through the Atonement of Jesus\r
Christ.\r

3. Mormon view of God -To Mormons, God has a physical body. According to Doctrine and Covenants, God created the whole universe and\r
everything in it from existing matter. There was a long procession of gods leading up to our Heavenly Father. Thus God is not a higher order or a different species than man. God is a man with a body of flesh and bones like us. As Prophet Joseph Smith\r
said: God himself was once as we now are and is an exalted man...\r
Whereas traditional Christian thinking says that God is outside time and space, absolutely immutable in any way. Thus God cannot feel or\r
express emotions and cannot be moved to change his planned actions no matter what his creatures do\r
and so only leaving them alone and helpless in a world filled with suffering and dangers. Moreover,\r
if God cannot change his thinking or plans, there seems no purpose to petitionary prayers. Hence the\r
restoration of Christianity by Joseph Smith.\r

Moreover, the Mormon view of God as struggling, suffering, and achieving is a radical departure from traditional concepts. Mormons affirm that man\'s salvation does benefit God. Latter Day revelation says: And there is no end to my works, neither to my words; for behold this is\r
my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man (Moses 1:39). If God\'s glory can be increased, then to that extent he is unfulfilled.\r

4. Mormon view of man - According to Mormon doctrines, men and women are the spirit sons and daughters of God. We lived in a premortal spirit existence before birth. We grew and developed there in preparation for the second estate. Thereafter we grow and mature in a\r
physical body to prepare for final eternal state. Mormons do not believe in human depravity. We are not implicated in Adam’s fall. We are\r
basically good in our eternal nature, but prone to error in our mortal nature. The human is a being\r
in conflict, but also a being with infinite potential.

The phrase As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become is a LDS principle, which summarizes it\'s doctrine of eternal progression.\r
It posits that God was once a mortal man who achieved divinity through a process of progression, and that faithful humans can also achieve exaltation and become divine\r
themselves. Mormons believe all resurrected people will be assigned into three kingdoms refered to three degrees of Glory: the Celestial(sun), Terrestrial (moon), and Telestial (star)\r
Kingdoms, after a final judgment based on their choices and adherence to God\'s commandments.\r

Such a concept of deification for believers is a core part of LDS theology, contrasting with mainstream Christian beliefs about God\'s eternal nature and human salvation.\r

5. Mormon theodicy - Mormonism seemingly has a better interpretation for the Fall. It\'s rather a co-creation rather than God\'s design.

Book of Mormon states, that there must needs be ... an opposition (2 Ne. 2: 15) , and if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the Garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained\r
forever, and had no end. And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained\r
in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew nosin. (2 Nephi 2:22)\r

It implies that Adam and Eve’s voluntary co-creation of a fallen world absolved God not only of their sins and sufferings but of the sins and\r
sufferings of all his other children as well. It was not an original sin of Adam and Eve but rather a\r
considered decision to leave the garden that made it possible for us to come to earth.\r

Essentially, Mormon theodicy can be interpreted as:

1) God’s power is conditioned by an eternal environment not entirely created by him.\r
2) The ultimate “essence” of persons is uncreated, including their inherent free will, which is at work in the universe as well.\r
3) Humans are uncreated “facts” of the universe, existing before this life in a pre-mortal world where we were informed of what might happen to us and we consented to come.\r
4) God shares in humanity’s struggle with evil.\r

6. Mormon and process theology - The Mormon original ideas were first expressed or implied by LDS\' founding Prophet, Joseph Smith. He was an unusual genius brilliant in germinal thinking, though uncultured. Coinciding with the main stream of\r
philosophic thought, he challenged the orthodoxy of his day. Such a revolutionary doctrine of a changing\r
God were contrary to the scriptural descriptions of God who changes not.

Prophet Joseph Smith placed God in a limited and temporal mold long before 19th and 20th century\r
philosophers\' similar theories. Whereof his ideas sound much like Hegel\'s ultimate reality as a blind\r
unconscious essence endowed with a potential for becoming as well as Schopenhauer\' will, which moves toward increasingly complex forms at ever-ascending levels of being. And later, brilliant scientist and philosopher Whitehead originally\r
developed process theology, holding that God has no temporal priority before all creation but with all\r
creation. As the composite of all emergent entities, God is himself an entity, with his subjective aims\r
for which he struggles to achieve satisfaction. He is constantly increasing and is an integral part of\r
the whole process of reality. Here we can hear the echo of Mormon doctrines.\r

In this light we can expect that the LDS\' ideas and practices will serve as the basis for development of a more complete process theology that would begreatly beneficial to contemporary philosophic thought, and vice versa.\r

Personally, I fortunately encountered some Mormon missionaries a few months ago. Through months\' church activities, I got to know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day\r
Saints (LDS). The LDS attracted me most in its preaching: As man is, God once was; As God is, man may become, a rather naturalistic\r
approach, just coinciding with Whitehead\'s process theology. His doctrine seemed to me quite convincing, humanistic and acceptable. I was soon determined and converted to the LDS, thereafter I experienced a significant spiritual\r
rebirth in my lifetime.