New Mormon Challenge, The

Book Overview

Current facts about Mormonism: Over 11 million members. Over 60,000 full-time missionaries--more than any other single missionary-sending organization in the world. More than 310,000 converts... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0310231949
• ISBN13: 9780310231943
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 1.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.4" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Review of New Mormon Challenge

Although the book is written by Evangelical scholars, it has been favorably received by Mormon thinkers and educators at BYU and other institutions. It is well-written, and avoids hype and hostility sometimes found in other works which disagee with LDS theology and philosophy. I would highly recommend the book for both LDS, as well as for non-Mormons.

Product Description and Excerpt from Amazon Paperback Listing

Written by an international team of respected Christian scholars, this freshly researched rebuttal of Mormon truth will aid those sharing the gospel with Mormons and those investigating Mormonism on their own. It will help readers to accurately understand Mormonism through biblical, historical, scientific, philosophical, and theological discussions. From the Back Cover Current facts about Mormonism - Over 11 million members. - Over 60,000 full-time missionaries more than any other single missionary-sending organization in the world. - More than 310,000 converts annually. - As many as eighty percent of converts come from Protestant backgrounds. (In Mormon circles, the saying is, "We baptize a Baptist church every week.") - Within fifteen years, the numbers of missionaries and converts will roughly double. - Within eighty years, with adherents exceeding 267 million, Mormonism could become the first world-religion to arise since Islam. You may know the statistics. What you probably don't know are the advances the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is making in apologetics and academic respectability. With superb training, Mormon scholars outclass many of their opponents. Arguments against Mormon claims are increasingly refuted as outdated, misinformed, or poorly argued. The New Mormon Challenge is a response to the burgeoning challenge of scholarly Mormon apologetics. Written by a team of respected Christian scholars, it is free of caricature, sensationalism, and diatribe. The respectful tone and responsible, rigorous, yet readable scholarship set this book in a class of its own. The New Mormon Challenge recycles no previous material and duplicates no one's efforts. Instead, responding to the best LDS scholarship, it offers freshly researched and well-documented rebuttals of Mormon truth claims. Most of the chapter topics have never been addressed, and the criticisms and arguments are almost entirely new. But The New Mormon Challenge does not merely challenge Mormon beliefs; it offers the LDS Church and her members ways to move forward. The New Mormon Challenge will help you understand the intellectual appeal of Mormonism, and it will reveal many of the fundamental weaknesses of the Mormon worldview. Whether you are sharing the gospel with Mormons or are investigating Mormonism for yourself, this book will help you accurately understand Mormonism and see the superiority of the historic Christian faith. Outstanding scholarship and sound methodology make this an ideal textbook. The biblical, historical, scientific, philosophical, and theological discussions are fascinating and will appeal to Christians and Mormons alike. Exemplifying Christian scholarship at its best, The New Mormon Challenge pioneers a new genre of literature on Mormonism. The Editors Francis J. Beckwith (Ph.D., Fordham University), Carl Mosser (Ph.D. candidate, University of St. Andrews), and Paul Owen (Ph.D., University of Edinburgh) are respected authorities

The Christian response to new Mormon scholarship

I was very impressed by this book. It contains chapters by many major Christian scholars in areas of their specialization, providing excellent insights into and arguments against LDS beliefs. The authors of this book do not argue against traditional Mormon sources of authority, as they have been largely abandoned by contemporary Mormons. The authors assume that the only accepted sources of God's revelation accepted by modern Mormons are the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price, and the current president of the organization. Traditionally (and I believe, officially) all of the past presidents have been included as accepted sources of God's revealed word, but many of today's Mormons are shying away from accepting that, as it leads to innumerable problems, as their previous leaders have said many rather unfortunate things which have long been used to refute Mormonism. However, I think that the authors should have raised an objection to the new Mormon acceptance of only the current president's words as inspired. If only the current president's words are inspired, then when there is a new president, are the past president's words no longer considered inspired? If so, then God's truth is changing and Mormonism has collapsed into relativism. If not, then the same should apply to all of the past presidents, thus putting them right back where they started with all the problems that position brings with it. In either case, it should have been pointed out that this is a rediculous position to be taken. I personally enjoyed William Lane Craig's chapter on creation ex nihilo the most. Craig presents a rather strong case that the Mormon's doctrine of the pre-existing matter fails to line up with the Bible, philosophical reasoning, and scientific evidence. I look forward to reading any responses that Mormon scholars make to the arguments presented against them in this book. This is definitely a unique book. While other Christian books written about Mormonism tend to simply point out that Mormonism is in conflict with the Bible, or they focus on errors in the Book of Mormon, etc, this book takes a rather different approach and looks mainly at the philosophical and historical implications and claims of Mormonism, and why these positions are not viable. I imagine it will be an elightening book whether you agree with their conclusions or not. Overall grade: A+

Wonderful Improvement in Evangelical Depiction of LDS Belief

I will start by stating that I am LDS, a student at BYU (Philosophy under-grad) and have been active in Apologetics for nearly four years now. I was privileged to be in the audience in Salt Lake City when, earlier this year, five of the contributors (including the 3 editors) spoke on this book, their contributions/papers and their hopes for it. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found in these presentations and the tone with which the presenters approached their topics. I say "pleasantly surprised" because I was not necessarily expecting the high degree of civility and integrity with which these presenters approached Mormonism (I was hoping for it but was not fully expecting it; I was, in all honesty, expecting the worst and was relieved to find it different than I had previously conceived). I was particularly impressed with Francis Beckwith and was delighted with the chance to meet him (I was reading through his and Stephen Parrish's _The Mormon Concept of God: A Philosophical Analysis_ at the time and was, and currently am, preparing a critique of that said work).This book stands as a vast improvement of LDS-critical literature and, overall, I would be hard pressed to place it in the category of "anti-Mormon" due to its general tone and approach. The term "anti," in LDS Apologetics, quite often holds a negative connotation, not inherent in the words general meaning, including, among other things, uninformed, illogical, poor scholarship, overly-antagonistic, incredibly biased, etc., none of which I can fully attribute to this work. Its academic tone is refreshing and its allowances for further dialogue on the issues (rather than dogmatic pronouncements of the complete error of our ways and the desolate nature of our attempts to answer their critiques) is encouraging. The writers speak their minds in a respectful manner and by-and-large are open for further dialogue, something often lacking in much LDS-critical literature.With that said, this work is not perfect. Despite the author's best intentions, there are occasional misrepresentations of LDS beliefs, utilization of weak arguments that most LDS philosophers/scholars would not hold, etc. This is to be expected, though, as the dialogue between LDS scholars and Evangelical scholars is still in its infancy. This is being remedied as the Society of Biblical Literature will now set apart a special section within their annual meetings for Evangelical-LDS discussion on various topics. Likewise, the increase of conferences in relation to things-LDS (such as Yale's upcoming conference on LDS Philosophy in 2003) will only help further dialogue and increase understanding between the two groups (something that is still sorely needed). Further, this work, and the responses currently being made towards it, should stand as a good impetus for further dialogue.I am thankful for the three editors (Beckwith, Owen and Mosser) for their desire to create such a work to bring genuine, and heart-felt, scholarship t

Academic essays which take Mormonism seriously!

I highly recommend this book to intellectual Christians and Mormons, whether involved professionally and/or personally with their faiths. No longer can Christian academia be accused of publicly ignoring Mormon apologetic efforts. This book offers a serious, massively end-noted response by impeccable Christian scholars to important issues raised by the Latter-day Saints' academic community. Several indices and a glossary of terms are included for referencing. What follows is a brief summary of the book's topics:Paul Copan and William Craig relay a brilliant defense of Christianity's view of God's creation ex nihilo in contrast to the Mormon belief of the world's organization from eternally existing matter. Jim Adams examines the evidence for Mormon belief in pre-existence and eternality of human souls, and of the gods in general, in light of the teachings of the Old Testament.Stephan Parrish and Francis Beckwith deal with moral law, the human/divine freedom of choice, and how they relate to the Mormon and Christian concepts of God.J.P. Moreland dissects Orson Pratt's view of humanity and its dependence on material existence.Paul Owens looks at monotheism from the perspective of the New Testament and how it contradicts the published views of several prominent Mormon scholars.Craig Blomberg takes up the question of whether or not Mormonism is Christian.The final section of the book focuses on the Book of Mormon, evalutating it on the basis of linguistics in the ancient Near East (Thomas Finley) and by contrasting principles of translation with possibilities of pseudotranslation (David Shepherd).For those who crave detailed and cogent arguments, intellectual stimulation, and thoughtful interaction in Christian and Mormon apologetics, look no further than this book and ENJOY!