Mormon Doctrine

Salvation by grace

The entry that sets Latter-day Saint soteriology against Protestant Christianity, and the two words the second edition took out of it.

Salvation By Grace is the entry a reader arrives at from outside. It is Mormon Doctrine answering the question most often put to Latter-day Saints by other Christians, and its answer is a distinction: immortality comes by grace alone, and eternal life does not.

The distinction

Immortality is a free gift and comes without works or righteousness of any sort; all men will come forth in the resurrection because of the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Salvation By Grace”, 1966 second edition, p. 472

Salvation in the celestial kingdom of God, however, is not salvation by grace alone. Rather, it is salvation by grace coupled with obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Salvation By Grace”, 1966 second edition, p. 472

The entry's proof text is 2 Nephi 25:23 — “it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” — and its reading of Ephesians 2 is unusually explicit about method: McConkie quotes Paul with his own glosses inserted in square brackets, so that “by grace ye are saved” is followed immediately by “[meaning in the celestial kingdom]”. Whatever one makes of the exegesis, the entry does not hide it.

What the second edition took out

The doctrine did not change between the editions. The description of everyone who holds it did. In 1958 the entry reads:

However, one of the most damnable doctrines of an apostate Christendom is the concept that man can gain salvation (meaning in the kingdom of God) by grace alone and without obedience. This doctrine of the devil has the obvious effect of lessening the determination of an individual to conform to all of the laws and ordinances of the gospel.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Salvation by Grace”, 1958 first edition

The same passage in the second edition:

However, one of the untrue doctrines found in modern Christendom is the concept that man can gain salvation (meaning in the kingdom of God) by grace alone and without obedience. This soul-destroying doctrine has the obvious effect of lessening the determination of an individual to conform to all of the laws and ordinances of the gospel.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Salvation By Grace”, 1966 second edition, p. 472

Most damnable becomes untrue. An apostate Christendom becomes modern Christendom. This doctrine of the devil becomes this soul-destroying doctrine. The sentence does the same work with the temperature turned down, which is a fair description of what the 1966 revision did generally.

Where it stands

The distinction the entry draws is still Latter-day Saint teaching, and it is still where the conversation with other Christians tends to stall. What has changed is the register in which the church makes it. Contemporary Latter-day Saint writing on grace — Brad Wilcox's The Continuous Atonement and Stephen E. Robinson's Believing Christ are the two most read — puts the same doctrine as a partnership rather than a debt, and some read “after all we can do” as in spite of rather than after. The entry is the older register, and it is the one quoted back at the church most often.