I received the following this morning from Richard Mouw. I'm assuming since he's asking me to provide context he has no problem with me posting this:

"If you are going to quote my line about Bob Millet's faith in Jesus, at least provide the context. I certainly do not "baptise" Mormon theology as Christian:

"At the heart of our continuing disagreements, I am convinced, are very basic worldview issues. Judaism and Christianity have been united in their insistence that the Creator and the creation—including God’s human creatures—are divided by an unbridgeable “being” gap. God is the “Wholly Other”—eternal and self-sufficient—who is in a realm of existence that is radically distinct from the creation that was brought into being out of nothing by God’s sovereign decree. On this view of things, to confuse the Creator’s being with anything in his creation is to commit the sin of idolatry. Mormons, on the other hand, talk about God and humans as belonging to the same “species.” Inevitably, then, the differences are described, not in terms of an unbridgeable gap of being, but in the language of “more” and “less.”

This kind of disagreement has profound implications for our understanding of who Jesus Christ is. In traditional Christianity, the question of Christ’s saving power cannot be divorced from how we understand his “being.” If we believe that we are, in our fallenness, totally incapable of earning our own salvation, then the crucial questions are: What would it take to save us? What would a Savior have to be in order to pay the debt for our sin? And, faced with answers given to these questions by teachers who saw Jesus as less than fully God,  the church leaders gathered at the Council of Nicea set forth, in 325 A.D., this profound  confession of who Jesus is. “We believe,” they wrote, in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father. Through him all things were made.

And only when we acknowledge all of this about him, the Council stipulated, can we move confident to this bold and amazing proclamation: For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven.

As an evangelical Christian I want more than anything else that people—whatever disagreements I might have with them on other matters—know this Jesus personally, as the heaven-sent Savior who left heaven’s throne to come to the manger, and to Gethsemane, and to Calvary, to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. I also know that having a genuine personal relationship with Jesus Christ does not require that we have all our theology straight. All true Christians are on a journey, and until we see the Savior face-to-face we will all see through a glass darkly.

But I also believe with all my heart that theology is important. There is a real danger for all of us that we will define Jesus in such a way that we cannot adequately claim the full salvation that he alone can provide.  I think that an open-minded Christian reader of this book will sense that Bob Millet is in fact trusting in the Jesus of the Bible for his salvation. That is certainly my sense. And this is why I find it especially exciting to be in dialogue with him and other LDS friends about what it means to have a theologically adequate understanding of the person and work of the One who alone is mighty to save. I hope that reading this book will inspire many people—traditional Christians as well as Latter-day Saints—with a new motivation for engaging in that eternally significant conversation."

My response: First, about being in context. As I said in my original post, I haven't received the book yet. I pulled the quote from James White's blog, who has read it and has written a review of it (to be published in the next Christian Research Journal). Second, I did not say that Dr. Mouw "baptizes" Mormon theology as Christian. I said that he has baptized false teaching, in this case relating to Christ, as acceptable for salvation. More specifically, Dr. Mouw is baptizing Robert Millet’s LDS understanding of Jesus as salvific.

Third, in light of the context provided here by Dr. Mouw, I stand by my original statements. In fact, I find the context to be just as troubling as the original quote. From what I can tell, the foundational statement is "I also know that having a genuine personal relationship with Jesus Christ does not require that we have all our theology straight." We agree on something. The question is to what degree does our theology need to be straight? Can I believe in a multitude of gods, three or four of which rule over this planet; that we're Father God's actual children and will one day be exactly like him, and yet be saved? Is just saying the name of Jesus all it takes now? Where does Dr. Mouw draw the line? Does salvation require or entail having any theology straight?

I should make it clear that I'm not dictating who is saved and who isn't. That's up to God. Rather, I'm taking Jesus' words, "I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins (John 8:24, in the context of 12-59)" to mean we have to believe what Jesus taught in order to be saved. Just from reading what Dr. Mouw's provided here, it appears that he believes the doctrine of the trinity, and the understanding of its necessity for salvation, originated at the Council of Nicea. Maybe he didn't mean that, but wouldn't it be better to point to the Scripture that teaches the doctrine of the trinity, rather than a council? Our faith doesn't rest in councils; it rests in the Word of God in which He has declared the truths of who He is and what He has done, and the devastating consequences for believing otherwise.

An added note to the Eerdmans issue; if this were only an academic publication, I wouldn’t as concerned. However, this is published for the layman. And apparently, the laymen are already eating it up.