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The video makes much of a statement by Church President Gordon B. Hinckley:
- No I don't believe in the traditional Christ. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak. For the Christ of whom I speak has been revealed in this the dispensation of the Fullness of Times.
- —President Gordon B. Hinckley, Deseret News (20 June 1998): 7. Screenshot
It should be emphasized that the "traditions" alluded to by President Hinckley are the non-Biblical creeds. But, members of the Church do not reject the Biblical witness—it is partly because the creeds are not Biblical that the LDS do not use them.
President Hinckley continues to explain that revelation teaches more about God than philosophical speculation, and insists that he is a Christian, but the video does not quote this material:
- [Jesus], together with His Father, appeared to the boy Joseph Smith in the year 1820, and when Joseph left the grove that day, he knew more of the nature of God than all the learned ministers of the gospel of the ages.
- Am I Christian? Of course I am. I believe in Christ. I talk of Christ. I pray through Christ. I'm trying to follow Him and live His gospel in my life.
President Hinckley elsewhere made it clear that we differ with other Christians over the creeds, not over the scriptural witness:
- As a Church we have critics, many of them. They say we do not believe in the traditional Christ of Christianity. There is some substance to what they say. Our faith, our knowledge is not based on ancient tradition, the creeds which came of a finite understanding and out of the almost infinite discussions of men trying to arrive at a definition of the risen Christ. Our faith, our knowledge comes of the witness of a prophet in this dispensation who saw before him the great God of the universe and His Beloved Son, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. They spoke to him. He spoke with Them. He testified openly, unequivocally, and unabashedly of that great vision. It was a vision of the Almighty and of the Redeemer of the world, glorious beyond our understanding but certain and unequivocating in the knowledge which it brought. It is out of that knowledge, rooted deep in the soil of modern revelation, that we, in the words of Nephi, “talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that [we and] our children may know to what source [we] may look for a remission of [our] sins” (2 Nephi 25꞉26).
- —Gordon B. Hinckley, "We Look to Christ," Ensign (May 2002): 90.off-site
To read more:
- Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, "Comparing LDS Beliefs with First-Century Christianity," Ensign (March 1988): 7.off-site
- Stephen E. Robinson, "Are Mormons Christians?," New Era (May 1988), 41.off-site
From: Who is Jesus?
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