Becoming Like God
One of the most common images in Western and Eastern
religions alike is of God as a parent and of human beings as God’s children.
Billions pray to God as their parent, invoke the brotherhood and sisterhood of
all people to promote peace, and reach out to the weary and troubled out of
deep conviction that each of God’s children has great worth.
But people of different faiths understand the
parent-child relationship between God and humans in significantly different
ways. Some understand the phrase “child
of God” as an honorary title reserved only for those who believe in God and
accept His guidance as they might accept a father’s. Many see parent-child
descriptions of God’s relationship to humanity as metaphors to express His love
for His creations and their dependence on His sustenance and protection.
Latter-day Saints
see all people as children of God in a full and complete sense; they consider
every person divine in origin, nature, and potential. Each has an eternal core
and is “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.”1 Each possesses seeds of
divinity and must choose whether to live in harmony or tension with that
divinity. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all people may “progress
toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny.”2 Just as a child can develop the attributes of his or her parents over
time, the divine nature that humans inherit can be developed to become like
their Heavenly Father's.
The desire to nurture the divinity in His children is one
of God’s attributes that most inspires, motivates, and humbles members of the
Church. God’s loving parentage and guidance can help each willing, obedient
child of God receive of His fulness and of His glory. This knowledge transforms
the way Latter-day Saints see their fellow human beings. The teaching that men
and women have the potential to be exalted to a state of godliness clearly
expands beyond what is understood by most contemporary Christian churches and
expresses for the Latter-day Saints a yearning rooted in the Bible to live as
God lives, to love as He loves, and to prepare for all that our loving Father
in Heaven wishes for His children.
What does the Bible say about humans’ divine potential?
Several biblical
passages intimate that humans can become like God. The likeness of humans
to God is emphasized in the first chapter of Genesis: “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. … So God
created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and
female created he them.”3 After Adam and Eve partook of the
fruit of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” God said they had
“become as one of us,”4 suggesting that a process of
approaching godliness was already underway. Later in the Old Testament, a
passage in the book of Psalms declares, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of
you are children of the most High.”5
New Testament passages also point to this doctrine. When Jesus was accused of blasphemy on the
grounds that “thou, being a man, makest thyself God,” He responded, echoing
Psalms, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?”6 In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus
commanded His disciples to become “perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect.”7 In turn, the Apostle Peter referred to
the Savior’s “exceeding great and precious promises” that we might become
“partakers of the divine nature.”8 The Apostle Paul taught that we are
“the offspring of God” and emphasized that as such “we are the children of God:
and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”9 The book of Revelation contains a
promise from Jesus Christ that “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.”10
These passages can be interpreted in different ways. Yet
by viewing them through the clarifying lens of revelations received by Joseph
Smith, Latter-day Saints see these scriptures as straightforward expressions of
humanity’s divine nature and potential. Many other Christians read the same passages
far more metaphorically because they experience the Bible through the lens of
doctrinal interpretations that developed over time after the period described
in the New Testament.
How have ideas about divinity shifted over Christian
history?
Latter-day Saint
beliefs would have sounded more familiar to the earliest generations of
Christians than they do to many modern Christians. Many church fathers
(influential theologians and teachers in early Christianity) spoke approvingly
of the idea that humans can become divine. One modern scholar refers to the
“ubiquity of the doctrine of deification”—the teaching that humans could become
God—in the first centuries after Christ’s death.11 The church father Irenaeus, who died about A.D. 202, asserted that Jesus
Christ “did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might
bring us to be what He is Himself.”12 Clement of Alexandria (ca. A.D. 150–215) wrote that “the Word of God
became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.”13 Basil the Great (A.D.
330–379) also celebrated this prospect—not just “being made like to God,” but
“highest of all, the being made God.”14
What exactly the early church fathers meant when they
spoke of becoming God is open to interpretation,15 but it is clear that
references to deification became more contested in the late Roman period and
were infrequent by the medieval era. The
first known objection by a church father to teaching deification came in the
fifth century.16 By the sixth century, teachings
on “becoming God” appear more limited in scope, as in the definition provided
by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. A.D. 500): “Deification … is the
attaining of likeness to God and union with him so far as is possible.”17
Why did these beliefs fade from prominence? Changing
perspectives on the creation of the world may have contributed to the gradual
shift toward more limited views of human potential. The earliest Jewish and
Christian commentaries on the Creation assumed that God had organized the world
out of preexisting materials, emphasizing the goodness of God in shaping such a
life-sustaining order.18 But the incursion of new philosophical ideas in the second century led
to the development of a doctrine that God created the universe ex
nihilo—“out of nothing.” This ultimately became the dominant teaching
about the Creation within the Christian world.19 In order to emphasize God’s
power, many theologians reasoned that nothing could have existed for as long as
He had. It became important in Christian circles to assert that God had
originally been completely alone.
Creation ex nihilo
widened the perceived gulf between God and humans. It became less common to
teach either that human souls had existed before the world or that they could
inherit and develop the attributes of God in their entirety in the future.20 Gradually, as the depravity of
humankind and the immense distance between Creator and creature were
increasingly emphasized, the concept of deification faded from Western
Christianity,21 though it remains a central tenet of
Eastern Orthodoxy, one of the three major branches of Christianity.22
How were ideas
about deification introduced to Latter-day Saints?
The earliest Latter-day Saints came from a society
dominated by English-speaking Protestants, most of whom accepted both ex nihilo
creation and the Westminster Confession’s definition of God as a being “without
body, parts, or passions.”23 They likely knew little or
nothing about the diversity of Christian beliefs in the first centuries after
Jesus Christ’s ministry or about early Christian writings on deification. But
revelations received by Joseph Smith diverged from the prevailing ideas of the
time and taught doctrine that, for some, reopened debates on the nature of God,
creation, and humankind.
Early revelations to Joseph Smith taught that humans are
created in the image of God and that God cares intimately for His children. In
the Book of Mormon, a prophet “saw the finger of the Lord” and was astonished
to learn that human physical forms were truly made in the image of God.24 In another early revelation,
Enoch (who “walked with God” in the Bible25) witnessed God weeping over His
creations. When Enoch asked, “How is it thou canst weep?” he learned that God’s
compassion toward human suffering is integral to His love.26 Joseph Smith also learned
that God desires that His children receive the same kind of exalted existence
of which He partakes. As God declared, “This is my work and my glory—to bring
to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”27
In 1832, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon experienced a
vision of the afterlife. In the vision, they learned that the just and unjust
alike would receive immortality through a universal resurrection, but only
those “who overcome by faith, and are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise”
would receive the fulness of God’s glory and be “gods, even the sons of God.”28 Another revelation soon
confirmed that “the saints shall be filled with his glory, and receive their
inheritance and be made equal with him.”29 Latter-day Saints use the
term exaltation to describe the glorious reward of receiving
one’s full inheritance as a child of Heavenly Father, which is available
through the Atonement of Christ, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the
gospel.30
This striking view of each human’s potential future was
accompanied by revealed teachings on humanity’s past. As Joseph Smith continued
to receive revelations, he learned that the light or intelligence at the core
of each human soul “was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” God is the
Father of each human spirit, and because only “spirit and element, inseparably
connected, receive a fulness of joy,” He presented a plan for human beings to
receive physical bodies and progress through their mortal experience toward a
fulness of joy. Earthly birth, then, is not the beginning of an individual’s
life: “Man was also in the beginning with God.”31 Likewise, Joseph Smith taught
that the material world has eternal roots, fully repudiating the concept of
creation ex nihilo. “Earth, water &c—all these had their
existence in an elementary State from Eternity,” he said in an 1839 sermon.32 God organized the universe
out of existing elements.
Joseph Smith continued to receive revelation on the
themes of divine nature and exaltation during the last two years of his life.
In a revelation recorded in July 1843 that linked exaltation with eternal
marriage, the Lord declared that those who keep covenants, including the
covenant of eternal marriage, will inherit “all heights and depths.” “Then,”
says the revelation, “shall they be gods, because they have no end.” They will
receive “a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.”33
The following April, feeling he was “never in any nearer
relationship to God than at the present time,”34 Joseph Smith spoke about the
nature of God and the future of humankind to the Saints, who had gathered for a
general Church conference. He used the occasion in part to reflect upon the
death of a Church member named King Follett, who had died unexpectedly a month
earlier. When he rose to speak, the wind was blowing, so Joseph asked his
listeners to give him their “profound attention” and to “pray that the L[ord] may
strengthen my lungs” and stay the winds until his message had been delivered.35
“What kind of a being is God?” he asked. Human beings
needed to know, he argued, because “if men do not comprehend the character of
God they do not comprehend themselves.”36 In that phrase, the Prophet
collapsed the gulf that centuries of confusion had created between God and humanity.
Human nature was at its core divine. God “was once as one of us” and “all the
spirits that God ever sent into the world” were likewise “susceptible of
enlargement.” Joseph Smith preached that long before the world was formed, God
found “himself in the midst” of these beings and “saw proper to institute laws
whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself”37 and be “exalted” with Him.38
Joseph told the assembled Saints, “You have got to learn
how to be a god yourself.”39 In order to do that, the
Saints needed to learn godliness, or to be more like God. The process would be
ongoing and would require patience, faith, continuing repentance, obedience to
the commandments of the gospel, and reliance on Christ. Like ascending a
ladder, individuals needed to learn the “first prin[ciples] of the Gospel” and
continue beyond the limits of mortal knowledge until they could “learn the last
prin[ciples] of the Gospel” when the time came.40 “It is not all to be
comprehended in this world,” Joseph said.41 “It will take a long time
after the grave to understand the whole.”42
That was the last time the Prophet spoke in a general
conference. Three months later, a mob stormed Carthage Jail and martyred him
and his brother Hyrum.
What has been taught in the Church about divine nature
since Joseph Smith?
Since that sermon, known as the King Follett discourse,
the doctrine that humans can progress to exaltation and godliness has been
taught within the Church. Lorenzo Snow, the Church’s fifth President, coined a
well-known couplet: “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.”43 Little has been revealed
about the first half of this couplet, and consequently little is taught. When
asked about this topic, Church President Gordon B. Hinckley told a reporter in
1997, “That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don’t know very much
about.” When asked about the belief in humans’ divine potential, President
Hinckley responded, “Well, as God is, man may become. We believe in eternal
progression. Very strongly.”44
Eliza R. Snow, a Church leader and poet, rejoiced over
the doctrine that we are, in a full and absolute sense, children of God. “I had
learned to call thee Father, / Thru thy Spirit from on high,” she wrote, “But,
until the key of knowledge / Was restored, I knew not why.” Latter-day Saints
have also been moved by the knowledge that their divine parentage includes a
Heavenly Mother as well as a Heavenly Father. Expressing that truth, Eliza R.
Snow asked, “In the heav’ns are parents single?” and answered with a
resounding no: “Truth eternal / Tells me I’ve a mother there.”45 That knowledge plays an
important role in Latter-day Saint belief. As Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles wrote, “Our theology begins with heavenly
parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.”46
Humankind’s divine nature and potential for exaltation
have been repeatedly taught in general conference addresses, Church magazines,
and other Church materials. “Divine nature” is one of eight core values in the
Church’s Young Women program. Teaching on human beings’ divine parentage,
nature, and potential features prominently in “The Family: A Proclamation to
the World.” Divine nature and exaltation are essential and beloved teachings in
the Church.
Does belief in exaltation make Latter-day Saints
polytheists?
For some observers, the doctrine that humans should
strive for godliness may evoke images of ancient pantheons with competing
deities. Such images are incompatible with Latter-day Saint doctrine.
Latter-day Saints believe that God’s children will always worship Him. Our
progression will never change His identity as our Father and our God. Indeed,
our exalted, eternal relationship with Him will be part of the “fulness of joy”
He desires for us.
Latter-day Saints also believe strongly in the
fundamental unity of the divine. They believe that God the Father, Jesus Christ
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, though distinct beings, are unified in purpose and
doctrine.47 It is in this light that
Latter-day Saints understand Jesus’s prayer for His disciples through the ages:
“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they
also may be one in us.”48
If humans live out of harmony with God’s goodness, they
cannot grow into God’s glory. Joseph Smith taught that “the powers of heaven
cannot be controlled nor handled only [except] upon the principles of
righteousness.” When humans abandon God’s selfless purposes and standards, “the
heavens withdraw themselves [and] the Spirit of the Lord is grieved.”49 Pride is incompatible with
progress; disunity is impossible between exalted beings.
How do Latter-day Saints envision exaltation?
Since human conceptions of reality are necessarily
limited in mortality, religions struggle to adequately articulate their visions
of eternal glory. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared
for them that love him.”50 These limitations make it
easy for images of salvation to become cartoonish when represented in popular
culture. For example, scriptural expressions of the deep peace and overwhelming
joy of salvation are often reproduced in the well-known image of humans sitting
on their own clouds and playing harps after death. Latter-day Saints’ doctrine
of exaltation is often similarly reduced in media to a cartoonish image of
people receiving their own planets.
A cloud and harp are hardly a satisfying image for
eternal joy, although most Christians would agree that inspired music can be a
tiny foretaste of the joy of eternal salvation. Likewise, while few Latter-day
Saints would identify with caricatures of having their own planet, most would
agree that the awe inspired by creation hints at our creative potential in the
eternities.
Latter-day Saints tend to imagine exaltation through the
lens of the sacred in mortal experience. They see the seeds of godhood in the
joy of bearing and nurturing children and the intense love they feel for those
children, in the impulse to reach out in compassionate service to others, in
the moments they are caught off guard by the beauty and order of the universe,
in the grounding feeling of making and keeping divine covenants. Church members
imagine exaltation less through images of what they will get and
more through the relationships they have now and how those relationships might
be purified and elevated. As the scriptures teach, “That same sociality which
exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with
eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.”51
How important are teachings about exaltation to Latter-day
Saint beliefs overall?
The teaching that human beings have a divine nature and
future shapes the way Latter-day Saints view fundamental doctrine. Perhaps most
significantly, belief in divine nature helps us more deeply appreciate the
Atonement of Jesus Christ. While many Christian theologians have expressed the
magnitude of the Savior’s Atonement by emphasizing human depravity, Latter-day
Saints understand the magnitude of the Atonement of Christ in terms of the vast
human potential it makes possible. Christ’s Atonement not only provides
forgiveness from sin and victory over death, it also redeems imperfect
relationships, heals the spiritual wounds that stifle growth, and strengthens
and enables individuals to develop the attributes of Christ.52 Latter-day Saints believe
that it is only through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that we can have a sure
hope of eternal glory and that the power of His Atonement is fully accessed
only by faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the
Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end in following the instruction and example of
Christ.53 Thus, those who become like
God and enter into a fulness of His glory are described as people who have been
“made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out
this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood.”54
An awareness of humans’ divine potential also influences
Latter-day Saints’ understanding of gospel principles such as the importance of
divine commandments, the role of temples, and the sanctity of individual moral
agency. Belief that human beings are actually God’s children also changes
Latter-day Saints’ behavior and attitudes. For example, even in societies where
casual and premarital sex are considered acceptable, Latter-day Saints retain a
deep reverence for the God-given procreative and bonding powers of human sexual
intimacy and remain committed to a higher standard in the use of those sacred
powers. Studies suggest that Latter-day Saints place an exceptionally high
priority on marriage and parenthood,55 a consequence in part of a
strong belief in heavenly parents and a commitment to strive for that divinity.
Conclusion
All human beings are children of loving heavenly parents
and possess seeds of divinity within them. In His infinite love, God invites
His children to cultivate their eternal potential by the grace of God, through
the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.56 The doctrine of humans’
eternal potential to become like their Heavenly Father is central to the gospel
of Jesus Christ and inspires love, hope, and gratitude in the hearts of
faithful Latter-day Saints.
Resources
Matthew 5:48. The word perfect in Matthew 5:48 can
also be translated whole or complete, implying a
distant objective and ongoing, concerted effort (see Russell M. Nelson, “Perfection Pending,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 86).
Norman Russell, The
Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (2004), 6.
Irenaeus, “Against
Heresies,” in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The
Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Father Down to A.D.
325 (1977), 1:526.
Clement, “Exhortation to
the Heathen,” in Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 2:174.
Saint Basil the Great, “On
the Spirit,” in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., A Select Library of
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd series
(1994), 8:16.
There are likely important
differences as well as similarities between the thinking of the church fathers
and Latter-day Saint teachings. For a discussion of similarities and
differences between exaltation as understood by Latter-day Saints and modern
Eastern Orthodox understanding of statements by church fathers on deification,
see Jordan Vajda, “Partakers of the Divine Nature: A Comparative Analysis of
Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization,” Occasional Papers Series, no.
3 (2002), available at maxwellinstitute.byu.edu.
See Vladimir Kharlamov,
“Rhetorical Application of Theosis in Greek Patristic
Theology,” in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, eds., Partakers
of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the
Christian Traditions (2008), 115.
Quoted in Russell, Doctrine
of Deification, 1; italics added.
As the second-century
church father Justin Martyr said, “We have been taught that He in the beginning
did of His goodness, for man’s sake, create all things out of unformed matter”
(The First Apology of Justin, in Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene
Fathers, 1:165; see also Frances Young, “‘Creatio Ex Nihilo’: A
Context for the Emergence of the Christian Doctrine of Creation,”Scottish
Journal of Theology 44, no. 1 [1991]: 139–51; Markus Bockmuehl, “Creation
Ex Nihilo in Palestinian Judaism and Early Christianity,” Scottish
Journal of Theology 66, no. 3 [2012]: 253–70).
For information on the
second-century context that gave birth to creation ex nihilo, see Gerhard
May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in
Early Christian Thought (2004).
See Terryl L. Givens, When
Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought (2010).
A minor resurgence of the
doctrine of deification within Western Christianity occurred at the hands of a
group of 17th-century English clergymen-scholars, called the Cambridge
Platonists. (See Benjamin Whichcote, “The Manifestation of Christ and the
Deification of Man,” in C. A. Patrides, ed., The Cambridge Platonists [1980],
70.)
In “The Place of Theosis in
Orthodox Theology,” Andrew Louth describes Eastern Orthodoxy as focused on a
“greater arch, leading from creation to deification” and feels that Catholic
and Protestant theologies have focused on a partial “lesser arch, from Fall to
redemption” to the exclusion of that whole (in Christensen and Wittung, Partakers
of the Divine Nature, 35).
Westminster Confession of
Faith, chap. 2 (1646). The Westminster Confession was drawn up by the
Westminster Assembly of 1646 as a standard for the doctrine, worship, and
government of the Church of England. Its contents have guided the worship of a
number of Protestant churches since the time of its writing.
Ether 3:6; see also Doctrine and Covenants 130:22; Moses 6:8–9. On Joseph Smith’s teachings on the embodiment of God,
see David L. Paulsen, “The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment: Restoration,
Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives,” BYU Studies 35,
no. 4 (1995–96): 13–39, available at byustudies.byu.edu.
See Moses 7:31–37. On the profundity of this image, see Terryl Givens
and Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life (2012).
See Dallin H. Oaks, “No Other Gods,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov.
2013; Russell M. Nelson, “Salvation and Exaltation,” Ensign or Liahona, May
2008; see also Articles of Faith 1:3.
Joseph Smith, remarks,
delivered before Aug. 8, 1839, in Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook,
eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the
Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (1980), 9; also available
at josephsmithpapers.org.
Wilford Woodruff journal,
Apr. 6, 1844, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
Discourse, Apr. 7, 1844, as
reported by William Clayton, available at josephsmithpapers.org. While the King Follett discourse represents Joseph
Smith’s most detailed known discussion of divine nature and exaltation, it is
important to note that because of the wind on the day the sermon was delivered
and the limitations of transcription techniques, we are left without certainty
about Joseph Smith’s exact or complete wording during the sermon. The partial
accounts of four witnesses and an early published account give us a record, if
only an imperfect one, of what Joseph Smith taught on the occasion, and what he
taught gives us insight into the meaning of numerous passages of scripture. But
the surviving sermon text is not canonized and should not be treated as a
doctrinal standard in and of itself. For the accounts of Willard Richards,
William Clayton, Thomas Bullock, Wilford Woodruff, and the August 15,
1844, Times and Seasons, see “Accounts of the ‘King Follett
Sermon’” on the Joseph Smith
Papers website.
Discourse, Apr. 7, 1844, as
reported by Willard Richards, available at josephsmithpapers.org, spelling modernized.
Discourse, Apr. 7, 1844, as
reported by Wilford Woodruff, available at josephsmithpapers.org, spelling modernized.
Eliza R. Snow, Biography
and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow (1884), 46. The couplet, which has
never been canonized, has been formulated in slightly different ways. For
others, see The Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, ed. Clyde J.
Williams (1996), 1–9.
Don Lattin, “Musings of the
Main Mormon,” San Francisco Chronicle, Apr. 13, 1997; see also
David Van Biema, “Kingdom Come,” Time, Aug. 4, 1997, 56.
First published as a poem,
this later became a popular hymn. (Eliza R. Snow, “My Father in Heaven,” Times
and Seasons, Nov. 15, 1845, 1039; “O My Father,” Hymns, no. 292; see also Jill Mulvay
Derr, “The Significance of ‘O My Father’ in the Personal Journey of Eliza R.
Snow,” BYU Studies 36, no. 1 [1996–97]: 84–126, available
at byustudies.byu.edu.) For Latter-day Saint thought on Mother in Heaven,
see David L. Paulsen and Martin Pulido, “‘A Mother There’: A Survey of
Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven,” BYU Studies 50,
no. 1 (2011): 70–97, available at byustudies.byu.edu.
See “Mormons in
America—Certain in Their Beliefs, Uncertain of Their Place in Society,” Pew
Research, Religion and Public Life Project, Jan. 12, 2012, available at pewforum.org.