Seeking Jesus of Nazareth
Common faith, real differences, and the Restoration—a map you can inspect.
Christians who look to Jesus of Nazareth for salvation describe God in remarkably similar words and, in a few important places, in very different ones. This study lets you see where. It compares 57 ways the historic creeds and confessions describe God with what the Restoration teaches, one statement at a time, and it shows its sources for every claim.
It is not a contest. Nothing here will tell you which church is true. It will help you say, with precision and charity, where two traditions genuinely agree, where they share a concern but mean it differently, where they directly disagree, and where one of them makes a claim the other does not.
Five commitments
Before you begin, this study makes five promises, and it asks you to make them too.
- We will not mock other Christians. Every tradition on this map is described in its own words, from its own official sources.
- We will not hide real differences. Where two traditions disagree, the map says so plainly and shows the texts.
- We will not confuse similar words with identical meanings. “Creator” is confessed by everyone here; what lies behind the word is not always the same.
- We will not confuse unity with uniformity. Shared devotion to Christ does not require agreement on every doctrine.
- We will seek both truth and charity. Accuracy without kindness wounds; kindness without accuracy deceives.
Choose your starting point
Everyone sees the same map, the same sources, and the same numbers. Your starting point only changes which conversations are practiced first and which side of the table you are asked to imagine.
You can change this at any time. Your choice is stored only in this browser.
What “57” means
The map’s core is 57 descriptions of God drawn from the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, the Fourth Lateran Council, the Augsburg Confession, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Westminster Confession, and other historic formularies: God is living, true, Father, almighty, merciful, invisible, without body, unchangeable, and so on. Each description was compared with authoritative Latter-day Saint teaching and placed in one of three categories.
These are descriptions of God, not a list of every Christian doctrine. The map does not count teachings about the Church, sacraments, salvation, or the end of the world, and it does not by itself decide the question of the Trinity—which has its own panel below. 26 additional Restoration teachings, mostly about who human beings are and what they may become, are counted separately because they do not appear in the creeds at all.
The four categories, in plain words
| On the map | What it means | The sentence you can say |
|---|---|---|
| AShared | Both traditions affirm this of God in the same sense. | Here we genuinely agree. |
| QShared, but differently understood | Both use the word and share the concern, but the picture behind it differs—the how or the what kind. | Here we share a concern but mean it differently. |
| DDifferent | At the level the creeds intend, the two teachings cannot both be true. | Here we directly disagree. |
| +Restoration addition | A teaching the creeds and confessions studied do not contain as a positive doctrine. | Here one tradition makes an additional claim. |
Those four sentences are the whole method. Every card on the map resolves to one of them, and every conversation you practice here ends with you able to say which.
Where a source has not been located for a tradition, the map shows a hatched gap, never a colored tile. A gap is not a denial.
How to read the numbers
Every statistic on this site shows three things: the count, the percentage, and, where the research supports one, the range it moves within when the coding is weighted for how central a doctrine is. All three carry a provisional mark. For example:
52 of 57 inherited descriptions share a conceptual floor (Shared + Shared, differently understood) 91.2% holding between 87.8% and 91.2% (How this range moves: it shows where the count lands if some of the 57 descriptions are treated as more central to Christian teaching than others. Weighting them keeps the share between about 88% and 91%.) Provisional: internal coding, external validation pendingThe coding was done inside this project and has not yet been independently replicated by outside scholars. The numbers describe this bounded comparison; they do not measure “Christianity,” and they never rank one denomination as closer or farther than another. The site will not show you a denomination ranking, because the evidence is not complete enough to support one honestly.
Ten ways a comparison goes wrong
The map is only as good as the reader. These are the ten mistakes it is built to help you avoid. Each has a name; the Clarifications explorer uses them as labels.
- Slogan compression. A short phrase is true but leaves out the distinction you need. “Faith alone.” “After all we can do.”
- Same word, different meaning. Two traditions use one term with different content. “Spirit.” “Saved.”
- Apparent contradiction. Two teachings look inconsistent until you separate the layers they belong to.
- Church standing vs. standing before God. A church’s judgment about membership is mistaken for God’s judgment of a soul.
- Silence vs. denial. A source that does not mention something is treated as rejecting it.
- Precedent vs. equivalence. An ancient idea that resembles a modern teaching is treated as identical to it.
- Relational vs. metaphysical. Language about relationship is read as a claim about substance, or the reverse.
- One family, many voices. A whole tradition is treated as a single uniform body.
- Whose authority, how far. One document or institution is taken to speak for a wider communion than it does.
- The semantic floor. A broad label is read as a thicker claim than the comparison actually tested.
The Godhead and the Trinity
This panel is explanatory context. It is not counted in the 57 descriptions and never changes a denominator.
The 57 descriptions are about God’s attributes. They do not, by themselves, settle the question most people ask first: is God one being in three persons, or three persons one in purpose? That question belongs to the structure of the Godhead, and this panel addresses it directly, outside the count.
On the left, the creedal Shield of the Trinity: the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father. On the right, the Latter-day Saint Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are each divine and together are one Godhead; each is a separate being; the Father presides, and prayer is offered to the Father in the name of the Son. The one counted description that touches this structure—“neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance”—is coded shared, but differently understood (RNR-H56).
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are explicitly named in Christian confession — in the Nicene Creed and in the Articles of Faith alike. Shared naming does not establish identical Trinity/Godhead ontology.
Historic conciliar and confessional Christianity commonly affirms one divine essence or nature shared by Father, Son, and Spirit. Do not reduce all Christian Trinitarian traditions to one philosophical theory.
Restoration teaching distinguishes the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost personally and gives a distinctive embodied account of the Father and the Son. This panel is explanatory; it does not create a new A/Q/D row.
Unity and distinction are shared concerns even where the metaphysical account differs. The exact meaning of divine unity must be stated tradition by tradition.
About the Clarifications explorer
Some misunderstandings are not about any single description of God. They come from a slogan, a shared word, or a difference in how a tradition governs itself. The Clarifications explorer holds short cases that untangle those—the first two are a Baptist case and a Latter-day Saint case on the same fault line, faith and works. These cases reach beyond the 57 descriptions, they are never counted, and a case appears automatically only once per view and only when it is relevant to what you are reading.
Faith Alone, but Not Faith Without Fruit (Baptist)
If Baptists teach justification by faith alone, why can persistent sin or heresy result in church discipline or excommunication?
Distinguish justification/standing before God from the congregation's judgment of visible profession, discipleship, and membership.
In Southern and confessional/Reformed Baptist theology, works do not merit justification. Repentance, sanctification, perseverance, and obedience are expected fruits/evidences of regeneration. Church discipline therefore addresses visible profession and ecclesial fellowship rather than functioning as a church cancellation of God's justification.
What this case does not prove. It does not make Baptist and Latter-day Saint soteriology identical; it does not claim all Baptists share one perseverance model; and it does not treat excommunication as a direct determination of God's hidden judgment of regeneration.
Sources: Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article IV — Salvation · Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article V — God's Purpose of Grace · Resolution on Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics, 1994 Annual Meeting resolution · On Integrity in SBC Leadership, 2024 Annual Meeting resolution · Second London Baptist Confession (1689), Chapter 11, paragraph 2 · Second London Baptist Confession (1689), Chapter 11, paragraph 2 · Second London Baptist Confession (1689), Chapter 26, paragraph 2 · Second London Baptist Confession (1689), Chapter 26, paragraph 7 · What We Believe, Salvation · What We Believe, Perseverance
By Grace, After All We Can Do (Latter-day Saint)
If Latter-day Saints believe they are saved by grace, why does the Book of Mormon say "after all we can do," and why do the Articles of Faith say salvation comes "by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel"? Does that mean Latter-day Saints earn salvation by works?
Distinguish the source of salvation (the grace of Jesus Christ alone, which no one can earn) from the response salvation calls for (repentance, faith, obedience, and enduring), and distinguish "saved" in the broad sense (resurrection and redemption offered to all) from exaltation (the fulness of eternal life received through covenant).
In Latter-day Saint teaching, no one earns salvation. The Book of Mormon states that it is "only in and through the grace of God" that anyone is saved (2 Nephi 10:24), and official teaching states plainly that "we cannot earn our way into heaven" and that salvation "cannot be bought with the currency of obedience" (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "The Gift of Grace," April 2015 General Conference). "After all we can do" (2 Nephi 25:23) does not mean grace is paid out once human effort is exhausted; in the Book of Mormon's own usage "all we could do" is repentance (Alma 24:11). Obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel (Articles of Faith 1:3) is the covenant response through which a person receives and keeps receiving the gift, not a price paid for it. Official teaching describes obedience as "the reaching out of our mortal hand to receive this sacred gift" and grace as "the divine help or strength extended to us through the Atonement" (Gospel Topics: Grace) that enables the disciple to be "perfect in Christ" (Moroni 10:32).
What this case does not prove. It does not make Latter-day Saint and Baptist or Reformed soteriology identical; it does not resolve the differences over imputed versus infused righteousness, ordinances as conditions of covenant, or the doctrine of exaltation; and it does not claim that every Latter-day Saint has always articulated grace without a works-emphasis. It settles what the sources teach, not how every member has spoken.
Sources: Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 25:23 · Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 10:24 · Book of Mormon, Alma 24:11 · Book of Mormon, Moroni 10:32 · Pearl of Great Price, Articles of Faith 1:3 · Gospel Topics: Grace, Opening definition · Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "The Gift of Grace," April 2015 General Conference, Section "The Gift of Grace" · Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "The Gift of Grace," April 2015 General Conference, Section "The Gift of Grace" · Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "The Gift of Grace," April 2015 General Conference, Section "Why Then Obey?" · Bible Dictionary: Grace, Entry "Grace"
How this map was made
This study was prepared by Aaron J. Powner for Words of Plainness Ministry. Historic descriptions of God were drawn from official creeds, councils, confessions, and catechisms, and every citation links to the text on the publishing tradition’s own site; every quoted phrase is checked against that text each time the site is built. Latter-day Saint comparators are drawn from canonized scripture, official Church publications, and General Conference addresses, with the source level shown on each card.
The classification of each description was carried out within this project with the assistance of an AI system, then reviewed and ratified line by line by the author. The results are internally consistent but have not yet been independently replicated by outside scholars, and they are labeled provisional wherever they appear. A denomination-by-denomination view exists in the research files but is withheld from this site until its evidence is complete enough to display fairly.
