Man May Become Like God

#Man May Progress to Become Like God

Concern You should be ashamed of yourselves. It is blasphemous to believe that man can become a god.

Discussion Before reading this article, please see “Deification,” in volume 4, chapter 6 of Ye Shall Know of the Doctrine.

Neither Jew nor Christian, from their scriptures, can give you, either from the Old Testament or the New Testament, a definite authoritative answer saying just what is God’s purpose in creation – what the purpose and design of God is in the creation of man! David’s great question, in Psalm 8, and repeated by Paul in Hebrews 2:6-8 remain to this day unanswered from their scriptures either by Jew or Christian. “What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” asks David in the Psalm 8. But what is the answer? There is no plain and authoritative declaration from scripture. Such an answer is not to be found in the Bible. The nearest approach to such an answer is in the following scriptures: “O Lord . . . thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Revelation 4:11). “Bring my sons from far . . . everyone . . . for I have created him for my glory” (Isaiah 43:6, 7). So, we may say that all things were created for the “pleasure” of God and for his “glory,” but where does man appear in all that?

In this last dispensation God, by revelation, has made known three very definite things:

(1) “Behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).

(2) “All things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things; Adam fell that men might be [i.e. exist as men]; and men are that they might have joy” (2Nephi 2:25).

(3) “Man is spirit; the elements are eternal: and spirit and element inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; and when separated man cannot receive a fulness of joy. The elements are the tabernacle of God; yea, man is the tabernacle of God, even temples” (D&C 93:33-35).

In these newly revealed doctrines is disclosed the importance and purpose of human life: God is engaged in bringing about the “immortality and eternal life” of man; the existence of man that he might have joy; the inseparable union of eternal spirit with eternal element, necessary to that joy; and this God seeks to promote.

A basic doctrine of the Church is that we are the children of God. This doctrine is taught over and over again in the Bible. For example, “All of you are children of the most High” (Psalm 82:6) and “We are the offspring of God” (Acts 17:29). If we are his children, then he is our Father. Many so-called Christian sects today belittle this doctrine – that we are literally sons and daughters of God. Out of this great truth spring other truths. All men are brothers – we should seek to look after and not injure one another. We are entitled to feelings of self-worth and dignity. Also, since we are his offspring, then we may come to become like him. We are of the same species. Every living thing in creation follows the pattern of its parentage.

In the Church, we readily acknowledge that here on earth we seek to grow and progress in personal righteousness and in acquiring the attributes which God possesses. The Lord commanded, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). This command is not simply idealistic nonsense; it is a literal commandment. We strive to be like him. This truth has been regarded as a sacrilege by others. They accuse us of aspiring to inappropriate heights beyond the reach of the human family.

The Bible teaches the doctrine of eternal progression and becoming like God. Romans 8:16-17 reads, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

With Christ, we may inherit, through our choices, all that the Father hath and we may become like God. Joseph Smith defined the expressions “heirs of God” and “joint heirs with Jesus Christ,” saying the righteous are to “inherit the same power, the same glory and the same exaltation, until you arrive at the station of a God, and ascend the throne of eternal power, the same as those who have gone before” (TPJS, 347). When you have all that the Father has, then you are as the Father is.

2 Peter 1:3-4 reads “According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue. Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” Note that we have been given “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” and that we may become “partakers of the divine nature.”

Revelation 3:21 reads “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.” God empowers those who overcome trial and temptation to become like him; the righteous become exalted beings, sitting as kings upon heavenly thrones. Enoch said to God, “Thou hast made me, and given unto me a right to thy throne, and not of myself, but through thine own grace” (Moses 7:59). Similarly, Jesus promised the twelve Apostles “twelve thrones” (Matthew 19:28).

We do not, of course, equate ourselves with God nor seek to supplant him in any way. We strive only to grow up to reach our God-given potential according to his will. We do not believe that humans will ever be equal to or independent of God.

A fascinating and helpful insight has been afforded us by those who have studied the doctrines taught in the early Christian church, the church of the first few centuries A.D. In 1980 a church member, Keith Norman wrote a doctoral dissertation at Duke University (reproduced as Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology [Provo, Utah FARMS, 2000]). Soteriology, by the way, is the study of the salvation of man. Brother Norman’s subject was an early Catholic Bishop, Athanasius, who was Bishop of Alexandria (in Egypt) about 350-370 A.D. He was a crucial figure in the formation and maintaining of the mainstream doctrines of the Christian, actually Roman Church. Dr. Norman analyzed Athanasius’s writings and points out that he believed that the salvation of man involved the man’s becoming like God.

More recently another thesis has been written by Jordan Vajda, a Dominican Catholic priest. It is entitled Partakers of the Divine Nature: A Comparative Analysis of the writings of the early Christian Fathers and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization (written at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley). Father Vajda finds that the writings of the early Christian Fathers contain, unmistakably, the idea of humans progressing to become like God – in fact becoming gods themselves. He writes of those who read his paper: “Members of the LDS Church will discover unmistakable evidence that their fundamental belief about human salvation and potential is not unique or a Mormon invention. Latin Catholics and Protestants who read this paper will learn of a doctrine of salvation that, which relatively foreign to their ears, is nevertheless part of the heritage of the early Catholic Church of the first millennium. This doctrine is that salvation in Christ involves our becoming “partakers of the divine nature.”

Father Vajda concludes his paper with a reference to the anti-Mormon propaganda film “The Godmakers.” He says:

The Mormons are truly “godmakers.” As the LDS doctrine of exaltation explains, the fullness of human salvation means “becoming a god.” Yet what was meant to be a term of ridicule has turned out to be a term of approbation, for the witness of the early Fathers of the Church . . . is that they also believed that salvation meant “becoming a god.” It seems that if one’s doctrine of salvation cannot accommodate a doctrine of human divinization, then that doctrine has rejected the heritage of the early Christian church and departed from the faith of the first millennium Christianity. . . . Thus, ironically, those who would excoriate Mormons for believing in the doctrine of exaltation actually agree with them that the early church experienced a “great apostasy” on fundamental doctrinal questions. And the supreme irony is that such persons should probably investigate the claims of the LDS Church, which proclaims that within itself is to be found the “restoration of all things.”

There is other evidence from non-LDS sources which supports deification, or man’s progressing to become like God, as a legitimate Christian doctrine. Consider the following definition of deification from the Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology:

Deification (Greek theosis or apotheosis) is for Orthodoxy the goal of every Christian. Man, according to the Bible, is “made in the image and likeness of God” (cf. Genesis 1:26), and the Fathers commonly distinguish between these two words. The image refers to man’s reason and freedom, that which distinguishes him from the animals and makes him kin to God, while likeness refers to ‘assimilation to God through virtues’ (St. John of Damascus). It is possible for man to become like God, to become deified, to become god by grace. This doctrine is based on many passages of both OT and NT (e.g. Psalm 82:6; 2 Peter 1:4), and it is essentially the teaching both of St. Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (Romans 8:9-17; Galatians 4:5-7), and the Fourth Gospel (John 17:21-23). (Symeon Lash, ed. Alan Richardson and John Bowden [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983], 147.)

An ancient Christian leader, Clement of Alexandria (about A.D. 215) wrote: And the Word Himself now speaks to you plainly, putting to shame your unbelief, yes, I say, the Word of God speaks, having become man, in order that such as you may learn from man how it is even possible for man to become a god. (English rendering from G. W. Butterworth, trans., Clement of Alexandria [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953], 23.)