RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Ankerberg, John. and Weldon, John. The Facts on the Masonic Lodge. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1989.
Surprisingly good. You never can tell with pop apologetics tracks. It doesn't get into the hermetic issues of Freemasonry. It focuses on the "Blue Lodge," as most Masons are there. It mainly stays with standard Masonic texts and is fair. Instead of quoting the actual text, I am going to quote from the Masonic manuals from which they quote.
They argue that Masonry is a religion because a) some of its key texts say it is; b) it requires specific religious beliefs (immortality of the soul; belief in a supreme being), and c) promises an eternal reward. And koinonia. This is exactly what the church offers (Henry Wilson Coil, Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia 1961:512). And since they require belief in these, that fits the definition of a Creed.
Since this religion disagrees with Christianity in key aspects, Christians can't be Masons. We will focus on some of these aspects:
Surprisingly good. You never can tell with pop apologetics tracks. It doesn't get into the hermetic issues of Freemasonry. It focuses on the "Blue Lodge," as most Masons are there. It mainly stays with standard Masonic texts and is fair. Instead of quoting the actual text, I am going to quote from the Masonic manuals from which they quote.
They argue that Masonry is a religion because a) some of its key texts say it is; b) it requires specific religious beliefs (immortality of the soul; belief in a supreme being), and c) promises an eternal reward. And koinonia. This is exactly what the church offers (Henry Wilson Coil, Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia 1961:512). And since they require belief in these, that fits the definition of a Creed.
Since this religion disagrees with Christianity in key aspects, Christians can't be Masons. We will focus on some of these aspects:
- Jahbulon. This name of God is a combination of Jehovah, Baal, and Osiris. By definition this isn't the God that Christians worship. We worship the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
- Freemasonry teaches that a man is in darkness prior to becoming a freemason (Albert Mackey, Manual of the Lodge, 520). The Bible, on the other hand, says that before Christ we were in darkness (Galatians 1:4).
- Freemasonry openly mocks the biblical God, calling him "a partisan tribal god" (Coil 516-517). And they aren't nearly as apophatic as they claim. They make a number of positive assertions about God: he is unitarian, deistic (Martin Wagner, Freemasonry: An Interpretation, 284). Even on Masonic principles there is no way they can reconcile these disparate claims (and that's not even mentioning Islamic theology or Judaism). We don't have the same view of God, as both Pike and Coil admit.