My path of ministry this past month intersected with that of a learned LDS Stake President, whose many virtues I have come to admire and respect. In response to my request to clarify profoundly subtle aspects of the LDS gospel he wrote: “I have been pondering over the questions you have been asking about the nature of our beliefs with respect to Christ's atonement and so forth. I recently came across this quote from C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, p. 115) which seems to show a lot of wisdom.
Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary. A serious moral effort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out of that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come.
“I think he was quite insightful. It sure makes you think.”
My reply was as follows.
I first became aware of this quote of C.S. Lewis in Grace Works–After All We Can Do (2003, pp. 125-126) by BYU professor of ancient Scripture, Robert L. Millet. I find Millet's penchant for quoting evangelical thinkers to validate LDS doctrine quite clever. Disturbing, however, is the wrong impression Millet leaves his readers by apparently quoting Lewis out of context.
Millet quotes Lewis’ Mere Christianity (1996) on pp. 131-132; however, the sentence that directly follows the quote is curiously absent. Lewis continues:
And, of course, we begin by thinking it is like two men working together, so that you could say, “He did this bit and I did that.” But this way of thinking breaks down. God is not like that.
Lewis here not surprisingly stands in opposition to the cooperative LDS gospel (i.e. faith plus works).
Second LDS Prophet and President, Brigham Young, explains (Discourses of Brigham Young, 1954, p. 27):
The Lord has revealed to us a plan by which we may be saved both here and hereafter. God has done everything we could ask, and more than we could ask. The errand of Jesus to earth was to bring his brethren and sisters back into the presence of the Father; he has done his part of the work, and it remains for us to do ours.
Tenth LDS Prophet and President, Joseph Fielding Smith, writes (Doctrines of Salvation, 1954, p. 123):
The Savior does not save anybody from his individual sins only on condition of his repentance. So the effect of Adam's transgression was to place all of us in the pit with him. Then the Savior comes along, not subject to that pit, and towers the ladder. He comes down into the pit and makes it possible for us to use the ladder to escape.
Lewis further clarifies his opposition to a cooperative gospel on page 130:
Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer.
Lewis continues on page 131:
Thus if you have handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.
Evangelicals join C.S. Lewis in the conviction that Christ "offers everything for nothing" (i.e. eternal life free for the asking; e.g. John 4:10-14; 6:26-29). And we obey Him "because" we are saved (e.g. Ephesians 2:8-10), not "in order to be saved" (e.g. Galatians 3:1-3) as the LDS gospel teaches. Moreover, if heaven were a "reward for [our] actions" salvation would not be "reckoned of grace, but of debt," (Romans 4:4, KJV), which is the antithesis to the NT Gospel (e.g. Romans 4:4-6; 3:21-26).
The LDS gospel inescapably puts God in the debt of Latter-day Saints as one blade in a pair of scissors is indebted to the other, albeit in a very loose sense. Ironically, this notion is as abhorrent to Latter-day Saints as it most certainly was to the apostle Paul, the author of Romans. According to Paul, however, Christ alone is the Knife who cuts a path to our Perfection on the condition of our faith alone. As it has rightly been declared, “Grace works; after all, what can we do!”
