Becoming Gods? Is this true?

[Flyonthewall]

Originally Posted by Malachi7

Sir, I'm asking about a specific topic regarding your religion. I'm a guest in your house asking questions about your beliefs.

Do you personally believe that you'll become a God and have spirit-children (I assume with a Goddess wife) and that these spirit-children will later take on physical bodies and become Gods themselves? That's what I read on a site critical of the Mormon religion.

Unfortuneately, sites that are critical will take a complex doctrine and over-simplify it to the point where it is not exactly what is taught. For example, your question makes it sound like we think all LDS will become gods. That is not true - only those that remain faithful and are found worthy.

For what it's worth, I think it's a legitimate criticism to say that the Mormon religion believes things very different from Christianity.

We do believe things differently from mainstream Christianity, but the things we believe are founded in scripture. The problem is, most Christians do not get the same meaning out of them and reject our claims out of hand.
The great thing is, we have a prophet, and an additional testament of Jesus Christ to clarify concepts.

[Snow]

Originally Posted by Malachi7

Sir, this concept isn't just different from mainstream Christianity. It's just different...period.

As far as I can tell it's uniquely Mormon.

Hardly unique. In the words of one writer, the teaching of man becoming god was, among the early Christian Fathers, "utterly ubiquitous."

William R. Inge, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote:
"God became man, that we might become God" was a commonplace of doctrinal theology at least until the time of Augustine, and that "deification holds a very large place in the writings of the fathers...We find it in Irenaeus as well as in Clement, in Athanasius as well in Gregory of Nysee. St. Augustine was no more afraid of deificari in Latin than Origen of apotheosis in Greek...To modern ears the word deification sounds not only strange but arrogant and shocking. [William Ralph Inge, Christian Mysticism (London, Metheun & Co., 1948[1899]), 13, 356.]

The teaching survives in the Eastern Orthodox tradition:

The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology describes "deification" thusly:
Deification (Greek Theosis) is for orthodoxy the goal of every Christian. Man, according to the Bible, is ‘made in the image and likeness of God’...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 O.T. and N.T. (Ps. 82: (81) .6; 2_Pet. 1:4), and it is essentially the teaching both of St. Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (Rom. 8:9-17, Gal. 4:5-7) and the fourth gospel (John 17:21-23). [Alan Richardson (editor), The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1983)]

[tubaloth]

Wow a late night “battle” going on.

Malachi7

There seems kind of be a lot of confusion happening. I think the biggest thing that has been over looked in really our Idea of who God is!

I’m not sure if you have read Joseph Smith’s account But this kind of sets the stage for everything else.

I’m going to go through this kind of quickly. I hope I don’t loose you.

The LDS church believes that when Christ was on the earth he set up his Gospel and Kingdom on the earth (with Revelation given to man). As man turned his Back on the Gospel of Jesus Christ it was then taken from the earth. (why did apostles stop being called? Why did the bible end?) This falling away we call the Apostasy. But God always promised that his Church would be restored in the last days. Fast forward to 1820. Joseph Smith was struggling with the idea of Religion and which church to join. How could all churches be of God if they teach things so differently. Joseph Smith then came across James 1:5 about asking God, and He well give us an answer if we ask in Faith. This Joseph Smith did (at the age of 14). What happen to Joseph Smith is pretty much the most remarkable thing that can happen for anybody on this earth. Its how prophets are called. Joseph Smith prayed and Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him.

From the start in the LDS teachings God has a body of Flesh and Bones! (as does Jesus Christ). We also believe they are separate individuals.

Something else you probably need to understand is our teachings on marriage. We believe that marriage is sealed by the power of God (through his Priesthood). Being in the power of God, it can be bound on earth and in heaven. Really meaning that Marriage is made to last beyond this earth life in to the heavens. We really believe that to get to “Heaven” we need to be marred. Both Husband and Wife.

Now the whole point of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is to gain all our Father has! We really do believe this! We believe that our Heavenly Father loves us enough that he does give us all he has! Including his power, and becoming just like He is!

Do we sit around on Sunday during church talking about what it is going to be like to be a god. No. You might hear it talked about a couple of times a YEAR! This doctrine is so deep no LDS member can really completely comprehend what it really means! What it does for us is we realize we have a lot to live up to! We realize this earth life is more then just a fun place to play freebie. That we are here to learn and grow and to really become like Jesus Christ, and His Father.

Now, I hope with this added understanding, you can see how we see the verses in the bible different then you probably have seen them.
So when it says we can become joined heirs we Christ! We really do believe that. We can gain the same things that Christ did! What did Christ get, he become God! We believe that this is possible for us too.

This idea is hard for people to understand. I don’t expect you to just grab hold of it. What I do expect is that you search the scriptures and look at them a little closer then maybe you had before. (Read the other scriptures people have sited so far).

One of the early Prophets (yes we have prophets again) named Lorenzo Snow taught this doctrine about us becoming like God. Pondered over some of the scriptures we have sited and a few others like:
(1 John 3:2-3.)
2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
3 And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

We really do believe we can be like him.
Lorenzo Snow wrote this poem really as he ponder over this topic.

Dear Brother:

Hast thou not been unwisely bold,
Man's destiny to thus unfold?
To raise, promote such high desire,
Such vast ambition thus inspire?
Still, 'tis no phantom that we trace
Man's ultimatum in life's race;

This royal path has long been trod
By righteous men, each now a God:
As Abra'm, Isaac, Jacob, too,
First babes, then men—to gods they grew.
As man now is, our God once was;
As now God is, so man may be,—
Which doth unfold man's destiny.
For John declares: When Christ we see
Like unto him we'll truly be.
And he who has this hope within,
Will purify himself from sin.
Who keep this object grand in view,
To folly, sin, will bid adieu,
Nor wallow in the mire anew;
Nor ever seek to carve his name
High on the shaft of worldly fame;
But here his ultimatum trace:
The head of all his spirit-race.
Ah, well: that taught by you, dear Paul,
'Though much amazed, we see it all;
Our Father God, has ope'd our eyes,
We cannot view it otherwise.
The boy, like to his father grown,
Has but attained unto his own;
To grow to sire from state of son,
Is not 'gainst Nature's course to run.
A son of God, like God to be,
Would not be robbing Deity;
And he who has this hope within,
Will purify himself from sin.
You're right, St. John, supremely right:
Whoe'er essays to climb this height,
Will cleanse himself of sin entire—
Or else 'twere needless to aspire.

—Cited in Commentary 2:532-33
(Bruce R. McConkie, The Promised Messiah: The First Coming of Christ [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1978], 134.)

[Malachi7]

Originally Posted by Snow

Hardly unique. In the words of one writer, the teaching of man becoming god was, among the early Christian Fathers, "utterly ubiquitous."

William R. Inge, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote:
"God became man, that we might become God" was a commonplace of doctrinal theology at least until the time of Augustine, and that "deification holds a very large place in the writings of the fathers...We find it in Irenaeus as well as in Clement, in Athanasius as well in Gregory of Nysee. St. Augustine was no more afraid of deificari in Latin than Origen of apotheosis in Greek...To modern ears the word deification sounds not only strange but arrogant and shocking. [William Ralph Inge, Christian Mysticism (London, Metheun & Co., 1948[1899]), 13, 356.]

The teaching survives in the Eastern Orthodox tradition:

The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology describes "deification" thusly:
Deification (Greek Theosis) is for orthodoxy the goal of every Christian. Man, according to the Bible, is ‘made in the image and likeness of God’...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 O.T. and N.T. (Ps. 82: (81) .6; 2_Pet. 1:4), and it is essentially the teaching both of St. Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (Rom. 8:9-17, Gal. 4:5-7) and the fourth gospel (John 17:21-23). [Alan Richardson (editor), The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1983)]

Snow, I've done more reading. While there is much that could be debated regarding the topic of theosis, that's not what I'm after here. (C.S. Lewis did not intend for us to believe that he believed men could become deity. In fact, he's quoted as saying that for men to aspire to the attributes that only God possesses, i.e. omniscience and omnipotence, is based on self-intoxication.) What I'm strictly after is what LDS believe about the afterlife.

What I've found out from websites critical of your religion is that Mormons are taught to believe that "exaltation" is a state of being that only married Mormons achieve and that their family will continue in the eternities and that the spirit-children of those families will inhabit physical bodies to live on another planet. I've read that those children are said to learn to become Gods themselves and repeat the process of having spirit-children with their "celestial" mates.

Is that what Mormonism would have us believe?

If so, I'm sure you'll understand when I say I find that hard to accept as even remotely a Christian belief.

[crytsprospect]

You talk allot but you don't listen how sad for you.

[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by Malachi7

Hi:

I read on a website that it's a Mormon belief that you can become Gods and Goddesses.

And that you will have children after you die.

And that your children will later become Gods too...if they take on physical bodies.

Are they making that up about LDS beliefs?

No, they are not making it up. It is LDS doctrine. And as others have already said it was originally Christian doctrine until the apostacy.

We believe that through Joseph Smith the full Gospel was restored to the earth and once again we have the same teachings which existed in the original church.

Other denominations continue to reject them, even though they are Biblical. That's OK. Everyone has their own agency and freedom to choose what to believe. We do not seek to impose our beliefs on you. However, I would ask that you read the Bible with an open mind and accept our right to our beliefs which we see there in the Bible.

We believe that the original teachings of Jesus Christ have been restored. We do not tell you that you are not Christian because you do not believe all that he taught. Please do not tell us that we are not Christian because we do.

[Flyonthewall]

Originally Posted by skalenfehl

It was also different to the Jews when they were about to stone Christ. But alas, it's written plain as day. I gotta get to bed. Good night.

This is a good point to observe. The traditional religious leaders in the days of Christ, who were supposedly the scriptural scholars of the day, rejected the fulfillment of the very scriptures they were keepers of. They did not understand the true meaning of the scriptures, because too many man-made concepts were put in place to make them conform to the philosophies of men.

Likewise, today, the traditional religious leaders, who are supposedly scriptoral scholars, reject the true meanings of the scriptures, because of the man-made concepts that have been put in place.

And just as in the days of Christ, the religious leaders stated that Christ was a heretic because He didn't teach the same things they did, so now days, when the truth is restored, religious leaders of this day state that our teachings are "non-Christian" or even heretical.

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

[skalenfehl]

Exactly my point. He overlooked or ignored my other points, though. I recognize the difference between nit-pickers and sincere investigators.

The bottom line is what we believe is founded on revelation of our modern day prophets and not "Christian teachers", which could be compared to the Jewish scholars who knew the law, but did not understand the law.

If we had lived in Christ's time or before, we'd have other prophets like, ironic to this topic, Malachi, who's purpose was to correct the lax religious and social behavior of the Israelites at the time. He told the people of their wrong doings (robbing God by not paying their tithes, priests not teaching well, divorce, etc).

Each prophet had a different message for the people in their particular time. Moses led the Isrealites out of Egypt, received the 10 commandments, the law of Moses, etc. Noah warned people to repent lest they be wiped out, and so on. Our prophets of today receive revelation pertaining to our times and our circumstances, including further revelations about the doctrine of salvation and exaltation. The warnings of our day include things like debt/living within our means, food storage/emergency preparedness, pornography, etc.)

Christian teachers of other faiths have only the Bible as far as it is translated correctly to interpret the definition of Christianity, teach basic gospel principles like baptism, but do not have the authority to baptize unto salvation, or to act in God's name, etc. I could go on...

[Snow]

Originally Posted by Malachi7

Snow, I've done more reading. While there is much that could be debated regarding the topic of theosis, that's not what I'm after here. (C.S. Lewis did not intend for us to believe that he believed men could become deity. In fact, he's quoted as saying that for men to aspire to the attributes that only God possesses, i.e. omniscience and omnipotence, is based on self-intoxication.) What I'm strictly after is what LDS believe about the afterlife.

What I've found out from websites critical of your religion is that Mormons are taught to believe that "exaltation" is a state of being that only married Mormons achieve and that their family will continue in the eternities and that the spirit-children of those families will inhabit physical bodies to live on another planet. I've read that those children are said to learn to become Gods themselves and repeat the process of having spirit-children with their "celestial" mates.

Is that what Mormonism would have us believe?

If so, I'm sure you'll understand when I say I find that hard to accept as even remotely a Christian belief.

Yes, I understand why you find it hard to believe since until last night you didn't even know that it was a belief with theologians throughout history, the orthodox tradition, the early Church Fathers and the bible itself.

It's odd that with all the names I gave you would focus on CS Lewis, - instead of the many, many Church fathers. But here is one thing that Lewis said:

"There are no ordinary people," writes Lewis. Rather, we "live in a society of possible gods and goddesses. The dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship."

In The Screwtape Letters Lewis has his devil say, "the obedience which the Enemy [i.e., God] demands of men is quite a different thing [from his own Satanic goals]. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and his service is not. o. mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself--creatures whose life, on a miniature scale, will be qualitatively like his own."

Regardless, of what Lewis thought, of more interest is what the early Christians taught and believed, and how their beliefs were ground in the New and Old Testament.

Why is it hard to accept as a Christian belief if Christians taught and believed it going back 2000 years?

Perhaps, now having an idea of just how widespread and important the idea of theosis or divinization - what The Church of Jesus Christ calls exaltation - is, you are now hung up on some specifics, which, from your last post, are:

1. That divinization is restricted to faithful members of (what we believe to be) God's sole authorized Church

2. Families are eternal

3. Resurrected and divinized beings possess physical bodies

4. Those physical bodies occupy some physical space

5. We along with Christ, share in the Father's glory and become joint heirs of all that the father has, become divinized and thus share in God's creative powers.

Can you tell me just what, specifically, about any or all of those you labor with?

[BenRaines]

Welcome back Snow.

Ben Raines