Mormons and Catholics

I thought it would be interesting to blog about this book and the reviews it has gotten so. The book came out last year and has since received three reviews. One is at my personal blog, another by Times and Season’s Julie M. Smith last December, and a somewhat negative review I recently found is at a new publication called Countercult Apologetics Journal. Perhaps I can help further the conversation by offering some constructive criticism in turn.

Its author, Dr. Paul L. Maier, appears to have the neccesary credentials to critique a book on Early Christianity, having written a number of books including works on Pontius Pilate, Josephus, and Eusebius as well as publishing in the Harvard Theological Review. However I am unaware of him previously engaging Mormon scholarship before, the only connection I see in his CV is co-authoring a book about The Da Vinci Code (or “Duh Vinci” as it is more popularly known on Catholic blogs) with Hank Hanegraaff, who is an outspoken critic of Mormon. In observing this, I am not trying to make an ad hominem attack, merely trying to see where he is coming from.

In fact, Maier starts and ends his review with a few gracious remarks. It is a “handsomely bound volume,” “well researched and written,” and that the “contributors . . . must be commended for doing as well as they did.” He also correctly gets to the main points of ECiD even if he makes use of the exclamation mark to express incredulity and amazement. For example, “Mormon scholars . . . are now pushing the claimed deviations from Christ’s teaching and practice much earlier, indeed, back to earliest Christianity even before A.D. 100!”

Some of his remarks are legitimate expressions of the book’s weaknesses in reaching out to a non-Mormon audience. When a Book of Mormon passage is used to bolster claims of excising passages of scripture, we can expect guffawing from those who don’t hold to its validity. But an interesting question to ask is if the Book of Mormon actually gets it right on this account and if so, does it get credit for being ahead of Biblical scholarship? My tentative conclusion, supplemented by non-Book of Mormon evidence is that there has been textual tampering; but I am by no means an expert. Maier does not examine the patristic evidence Dr. John Gee brings up in in his essay (a preliminary version of which is online). It is likely that space constraints of his review prohibited him from doing such.

Dr. Maier also criticizes the essays for which they do not discuss, and I have mixed feelings about this. It isn’t fair to criticize a book for what it does not address, on the other hand, sometimes it seems that the omissions are so glaring that they warrant taking the authors to task on. In the Mormon paradigm, a majority agreement–even if it is not explicitly contra-Biblical–is not something to embrace if it functions in place of a normative revelator. The standard that Dr. Maier appears to endorse (I am probably over-simplifying here), would require him to renounce Protestant schisms and reunite with Catholicism because the majority of Christians are Catholics and they are conscientiously following the scriptures to the best of their understanding. However, Dr. Maier has identified a weakness in the ability of Mormon authors to influence those outside the Mormon paradigm. Mormons should engage the best of Christian scholarship such as that of Cardinal John Henry Newman, and understand the arguments surrounding doctrinal development better.

On the third paragraph, Dr. Maier just misses the boat (FARMS readers will note my phrasing). Rather than not having much to work with, pro-Mormon scholars have won the battle on DNA studies and are making a tremendous amount of progress finding Old and New World correlations to the Book of Mormon (1,2,3,4,5, etc.). Even the most prestigious DNA critic, Simon Southerton, has made a major concession:

In 600 BC there were probably several million American Indians living in the Americas. If a small group of Israelites, say less than thirty, entered such a massive native population, it would be very hard to detect their genes today.

Dr. Maier can be excused for not following all Mormon scholarship and writing to a non-Mormon audience on the DNA issue. His claim that early Christianity had a “cloud of witnesses” and that early Mormonism did not, is harder to understand. Mormonism does not just rest on the claims of one man, many of the foundational events were well attested to: the Three and Eight Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, the angelic restorations of the priesthood, the group pentecostal experiences at the Kirtland Temple dedication, the kingdoms of glory vision, healing miracles, and appearances of Jesus Christ.

Taking the one paragraph tangent from his review only slightly detracted from the good points he brought up. Dr. Maier should be commended for doing as well as he did given space limitations, the needs of a non-Mormon audience, and limited understanding of Mormon scholarship. I appreciate his willingness to share a non-Mormon outsider’s view with us and taking the time to read something outside the framework of his faith.