Evidence · Case 11 · Mormonism
“Becoming Like God,” Gospel Topics Essays
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
The 2014 essay teaches that humans may become like God, and insists this is not many gods in competition: “God’s children will always worship Him.” It calls the “own planet” image a caricature few members would recognize.
Sources
Objections & responses
- Eastern Orthodox theosis teaches that humans become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and Athanasius said God became man that man might become god. Isn’t exaltation being presented as uniquely Mormon when it has Christian parallels?
The parallel is real and Latter-day Saint apologists use it. The difference the Orthodox insist on is that theosis is participation in God’s life by grace, never becoming God by nature or becoming a god of the same kind as the Father; the Creator-creature distinction is preserved absolutely. LDS exaltation, as taught by Joseph Smith in the King Follett discourse and by Lorenzo Snow (as God is, man may become), is becoming what the Father is, on the premise that the Father was once as we are. That premise is what theosis never held, and it is the point of difference.
- The essay is the church’s most careful public statement. Earlier leaders, including Smith himself, said much more, including that God was once a man. Doesn’t citing only the polished essay let the church define the doctrine at its most palatable?
Both belong together. The 2014 essay affirms the Snow couplet while declining to elaborate on the Father’s past; the King Follett discourse and Brigham Young’s sermons say plainly what the essay leaves quiet. The Christian concern is with the doctrine as taught by the founding prophets and still affirmed, not with the tone of the current essay. Reading the earlier statements from LDS sources keeps you from caricaturing the doctrine and from soft-pedaling it.