Deification

Volume Four—Chapter Six DEIFICATION

#Can man Become as God Is?

Evangelical view. For Evangelicals, a key concern is preserving the distinction between the creature and the Creator. They so hold in light of Paul’s teachings that the heart of idolatry and rebellion against God is to worship the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:18-32). They are troubled by our belief that “as man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become” (The origin of this couplet is explained in Eliza R. Snow’s, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, 46-47).1 Blomberg writes: Belief in the humanity of God the Father could . . . be viewed merely as a curiosity, if it were not for the additional claim that God was once a finite human” (HWD, 105).

Perhaps the doctrine that has generated most controversy between Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints is the notion of “deification,” “theosis,” or “divinization.” This is our doctrine that man can progress to become like God. Blomberg writes: “If all Mormons mean by [deification] is that we are re-created in God’s image, perfect in holiness and immortal in nature, with physically resurrected bodies, then we join hands with them in looking forward to such a wonderful day. . . However, if Latter-day Saints believe that humans can take on God’s being and God’s incommunicable attributes . . . then we demur, claiming that they have not adequately preserved the distinction in essence between the creature and the Creator” (Ibid., 107). Generally, Evangelicals feel it is presumptuous and sacrilegious to believe man can become as God is.

According to Evangelicals, the most credible categorization of God’s characteristics stems from the distinction Protestant Reformers made between “communicable” and “incommunicable” attributes. The communicable attributes are those humans can share to a partial extent in this life and fully in the life to come. A partial list of these might include holiness, love, justice, mercy, constancy, spirituality, and persistence. The incommunicable attributes unique to God are the three “omnis”: omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Also historic Christianity has always included two other features of God’s nature under the incommunicable attributes: eternality and immateriality.

Evangelicals maintain that “historic Christianity” (Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox branches alike) has always taught the “eternality” of God. By “eternality” they mean there is only one being in the universe who has always existed in eternity past and who will always exist in the eternal future. They point to such passages as Ephesians 3:21 which ascribe glory to God “throughout all generations, for ever and ever.” They also point to Isaiah and Revelation which both refer to God as the First and the Last, the Being who existed when there were no others and apart from whom there is no God. Isaiah 44:6: “Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” Revelation 1:8: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” They point to texts like Psalm 90:2: “From everlasting to everlasting you are God;” or Jude 1:25: “To the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power, and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore.” They see no evidence for interpreting these scriptures to mean anything other than that God has always existed as the one supreme, uncaused Being who alone is worthy of worship.

Evangelicals use Genesis 2:7 as an argument against man’s being of the same species as God: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.” They feel this implies there is an ontological chasm between God and man.

Blomberg concludes: “For the most part, historic Christianity, when it has spoken of believers becoming gods or becoming godlike, has preserved the necessary distinction between Creator and creature. We can come to share perfectly in God’s communicable attributes, but we can never usurp God’s unique role by becoming allpowerful, all-knowing or all-present. To be ‘like God’ is different from ‘becoming’ or ‘being’ God, or being identical in kind to God. We will never be objects of worship in our own right. We are never told in scripture that we will be able to create worlds; only God is said to do that” (HWD, 101-02).

LDS view of “creature and Creator.” As to Latter-day Saints’ collapsing “the distinction in essence between the creature and the Creator,” we plead guilty. We believe humans and God to be of the same species (genos or genus). Acts 17:28 explains that we are the “offspring of God.” We are, however acutely aware of the immense gulf between us and our attributes and God and his attributes.

Brother Robinson writes: “The soil from which the LDS doctrine of deification grows is the belief that humans are of the divine species and that the scriptural language of divine paternity is not merely figurative” (HWD, 82). Is God our Father or not? Will we receive God’s glory and sit on God’s throne or not? Will we become one with God or not? Granted there is a gulf between fallen humanity and exalted divinity, but Mormons believe this gulf is bridged in Christ Jesus. In our fallen condition, we are utterly different. In our saved and glorified state, we will be what God is through God’s grace. We will even come eventually to possess God’s so-called incommunicable attributes.

One of the Evangelicals’ major objections to the LDS view seems to be their dictum: Finite beings cannot become infinite; infinite beings cannot ever have been finite. This seems to be good Platonic thinking. This objection is philosophical rather than biblical. Why can’t the finite become infinite, or vice versa? Is there another reason other than the idea contradicts Plato’s assumptions about the nature of things? The strict wall of separation between the human and the divine (“we aren’t really his children; we can’t really be like him”) is not really biblical. It is purely philosophical.

Plato insisted that the human and the divine are mutually exclusive. Scripture says God in Christ became man, “The Word was made flesh” (John 1:14); “In all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). Nevertheless, Greek philosophy demanded the divine could not become truly human, and vice versa. Plato insisted they must be distinct and separate. So it became necessary to formulate the theory of the dual nature of Christ. According to the creed that emerged from the Council at Chalcedon, Christ’s divine nature never became human, never suffered, never died. Never mind what the scriptures say.

Robinson writes further:

Latter-day Saints reject all that. The Word was made flesh. In Christ, God became man. And if the divine can become fully human and then as human be raised up again to be fully God (Philemon 2:6-11), then it is established that what is fully human may also be divine. . . . And by the grace of God we humans can also be raised up to be joint heirs of God with Christ (Romans 8:16-17). Christ is the example of what the Father finally desires of us and for us. It is God’s intention, through the atonement and the gospel, to make us what Christ is and share with us what Christ has (HWD, 83).

Robinson observed that the ontological distinction between creature and Creator is perhaps “the heart of the disagreements between us, for Latter-day Saints maintain that God’s work is to remove the distinctions and barriers between us and to make us what God is” (Ibid., 81). We do not deduce this by philosophical argument. It is flatly stated in the New Testament: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (John 17:21-23, italics added). We become one in them (the Father and the Son) as they are one in each other. Whatever the relationship between them is, we can share it. It will assuredly not be as fallen mortals, but as saved, resurrected and glorified sons and daughters of God. We can participate in the life of God through God’s grace and the atonement of Christ. If the redeemed really do become one with the Father and the Son, in the same way they are one with each other, then how can anyone deny that the redeemed share their divine attributes—even the so-called incommunicable attributes? “Incommunicable attributes” is not a biblical term. And if Peter says we partake of God’s nature, by what authority can these later theologians limit that to mean only some of God’s nature? If God the Father communicates his attributes to the Son, and I am one with the Father and the Son in the same way they are one with each other, then their attributes, by the grace of God, become mine. I may be made perfect and one with them.

Biblical concept of eternity or forever. The biblical concept of “eternity” is problematic. Most constructions translated “forever” or “eternal” actually read “to the end of the age” or just “to the age.” Indeed, the words usually rendered “forever” or “eternal” are the Greek and Hebrew words for “age.” “Age” is a finite time, from the beginning creation to the end of the earth or some smaller increment of that period. First-century Jews understood eternity to consist of successive ages or eons, all within the parameters of the beginning of creation and the end of the earth. God is the First and the Last, the only being who exists from the beginning to the end (Isaiah 44:6; Revelation 1:8). That is, he exists from the first moment of creation to the last. This is clearly a temporal frame. The phrase “before all ages” (Jude 1:25) simply means “from the beginning,” from before the creation—before the clock started ticking. We believe that God did exist as God “before all ages” (from the beginning). That does not say anything about before the beginning. Thus, expressions like “the First and the Last” or “before all ages” do not affirm anything about conditions before the beginning or after the end of this creation.

God’s purpose in creation. Neither Jew nor orthodox Christian, from their scriptures, can give you, either from the Old Testament or the New Testament, a definite authoritative answer to the questions: Just what is God’s purpose in creation? What is the purpose and design of God in the creation of man? David’s great question, in Psalm 8, and repeated by Paul in Hebrews 2:6-8, remains to this day unanswered, either by Jew or Christian: “What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” So what is the answer? There is no plain and authoritative declaration from the Bible. The nearest thing to an answer is in the following: “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 what exactly does that mean? Where does man appear in all that? How might God derive “pleasure” and “glory” from man?

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

1. Absence from the body is bondage (D&C 45:17; 138:50). We can only be truly fulfilled following our resurrection when we are vested with an eternal body (see D&C 88:15, 20, 28; 93:33-34; 131:7). Joseph Smith taught that “happiness consists in having a body” (TPJS, 181) and that having a body brings power, for “all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not” (Ibid.). “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).

2. It is God’s avowed purpose to bring man back home to live with him for all eternity. “Behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). Not only does God intend that man live forever in a resurrected state (“immortality”), but that he also live forever in God’s eternal presence (“eternal life”). Man’s return to God satisfies God’s yearning and from man’s continued spiritual growth, God somehow derives an increase in his own “glory,” light, or attributes.

3. Man exists that he might have joy. The ultimate joy, a fulness of joy, comes only from eternally abiding with God clothed with a celestial eternal resurrected body. “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).

Within these newly revealed doctrines is found the importance and purpose of human life. God is engaged in bringing about the “immortality and eternal life” of man. Man exists that he might have joy and the inseparable union of eternal spirit with eternal element necessary for that joy. This is what God seeks. This is God’s purpose.

The Father and his offspring. A basic and cherished doctrine is that we are the literal children of God. In our premortal existence, God and his eternal celestial companion begat each of us. Our intelligence was embodied with spirit matter, and we became spirits. We know nothing else about this birth process. Most Evangelicals are critical of this doctrine, claiming we cannot be of his species. He is fundamentally higher. We are lower. God is not really our Father in anything but an allegorical or adoptive sense.

It is difficult to deny the existence of God’s intimate fatherhood in light of New Testament scriptures. Consider, for example: Romans 8:16-17 “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.” Consider also: Acts 17:28-29 “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.” In other words, we ought not to think God is fundamentally different from man. Or: Galatians 4:6-7 “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” And finally: Hebrews 12:9 “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?”

Yet, again, to the Evangelicals, these scriptural references to God’s literal fatherhood are mere metaphor. In their view, God is fundamentally different from us. He is a separate species, a higher entity, entirely unlike man.

Daniel Peterson comments:

It is obviously true that . . . there is a critically important sense in which we become the children of God . . . by divine adoption. But the scriptures seem plainly to indicate that there is another sense in which we are, all of us, Christian or not, children of a Heavenly Father. Acts 17:28- 29 seems to teach this most clearly. In this passage, the apostle Paul approvingly cites a pagan poet to an audience of Athenian pagans on the Areopagus, to the effect that we (evidently including his pagan hearers) are the “offspring” of God. And the word translated as “offspring’ by the King James Bible, Genos (related to Latin/English genus and to English kin), indisputably has the sense of “family,” “race,” or “kind” (FRB, 314-15). Another biblical example of God’s fatherhood is: “All of you are children of the most High” (Psalm 82:6). If we are his children, then he is our Father. Out of this great truth spring other truths. All men are brothers. We should seek to look after and avoid injuring one another. We are entitled to feelings of self-worth and dignity. Since we are his offspring, we may become like him. We are of the same species. Every living thing in creation follows the pattern of its parentage.

Previously, we have reviewed the concept we LDS take for granted—that God the Son, Jesus Christ, was the God of the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. Though Jesus is not his own Father, the Son rightly is accorded the title “Father” for at least three reasons: (1) He is, by designation from his Father, the Creator of heaven and earth. Somehow, also, he is the power that keeps the universe and its inhabitants operating (D&C 88:13). (2) By virtue of the Savior’s atonement, humankind may be “born again” as his sons and daughters. Thus, Jesus is the divine parent of the saved (Mosiah 5:7). (3) He is designated by the Father to be the Father’s agent and representative to humankind. He is authorized to speak for the Father, as though he were the Father. In our terminology, we say he has received the Father’s “divine investiture of authority.”

LDS view of deification. The Church teaches officially that through the grace of God exalted humans (husbands and wives sealed to one another forever) will participate in the divine nature and exercise divine powers, including the power of creation. We choose to call such beings “gods” (with a small g). Evangelicals find that term incorrect by Evangelical definitions and would prefer we use a different term.

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 are commanded to strive to be like him. Our progression to godhood will never allow us to “catch up” to God the Father in power, knowledge, or any other of his spiritual gifts and attributes. We do, however, see an uninterrupted ontological continuum between us and God. That is, we can become like him. We are intimately related to him. He is not basically different from us.

There are only three passages in LDS scripture that deal directly with deification: 1. D&C 76:58 describes those who are saved in the celestial kingdom with these words: “Wherefore as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God—Wherefore, all things are theirs, whether life or death, or things present, or things to come, all are theirs and they are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” This verse is essentially a restatement of Psalm 82:6, John 10:34-36, and 1 Corinthians 3:21-23. Hence, it should not be objectionable to Evangelicals.

2. D&C 121:28, 32 mention other gods: “A time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest. . . . According to that which was ordained in the midst of the Council of the Eternal God of all other gods before this world was, that should be reserved unto the finishing and the end thereof, when every man shall enter into his eternal presence and into his immortal rest.” These verses are only an oblique reference to “the Eternal God of all other gods.”

3. The main scriptural authority for the LDS doctrine of deification is to be found in D&C 132:19-20:

And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood; and it shall be said unto them—Ye shall come forth in the first resurrection; and if it be after the first resurrection, in the next resurrection; and shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths—then shall it be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that he shall commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, and if ye abide in my covenant, and commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant hath put upon them, in time, and through all eternity; and shall be of full force when they are out of the world; and they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever. Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.3

To these scriptures probably ought to be added Lorenzo Snow’s previously mentioned epigram: “As man now is, God once was; As God now is, man may become.” Also, Joseph Smith taught, in the funeral address for King Follett, that God is an exalted man: “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret” (TPJS, 345). Neither of these latter two statements is scriptural or canonized in the technical sense. Neither has been explained or elucidated to or by the Church in any official manner. Nonetheless, they are so widely accepted by Latter-day Saints that this technical point has become moot. In effect, these statements have become normative. They set the doctrinal standard.

On the basis of statements made by Joseph Smith and Lorenzo Snow to the effect that God was once a man, Evangelicals have charged that the Mormon God is “merely a man.” We do not believe that God is “just a man” or “merely a man.” No Mormon would say such a thing. God is God, and Mormons attribute to God every honor, power, glory, and perfection Evangelicals do.

Evangelicals point out that the idea: “As man is God once was, and as God is, man may become” is not found in the Bible. Admittedly, there is no thorough explanation of this concept there. Should we expect there to be? What God did before the beginning of our round of creation and what humans may do after the end of this earth are not treated in the Bible. These teachings of Joseph Smith and Lorenzo Snow do not contradict the Bible. The Bible has nothing to say about those two periods of time. It is true, however, that Joseph is adding things that occur before and after the biblical account. Since the Bible is silent on this matter, we cannot be justly accused of contradicting it.

The Bible does, however, allude tantalizingly to the doctrine of eternal progression and becoming like God:

1. Romans 8:16-17: “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. 2 Peter 1:3-4: “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 we have been given “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” and we may become “partakers of the divine nature.” Would we not, then, expect the divine nature to be extended to us and become part of us?

3. Revelation 3:21: “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).

Roger D. Cook finds “extremely strong evidence to suggest that theosis [deification] is a prominent doctrine of early Judaism and Christianity before the process of Hellenization takes place. The separate nature of the Godhead is also well attested” (FRB, 287). Cook then analyzes a pseudepigraphic source, the Ascension of Isaiah, written about the middle of the second century. This work describes all three members of the Godhead as separate embodied individuals and depicts the exaltation that is to be expected by faithful Christians in unmistakable deification terminology (FRB, 287- 91).

Cook also sees evidence of deification or theosis in the Bible:

Theosis is clearly seen in the Old and New Testaments as the faithful are promised that they will be enthroned in God’s presence. The book of Daniel exclaims that the “wise” shall gain their own glory and “shine as the brightness of the firmament” (Daniel 12:3; compare Matthew 13:43). Christ invites those who overcome to sit in his throne as he has overcome and sits with the Father in his throne (see Revelation 3:21). John also claims that thrones of judgment are given to the saints and that they will reign with God and Christ (see Revelation 20:4, 6), wearing “white robes” (Revelation 6:11, 7:9-14) and crowns (Revelation 4:4, 10). Paul declares that the faithful will judge the world and angels (see 1 Corinthians 6:2-3). Paul also explains that faithful Christians have been raised up by God and enthroned with Christ in the heavenly realms (see Ephesians 2:4-7) (FRB, 295).

Cook concludes: “Thus the burden of proof seems to be on orthodox Christians to show that an independent Judeo-Christian theosis did not exist. The historical/cultural evidence is that early Christianity believed in a God who is embodied, that each member of the Godhead is anthropomorphic and embodied, and that a doctrine of theosis was firmly in place in the early Christian church” (Ibid., 298).

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

More recently, another doctoral thesis was 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 the writings of the early Christian Fathers to contain, unmistakably, the idea of humans progressing to become like God, indeed, 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, though 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 fulness 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 that 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) (147).

An ancient Christian leader, Clement of Alexandria (ca AD 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, 23).

Certainly deification ought not to be considered some pagan idea that the Latterday Saints have invented and imposed on the text. Rather, it is a doctrine at least alluded to in the Bible that has been understood variously by different groups.

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.

Evangelicals often cite Numbers 23:19 as evidence against the LDS concept of God. It reads: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” We do not believe God is a mortal man—or the son of one, or that God ever changes his mind—any more than the Evangelicals do. Yet neither do we think the author of Numbers intended here to provide information about what God may have been before the beginning of time—prior to the onset of creation.

Regarding Genesis 2:7, sometimes raised by Evangelicals against our doctrine of deification, when God formed man “of the dust of the ground,” he formed only his body. This says nothing about the heritage of the spirit that inhabited that body. This verse does not demonstrate in any way an ontological chasm between God and man.

Evangelicals do look forward to perfected, re-created, resurrected, glorified, and exalted bodies that Christ will provide when he returns. Blomberg acknowledges the early church, like Eastern Orthodoxy throughout its history, felt much freer than Protestantism or Catholicism has felt to speak of believers’ deification, divinization, or of their becoming gods or godlike. To be sure, 2 Peter 1:4 speaks of believers receiving God’s “very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” Blomberg also acknowledges other scriptures that support the LDS view such as John 10:34, “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” and Psalm 82:6, “I have said you are gods.” But then Blomberg back-pedals furiously by saying: “But in context 2 Peter 1:4 is clearly talking about becoming like God morally, not actually (HWD, 101, emphasis added).

Robinson writes:

To Latter-day Saints the glorified and resurrected Christ illustrates in person what the saved can become through his grace. For us the logic of the scriptures is inescapable: (1) Jesus Christ is divine, and (2) through the atonement and the grace of Christ the saved become one with Christ, become like him (1 John 3:2) and receive his image and glory (John 17:21-23; 2 Corinthians 3:18). Therefore, (3) through the atonement of Christ the saved become in some sense divine. If A equals B, and B equals C, how shall one resist concluding that A equals C? (HWD, 81).

Robinson adds:

We have been designated heirs to all he [Christ] has (Romans 8:16-17; Revelation 21:7), which is [identical to] all that the Father has (John 3:35). We might again be charged here with taking the language of scripture too literally, but the doctrine is scriptural, and the same passages of scripture have led many others in the history of the Christian tradition to conclusions similar to those of the Latter-day Saints (Ibid., 80).

Robinson then concludes:

Now, if the Christian scriptures teach that we will look like God, receive the inheritance of God, receive the glory of God, be one with God, sit upon the throne of God, and exercise the power and rule of God, then surely it cannot be un-Christian to conclude with C. S. Lewis and others that such beings as these can be called gods, as long as we remember that this use of the term gods does not in any way reduce or limit the sovereignty of God our Father. That is how the early Christians used the term; it is how C. S. Lewis used the term; and it is how the Latter-day Saints use the term and understand the doctrine (Are Mormons Christians?, 65).

1 President Lorenzo Snow often referred to this couplet as having been revealed to him by inspiration during the Nauvoo period of the Church. See, for example, Deseret Weekly 49 (3 November 1894), 610; Deseret Weekly 57 (8 October 1898), 513; Deseret News 52 (15 June 1901), 177; and Journal History of the Church, 20 July 1901, 4.

For a discussion of this spiritual growth, see volume 1, chapters 7, Spiritual Growth— Gifts of the Spirit, and 8, The Blessings of Spiritual Gifts.

3 See a thorough discussion of the enigmatic elements of this passage in “The Fundamental Spiritual Entity” in volume 3, chapter 28, The Doctrine of the Family.