I get requests to talk to people outside of Mormonism. I’m excited to introduce a non-evangelical, run of the mill Lutheran pastor, Reverend Willie Grills from Arkansas on the show.  We’ll talk about Lutheranism, Mormonism, how protestants don’t just pick on Mormons but fight amongst themselves, and Willie will even ask me some questions about Mormonism. Let’s hope I answer correctly! Check out our conversation…

Copyright © 2022

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

Introduction

I’m excited to introduce Reverend Willie Grills. Willie is a long-time subscriber of Gospel Tangents. Why is he interested in Mormonism? Check out our conversation….

Interview

GT  00:47  Well, welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m excited to have a non-evangelical on the show for the first time, I think. We’ve got a Lutheran pastor. Could you go ahead and tell us who you are?

Willie  01:00  I’m Pastor Willie Grills. I’m a member of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, a conservative, confessional Lutheran denomination, pastor in Avila, Arkansas, just outside of Little Rock. Just what Missouri Synod means, I’m sure we’ll get to in this interview. But I’m a little bit different from some of the other guys you’ve had on. You mentioned, not Evangelical, but I think, 400 years ago, if you’re using that definition of evangelical, that might work. But it’s a loaded term in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

GT  01:39  Yeah, so one of the things that’s amazing to me, I don’t usually point out when people are subscribers, but Willie, you’ve been a subscriber for a long time to Gospel Tangents. I’m just fascinated why a Lutheran pastor would be interested in Mormon history, can you tell us why that is?

Willie  01:57  Well, yeah, that’s an excellent question. Mormonism, if I can use that term.

GT:  Yes

Willie: It’s a safe space, right?

GT  02:05  We’re non-correlated here. So it’s good.  (Chuckling)

Willie  02:09  One of the things that I really enjoy studying and focusing on is 19^th century religion in America. Mormonism is integral to that part of American history. It comes out of a very interesting time, as far as the revivalism of the time. You’re getting into the Second Great Awakening. Mormonism is a force that we have to learn about, and that we have to understand, not only as Americans anymore, but as far as global Christianity is concerned. A lot of the apologetics around it, have kind of mixed effectiveness, we can say, on both sides. So, I think that understanding it, as an historian is as important as it is interesting. Then, theologically, too, the development of it. Both are very interesting, and of course, very important. When the missionaries come and knock on your door, what are you expecting here? Are you going to present a caricature of those guys? Or are we going to be able to talk to them in a fair and honest way? Plus, again, the history for me is just extremely, extremely interesting, and important.

GT  03:23  Well, that’s great, like I said, I’m always interested and plus, I do have requests that say, “We need some more outsiders,” to kind of get a perspective on Mormonism. So, I appreciate…

Willie  03:33  Gentiles.

GT  03:33  Gentiles, there you go.  (Chuckling) So, it’s nice to get it. You actually have a podcast. Why don’t you give us a little spiel on your podcast?

Willie  03:46  Sure. The podcast is, A Word Fitly Spoken. It is a podcast that focuses on a Lutheran perspective of history and theology and cultural engagement. It is very Lutheran. So there is some inside baseball, but I think there’s a lot there that people could profit from.  Certainly, there’s a lot there that people are going to disagree with. So, yeah, awordfitlyspoken.org. It’s available on all the podcast apps. There is another Word Fitly Spoken out there. That’s not us, and they couldn’t be more different if we tried. You’ll know which one’s ours when you find it.

GT  04:24 I’ve always been curious. This is one of the questions I haven’t asked you. A Word Fitly Spoken. Why is it fitly spoken? What does that mean, exactly? Is that like a Lutheran thing?

Willie  04:33  Well, no, that’s from the Bible, a word fitly spoken. So, it’s from the proverb. So, a word fitly spoken I–now of course, when you put me on the spot, it’s Proverbs 25. But here we go. A” word fitly spoken is like apples of gold and pitchers of silver.  As an earring of gold, an ornament of fine gold, so as a wiser reprover upon an obedient ear.” It’s about speaking good things to one another and wise things to one another.

GT:  It was interesting, you told me about your podcast, and you have actually done, is it three or four episodes on Joseph Smith? I can’t remember.

Willie  05:11  Two on Joseph. Yeah.

GT  05:13  Two on Joseph and one on the Succession crisis. That’s what it was.

Willie  05:17  Yeah.

GT  05:17  Tell us about the reception that your group had?

Willie  05:22  Well, it was in the early days, so the audience wasn’t quite as big. There are typical people that like what we do. One of the things, especially on historical episodes, I absolutely insist on is fairness and being as objective as we can be. We’re not going to agree on everything, but at least trying to be fair to the record. I think some people would have liked us to have been more pointed, which is an odd thing for me to hear, because I am someone who can, at times, be a little bit too quick with the sword. There were some people that thought that we should have gone, full, “Joseph was American Muhammad,” or something like that. That really is not the purpose of what those episodes were.

GT  06:04  I can still hear, like, if a Mormon audience was listening, every once in a while you’d hear these things, “Well, the purported prophet…” or little jabs there.

Willie  06:14  I’m sure that for a Mormon audience, it would not have been close enough to hagiography for them.

GT  06:19 (Chuckling)  But I would say it was very fair. I was excited to find out that–I was listening along. Oh, actually, we have Daniel Stone above my head here, I can’t forget where he is, right there. And that you had talked about Alice Cooper. I texted you and said, “Did you get that from my podcast?”

And you said, “Yes.” That was a lot of fun. So yeah, I thought you were very fair. It’s funny. In my conversation with Dr. Christopher Thomas, he’s a Pentecostal theologian, and we talked about the missionaries. Chris said, “And the missionaries don’t know nothing.”

And I was like, “When I was a missionary, I didn’t know nothing, either.” But, yeah, I think you actually have a very good grasp of, especially Joseph Smith History. So, well done. I’ll give you a big compliment there.

Willie  07:19  Thank you. I appreciate it.

GT  07:23 So, you talked a little bit about the Missouri Synod, is that how you say it?  I always thought it was Synod (Sigh-nod), but it’s Synod [Sin-od]?

Willie  07:30  Yes, Synod, yeah.

GT  07:32  So, tell us a little bit more. One of the things I’d like to do with this is get a little bit more acquainted. Mormons, especially me, like we just lump all Protestants together. I still don’t really understand the difference between evangelical and non-evangelical or just a regular run of the mill Protestant.

Willie  07:53  Protestant is a big word, right. It’s a broad term. So, a synod, again, broadly speaking, is akin to a diocese, so a geographic territory for a church. Now, for us, and in Lutheranism, at least in some of the groups like the Missouri Synod–synod also refers to the church body as a whole. So, our denomination is the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Because of our geographic location, we came to be called Missouri Synod, but we have churches all across the United States. Historically, we had churches outside of the United States, although the desire was for them to form their own church body. So, we eventually did grant them independence and then fellowship. So, for us, the Synod  refers to the whole denomination, but for something like, a denomination like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, it might refer to a geographic diocese. So, yeah, that’s the short and very riveting answer.

Willie  08:00  So, there are kind of different, what’s the word? [There are] different groups of Lutherans. Right? Because you’re not an Evangelical Lutheran? An Evangelical Lutheran would be an evangelical, right? Or is that not correct.

Willie  09:16  Okay, no, se this is where it gets tricky. So my congregation, for example, the full name is like, well, I won’t give you the full legal name because we don’t have enough time. But it’s like Zion, it could be like Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, or I was at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. So, in Europe, and originally, the term evangelical, essentially, referred to those who held a Protestant doctrine, if that makes sense. So, those who would believe in justification by faith, for example, by the time the 20^th century rolls around, which, our churches are going to predate that. Evangelical, then comes to mean really more of an emphasis on say, a born-again experience. So, we would say we are evangelical, insofar as we embrace the evangel, that is to say, the gospel, but not evangelical, insofar as we stress, absolutely, a born-again, experience. Does that make sense?

GT  10:11  Yeah. So when I think…

Willie  10:14  It’s confusing.

GT  10:15  Yeah. When I think of evangelicals like Steve Pynakker and Christopher Thomas, I’m thinking of more–and I don’t mean this in a derogatory sense, but like the Holy Rollers. Like you’re doing a lot of clapping, a lot of singing, a lot of drums and rock band kind of music, very lively services.

Willie  10:38  Yeah, I think for all intents and purposes, the term evangelical has come to mean that, for many people.

GT  10:44  OK

Willie  10:45  The definition has moved. Yeah, we are more traditionally Protestant and probably, at the same time, more Catholic than a lot of Protestants. Most of our churches are liturgical. We have a very formal form of worship. A lot of our churches will tend to have historic church vestments, so that a reformed Protestant, someone with more of a Calvinistic influence would see us as very, very Catholic. A Roman Catholic would look at our theology and see us as very, very Protestant. So, we can’t please anybody. So, we just do our own thing over here, I guess.

GT  11:23  So you would have more Mormon-like services? I shouldn’t say boring, but you’re not going to be clapping.

Willie  11:36  I don’t consider it boring, but some people may.

GT  11:37  You don’t get to clap and say Hallelujah, praise Jesus during services, right?

Willie  11:43  No, no, it is very reverent. But I do feel the need to say that, a lot of people are going after that experiential sort of religion. And you can have that in some of our services. But we want to highlight in our services that whether you feel it or not, that the divine service, which is what we call, worship, or our Sunday services, rather, so divine service liturgy is, it is God coming to you. Then, you’re, of course, speaking back to God. But those objective things that belong to you, as a Christian, are yours, whether you have that exuberant mountaintop experience that Sunday or not. When the forgiveness of sins is announced, that it’s yours, whether you’re feeling it that day or not, right? The gospel preached to you is yours, whether you really felt like coming to church that morning or not, but you came anyway. So, we’re very hesitant to let emotion facilitative everything. I think that might be the best way I can describe it. And not that that’s what the–I’m not trying to say that that’s what the others are doing. But we’re sort of careful about that. You can have emotions. You’re allowed to do that. In the Lutheran church, you can, but we are, we tend to be, whether that’s cultural or not, probably a little bit of it is, rather stoic.

GT  13:06  Yeah, stoic is kind of how LDS services are, too. I will say, Episcopal services can be that way, Catholic services can be that way.

Willie  13:15  Correct.

GT  13:16  In some ways, I think Mormons would be more at home in a Lutheran service, like you have, or a Catholic service, because it’s more familiar to us than. “Hey, Praise Jesus. Amen,” you know, that kind of a thing.

Willie  13:32  Sure, yeah.

GT  13:33  But there’s certainly lots of different ways to worship. Well, I think I told you, back in the 90s, before I got married, I dated a Lutheran girl. I would, actually, probably call her a girlfriend. She used to invite me to Lutheran services. Actually, I didn’t go to church with her, but there was a Wednesday Bible study that I used to go to all the time. I got to be really good friends with the pastor there. They had a video, I wish I could remember the name of it, on Martin Luther. It really reminded me of Joseph Smith’s First Vision. It was the same kind of filming. It looked the same. I was just like, “Wow, this is just like Joseph Smith.” So, you probably would call that a heretical thing that I just said. (Chuckling) But for those of us who aren’t familiar with Martin Luther, and not Martin Luther King, but Martin Luther, the original Martin Luther, because he was born on Halloween, right?

Willie  14:45 No, no, no. Okay, but you remember your dates well, so you’re ahead of the curve. He was not born on Halloween. On October 31, 1517, he nails the 95 theses…

GT  14:58  Oh…

Willie  14:58  …to the Wittenberg church door, thus kickstarting the Protestant Reformation.

GT  15:03  Because, my girlfriend, they didn’t celebrate Halloween, they called it the Marty Party, because it was Martin Luther.

Willie  15:09  Oh, well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry they called it such a cringe name. Okay. So, here’s what we have. We follow a lot of the historic church feast days. So, October 31, though, is All Hallows Eve. So, All Saints Day is November 1. But we also celebrate Reformation Day on October 31, or we move it to the nearest Sunday. So, you’ve got Reformation Day. We’ve never called it the Marty party. I’d probably have to hide my face or something, if we did. But, Reformation Day, yeah. The color, curiously, on Reformation Day is red. So, we have liturgical colors that change throughout the year, depending upon the feast day. The red can either be the red of Pentecost, the gospel coming down, whatever, the gospel going out or red for the blood of the martyrs. Because we do recognize that people were martyred for being Protestant. But, yeah, so it just, because of October 31, 1517, that is the day that we celebrate the Reformation. Then the next day would be All Saints Day where we celebrate all of the faithful who have died. Then, of course, we do believe that they are alive with God, worshiping with us, even now.

GT  15:16  When I think of All Saints Day, obviously, that’s kind of a Catholic holiday. Would you say your worship services are very Catholic?

Willie  16:42  Okay, so I believe that, when I say yes, some Lutherans listening to this are going to go, “No.” Then, if I say no, some Lutherans are going to go, “No,” because to be fair, we do have, on one end of the spectrum, some happy-clappy looking Lutheran services, and then some very, very Catholic looking ones. But, even, I think our middle of the road services are going to look much more Catholic to the typical Protestant or the typical Evangelical. We do follow a historic liturgy. So, yeah, I would say that we stand in the Catholic tradition of worship.

GT  17:23  I know, the Catholics still are–this is where my multilingual religious [knowledge] is going get me in trouble. But, do they call it canonizing saints?

Willie  17:37  Yes.

GT  17:38  That’s what I thought, okay, so I got that right. So, you wouldn’t follow the newer saints. It would be the older saints before 1517?

Willie  17:47  Yes, but we don’t believe in a canonization process. So, we would take the name saint in a number of different ways. We believe that all true Christians are saints. And we believe that all of the faithful departed are saints. Yet, we also recognize, so we don’t have a problem, for example, referring to St. Augustine as St. Augustine. We even have days where we would remember, particularly biblical saints, but also extra people outside of the Bible, people throughout church history. And yes, we’ve even added our own. So C.F.W. Walther, who was sort of our de facto founder in the United States, we have a day commemorating him on our calendars, things like that. But we don’t have a canonization process or anything like that. We believe that all Christians and all faithful departed are rightly called saints.

GT  18:38  Okay.

Willie  18:40  Because they’re made holy by God, I guess. I should give you the theological justification there, and the Bible uses it that way, too.

GT  18:47  Okay. So, I know, LDS, we refer to ourselves as a Latter-day Saints. Would you refer to your congregants as saints as well? Or is that just special people like St. Augustine or St. Clement, or people like that?

Willie  19:00  As a theological concept, we don’t call each other saint. We would just refer to each other as Christians. Lutheran, even that name Lutheran, that’s a tricky one, too, because that’s a name that gets applied to us. We actually kind of wanted to just–there’s evidence that we wanted to be called evangelicals in the 1500s. But we would also accept the term Catholic, if we use it in the right sense, as in the universal church, what the church always believes. But Lutheran just kind of got thrown at us as a pejorative.

GT  19:10  Like Mormon, right?

Willie  19:34 Correct, exactly like that.

GT  19:38  Alright, so can you tell us a little bit more about Luther, I think most Mormons, I’m going to still use the term, out of care. Most Mormons, most Latter-day Saints, we know about Luther’s 95 theses, but that’s probably about it, other than, he didn’t like the Catholics. Some people might know that Luther didn’t actually start the Lutheran Church. He was kind of a Snuffer, a Denver Snuffer in that way, like, “Hey, I’m not starting a church.”

Willie  20:09  Yeah, let me give you the Cliff Notes version here. I think that’s important. I do think that even the LDS recognize the importance of the Protestant Reformation, at least today. I mean, I know that all of our creeds are an abomination, but they still, they’re kind of friendly toward us now. So, Luther is a man with a very troubled conscience. He is a monk. He joins the monastery after a near-lightning strike. He makes a vow, saying that he’ll become a monk. He’s always a very tortured soul, wondering about assurance of salvation, will he ever be good enough? So, even as a monk, he is confessing more than he has to. He is even more acetic than he needs to be. They send Luther to Rome. He doesn’t like the corruption that he sees there. He comes back. He’s a professor. He’s a doctor at the University of Wittenberg. He has a doctorate in theology and begins to seriously study the Scriptures.

Willie  21:07  So, I think your Joseph Smith moment that you’re referring to, in this documentary that you watched on Luther, is probably this experience, where he’s reading the Book of Romans. It finally clicks in his head, that the just will live by faith. This really is the linchpin of his theology, that everything that we have from God is gift, that it is received by faith, and that, yes, we can talk about good works and things a little bit down the road, but that everything we receive is grace upon grace. So, his conscience is able to be unburdened once that clicks for him. So, it is a bit of a shining moment for him. It’s an epiphany for him.  No angels appear. Although later, Luther, by some preachers will be referred to as the angel of Revelation, but we won’t get into that.

GT  21:55  (Chuckling)

Willie  21:56  So, that is it. Then, he begins, he’s writing tracts. He’s writing things that are getting him into trouble, and that’s eventually going to lead to his excommunication from the Catholic Church. But there are all kinds of other things that are tied up in this. So, you’re dealing with the Holy Roman Empire. You’re dealing with a Germany that is not united. You have all of these different princes and fiefdoms. So, they’re able to choose their own religion. He comes about at just the right time, to where a movement like this can spread. The printing press is there. So, his writings are being disseminated sort of far and wide. What he is preaching is really clicking with the peasant, with the layman, with certain princes, but it’s not really clicking with the Pope, and with certain bishops, and that gets him into trouble.

GT  22:51  So, is he kind of a Denver Snuffer of his day with the Catholic Church?

Willie  23:04  See, the context is so different, because Luther is not a visionary, and later, he is really going to write a very strong polemic against those who are claiming divine revelation. So, he wants to be very clear that what he is teaching is in accord with Scripture and in accord with, even, the church fathers. So, he wants to be very careful that we’re not teaching anything novel, that there’s not a disconnect, that what has happened is corruption has entered into the church to where you can buy an indulgence, and that erases your sin. Now, that’s a very sort of reductionistic way of explaining this, but that is how a lot of people understood this. So, the 95 theses, sort of the first blast here, have a lot to do with the sale of indulgences. Can I buy something, or can I perform a certain action and receive a certain bit of alleviation for my time in purgatory? Or can I do that, for the souls in purgatory, for those who have died? These are the sorts of things that Luther is reacting against. So, he doesn’t like the abuses that he sees. But he’s like a Denver Snuffer in this way that he doesn’t intend to separate from the church, but they make that decision for him.

GT  24:15  Right. Yeah. Yeah, I can see some similarities there. But, yeah, Denver is definitely much more of a visionary than Luther, it sounds like.

Willie  24:24  Yeah, and you know, it’s interesting when I see these guys, you know, your history is interesting, because, when you have the Great Apostasy, you’re not really looking at the rest of church history. But, yet, you still have great debates just on what amounts to about 20 years in the 19^th century. I find that very interesting. Was Joseph a polygamist or not? And that’s one of Snuffer’s big things. Who is the rightful successor? Down to this day, you have competing visionaries.

GT  24:59  Well, and can you talk a little bit more about it, because Luther, I know he made a big deal about he didn’t really want to start a church, and I don’t believe one started in his lifetime. Is that correct? It was after he died.

Willie  25:12  Yeah, if you think about the church, and this is, again, Cliff’s Notes version, you have a united church until 1054, with the Great Schism.

GT  25:23  Right, the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic, you’re talking about.

Willie  25:28  Correct, and that’s over the, largely over the primacy of the Pope. Then, you get to the Protestant Reformation. Then there is the Lutheran branch of the Reformation, but at the same time, you have the Calvinists that are going to come up and all the other iterations that come up, relatively quickly. But Luther was not intending to start anything called a Lutheran church. He wanted to reform the church. It’s not a restoration. It is a reform, or you could call it a rediscovery of certain truths. But Luther would have been happy to live under the Pope, if the Pope would have not insisted that he was the Vicar of Christ, would not have insisted that he, alone, had the keys over purgatory, for example, things like that. Purgatory is a doctrine that we do not hold to, for example. But we still believe, for instance, in the doctrine of the keys, the office of the keys, the binding and loosing of sins, things like that. We believe in confession. We believe that when the called and ordained pastors absolve sins, they are forgiven, which would separate us from most other Protestants, for example. So, we are very much still in the Catholic stream, in regard to a lot of things. But we are not Roman Catholic. So, if you ask certain Lutherans, and there is some truth to this, they would say no, by excommunicating, Luther, essentially, by affirming what happens at the Council of Trent, the Catholics have excommunicated themselves from the universal church. So it kind of depends on who you ask.

GT  27:08  That kind of sounds like what Denver says.

Willie  27:13  Exactly. What did I say before, nothing new under the sun?

GT  27:19  So wow, that’s interesting. Of course, this is one of those arguments that I feel like I have to address that kind of drives me crazy, is the whole grace versus works. But I would love to have you comment on, I believe it’s in 2^nd Nephi in the Book of Mormon where it says, “We are saved by grace, after all we can do.”

Willie  27:48  After all that we can do. Yeah.

GT  27:50  And so you would probably still find that pretty heretical, right?

Willie  27:54  Yeah, and I will say, for the audience’s sake, and especially watching this on video, we had originally tried to record this in my office where I have all of my books.  I ran off and don’t have my quad with me, because I wanted to have it for this.

GT  28:09  Oh, bummer.

Willie  28:10 Bummer, but I’ve got enough, maybe I know enough up here. If I say that I know enough of the Book of Mormon in my head, my listeners will get very nervous. So, yeah. I think that–I’ve looked into this quite a bit really, with how the Mormons understand that and I get a bunch of different answers. So, Bob Millet, or Mallette, or however I’m supposed to say it.

GT  28:35  Yeah, Millet. [Mill-it]

GT  28:37  He gives a little bit of a different answer than like a Brad Wilcox or somebody like that. I do think the trend in Mormonism is leaning more toward the grace side. But we would believe that everything is grace. You’ll see me pulling up some stuff digitally, because I don’t have my books in front of me, and I wanted to kind of talk to your audience a little bit. So, the Small Catechism is kind of our basic teaching document. You might have it right there. Yeah.

GT  29:11  Now, by the way, and I should say, you were kind enough to send me this, as well as this Bible, English Standard Version. You can’t see it very well, but that’s what it is. And, oh, my Book of Mormon here. So, you’re a great listener.

Willie  29:32  Thanks so much.

GT  29:35  So, anyway, go ahead, Luther’s catechism.

Willie  29:37  Right, well, I’m still waiting on a restock of Gospel Tangents coffee mugs.

GT  29:41  (Chuckling)  I’ll have to get you one.

Willie  29:45  So, for example, in the Small Catechism, we talk about the third article of the Apostles Creed, which is, “I believe in the Holy Spirit of the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” Then in our explanation, “I believe that I cannot, by my own reason or strength, believe in Jesus Christ, my lord or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me the one true faith, in the same way he calls, gathers and lightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it in Jesus Christ in the one true faith,” so on and so forth.

Willie  30:19  So that we believe that from first to last, it is grace upon grace, that God has to call us first, and God does the work in our hearts to justify us. We do believe that people can reject that, of course, that people will have true saving faith and then fall away. So, all of your Calvinist listeners have now anathematized me, after that.

GT  30:43  (Chuckling)

Willie  30:43  So, with that Nephi verse, we would take issue with, “After all that we can do,” because we don’t believe that, first a priori, that we can do anything. We believe that man is dead in trespasses and sins, and so that the Holy Spirit must first work on him before that before man can believe in Him. And God does that in different ways.

GT  31:05  Yeah, and I’m not here to debate that, but I want to get…

Willie  31:07  No, no, that’s fine.

GT  31:09  Because there’s the one scripture in James that I believe Luther said, and you probably, and I wish I could have it off top of my head. Luther said the Book of James was uninspired. Do you know what I’m referring to?

Willie  31:23  He refers to it as an epistle of straw. But I must say, and this is the caveat we always have to get. We are called Lutheran. But we don’t subscribe to everything Luther said, His works are not canonized, only the Bible is canonized for us, the Protestant canon. But a lot of his writings, as a pastor in the Missouri Synod, I do have to subscribe to without error. So, to be fair, but that doesn’t include everything he wrote. And everything I said is true for all of our congregations and pastors. But that, in James is, “Faith without works is dead,” is probably what you’re thinking of.

GT  32:01  That’s what I was thinking of.

Willie  32:03  Yeah, and, of course, James does also say that a man is justified not by faith alone. James does say that. So, a bit of a sticky wicket for us, right? That’s kind of the gotcha that people usually use for us. But we would typically explain it in two ways. The first, the most common way is that oh, James is talking about external righteousness. That’s what most Protestants would say. But there’s also the fact that if you have true faith, good works are naturally produced. Luther is reacting to a time where people are really seeing salvation is purely transactional. Have I done enough? Did I pay enough? Have I gone to enough masses, or this or that? So, there is a bit of a problem, even today, where if you’re looking for your assurance of faith in like, “Am I bearing enough fruit?” You’re going to despair pretty easily, I think. But we would wholeheartedly agree that true, saving faith produces works and so that if you say you have faith, but you are living a completely wicked lifestyle, and I don’t mean like, oh, you’re smoking cigarettes and saying cuss words, but you’re completely denying Christ with your life, that the person will be on very shaky ground spiritually. I fully admit that people can go from one extreme or another on this. And I know that this is one that Mormons bring out a lot, too, that man is justified, not by faith alone. But again, James is speaking to people who say they have faith, but their lives do not demonstrate that in any way. That would be a problem for us, too.

GT  33:49  I mean, kind of my personal theology, I’ll say it that way, is the whole grace/works argument is just kind of two sides of the same coin.

Willie  34:03  Yeah.

GT  34:05  I mean, I would probably subscribe to yes–correct me if I’m wrong. The Lutheran frame of mind is that because of grace, you’re going to have good works. Maybe the LDS frame of mind is, “I have good works, which shows I have faith. To me we’re really, it’s a kind of a chicken or the egg. You know, which came first, the chicken or the egg? I mean, to me we’re basically–it’s a stupid argument. Like we’re arguing the same thing. It’s just semantics.

Willie  34:42  Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I think you all, too, have a very, I would say a stricter system of accountability in the LDS Church, a stricter system of accountability.

GT  34:59  Oh, yes.

Willie  35:00  While it is true that our church is historically, especially in America, I mean even well into the 1900s would post all of the giving records of the members publicly on the church bulletin board.

GT  35:12  Oh.

Willie  35:14  We don’t we don’t do that anymore. We don’t really check tithing records.

GT  35:18  That sounds very Catholic. (Chuckling)

Willie  35:19  (Chuckling)  So, yeah, we are a bit more relaxed in that these days. I think for a lot of Christians, sometimes they look at us as a little bit impious, because a lot of our people will drink alcohol, for example, smoking cigars, tobacco, that thing’s common. So, people associate piety only with abstaining from those things. And I’m not talking about Mormons. I mean, if a Baptist saw that, they would be possibly scandalized, too. But I believe that there’s a problem using those things to excess, don’t get me wrong. But I think sometimes we forget that the true fruits of the Spirit are things like charity, love, kindness, patience, those sorts of things.

GT  36:10  Well, and I remember my girlfriend’s Lutheran pastor would invite me out for beer and I’d be like, “I’ll come along, but I’m not going to drink.”

Willie  36:21  Did he know you were Mormon?

GT  36:23  Absolutely.

Willie  36:25  He was testing you. He wanted to show you how much he relied on grace. It was like a reverse meat sacrificed to idols thing for him.

GT  36:40  Yeah, that was fun. But yeah, it’s definitely, you know, from an LDS point of view was like, wow, a pastor drinks beer? Wow. That’s weird. So now, you mentioned something that I think many, many LDS really struggle with, and that’s Calvinism. And I think we’ve talked about Arminianism. Can you first define what those two terms mean?

Willie  37:11  Sure.

GT  37:11  And are Lutherans Calvinist or Arminian?

Willie  37:18  Well, the Arminians say we’re Calvinists, and the Calvinists say, we’re Arminian.

GT  37:22  Oh, that’s interesting.

Willie  37:23  We say you’re your own thing. Leave us alone. Now, this is an interesting one for me, because I was not a Christian. I was not raised in the faith. The family I had who were Christians belonged to Holiness churches, so I can speak Chris Thomas’ language, too.

GT  37:42  Oh, nice.

Willie  37:43  But, when I am converted, I really cut my theological teeth, actually, in a Calvinist church. But I, eventually, became Lutheran. I’m a Lutheran pastor now and all of that. A Calvinist is what we would call reformed. When you see reformed theology, this is what they’re going to say. The hallmark of that is the five points of Calvinism. So, they believe that man is totally depraved, so he is extremely sinful, will not make a positive spiritual move on his own.  They believe in unconditional election to salvation, and the ordination of damnation. They believe that the atonement of Christ is limited only to those chosen to salvation. They believe in irresistible grace, that all of those who are called by the gospel will accept it and will never fall away. And that would be the last point, the perseverance of the saints, that they would not fall away. Arminians reverse all of those points.

GT  37:44  Let me just back up there for a second. So, a Calvinist is once saved, always saved?

Willie  38:02  In a way, yeah. Some of them would object to that. But I mean, in the way they say it is like, if you have true faith, you will ultimately be saved because God has chosen you to be saved.

GT  39:01  So, if a person falls away, they never had true faith?

Willie  39:05  Yeah, that’s essentially what they would say.

GT  39:08  Okay.

Willie  39:10  Arminians are pretty much the opposite of that. I mean, they would kind of believe in that first point, but they believe that everyone is born depraved, but God gives everyone enough grace that they could choose to respond or not respond. But they don’t believe in election. They believe that the Atonement is universal. They believe that grace is resistible, and the perseverance of the saints is not true.

Willie  39:36  Lutherans, and I’m speaking for my branch of Lutheranism, what we would call confessional Lutheranism that holds to a very strict subscription to a book of 10 documents called the Book of Concord. So, we hold them because we believe they are clear exposition of Scripture. Okay, there’s my necessary boilerplate. So, we do believe that man is born sinful and cannot respond to God by nature, that God must work in him. We do believe that God elects people to salvation, but not to damnation. [We believe] that the gospel is freely offered to everyone, that some people will come to saving faith and will lose it. They will turn away from it, so, they will not persevere. We 100% believe that Jesus Christ’s atonement covers everyone. Christ is God, and has died for all, and that his blood covers everyone. The election debate is a really long controversy in Lutheranism. So, I won’t bore you with those details. Because the debate boils down to, well, does God elect them just of his free choice, or does he look down through the corridors of time and see if they would have faith or not, and then choose them? So that’s the theological debate there.

Willie  40:57  I realize that Mormons agree with, basically, none of those points except maybe the atonement and the falling away.

GT  41:03  (Chuckling)  So, just to put this kind of in a nutshell, and maybe this is oversimplifying it, but hopefully it helps to clarify. So, the Calvinists are ‘Once saved, always saved,’ and the Arminians are, ‘You can fall away, even after you’re saved.’ Is that a fair statement?

Willie  41:26  Yes, that’s correct. Yeah.

GT  41:28  Okay.

Willie  41:29  We would believe that someone could have true faith, and then lose that faith.

GT  41:34  So, then, Lutherans are Arminian or Calvinist?

Willie  41:42  We are neither.

GT  41:42  Neither. So you’re like Mormons, then.

Willie  41:46  Well, that’s the soundbite, right?  That’s what gets pulled out of this episode for my heresy trial.

GT  41:51  (Chuckling)

Willie  41:53  Yeah, we would consider as neither. We would have problems with each and so that’s just part of the soteriology. Sacramentally, we’re quite different from both groups in the main, because we believe that God works through means, which they both would agree that God works, say, through preaching, and we would, too. But we also believe in other means of grace, like baptism, the Lord’s Supper, confession and absolution. We believe that God works through these things as well. A lot of them would disagree. We believe that baptism regenerates, for example. We believe that the Lord’s Supper forgives sins.

GT  42:33  Oh, because Mormons say that baptism washes away your sins, but you’re saying it’s the communion?

Willie  42:40  Well, I think, no, no, no. Okay. So, well, yes, but hold on. We are saying that both do that. So, that baptism washes away sins, and I said regenerates, but we’re saying the same thing. We look at baptism as a new birth. I think I’m correct in that. Right?

GT  42:57  Yes.

Willie  42:58  Yeah. So baptism does that. Yet, I don’t know about you, but I do sin every day.

GT  43:06  Not me, I’m perfect. (Tongue in cheek.)

Willie  43:08  Right, well, Word of Wisdom, right?

GT  43:10  (Chuckling)

Willie  43:10  You’re keeping it. By the way, we’ve gone almost 40 minutes and I’ve not mentioned Postum or fry sauce yet, but I hope we can get to that. [Those are] two of my favorite things. Where was I? Oh, okay. Yes. So, the Lord’s Supper Jesus says, “Take. Eat. This is my body. This is my blood given to you for the remission of sins.”  So we believe that the Lord’s Supper is also for the forgiveness of sins and the strengthening of faith, that God is continually forgiving our sins through the means that he is established, and the Holy Spirit is working through that, continually strengthening our faith.  We believe that we need that food just as much as we need the food we eat for the body.

Do Atonement Theories Lead to Violence?

GT  43:54  Okay.  Another thing that I wanted to talk to you about was atonement theory.  I’ve got an interview with Paul Toscano. He’s definitely not a mainstream LDS belief on atonement theories. But there are five theories that I looked at on the great, expert website Wikipedia. (Chuckling)

Willie  44:25  Yeah.

GT  44:25  I just wanted to run these by you and see where Lutheranism fits in. I think I know the answer. So, there’s five basic ones: moral influence, ransom, satisfaction, penal substitution and governmental. First of all, are you familiar with those five different types of atonement theories?

Willie  44:46  I’m familiar with most of them. Yeah, moral influence, ransom, Christus victor, satisfaction theory, governmental. The governmental theory is basically more of a Methodist thing, I think. Yeah, I’m familiar with most of them.

GT  45:01  Okay.  Can you give us a very brief [explanation?] What is moral influence? What does that mean as far as atonement theory?

Willie  45:09  Yeah, moral influence is going to be that Jesus Christ came about in order to bring about a positive change in humanity. So, the moral change comes about through his teachings. He’s doing this to be a good example to us. I mean, yes, of course, Jesus is an example. But I think that really is an injustice to the atonement, to say that it’s just an example. That it’s just a very vivid example of taking up your cross.

Willie  45:38  I will say that, while there is one theory that sort of dominates most of Protestant theology, I think as a Lutheran, there are aspects of most of these that we can embrace. So, yeah, so we’ve got moral influence theory. Ransom theory would be another one. That’s a very early one. It’s the idea that Christ comes to die as a ransom for the sins of the world. So, the question is, it’s a ransom Sacrifice. But the debate is, is the ransom paid to the devil? Or is the ransom paid to God the Father? You can kind of see a more traditional penal view of the Atonement coming out of that. Satisfaction needs to be made. A payment needs to be made. So who is the payment made to? Is that God or the devil? That would be the debate. So, the idea is, so Adam and Eve fall. In their fall, they turn humanity over to the devil. So, we have to give the devil something as a ransom. That will be problematic for me. But I think if you’re paying the ransom, which does have an Old Testament precedent to God, then it makes more sense. I guess I’m just uncomfortable with paying anything to the devil.

GT  46:58  Me too.

Willie  46:59  Right? Okay, so Christus Victor, some would say the Christus–and I don’t know, if I’m going off the same list as you, I’m just kind of going through here.

GT  46:59  Yeah, I think so.

Willie  47:06  Some would say that Christus Victor would be a very popular one throughout the history of the church. That is, essentially, that Christ dies to defeat the powers of sin, death and the devil, and to free mankind from bondage. Every Christian kind of has to agree with this, to one degree or another. In his death, he has conquered the devil. The devil is very much defeated now, and that will be made clear very soon. He has opened wide the gates of heaven and knocked down the gates of hell and of the dead. We believe that in the apostles creed, that Christ descended into hell, that Christ descends into hell, into the abode of the dead, to declare victory over the demons and to inaugurate the kingdom of salvation. So, that’s very much part of the Christus Victor theory.

Willie  48:09  The satisfaction theory and the penal substitutionary theory, I’ll kind of take together. But the penal substitutionary one is basically the one where Christ is punished for the sins of the world, and justice had to be made, that the law of God had to be perfectly fulfilled. Christ does that on our behalf. In doing so, then, through his means, he is able to exchange his righteousness for our unrighteousness. So Christ takes upon our unrighteousness and atones for it, and in exchange gives us his righteousness.

Willie  48:45  The issue people have with the satisfaction theory, or the penal substitutionary theory, is they don’t like the idea of Jesus being punished for sins that are not his own, or for God punishing him. I realize that that’s a difficult thing for people to understand. I’m sympathetic with that. I understand why people would see that as bad. But we also understand that Christ willingly does this, that this is a gracious act, and then in that atonement theory, justice must be made, and righteousness must be fulfilled. I mean, Christ even himself says he must fulfill all righteousness, and so we need that. So, that is why Christ does it, and he does it willingly. But I think the issue people have is that the Father is punishing him. That’s just kind of how they see it. Yeah. I mean, is that your objection?

GT  49:36  That’s my [objection.]  You already knew I had an objection on that one. But, yes, that’s true. Okay. We’ll finish the summary, and then we’ll dive into more details there.

Willie  49:49  So you have the governmental theory, which is similar to the penal substitutionary theory. Really, I’m trying to really think about how it really differs here. I think it’s mostly because Christ only dies for the church in a judicial way. It’s something a little bit strange here. So, that’s my very insufficient summary of the governmental theory. There’s a scapegoat theory, which is very similar to ransom theory and penal substitutionary atonement.

GT  50:22  Right.

Willie  50:22  The sins are laid upon the scapegoat. So, the sins are laid upon Christ, and Christ takes them. The scapegoat, that’s also very interesting because of who the scapegoat goes out to, but we won’t get into that.

GT  50:36  All right, so thank you. That’s a very nice summary. So as far as how the Lutheran Church looks at it, what do you lean towards?

Willie  50:51  I think that in most of our preaching, undoubtably penal substitutionary atonement dominates, however, Christus Victor is very powerful, too. If you go and listen to my sermons, you’ll see both of those, but I would probably argue that Christus Victor, that defeat of sin, death, and the devil is really what is highlighted. I do believe that’s what the world needs to hear more nowadays. Because if I go and tell someone that you need to have your sins forgiven, and Christ has to suffer for it, we’re dealing with people who have no concept of what sin even means. We have to do a very basic thing. Okay, so what’s the big deal? I sin. Well, sin as an enemy. Sin is something that destroys you. The devil is an enemy, that is seeking only what is worse for you. The world, which is in bondage to sin–to explain those things, and then show how Christ breaks those chains, I think is very important. I think it’s very powerful. I mean, it’s biblical. So, we need to preach that, that Christ has trampled all of his enemies, and that Christ has come to free you from those things. Not just free you from vices, again, but to free you from that which kills you, that which is sin, that frees you from the curse, that he has destroyed that. So, both of those two would come to dominate, but you’ll find some from a lot of the different theories pulled in. But those two would be the two dominant themes.

GT  52:19  I guess my issue, because I think in a lot of ways, LDS are very similar, would have similar beliefs with what you just said, kind of Christus Victor and penal substitution. The scripture does spring to my mind, “Can mercy, rob justice?” There’s a big theological case in the Book of Mormon about that, which really seems to be kind of penal substitution.  Every time I ask a theologian like you, or Chris Thomas, or Paul Toscano, they kind of shy away from what is what is atonement theology in the Book of Mormon? Maybe this is just my obsession with it. But I don’t like penal substitution. I don’t like it.

Willie  53:08  Well, I mean, if you receive the benefits of it, you’d like it.

GT  53:11  Yeah. But I guess my issue is, why does God have to punish Jesus for my sin? What did Jesus do?

Willie  53:28  What does any sacrificial lamb in the Old Testament? What is it a turtle dove? What do they do?

GT  53:33  I think it’s barbaric. It’s awful. I hate it. I think it’s Stone Age thinking.

Willie  53:39  Yeah, but I would caution with that thinking because it was instituted by God. Now, you might disagree with that.

GT  53:47  Well see, I would argue with that I don’t think mankind understands God very well. Man probably misinterpreted what God really wanted. That would be my thing and that God let it go.

Willie  54:03  Yeah, no. Yeah, but see that would be the presupposition there. But I would presuppose that the scriptures say what they mean, and that they’re that they’re accurate, and inerrant. I don’t mean to say, I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, or anything like that. But I mean, the scriptures present this as God setting up this system. We also believe that all of the Old Testament system is a type of Christ. So that Christ does appear in the Old Testament in these theophanies, but everything points and testifies to Christ. So, the whole temple system for us is pointing toward that great and final sacrifice of Christ. It is meant to point us toward that. I think that part of the severity of the sacrifices is meant to show us just how serious sin is. The wages of sin is death and so that as we stray further from God, this is meant to show us just what that means. If we can look at it as God is teaching us and you can say teaching us through the lens of culture if you want.  But if God is actually teaching us through that, and is ultimately going to bring about good, then there is a purpose behind it. It’s kind of like anything that’s difficult, or what we would see as barbaric, God doesn’t permit it, and certainly doesn’t establish it without a much higher purpose.

GT  55:28  I mean, I just look at the whole Old Testament.

Willie  55:35  Yeah.

GT  55:36  I hate to say this, because it sounds blasphemous, but sometimes God’s a jerk. You know?

Willie  55:43  Yeah, I wouldn’t say he’s a jerk, sometimes God is rather stern to put it lightly.

GT  55:50  But wipe out the whole village, you know, the walls come tumbling down. Everybody died, kill all the cattle, everything.

Willie  55:58  When God makes a…

GT  55:59  That’s not a God of love.

Willie  56:01  But that same God saw his people through the wilderness and that same god and showed mercy to many, to many. That same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has now brought about the salvation of the entire world. So, for all of that, it ultimately ends in mercy.

GT  56:20  That same God flew a couple of planes into the World Trade Center, though, right?

Willie  56:25  No, two pilots did it.

GT  56:26  You can take it that way, and people do. That’s my issue. That God’s a jerk. You know, I don’t want to worship that God who–or if we take it in a Mormon context. You know, God came to the Lafferty brothers and said, “Hey, you’ve got to kill Brenda Lafferty and her daughter, or the baby.” I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl.

GT  56:27  Yeah, that God, I don’t like that guy. He’s a jerk. I would rather go to hell, if that’s what God required of me.

Willie  56:58  But here’s the thing. Just because someone says that, I mean, because we’re dealing with two different things now. So the scripture which attributes things directly to God, to suppose revelation, where people are doing it in the name of God–and that’s the rub. Who has who has the right voice? By what standard? And that’s where the rub is. Well, neither you or I believe that God told the Lafferty brothers to kill that woman and her baby,

GT  57:21  Right.

Willie  57:22  I don’t think so.

GT  57:23  And I don’t think he told those Muslims to fly into the World Trade Center.

Willie  57:26  Of course not. No.

GT  57:26  But I question whether God said, “Yeah, walk around Jericho seven times and kill everybody there.”

Willie  57:34  Right.

GT  57:34  I questioned that God. I know that’s the biblical interpretation and the standard traditional thing, I understand that. But to me, that is just the same bad projection as the Muslims who flew into the World Trade Center.

Willie  57:52  But God does predict a lot of this, that people would say this. His answer is basically, is essentially, “I’m God, and don’t question me.” But at the same time–but it’s not satisfactory, right?

GT  58:05  No, it’s not at all. Because here’s the thing. Joseph Smith can say, “I believe God told me to practice polygamy,” and I’m pretty sure you would say, “I don’t think that was a true revelation of God.” And I have a big question about that.

Willie  58:20  We’ll see. Yeah, and that’s the tricky thing for you, because I can sit here and say that I believe that the scriptures are inspired and inerrant, I believe pretty much all the traditional things about–I believe it happened, and I believe that God told people to do this. I’m going to wrestle with those difficulties when dealing with people, “how could God allow this?” from a bit of a different angle now, than someone who believes in continuing revelation. Because you’re dealing with it in a live way, I’m looking back at the historical record, and you’re, you have to deal with it in? I mean, you would have an issue with polygamy, but you would also believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, correct?

GT  59:00  Yeah, but I can name a lot of bad things, a lot of biblical prophets did that were awful. Abraham, number one.

Willie  59:06  Right.

GT  59:06  I’ve got lots of problems with Abraham.

Willie  59:09  Right. But that’s the apologetic there. I think that the real issue, if we want to talk about prophecy would be, do these prophecies come to pass, more than the moral character? Because if we’re looking at people’s moral character, the Bible outside of Jesus Christ, nobody comes out clean.

GT  59:24  Right.

Willie  59:24  I mean, you are going to struggle with these in a different way, like Mountain Meadows, well, that’s kind of a different one, because there’s debate on that. Right?

GT  59:35  Yeah.

Willie  59:36  There’s really no debate among the LDS that, among official LDS, that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy.

GT  59:43  Oh, that he practiced it, absolutely.

Willie  59:45  And then you have to wrestle with that. Right? Because it’s in revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants.

GT  59:54  Yes, but I mean, I can still look at the Bible–if I put my Bill Maher hat on and say, Well look, the Bible regulates slavery.

Willie  1:00:02  Right.

GT  1:00:02  And Lot slept with his daughter and Noah got drunk and, what’s his name? The guy who got swallowed by a shark.

Willie  1:00:14  Jonah.

GT  1:00:14  Jonah, or I guess it was a big fish, I shouldn’t say shark. But, you know, Jonah was a racist. Abraham threw his polygamous wife and kid out to die in the desert.

Willie  1:00:32  But God, God provides for them in the desert. Don’t forget. God provides for them.

GT  1:00:37  But what kind of a Christian–and I know he’s not Christian–but what kind of a Christian is Abraham to mistreat somebody so badly? And Jacob steals the birthright from Esau. I mean, there’s so much dysfunction.

Willie  1:00:56  Yeah, and that’s in the Bible.

GT  1:00:58  That I’m saying, “Hey, Joseph, Smith’s not that different.”

Willie  1:01:01  But that’s good news for you and me, because if so great of sinners like them can be redeemed, and if God can bring about the Savior of the world through their lineage…  I mean, this is what God works with. God is working through sinful peop