Commentary on Mormon Works-Based Salvation!!
(and how it factors into evangelism) - No Salvation at All!
Source: Facebook
Commentary by Aaron Shafovaloff, on Facebook
A whole generation of Latter-day Saint leaders used 2 Nephi 25:23 ("we are saved, after all we can do") from the late 1950's into the 1990's as a works-based, merit-based, earning of eternal life and exaltation. This was echoed by a generation of lay Mormons and commonly relayed to evangelicals by Latter-day Saints.
It was even a key verse used by Mormons to differentiate their own teaching from that of evangelicals!
Then a neo-orthodox shift (Hafen, Millet, Robinson) of interpretation came in the 1990's. It was then understood to mean that one is saved in spite of all they can do. Today it is rare to hear the mid-to-late 20th-century interpretation on the street. It's commonly neo-orthodox in rhetoric now.
(Edit: Mormonism is still fundamentally works-based; new rhetoric and interpretation of a single passage doesn’t reverse that.)
Evangelicals, understandably still reading trusted literature that is only 20 years old, operate on the prior LDS interpretation of the passage, and use the passage like Mormons themselves once did(!) — as a dividing line between Mormonism and evangelical Christianity.
They use it in a YouTube video or in a street conversation or even to their own still-LDS family members. But to their surprise they are criticized by a Mormon (or scolded by an LDS apologist!) for being uninformed or even maliciously misrepresentative. "Of course we don't interpret that passage that way!" With little compassion on the well-intentioned, gospel-motivated evangelical who is trying to keep up.
There is usually zero acknowledgement that it is LDS prophets and apostles who used to interpret the passage in a straightforwardly works-based way, with LDS culture following. They simply move onto another interpretation as though the prior generation never even existed.
I can try to help by informing evangelicals on the history and present-day status of interpretation, and on the likely original meaning. But I'm not going to finger-wag the evangelicals here. It is Latter-day Saints who need to be informing us about their own history of interpretation. But if they won't, we must.
It reminds me of the Adam-God transition from ambiguity to rejection around 1880–1910. Protestant critics lagged behind. But the fact that they even need to keep up is a challenge. It's fundamentally not fair to Christians. We can try to keep up in good faith, we can try to ask individual diagnostic questions, but Protestants warrant compassion here. Mormonism was a moving target, and Latter-day Saint leaders weren't being honest about that.
Patiently asking individual Latter-day Saints what they believe is, of course, part of the long-term solution, but that's not a panacea due to multiple issues. We have to train evangelicals to ask diagnostic questions that dig deeper in virtually every area of evangelical/LDS dialog. Mormonism arguably has a different philosophy of religious language. And it is still a works-based religion.
