Revisiting Abraham's "faith reckoned as righteousness" - Part 3 (The Blessed Man of Rom 4:6-8)

As I've been continuing on the quest of reading the Bible beyond the surface level, particularly Romans 4, I am excited to present another inspiration that I had. In a recent post (HERE), I emphasized how the Adoption theme (i.e. children, heirs, fatherhood) was undoubtedly the main theme of Genesis 15 and Romans 4. That was an expansion of "Part 2" (HERE) of this unexpected "series" on Abraham. To add yet another dimension to all this, I began to wonder if Paul's mentioning of King David in Romans 4 also had an Adoption theme to it, which seemed highly likely. As I thought about it, I came to realize that "we" have gotten used to reading Paul's mention of Psalm 32 as an isolated Psalm, focused only on forgiveness, completely divorced from the historical narrative that the Bible gives us of David's repentance. So I opened up the Bible where it talked about David's sin, and I was pleasantly surprised. 

TRULY understanding Mormonism - Is it nobodies business?

I recently made a post called Truly understanding Jehovah's Witnesses, but now I feel the grace has presented itself for me to make a similar post on getting into the mind of a Mormon. In some recent discussions with Mormons, it finally became clear to me what the fundamental issue was, and how Christian apologetics has largely failed to address it. So for this post, I want to try to convey what the actual mindset of Mormons is, and thus know how to actually have a discussion with them. 

Catholic apologetics on Mormonism has largely centered around the Great Apostasy, which is the Mormon dogma that the Gospel was lost some time after the death of the last Apostle, almost 2000 years ago. Many other groups and Protestant denominations hold to a similar idea of Great Apostasy, since it gives them a basis to start up their own Church. And it makes sense, because why have a new Church if you have nothing new to present to people? Well, in this case, we need to see what it is that Mormons have that nobody else has. 

The main problem with the typical Catholic approach to Mormonism is that Catholics think that simply disproving the Great Apostasy is sufficient to win the debate. While it is easy to disprove and discredit the Great Apostasy, the Catholic fails to really get to the heart of Mormonism. Something bigger is at stake, and so just disproving the Great Apostasy doesn't actually shake the Mormon you're talking to at their core. Recall that the Jehovah's Witnesses have lots of tangential issues that Christians get hung up on (e.g. Trinity), never getting to the heart of things. So too, the Mormons have various tangential issues that Christians get hung up on (e.g. polygamy) that really don't get to the heart of things. So we must get to the heart of things.