Craig Speechly Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 (edited) Having grown up during the 70's and 80's, I well remember the many talks by Bruce R. McConkie, Spencer W. Kimball and Marion G. Hanks, to name but a few, who proudly proclaimed to all the world the Mormon Doctrine of Eternal Progression and our ability to receive all that God has, even Godhood and all of it's rewards, including creating our own worlds and yes even our own planet on which to dwell in our own heaven. Seemingly embarrassed by this doctrine and in part due to it's wide spread exposure from the Book of Mormon musical, the church is now back tracking and distancing itself from these former bedrock doctrines. In the Hello Saints podcast, hosted by Evangelical Pastor Jeff McCullough, Jeff interviews members of the church to gain understanding and build bridges. In episode 5, Jeff interviews Religion Professor & LDS Author David Butler. Butler basically denies this once core belief suggesting with a laugh... "well that made for a great musical", but then denies that it is a core LDS belief. Butler also suggests that eternal marriage involving multiple wives is optional with the 1st spouse having veto rights. What the Fudge? The church has also distanced itself from this doctrine in it's essay. Sorry but this is not a doctrine that I even recognize. Or is this just an effort at wink, wink and face saving? Has anyone else noticed this distancing from a once core Enteral Progression doctrine to make the church more palatable to Christian evangelicalism? You can listen to this podcast Here You can listen to the Book of Mormon Musical song "I Believe" Here and the Essay Here Here are just a few quotes that support the once traditional Plan of Salvation that Butler is now walking away from. “We educate ourselves in the secular field and in the spiritual field so that we may one day create worlds, people and govern them.” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 386). In 2001 Henry B. Eyring repeated the key part of this quote in a Church Educational System (CES) fireside talk on Sunday, May 6, in Moscow, Idaho. His message was titled, “Drive for learning must have powerful spiritual component.” The quote was repeated not only in the LDS Church News, but also in the October 2002 Ensign. On the official LDS seminary website, Kimball’s quote was again cited by Mormon Apostle Richard G. Scott. In Mormonism, “seminary” is geared for high-school students. “The real life we’re preparing for is eternal life. Secular knowledge has for us eternal significance. Our conviction is that God, our Heavenly Father, wants us to live the life that He does. We learn both the spiritual things and the secular things ‘so we may one day create worlds [and] people and govern them’ (Spencer W. Kimball, The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 386).” (Henry B. Eyring) “Brethren, 225,000 of you are here tonight. I suppose 225,000 of you may become gods. There seems to be plenty of space out there in the universe. And the Lord has proved that he knows how to do it. I think he could make, or probably have us help make, worlds for all of us, for every one of us 225,000” (Spencer W. Kimball, “The Privilege of Holding the Priesthood,” Ensign (Conference Edition), November 1975, p. 80. Quoted in Doctrine and Covenants Institute Student Manual). 10th President Joseph Fielding Smith “That great blessing of celestial glory could never have come to us without a period of time in mortality, and so we came here in this mortal world. We are in school, the mortal school, to gain the experiences, the training, the joys, and the sufferings that we partake of, that we might be educated in all these things and be prepared, if we are faithful and true to the commandments of the Lord, to become sons and daughters of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ; and in His presence to go on to a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever, and perhaps through our faithfulness to have the opportunity of building worlds and peopling them.” (Joseph Fielding Smith, “Adam’s Role in Bringing Us Mortality,” General Conference, Oct. 1976, reprinted in Liahona, Jan. 2006.) “The Father has promised us that through our faithfulness we shall be blessed with the fullness of his kingdom. In other words, we will have the privilege of becoming like him. To become like him we must have all the powers of godhood; thus a man and his wife when glorified will have spirit children who eventually will go on an earth like this one we are on and pass through the same kind of experiences, being subject to mortal conditions, and if faithful, then they also will receive the fullness of exaltation and partake of the same blessings. There is no end to this development; it will go on forever. We will become gods and have jurisdiction over worlds, and these worlds will be peopled by our own offspring.” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation 2:48, quoted in Achieving a Celestial Marriage Student Manual, 1976, p.132) 5th President Lorenzo Snow On page 90 (chapter five) of the correlated manual titled Presidents of the Church Student Manual: Religion 345 (2004), under the subheading, “They Shall Organize Worlds and Rule Over Them,” it states: “Only a short time before his death, President Snow visited the Brigham Young University [then Brigham Young Academy], at Provo. President Brimhall escorted the party through one of the buildings; he wanted to reach the assembly room as soon as possible, as the students had already gathered. They were going through one of the kindergarten rooms; President Brimhall had reached the door and was about to open it and go on when President Snow said: ‘Wait a moment, President Brimhall, I want to see these children at work; what are they doing?’ Brother Brimhall replied that they were making clay spheres. ‘That is very interesting,’ the President said. ‘I want to watch them.’ He quietly watched the children for several minutes and then lifted a little girl, perhaps six years of age, and stood her on a table. He then took the clay sphere from her hand, and, turning to Brother Brimhall, said: ‘President Brimhall, these children are now at play, making mud worlds, the time will come when some of these boys, through their faithfulness to the gospel, will progress and develop in knowledge, intelligence and power, in future eternities, until they shall be able to go out into space where there is unorganized matter and call together the necessary elements, and through their knowledge of and control over the laws and powers of nature, to organize matter into worlds on which their posterity may dwell, and over which they shall rule as gods.’ (Snow, Improvement Era, June 1919, 658–59).” “We are the offspring of God, born with the same faculties and powers as He possesses, capable of enlargement through the experience that we are now passing through in our second estate… He has begotten us in His own image. He has given us faculties and powers that are capable of enlargement until His fullness is reached which He has promised — until we shall sit upon thrones, governing and controlling our posterity from eternity to eternity, and increasing eternally.” (Millennial Star 56:772, October 5, 1894) “When two Latter-day Saints are united together in marriage, promises are made to them concerning their offspring that reach from eternity to eternity. They are promised that they shall have the power and the right to govern and control and administer salvation and exaltation and glory to their offspring, worlds without end. And what offspring they do not have here, undoubtedly there will be opportunities to have them hereafter. What else could man wish? A man and a woman, in the other life, having celestial bodies, free from sickness and disease, glorified and beautified beyond description, standing in the midst of their posterity, governing and controlling them, administering life, exaltation and glory worlds without end” (Deseret News, 13 Mar. 1897; quoted by Spencer W. Kimball in The Miracle of Forgiveness [1969], 246; See also Lesson 10 of The Latter-day Saint Woman: Basic Manual for Women, Part A). 2nd President Brigham Young “All those who are counted worthy to be exalted and to become Gods, even the sons of God, will go forth and have earths and worlds like those who framed this and millions on millions of others.” (Journal of Discourses 17:143) “Having fought the good fight we then shall be prepared to lay our bodies down to rest to await the morning of the resurrection when they will come forth and be reunited with the spirits, the faithful, as it is said, receiving crowns, glory, immortality and eternal lives, even a fulness with the Father, when Jesus shall present His work to the Father, saying, ‘Father, here is the work thou gavest me to do.’ Then will they become Gods, even the sons of God; then will they become eternal fathers, eternal mothers, eternal sons and eternal daughters; being eternal in their organization they go from glory to glory, from power to power; they will never cease to increase and to multiply, worlds without end. When they receive their crowns, their dominions, they then will be prepared to frame earths like unto ours and to people them in the same manner as we have been brought forth by our parents, by our Father and God” (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 283; Journal of Discourses 18:259, October 8, 1876) Apostle Orson Pratt “But another and still greater object the Lord had in view in sending us down from yonder world to this is, that we might be redeemed in due time, by keeping the celestial law, and have our tabernacles restored to us in all the beauty of immortality. Then we will be able to multiply and extend forth our posterity and the increase of our dominion without end. Can spirits do this? No, they remain single. There are no marriages among spirits, no coupling together of the males and females among them; but when they rise from the grave, after being tabernacled in mortal bodies, they have all the functions that are necessary to people worlds. As our Father and God begat us, sons and daughters, so will we rise immortal, males and females, and beget children, and, in our turn, form and create worlds, and send forth our spirit children to inherit those worlds, the same as we were sent here, and thus will the works of God continue, and not only God himself, and His Son Jesus Christ have the power of endless lives, but all of His redeemed offspring.” (Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 14:242) “Each God, through his wife or wives, raises up a numerous family of sons and daughters; indeed, there will be no end to the increase of his own children: for each father and mother will be in a condition to multiply forever and ever. As soon as each God has begotten many millions of male and female spirits, and his Heavenly inheritance becomes too small, to comfortably accommodate his great family, he, in connection with his sons, organizes a new world, after a similar order to the one which we now inhabit, where he sends both the male and female spirits to inhabit tabernacles of flesh and bones. Thus each God forms a world for the accommodation of his own sons and daughters who are sent forth in their times and seasons, and generations to be born into the same. The inhabitants of each world are required to reverence, adore, and worship their own personal father who dwells in the Heaven which they formerly inhabited.” (The Seer, 37, March 1853) Apostle Moses Thatcher “There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth it understanding; the sinful who listen and obey are led to repentance, and, through the doors of baptism of the water and spirit are brought out of wickedness to the enlightenment of pure knowledge, until in obedience to heavenly law they secure the keys of power authorizing them to pass by the angels, inherit glory, become heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ; and, having abiding in them eternal lives shall beget, throughout the endless ages of eternity, the souls of the children of men to the honor and glory of God, and create and have dominion over worlds.” (Moses Thatcher, Journal of Discourses 26:305) Apostle Melvin J. Ballard “What do we mean by endless or eternal increase? We mean that through the righteousness and faithfulness of men and women who keep the commandments of God they will come forth with celestial bodies, fitted and prepared to enter into their great, high and eternal glory in the celestial kingdom of God; and unto them, through their preparation, there will come children, who will be spirit children. I don’t think that is very difficult to comprehend and understand” (Three Degrees of Glory, 10, 1922). Apostle L. Tom Perry Elder L. Tom Perry, Receive Truth, Ensign (CR), November 1997, p.60 “Peter and John had little secular learning, being termed ignorant. But they knew the vital things of life, that God lives and that the crucified, resurrected Lord is the Son of God. They knew the path to eternal life. This they learned in a few decades of their mortal life. Their righteous lives opened the door to godhood for them and creation of worlds with eternal increase. For this they would probably need, eventually, a total knowledge of the sciences. But whereas Peter and John had only decades to learn and do the spiritual, they have already had nineteen centuries in which to learn the secular or the geology of the earth, the zoology and physiology and psychology of the creatures of the earth. Mortality is the time to learn first of God and the gospel and to perform the ordinances. After our feet are set firmly on the path to eternal life we can amass more knowledge of the secular things” (President Kimball Speaks Out [1981], 91). In an October, 1997 conference address titled, “Receive Truth,” Apostle L. Tom Perry cited 12th President Spencer W. Kimball who taught, “Peter and John had little secular learning, being termed ignorant. But they knew the vital things of life, that God lives and that the crucified, resurrected Lord is the Son of God. They knew the path to eternal life. This they learned in a few decades of their mortal life. Their righteous lives opened the door to godhood for them and creation of worlds with eternal increase” (President Kimball Speaks Out [1981], 91). (See Ensign, November 1997, p. 60). Apostle Bruce McConkie “Exalted parents are to their children as our Eternal Parents are to us. Eternal increase, a continuation of the seeds forever and ever, eternal lives — these comprise the eternal family of those who gain eternal life. For them new earths are created, and thus the on-rolling purposes of the Gods of Heaven go forward from eternity to eternity.” (Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, The Millennial Messiah, 23, 1982) LDS Church Manuals “To live in the highest part of the celestial kingdom is called exaltation or eternal life. To be able to live in this part of the celestial kingdom, people must have been married in the temple and must have kept the sacred promises they made in the temple. They will receive everything our Father in Heaven has and will become like Him. They will even be able to have spirit children and make new worlds for them to live on, and do all the things our Father in Heaven has done. People who are not married in the temple may live in other parts of the celestial kingdom, but they will not be exalted” (Gospel Fundamentals [2001], 201). “An essential requirement for exaltation is celestial marriage, for exaltation depends upon the continuation of the family in eternity and the power to populate other worlds as our Father did this one.” (Principles of the Gospel, published by the LDS Church, 1976) Other sources “And so through the power of the priesthood the man has the opportunity of obtaining that degree of perfection by which he may create worlds and populate them with his own offspring” (Patriarch Eldred G. Smith, BYU Speeches of the Year, March 10, 1964, p.7). “Long before our God began his creations, he dwelt on a mortal world like ours, one of the creations that his Father had created for him and his brethren. He, with many of his brethren, was obedient to the principles of the eternal gospel. One among these, it is presumed, was a savior for them, and through him they obtained a resurrection and an exaltation on an eternal, celestial world. 8 Then they gained the power and godhood of their Father and were made heirs of all that he had, continuing his works and creating worlds of their own for their own posterity—the same as their Father had done before, and his Father, and his Father, and on and on. . . Nothing is more basic in the restored gospel than these truths that, because of recent events of space travel, are so timely. The great hope of the gospel for us is that we may come to a oneness with our Lord and our Father and partake of this same work and glory and godhood. Being joint-heirs of all that the Father has, we may then look forward to using those powers to organize still other worlds from the unorganized matter that exists throughout boundless space. Creating other worlds, peopling them with our own eternal posterity, providing a savior for them, and making known to them the saving principles of the eternal gospel, that they may have the same experiences we are now having and be exalted with us in their turn—this is eternal life. No wonder this possibility continues to fascinate and inspire Saints of all ages.” (BYU Professor Kent Nielson, “People on Other Worlds”, Ensign, April 1971) “Brigham Young believed that man is sovereign over his own actions; yet he did not rule out the omnipotence of God. He recognized the possibility of divine intervention, such as the religious experience of Paul, but believed the ultimate decisions of life affecting man’s eternal destiny are to be left to man. This idea was so important to Brigham Young as he conceived the purpose of this mortal existence that he said that ‘the consent of the creature must be obtained before the Creator can rule perfectly.’ Explaining this with eternal perspective, Brigham Young said: ‘Man is made an agent to himself before his God; he is organized for the express purpose, that he may become like his master. The Lord has organized mankind for the purpose of increasing in that intelligence and truth. . . until he is capable of creating worlds on worlds, and becoming Gods, even the sons of God.’ Believing that ‘the power of choice all intelligent beings inherit from the Gods of eternity. . . is innate,’ ” (“The Reflections of Brigham Young on the Nature of Man and the State,” by J. Keith Melville, BYU Studies, vol. 4 (1961-1962), Num. 3 and 4 – Spring and Summer 1962, p.257) “So far as the stages of eternal progression and attainment have been made known through divine revelation, we are to understand that only resurrected and glorified beings can become parents of spirit offspring. Only such exalted souls have reached maturity in the appointed course of eternal life; and the spirits born to them in the eternal worlds will pass in due sequence through the several stages or estates by which the glorified parents have attained exaltation.” (A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency [Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund, Charles W. Penrose] and the Twelve, “The Father and the Son,” Improvement Era, June 1916, 942, quoted in Achieving a Celestial Marriage Student Manual, 131, 1976) In his book Doctrinal Details of the Plan of Salvation (2005), Mormon educator David J. Ridges, who served 35 years with the Church Educational System, listed 44 true or false questions in what he called a “Plan of Salvation Pretest.” Question 31 (page 4) states “Those who receive exaltation will actually be making and peopling worlds of their own.” On page 13 he states that the answer is true, “President Brigham Young said, ‘After men have got their exaltations and their crowns—have become Gods, even the sons of God. . . they have the power then of propagating their species in spirit; and that is the first of their operations with regard to organizing a world’ (Journal of Discourses, 6:275).” Edited April 22, 2024 by Craig Speechly 1
Popular Post bluebell Posted April 22, 2024 Popular Post Posted April 22, 2024 I think the church has changed it's understanding of what that doctrine means and how it is interpreted, but the core behind those previous understandings and interpretations remains the same as it always has. In the past our leaders seemed really comfortable extrapolating teachings from a small amount of doctrine. We've really back off on that over the decades. Too much opinion taught over the pulpit as doctrine I think. Maybe you can point out what part of the Essay you find contradicts earlier teachings. I'm not sure what you are referring to specifically on that. 11
Popular Post MustardSeed Posted April 22, 2024 Popular Post Posted April 22, 2024 Gee. it’s almost like human beings have a tendency to take a little bit of power and position to assert opinions that get confused with core doctrine. Go figure. This is why it’s really important that no matter what is taught over the pulpit that we always lead our lives, not by that direction, but by going directly to the Lord ourselves and stating, I have decided “this” for myself, is that correct? And then to proceed as directed by God. I recognize that everybody is going to claim different direction from God however, I imagine if we in good faith makes that honest effort, God will not punish us for the miscommunication. What will be tragic is if faithful people do not take this initiative and discover one day that for example Spencer WK was “ wrong.” Victimization can kick in and often times will push the member out the door. I am an example of this. I feel victimized by a few things, but I also recognize personal responsibility and having not conferred with the Lord before complying with things that turned out to be nonsense. One of the ways that I am trying to heal from that is to take that initiative and decide things for myself. I can’t change my past, but I can work with God and live my best life moving forward. 7
ZealouslyStriving Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 (edited) 4 hours ago, Craig Speechly said: Having grown up during the 70's and 80's, I well remember the many talks by Bruce R. McConkie, Spencer W. Kimball and Marion G. Hanks, to name but a few, who proudly proclaimed to all the world the Mormon Doctrine of Eternal Progression and our ability to receive all that God has, even Godhood and all of it's rewards, including creating our own worlds and yes even our own planet on which to dwell in our own heaven. Seemingly embarrassed by this doctrine and in part due to it's wide spread exposure from the Book of Mormon musical, the church is now back tracking and distancing itself from these former bedrock doctrines. In the Hello Saints podcast, hosted by Evangelical Pastor Jeff McCullough, Jeff interviews members of the church to gain understanding and build bridges. In episode 5, Jeff interviews Religion Professor & LDS Author David Butler. Butler basically denies this once core belief suggesting with a laugh... "well that made for a great musical", but then denies that it is a core LDS belief. Butler also suggests that eternal marriage involving multiple wives is optional with the 1st spouse having veto rights. What the Fudge? The church has also distanced itself from this doctrine in it's essay. Sorry but this is not a doctrine that I even recognize. Or is this just an effort at wink, wink and face saving? Has anyone else noticed this distancing from a once core Enteral Progression doctrine to make the church more palatable to Christian evangelicalism? You can listen to this podcast Here You can listen to the Book of Mormon Musical song "I Believe" Here and the Essay Here Here are just a few quotes that support the once traditional Plan of Salvation that Butler is now walking away from. “We educate ourselves in the secular field and in the spiritual field so that we may one day create worlds, people and govern them.” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 386). In 2001 Henry B. Eyring repeated the key part of this quote in a Church Educational System (CES) fireside talk on Sunday, May 6, in Moscow, Idaho. His message was titled, “Drive for learning must have powerful spiritual component.” The quote was repeated not only in the LDS Church News, but also in the October 2002 Ensign. On the official LDS seminary website, Kimball’s quote was again cited by Mormon Apostle Richard G. Scott. In Mormonism, “seminary” is geared for high-school students. “The real life we’re preparing for is eternal life. Secular knowledge has for us eternal significance. Our conviction is that God, our Heavenly Father, wants us to live the life that He does. We learn both the spiritual things and the secular things ‘so we may one day create worlds [and] people and govern them’ (Spencer W. Kimball, The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 386).” (Henry B. Eyring) “Brethren, 225,000 of you are here tonight. I suppose 225,000 of you may become gods. There seems to be plenty of space out there in the universe. And the Lord has proved that he knows how to do it. I think he could make, or probably have us help make, worlds for all of us, for every one of us 225,000” (Spencer W. Kimball, “The Privilege of Holding the Priesthood,” Ensign (Conference Edition), November 1975, p. 80. Quoted in Doctrine and Covenants Institute Student Manual). 10th President Joseph Fielding Smith “That great blessing of celestial glory could never have come to us without a period of time in mortality, and so we came here in this mortal world. We are in school, the mortal school, to gain the experiences, the training, the joys, and the sufferings that we partake of, that we might be educated in all these things and be prepared, if we are faithful and true to the commandments of the Lord, to become sons and daughters of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ; and in His presence to go on to a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever, and perhaps through our faithfulness to have the opportunity of building worlds and peopling them.” (Joseph Fielding Smith, “Adam’s Role in Bringing Us Mortality,” General Conference, Oct. 1976, reprinted in Liahona, Jan. 2006.) “The Father has promised us that through our faithfulness we shall be blessed with the fullness of his kingdom. In other words, we will have the privilege of becoming like him. To become like him we must have all the powers of godhood; thus a man and his wife when glorified will have spirit children who eventually will go on an earth like this one we are on and pass through the same kind of experiences, being subject to mortal conditions, and if faithful, then they also will receive the fullness of exaltation and partake of the same blessings. There is no end to this development; it will go on forever. We will become gods and have jurisdiction over worlds, and these worlds will be peopled by our own offspring.” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation 2:48, quoted in Achieving a Celestial Marriage Student Manual, 1976, p.132) 5th President Lorenzo Snow On page 90 (chapter five) of the correlated manual titled Presidents of the Church Student Manual: Religion 345 (2004), under the subheading, “They Shall Organize Worlds and Rule Over Them,” it states: “Only a short time before his death, President Snow visited the Brigham Young University [then Brigham Young Academy], at Provo. President Brimhall escorted the party through one of the buildings; he wanted to reach the assembly room as soon as possible, as the students had already gathered. They were going through one of the kindergarten rooms; President Brimhall had reached the door and was about to open it and go on when President Snow said: ‘Wait a moment, President Brimhall, I want to see these children at work; what are they doing?’ Brother Brimhall replied that they were making clay spheres. ‘That is very interesting,’ the President said. ‘I want to watch them.’ He quietly watched the children for several minutes and then lifted a little girl, perhaps six years of age, and stood her on a table. He then took the clay sphere from her hand, and, turning to Brother Brimhall, said: ‘President Brimhall, these children are now at play, making mud worlds, the time will come when some of these boys, through their faithfulness to the gospel, will progress and develop in knowledge, intelligence and power, in future eternities, until they shall be able to go out into space where there is unorganized matter and call together the necessary elements, and through their knowledge of and control over the laws and powers of nature, to organize matter into worlds on which their posterity may dwell, and over which they shall rule as gods.’ (Snow, Improvement Era, June 1919, 658–59).” “We are the offspring of God, born with the same faculties and powers as He possesses, capable of enlargement through the experience that we are now passing through in our second estate… He has begotten us in His own image. He has given us faculties and powers that are capable of enlargement until His fullness is reached which He has promised — until we shall sit upon thrones, governing and controlling our posterity from eternity to eternity, and increasing eternally.” (Millennial Star 56:772, October 5, 1894) “When two Latter-day Saints are united together in marriage, promises are made to them concerning their offspring that reach from eternity to eternity. They are promised that they shall have the power and the right to govern and control and administer salvation and exaltation and glory to their offspring, worlds without end. And what offspring they do not have here, undoubtedly there will be opportunities to have them hereafter. What else could man wish? A man and a woman, in the other life, having celestial bodies, free from sickness and disease, glorified and beautified beyond description, standing in the midst of their posterity, governing and controlling them, administering life, exaltation and glory worlds without end” (Deseret News, 13 Mar. 1897; quoted by Spencer W. Kimball in The Miracle of Forgiveness [1969], 246; See also Lesson 10 of The Latter-day Saint Woman: Basic Manual for Women, Part A). 2nd President Brigham Young “All those who are counted worthy to be exalted and to become Gods, even the sons of God, will go forth and have earths and worlds like those who framed this and millions on millions of others.” (Journal of Discourses 17:143) “Having fought the good fight we then shall be prepared to lay our bodies down to rest to await the morning of the resurrection when they will come forth and be reunited with the spirits, the faithful, as it is said, receiving crowns, glory, immortality and eternal lives, even a fulness with the Father, when Jesus shall present His work to the Father, saying, ‘Father, here is the work thou gavest me to do.’ Then will they become Gods, even the sons of God; then will they become eternal fathers, eternal mothers, eternal sons and eternal daughters; being eternal in their organization they go from glory to glory, from power to power; they will never cease to increase and to multiply, worlds without end. When they receive their crowns, their dominions, they then will be prepared to frame earths like unto ours and to people them in the same manner as we have been brought forth by our parents, by our Father and God” (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 283; Journal of Discourses 18:259, October 8, 1876) Apostle Orson Pratt “But another and still greater object the Lord had in view in sending us down from yonder world to this is, that we might be redeemed in due time, by keeping the celestial law, and have our tabernacles restored to us in all the beauty of immortality. Then we will be able to multiply and extend forth our posterity and the increase of our dominion without end. Can spirits do this? No, they remain single. There are no marriages among spirits, no coupling together of the males and females among them; but when they rise from the grave, after being tabernacled in mortal bodies, they have all the functions that are necessary to people worlds. As our Father and God begat us, sons and daughters, so will we rise immortal, males and females, and beget children, and, in our turn, form and create worlds, and send forth our spirit children to inherit those worlds, the same as we were sent here, and thus will the works of God continue, and not only God himself, and His Son Jesus Christ have the power of endless lives, but all of His redeemed offspring.” (Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 14:242) “Each God, through his wife or wives, raises up a numerous family of sons and daughters; indeed, there will be no end to the increase of his own children: for each father and mother will be in a condition to multiply forever and ever. As soon as each God has begotten many millions of male and female spirits, and his Heavenly inheritance becomes too small, to comfortably accommodate his great family, he, in connection with his sons, organizes a new world, after a similar order to the one which we now inhabit, where he sends both the male and female spirits to inhabit tabernacles of flesh and bones. Thus each God forms a world for the accommodation of his own sons and daughters who are sent forth in their times and seasons, and generations to be born into the same. The inhabitants of each world are required to reverence, adore, and worship their own personal father who dwells in the Heaven which they formerly inhabited.” (The Seer, 37, March 1853) Apostle Moses Thatcher “There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth it understanding; the sinful who listen and obey are led to repentance, and, through the doors of baptism of the water and spirit are brought out of wickedness to the enlightenment of pure knowledge, until in obedience to heavenly law they secure the keys of power authorizing them to pass by the angels, inherit glory, become heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ; and, having abiding in them eternal lives shall beget, throughout the endless ages of eternity, the souls of the children of men to the honor and glory of God, and create and have dominion over worlds.” (Moses Thatcher, Journal of Discourses 26:305) Apostle Melvin J. Ballard “What do we mean by endless or eternal increase? We mean that through the righteousness and faithfulness of men and women who keep the commandments of God they will come forth with celestial bodies, fitted and prepared to enter into their great, high and eternal glory in the celestial kingdom of God; and unto them, through their preparation, there will come children, who will be spirit children. I don’t think that is very difficult to comprehend and understand” (Three Degrees of Glory, 10, 1922). Apostle L. Tom Perry Elder L. Tom Perry, Receive Truth, Ensign (CR), November 1997, p.60 “Peter and John had little secular learning, being termed ignorant. But they knew the vital things of life, that God lives and that the crucified, resurrected Lord is the Son of God. They knew the path to eternal life. This they learned in a few decades of their mortal life. Their righteous lives opened the door to godhood for them and creation of worlds with eternal increase. For this they would probably need, eventually, a total knowledge of the sciences. But whereas Peter and John had only decades to learn and do the spiritual, they have already had nineteen centuries in which to learn the secular or the geology of the earth, the zoology and physiology and psychology of the creatures of the earth. Mortality is the time to learn first of God and the gospel and to perform the ordinances. After our feet are set firmly on the path to eternal life we can amass more knowledge of the secular things” (President Kimball Speaks Out [1981], 91). In an October, 1997 conference address titled, “Receive Truth,” Apostle L. Tom Perry cited 12th President Spencer W. Kimball who taught, “Peter and John had little secular learning, being termed ignorant. But they knew the vital things of life, that God lives and that the crucified, resurrected Lord is the Son of God. They knew the path to eternal life. This they learned in a few decades of their mortal life. Their righteous lives opened the door to godhood for them and creation of worlds with eternal increase” (President Kimball Speaks Out [1981], 91). (See Ensign, November 1997, p. 60). Apostle Bruce McConkie “Exalted parents are to their children as our Eternal Parents are to us. Eternal increase, a continuation of the seeds forever and ever, eternal lives — these comprise the eternal family of those who gain eternal life. For them new earths are created, and thus the on-rolling purposes of the Gods of Heaven go forward from eternity to eternity.” (Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, The Millennial Messiah, 23, 1982) LDS Church Manuals “To live in the highest part of the celestial kingdom is called exaltation or eternal life. To be able to live in this part of the celestial kingdom, people must have been married in the temple and must have kept the sacred promises they made in the temple. They will receive everything our Father in Heaven has and will become like Him. They will even be able to have spirit children and make new worlds for them to live on, and do all the things our Father in Heaven has done. People who are not married in the temple may live in other parts of the celestial kingdom, but they will not be exalted” (Gospel Fundamentals [2001], 201). “An essential requirement for exaltation is celestial marriage, for exaltation depends upon the continuation of the family in eternity and the power to populate other worlds as our Father did this one.” (Principles of the Gospel, published by the LDS Church, 1976) Other sources “And so through the power of the priesthood the man has the opportunity of obtaining that degree of perfection by which he may create worlds and populate them with his own offspring” (Patriarch Eldred G. Smith, BYU Speeches of the Year, March 10, 1964, p.7). “Long before our God began his creations, he dwelt on a mortal world like ours, one of the creations that his Father had created for him and his brethren. He, with many of his brethren, was obedient to the principles of the eternal gospel. One among these, it is presumed, was a savior for them, and through him they obtained a resurrection and an exaltation on an eternal, celestial world. 8 Then they gained the power and godhood of their Father and were made heirs of all that he had, continuing his works and creating worlds of their own for their own posterity—the same as their Father had done before, and his Father, and his Father, and on and on. . . Nothing is more basic in the restored gospel than these truths that, because of recent events of space travel, are so timely. The great hope of the gospel for us is that we may come to a oneness with our Lord and our Father and partake of this same work and glory and godhood. Being joint-heirs of all that the Father has, we may then look forward to using those powers to organize still other worlds from the unorganized matter that exists throughout boundless space. Creating other worlds, peopling them with our own eternal posterity, providing a savior for them, and making known to them the saving principles of the eternal gospel, that they may have the same experiences we are now having and be exalted with us in their turn—this is eternal life. No wonder this possibility continues to fascinate and inspire Saints of all ages.” (BYU Professor Kent Nielson, “People on Other Worlds”, Ensign, April 1971) “Brigham Young believed that man is sovereign over his own actions; yet he did not rule out the omnipotence of God. He recognized the possibility of divine intervention, such as the religious experience of Paul, but believed the ultimate decisions of life affecting man’s eternal destiny are to be left to man. This idea was so important to Brigham Young as he conceived the purpose of this mortal existence that he said that ‘the consent of the creature must be obtained before the Creator can rule perfectly.’ Explaining this with eternal perspective, Brigham Young said: ‘Man is made an agent to himself before his God; he is organized for the express purpose, that he may become like his master. The Lord has organized mankind for the purpose of increasing in that intelligence and truth. . . until he is capable of creating worlds on worlds, and becoming Gods, even the sons of God.’ Believing that ‘the power of choice all intelligent beings inherit from the Gods of eternity. . . is innate,’ ” (“The Reflections of Brigham Young on the Nature of Man and the State,” by J. Keith Melville, BYU Studies, vol. 4 (1961-1962), Num. 3 and 4 – Spring and Summer 1962, p.257) “So far as the stages of eternal progression and attainment have been made known through divine revelation, we are to understand that only resurrected and glorified beings can become parents of spirit offspring. Only such exalted souls have reached maturity in the appointed course of eternal life; and the spirits born to them in the eternal worlds will pass in due sequence through the several stages or estates by which the glorified parents have attained exaltation.” (A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency [Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund, Charles W. Penrose] and the Twelve, “The Father and the Son,” Improvement Era, June 1916, 942, quoted in Achieving a Celestial Marriage Student Manual, 131, 1976) In his book Doctrinal Details of the Plan of Salvation (2005), Mormon educator David J. Ridges, who served 35 years with the Church Educational System, listed 44 true or false questions in what he called a “Plan of Salvation Pretest.” Question 31 (page 4) states “Those who receive exaltation will actually be making and peopling worlds of their own.” On page 13 he states that the answer is true, “President Brigham Young said, ‘After men have got their exaltations and their crowns—have become Gods, even the sons of God. . . they have the power then of propagating their species in spirit; and that is the first of their operations with regard to organizing a world’ (Journal of Discourses, 6:275).” Ridges also wrote: “Those who live worthy to become gods (D&C 132:20) will live as husbands and wives eternally and will have the blessing of ‘eternal increase,’ in other words, of having unlimited number of spirit children. Spirit children will be born to them as offspring (Acts 17:28-29), just as we were to our heavenly parents (Hebrews 12:9). This is also referred to as ‘a continuation of the seeds forever and ever’ (D&C 132:19). As gods, they will create worlds for their spirit children and send them through the same ‘great plan of happiness’ (Alma 42:8) that the Father has in place for us” (David R. Ridges, Mormon Beliefs and Doctrines Made Easier, p.88). “When we escape from this earth, (do) we suppose we are going to heaven? Do you suppose you are going to the earth that Adam came from? that Eloheim came from? where Jehovah the Lord came from? No. When you have learned to become obedient to the Father that dwells upon this earth, to the Father and God of this earth, and obedient to the messengers He sends—when you have done all that, remember you are not going to leave this earth. You will never leave it until you become qualified, and capable, and capacitated to become a father of an earth yourselves.” – Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses 1:356 I think the interview that Pres. Hinckley gave where he said that God having once been like man, and man becoming like God was, " a little couplet that we don't know much about" (was taken as) a green light for (some of) those uncomfortable with it to start downplaying it and ideas associated with it. I *personally* am pondering the idea that those that inherit Celestial Exaltation on this earth will collectively create a new earth where our spirit children will pass through a mortality. Edited April 22, 2024 by ZealouslyStriving Clarification
blackstrap Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 Is the alternative spending eternity strumming on a harp while lounging on a cloud ?
Stargazer Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 47 minutes ago, blackstrap said: Is the alternative spending eternity strumming on a harp while lounging on a cloud ? Yes, that's what I want to do for eternity. Heck yeah!
Pyreaux Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 (edited) Wherever webpage you copied from has this... coded vertical text, if you can fix that. Anyway, I'm glad they pulled back, there is a difference between what we think a text means and what text actually says. We have a right to disagree with leaders when ideas diverge from the scriptures; some thought there was no evolution/pre-Adamites, no one else in the Americas... That the Holy Spirit is a dude, etc. Leaders might be products of their time; their ideas are not much different from their contemporaries. Rather than crediting them for creating the folk doctrine, maybe it's rather those folk that created them instead. Edited April 22, 2024 by Pyreaux 2
Popular Post smac97 Posted April 22, 2024 Popular Post Posted April 22, 2024 (edited) A few thoughts: 1. I think commentary like what we see in the OP is often an exercise in A) wishful thinking, B) projection, or C) a bit of A and B. 2. Another common feature of this sort of commentary is to demean it by caricature, to describe it in language calculated to mock and offend and profane rather than fairly describe and explain. Paraphrasing Oprah Winfrey is a good example of this. 3. Craig's surmise is that the Church is "{s}eemingly embarrassed by this doctrine {exaltation}," such that "the church is now back tracking and distancing itself from these former bedrock doctrines." That is a curious narrative. The Church has a number of unique doctrines and practices, many of which are as visible, or even more so, than the doctrine of exaltation. For example, back in the 1996 there was a book-length effort to claim that the Latter-day Saints had become "Ashamed of Joseph." Nine years later, the Church released Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and elsewhere: Quote The film has been shown at a number of the church's visitors' center locations, including at the Mesa Arizona, Laie Hawaii, Idaho Falls Idaho, Los Angeles California, Hamilton New Zealand, Oakland California, St. George Utah, Washington D.C., London England temples, along with the Historic Kirtland, Historic Nauvoo, Hill Cumorah, and Independence Missouri centers. It has also been shown at the Cove Fort, Liberty Jail and San Diego Mormon Battalion historic sites, along with the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial, and the Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters. The film was also released on DVD in 2010 and revised in 2011. We are similarly pretty open with temples (lots of publicity about open houses and tours, etc., including explanations of Baptism for the Dead), missionary work, family history work, and so on. Heavenly Mother has Her own Gospel Topics Essay, as does polygamy (multiple essays, in fact), and the Book of Abraham, and The Book of Mormon. IOW, there's not really a good argument to be made that the Church is "embarrassed" about the theophanies and experiences of Joseph Smith, and the Gold Plates, and the Book of Mormon, the restoration of Priesthood authority, and so on. 4. If we are "now back tracking and distancing itself from these former bedrock doctrines," it seems odd that one of the fourteen Gospel Topics Essays is all about exaltation: Becoming Like God Some excerpts: "Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all people may “progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny.” 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." "What does the Bible say about humans’ divine potential?" "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.'" "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?'" "In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commanded His disciples to become 'perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' In turn, the Apostle Peter referred to the Savior’s 'exceeding great and precious promises' that we might become “partakers of the divine nature.'" "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.'" "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 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." "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.' 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.' 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.'" "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.'" "'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.' 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' and be 'exalted' with Him." "Joseph told the assembled Saints, 'You have got to learn how to be a god yourself.' In order to do that, the Saints needed to learn godliness, or to be more like God." "Humankind’s divine nature and potential for exaltation have been repeatedly taught in general conference addresses, Church magazines, and other Church materials. When Latter-day Saint young women recite their theme, each affirms, 'I am a beloved daughter of heavenly parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny.' 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." Kinda hard to read all these statements and square it with Craig's notion that the Church is "embarrassed" about them. 5. Is anyone else getting weird formatting stuff in this thread? It seems to be coming from Craig's copy and paste stuff. I see a very long line of text (one letter per line) streaming down the page. Thanks, -Smac Edited April 22, 2024 by smac97 5
Tacenda Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 1 hour ago, blackstrap said: Is the alternative spending eternity strumming on a harp while lounging on a cloud ? Well for me, I'll be a very busy "angel" maybe helping those on earth. A lot like the TV series "Touched by an Angel". 😁
Craig Speechly Posted April 22, 2024 Author Posted April 22, 2024 I fixed the quotes provided in my OP
Craig Speechly Posted April 22, 2024 Author Posted April 22, 2024 2 hours ago, bluebell said: I think the church has changed it's understanding of what that doctrine means and how it is interpreted, but the core behind those previous understandings and interpretations remains the same as it always has. In the past our leaders seemed really comfortable extrapolating teachings from a small amount of doctrine. We've really back off on that over the decades. Too much opinion taught over the pulpit as doctrine I think. Maybe you can point out what part of the Essay you find contradicts earlier teachings. I'm not sure what you are referring to specifically on that. It's the absence of any reference to getting my own planet from the essay. 🙂 That used to be freely discussed and clearly taught. 2
Craig Speechly Posted April 22, 2024 Author Posted April 22, 2024 1 hour ago, Pyreaux said: Wherever webpage you copied from has this... coded vertical text, if you can fix that. Fixed 1
Craig Speechly Posted April 22, 2024 Author Posted April 22, 2024 57 minutes ago, smac97 said: A few thoughts: 1. I think commentary like what we see in the OP is often an exercise in A) wishful thinking, B) projection, or C) a bit of A and B. 2. Another common feature of this sort of commentary is to demean it by caricature, to describe it in language calculated to mock and offend and profane rather than fairly describe and explain. Paraphrasing Oprah Winfrey is a good example of this. 3. Craig's surmise is that the Church is "{s}eemingly embarrassed by this doctrine {exaltation}," such that "the church is now back tracking and distancing itself from these former bedrock doctrines." That is a curious narrative. The Church has a number of unique doctrines and practices, many of which are as visible, or even more so, than the doctrine of exaltation. For example, back in the 1996 there was a book-length effort to claim that the Latter-day Saints had become "Ashamed of Joseph." Nine years later, the Church released Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and elsewhere: The film was also released on DVD in 2010 and revised in 2011. We are similarly pretty open with temples (lots of publicity about open houses and tours, etc., including explanations of Baptism for the Dead), missionary work, family history work, and so on. Heavenly Mother has Her own Gospel Topics Essay, as does polygamy (multiple essays, in fact), and the Book of Abraham, and The Book of Mormon. IOW, there's not really a good argument to be made that the Church is "embarrassed" about the theophanies and experiences of Joseph Smith, and the Gold Plates, and the Book of Mormon, the restoration of Priesthood authority, and so on. 4. If we are "now back tracking and distancing itself from these former bedrock doctrines," it seems odd that one of the fourteen Gospel Topics Essays is all about exaltation: Becoming Like God Some excerpts: "Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all people may “progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny.” 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." "What does the Bible say about humans’ divine potential?" "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.'" "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?'" "In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commanded His disciples to become 'perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' In turn, the Apostle Peter referred to the Savior’s 'exceeding great and precious promises' that we might become “partakers of the divine nature.'" "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.'" "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 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." "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.' 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.' 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.'" "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.'" "'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.' 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' and be 'exalted' with Him." "Joseph told the assembled Saints, 'You have got to learn how to be a god yourself.' In order to do that, the Saints needed to learn godliness, or to be more like God." "Humankind’s divine nature and potential for exaltation have been repeatedly taught in general conference addresses, Church magazines, and other Church materials. When Latter-day Saint young women recite their theme, each affirms, 'I am a beloved daughter of heavenly parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny.' 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." Kinda hard to read all these statements and square it with Craig's notion that the Church is "embarrassed" about them. 5. Is anyone else getting weird formatting stuff in this thread? It seems to be coming from Craig's copy and paste stuff. I see a very long line of text (one letter per line) streaming down the page. Thanks, -Smac So we do get to create and populate planets? Not according to Butler
Stargazer Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 After writing all the below I feel I should come up with a TL;DR: No, the Church isn't distancing itself from the planets. It's simply avoiding trying to teach quantum mechanics to first year physics students. Apologies in advance for the novel below... I don't think the Church is actually distancing itself from eternal progression and exaltation. The doctrine itself is unavoidable, since it's quite scriptural. Even such standard worthies as C. S. Lewis have suggested it clearly, though perhaps not to the degree we do. It might be that this doctrine is so far "out there" to the general run of Christianity that some of our leaders have tried to not make such a big deal of it, so as to avoid the TMI problem. Jesus Himself told Peter, James, and John to chill about saying too much, too soon, after the Transfiguration (which they witnessed). See Matt. 17:9. And when Jesus asked the apostles what they thought of Him, and Peter said "Thou art the Christ," Jesus told the apostles not to tell anyone about this. See Mark 8:27-30. So when Mike Wallace asked Gordon B. Hinckley about that Lorenzo Snow couplet, his response was to equivocate, as the doctrine is too advanced and easily misunderstood. I know exactly why President Hinckley said what he said. When I was serving as a full-time missionary, we had been teaching a JW family, and the next time we came for a visit, they had one of their "elders" there. This gentleman was very polite and respectful, and we had a nice conversation comparing doctrines. But finally, this gent came out with that couplet in German (we were in Germany), and asked if the translation was accurate. We told him it was. He asked us what was to be understood by the couplet. Since it was clear that this was going to our last visit, I simply answered "It means what it says." Whereupon he said something like "Well, that being the case, it seems quite clear that there is no real common ground or basis for discussion. But thanks for speaking with us." And we departed. Let me ask you, would you be satisfied by a mere planet? And I have a brilliant idea: let's completely restructure our investigator teaching plans and begin with Lorenzo Snow. Knock on the door; ring the doorbell: Mr. Brown: "Good evening. What can I do for you?" Elder Smith: "Just a quick question: how would you like to have your own planet?" Mr. Brown: <slams door> I had a hard enough time with a door approach trying to talk about Jesus Christ! You don't even need to step outside the New Testament in order to get to exaltation. 1 John 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." Nevermind all that fluff in the Old and New Testament about nobody seeing God at any time. Here it comes right out and says that we shall see God as he is. And why shall we? Because we will be like him! President Hinckley could have responded to Mike Wallace with this scripture, and thus could have made it clear that Lorenzo Snow was at least scripturally correct when he said "As God now is, man may be.” Of course it would be a harder sell with the first part of the couplet, "“As man now is, God once was..." And I will not at all be satisfied with a mere planet! What if God decided that all I could be trusted with was Mars? Just for grins, let's look at Chapter 5 of Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow: Quote From the Life of Lorenzo Snow In the spring of 1840, Lorenzo Snow was in Nauvoo, Illinois, preparing to leave for a mission in England. He visited the home of his friend Henry G. Sherwood, and he asked Brother Sherwood to explain a passage of scripture. “While attentively listening to his explanation,” President Snow later recalled, “the Spirit of the Lord rested mightily upon me—the eyes of my understanding were opened, and I saw as clear as the sun at noonday, with wonder and astonishment, the pathway of God and man. I formed the following couplet which expresses the revelation, as it was shown me. … “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.” Feeling that he had received “a sacred communication” that he should guard carefully, Lorenzo Snow did not teach the doctrine publicly until he knew that the Prophet Joseph Smith had taught it. Once he knew the doctrine was public knowledge, he testified of it frequently. In addition to making this truth a theme for many of his sermons, he adopted it as the theme for his life. His son LeRoi said, “This revealed truth impressed Lorenzo Snow more than perhaps all else; it sank so deeply into his soul that it became the inspiration of his life and gave him his broad vision of his own great future and the mighty mission and work of the Church.” It was his “constant light and guide” and “a bright, illuminating star before him all the time—in his heart, in his soul, and all through him.” This wasn't just some random poem that Brother Snow came up with. It was a personal revelation of divine truths -- eventually to be taught to the church and the world. Ultimately, it's not just the Latter-day Saints who need to defend this "odd doctrine" that man may become as God. The non-LDS Christians need to be hauled up to defend it, too. Because the New Testament itself clearly teaches it. Besides 3 John, if you look at the Parable of the Talents you can detect it there as well: if you're faithful over a few things, you'll be made a ruler over many things. Long, long time ago I read a book series compiled by Hartman and Connie Rector: "No More Strangers." In chapter 1 of volume 1 one finds the story of John S. Staley, who had been a Benedictine monk when he was introduced to the Church. He had been having questions, but was still a loyal and believing Catholic. He had been working at an institute for the treatment of children with mental difficulties and met a woman, named Mariellen, who really impressed him with her spirituality. He thought she would make a "splendid nun to found a new order for this work." In order to interest her in Catholicism, he lent her a book. His words: "I gave her a copy of The Divine Milieu, written by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an eminent French Jesuit priest and physical anthropologist. That book describes the author's concept of how man is gradually moving toward divinization. I considered it to be the most precious statement from a twentieth-century Catholic and thought that it surely would interest Mariellen in Catholicism. I anticipated the excitement this book would generate in her. "A few days later she returned the book to me and smilingly said, 'I enjoyed the book - parts of it sound as though they might have been written by a Latter-day Saint.' Never having heard that term before, I had to ask her, 'What is a Latter-day Saint?' She replied, 'I'm one, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sometimes we are nicknamed Mormons.' "From that point our discussions in theology veered sharply away from Catholicism as she adroitly led me into a new search by quoting from Lorenzo Snow, a past president of her Church: 'As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.' My spring was unsprung! President Snow had outdistanced Teilhard by a spiritual light-year! His was the most profound set of words I had heard in my life - and all my adult years had been spent studying theology, philosophy, and sociology!" "While Darwin spoke of the evolution of the body of man; while Spencer spoke about the development of the family and social institutions of man; while Teilhard spoke about the spiritual evolution of man; here Lorenzo Snow - to me, an obscure Mormon leader of the 1890's - had taken the teachings of Joseph Smith (which antedated Darwin's Origin of the Species) and said that not only is man progressing toward deification, but that God himself has gone through this process. What a vision this opened! What excitement shook me! This struck at the heart of my difficulties as a Catholic theologian and sociologist. Snow's statement went further than anything I had dreamed. I had considered Teilhard as one of the great contemporary thinkers, and here in twelve short words was a vision that eclipsed his farthest reach." As you see, some are ready for it. Others less so. Some must be allowed to discover the "deeper" parts of the gospel later, when they are better prepared. And a few are ready now. So we don't over-challenge people with the really glorious part of the doctrine of the gospel. 1
MiserereNobis Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 2 hours ago, blackstrap said: Is the alternative spending eternity strumming on a harp while lounging on a cloud ? Change the harp to a banjo and I’m there!
rpn Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 I think the shrinkage is from making vast assumptions based on little actual knowledge/revelation. Yes, all of that IS/may be the logical extension of what we now know. But we obviously do not have have enough absolute truth knowledge to confirm it, so no one (and most importantly the Church or our leaders) should be officially teaching it. 1
MiserereNobis Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 (edited) 17 minutes ago, Stargazer said: The non-LDS Christians need to be hauled up to defend it, too. Because the New Testament itself clearly teaches it. Just a small quibble. If it was clearly there, then it would be a part of non-LDS Christianity. Otherwise you’re saying we’re too obtuse to recognize something that is so clear. Edited April 22, 2024 by MiserereNobis 3
Craig Speechly Posted April 22, 2024 Author Posted April 22, 2024 8 minutes ago, rpn said: I think the shrinkage is from making vast assumptions based on little actual knowledge/revelation. Yes, all of that IS/may be the logical extension of what we now know. But we obviously do not have have enough absolute truth knowledge to confirm it, so no one (and most importantly the Church or our leaders) should be officially teaching it. So what's changed? Why are current leader hesitant to loudly proclaim this doctrine and why weren't former church leaders? Why would Butler deny that it's a belief in that podcast? He's no dummy.
Tacenda Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 35 minutes ago, Stargazer said: After writing all the below I feel I should come up with a TL;DR: No, the Church isn't distancing itself from the planets. It's simply avoiding trying to teach quantum mechanics to first year physics students. Apologies in advance for the novel below... I don't think the Church is actually distancing itself from eternal progression and exaltation. The doctrine itself is unavoidable, since it's quite scriptural. Even such standard worthies as C. S. Lewis have suggested it clearly, though perhaps not to the degree we do. It might be that this doctrine is so far "out there" to the general run of Christianity that some of our leaders have tried to not make such a big deal of it, so as to avoid the TMI problem. Jesus Himself told Peter, James, and John to chill about saying too much, too soon, after the Transfiguration (which they witnessed). See Matt. 17:9. And when Jesus asked the apostles what they thought of Him, and Peter said "Thou art the Christ," Jesus told the apostles not to tell anyone about this. See Mark 8:27-30. So when Mike Wallace asked Gordon B. Hinckley about that Lorenzo Snow couplet, his response was to equivocate, as the doctrine is too advanced and easily misunderstood. I know exactly why President Hinckley said what he said. When I was serving as a full-time missionary, we had been teaching a JW family, and the next time we came for a visit, they had one of their "elders" there. This gentleman was very polite and respectful, and we had a nice conversation comparing doctrines. But finally, this gent came out with that couplet in German (we were in Germany), and asked if the translation was accurate. We told him it was. He asked us what was to be understood by the couplet. Since it was clear that this was going to our last visit, I simply answered "It means what it says." Whereupon he said something like "Well, that being the case, it seems quite clear that there is no real common ground or basis for discussion. But thanks for speaking with us." And we departed. Let me ask you, would you be satisfied by a mere planet? And I have a brilliant idea: let's completely restructure our investigator teaching plans and begin with Lorenzo Snow. Knock on the door; ring the doorbell: Mr. Brown: "Good evening. What can I do for you?" Elder Smith: "Just a quick question: how would you like to have your own planet?" Mr. Brown: <slams door> I had a hard enough time with a door approach trying to talk about Jesus Christ! You don't even need to step outside the New Testament in order to get to exaltation. 1 John 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." Nevermind all that fluff in the Old and New Testament about nobody seeing God at any time. Here it comes right out and says that we shall see God as he is. And why shall we? Because we will be like him! President Hinckley could have responded to Mike Wallace with this scripture, and thus could have made it clear that Lorenzo Snow was at least scripturally correct when he said "As God now is, man may be.” Of course it would be a harder sell with the first part of the couplet, "“As man now is, God once was..." And I will not at all be satisfied with a mere planet! What if God decided that all I could be trusted with was Mars? Just for grins, let's look at Chapter 5 of Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow: This wasn't just some random poem that Brother Snow came up with. It was a personal revelation of divine truths -- eventually to be taught to the church and the world. Ultimately, it's not just the Latter-day Saints who need to defend this "odd doctrine" that man may become as God. The non-LDS Christians need to be hauled up to defend it, too. Because the New Testament itself clearly teaches it. Besides 3 John, if you look at the Parable of the Talents you can detect it there as well: if you're faithful over a few things, you'll be made a ruler over many things. Long, long time ago I read a book series compiled by Hartman and Connie Rector: "No More Strangers." In chapter 1 of volume 1 one finds the story of John S. Staley, who had been a Benedictine monk when he was introduced to the Church. He had been having questions, but was still a loyal and believing Catholic. He had been working at an institute for the treatment of children with mental difficulties and met a woman, named Mariellen, who really impressed him with her spirituality. He thought she would make a "splendid nun to found a new order for this work." In order to interest her in Catholicism, he lent her a book. His words: "I gave her a copy of The Divine Milieu, written by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an eminent French Jesuit priest and physical anthropologist. That book describes the author's concept of how man is gradually moving toward divinization. I considered it to be the most precious statement from a twentieth-century Catholic and thought that it surely would interest Mariellen in Catholicism. I anticipated the excitement this book would generate in her. "A few days later she returned the book to me and smilingly said, 'I enjoyed the book - parts of it sound as though they might have been written by a Latter-day Saint.' Never having heard that term before, I had to ask her, 'What is a Latter-day Saint?' She replied, 'I'm one, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sometimes we are nicknamed Mormons.' "From that point our discussions in theology veered sharply away from Catholicism as she adroitly led me into a new search by quoting from Lorenzo Snow, a past president of her Church: 'As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.' My spring was unsprung! President Snow had outdistanced Teilhard by a spiritual light-year! His was the most profound set of words I had heard in my life - and all my adult years had been spent studying theology, philosophy, and sociology!" "While Darwin spoke of the evolution of the body of man; while Spencer spoke about the development of the family and social institutions of man; while Teilhard spoke about the spiritual evolution of man; here Lorenzo Snow - to me, an obscure Mormon leader of the 1890's - had taken the teachings of Joseph Smith (which antedated Darwin's Origin of the Species) and said that not only is man progressing toward deification, but that God himself has gone through this process. What a vision this opened! What excitement shook me! This struck at the heart of my difficulties as a Catholic theologian and sociologist. Snow's statement went further than anything I had dreamed. I had considered Teilhard as one of the great contemporary thinkers, and here in twelve short words was a vision that eclipsed his farthest reach." As you see, some are ready for it. Others less so. Some must be allowed to discover the "deeper" parts of the gospel later, when they are better prepared. And a few are ready now. So we don't over-challenge people with the really glorious part of the doctrine of the gospel. So basically the meat of the doctrine, that is given way after the milk.
Stargazer Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 1 minute ago, MiserereNobis said: Just a small quibble. If it was clearly there, then it would be a part of non-LDS Christianity. Otherwise you’re saying we’re too obtuse to recognize something that is so clear. For me to say "you're too obtuse" would be a bit rude. I think it is more along the line of "this doesn't match up well with our accepted doctrine, so we'll ignore it." You might be treating it in a similar way to how the LDS treat Brigham Young's Adam-God "doctrine." Which he definitely talked about, but we don't know what the heck he was saying or what he really meant, so we ignore it. Paul clearly talks about baptism for the dead, but it's not part of the doctrine of any non-LDS Christian denomination. The Protestants skate right over passages in scripture which clearly indicate that authority is not merely something that is granted by a school of theology. Or worse, some declare that there is a "priesthood of all believers," which suggests there is no such thing as authority. And that is directly opposed to the Catholic claim to authority through the Apostle Peter. I'm saying that despite a clear reference to something in the scripture, if it doesn't nicely slot in to preferred doctrine it gets pretty short shrift. The author of 1 John writes in chapter 3, verse 2 (NJB): "My dear friends, we are already God's children, but what we shall be in the future has not yet been revealed. We are well aware that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is." "...we shall be like him..." is a clear reference to divinization, as Teilhard has described it. And when it says "...what we shall be in the future has not yet been revealed..." the Latter-day Saints say "Yes, it wasn't yet revealed back then, but it has been revealed now."
Stargazer Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 6 minutes ago, Tacenda said: So basically the meat of the doctrine, that is given way after the milk. Well, yes. By the same token, we teach arithmetic before we teach calculus. Or another metaphor might be a multi-course meal. Start with the soup, move on to the main course, and end with the dessert. And for those not hampered by the Word of Wisdom, finish with a nice cigar. 2
CV75 Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 (edited) 4 hours ago, Craig Speechly said: Having grown up during the 70's and 80's, I well remember the many talks by Bruce R. McConkie, Spencer W. Kimball and Marion G. Hanks, to name but a few, who proudly proclaimed to all the world the Mormon Doctrine of Eternal Progression and our ability to receive all that God has, even Godhood and all of it's rewards, including creating our own worlds and yes even our own planet on which to dwell in our own heaven. Seemingly embarrassed by this doctrine and in part due to it's wide spread exposure from the Book of Mormon musical, the church is now back tracking and distancing itself from these former bedrock doctrines. In the Hello Saints podcast, hosted by Evangelical Pastor Jeff McCullough, Jeff interviews members of the church to gain understanding and build bridges. In episode 5, Jeff interviews Religion Professor & LDS Author David Butler. Butler basically denies this once core belief suggesting with a laugh... "well that made for a great musical", but then denies that it is a core LDS belief. Butler also suggests that eternal marriage involving multiple wives is optional with the 1st spouse having veto rights. What the Fudge? The church has also distanced itself from this doctrine in it's essay. Sorry but this is not a doctrine that I even recognize. Or is this just an effort at wink, wink and face saving? Has anyone else noticed this distancing from a once core Enteral Progression doctrine to make the church more palatable to Christian evangelicalism? You can listen to this podcast Here You can listen to the Book of Mormon Musical song "I Believe" Here and the Essay Here Here are just a few quotes that support the once traditional Plan of Salvation that Butler is now walking away from. “We educate ourselves in the secular field and in the spiritual field so that we may one day create worlds, people and govern them.” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 386). In 2001 Henry B. Eyring repeated the key part of this quote in a Church Educational System (CES) fireside talk on Sunday, May 6, in Moscow, Idaho. His message was titled, “Drive for learning must have powerful spiritual component.” The quote was repeated not only in the LDS Church News, but also in the October 2002 Ensign. On the official LDS seminary website, Kimball’s quote was again cited by Mormon Apostle Richard G. Scott. In Mormonism, “seminary” is geared for high-school students. “The real life we’re preparing for is eternal life. Secular knowledge has for us eternal significance. Our conviction is that God, our Heavenly Father, wants us to live the life that He does. We learn both the spiritual things and the secular things ‘so we may one day create worlds [and] people and govern them’ (Spencer W. Kimball, The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 386).” (Henry B. Eyring) “Brethren, 225,000 of you are here tonight. I suppose 225,000 of you may become gods. There seems to be plenty of space out there in the universe. And the Lord has proved that he knows how to do it. I think he could make, or probably have us help make, worlds for all of us, for every one of us 225,000” (Spencer W. Kimball, “The Privilege of Holding the Priesthood,” Ensign (Conference Edition), November 1975, p. 80. Quoted in Doctrine and Covenants Institute Student Manual). 10th President Joseph Fielding Smith “That great blessing of celestial glory could never have come to us without a period of time in mortality, and so we came here in this mortal world. We are in school, the mortal school, to gain the experiences, the training, the joys, and the sufferings that we partake of, that we might be educated in all these things and be prepared, if we are faithful and true to the commandments of the Lord, to become sons and daughters of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ; and in His presence to go on to a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever, and perhaps through our faithfulness to have the opportunity of building worlds and peopling them.” (Joseph Fielding Smith, “Adam’s Role in Bringing Us Mortality,” General Conference, Oct. 1976, reprinted in Liahona, Jan. 2006.) “The Father has promised us that through our faithfulness we shall be blessed with the fullness of his kingdom. In other words, we will have the privilege of becoming like him. To become like him we must have all the powers of godhood; thus a man and his wife when glorified will have spirit children who eventually will go on an earth like this one we are on and pass through the same kind of experiences, being subject to mortal conditions, and if faithful, then they also will receive the fullness of exaltation and partake of the same blessings. There is no end to this development; it will go on forever. We will become gods and have jurisdiction over worlds, and these worlds will be peopled by our own offspring.” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation 2:48, quoted in Achieving a Celestial Marriage Student Manual, 1976, p.132) 5th President Lorenzo Snow On page 90 (chapter five) of the correlated manual titled Presidents of the Church Student Manual: Religion 345 (2004), under the subheading, “They Shall Organize Worlds and Rule Over Them,” it states: “Only a short time before his death, President Snow visited the Brigham Young University [then Brigham Young Academy], at Provo. President Brimhall escorted the party through one of the buildings; he wanted to reach the assembly room as soon as possible, as the students had already gathered. They were going through one of the kindergarten rooms; President Brimhall had reached the door and was about to open it and go on when President Snow said: ‘Wait a moment, President Brimhall, I want to see these children at work; what are they doing?’ Brother Brimhall replied that they were making clay spheres. ‘That is very interesting,’ the President said. ‘I want to watch them.’ He quietly watched the children for several minutes and then lifted a little girl, perhaps six years of age, and stood her on a table. He then took the clay sphere from her hand, and, turning to Brother Brimhall, said: ‘President Brimhall, these children are now at play, making mud worlds, the time will come when some of these boys, through their faithfulness to the gospel, will progress and develop in knowledge, intelligence and power, in future eternities, until they shall be able to go out into space where there is unorganized matter and call together the necessary elements, and through their knowledge of and control over the laws and powers of nature, to organize matter into worlds on which their posterity may dwell, and over which they shall rule as gods.’ (Snow, Improvement Era, June 1919, 658–59).” “We are the offspring of God, born with the same faculties and powers as He possesses, capable of enlargement through the experience that we are now passing through in our second estate… He has begotten us in His own image. He has given us faculties and powers that are capable of enlargement until His fullness is reached which He has promised — until we shall sit upon thrones, governing and controlling our posterity from eternity to eternity, and increasing eternally.” (Millennial Star 56:772, October 5, 1894) “When two Latter-day Saints are united together in marriage, promises are made to them concerning their offspring that reach from eternity to eternity. They are promised that they shall have the power and the right to govern and control and administer salvation and exaltation and glory to their offspring, worlds without end. And what offspring they do not have here, undoubtedly there will be opportunities to have them hereafter. What else could man wish? A man and a woman, in the other life, having celestial bodies, free from sickness and disease, glorified and beautified beyond description, standing in the midst of their posterity, governing and controlling them, administering life, exaltation and glory worlds without end” (Deseret News, 13 Mar. 1897; quoted by Spencer W. Kimball in The Miracle of Forgiveness [1969], 246; See also Lesson 10 of The Latter-day Saint Woman: Basic Manual for Women, Part A). 2nd President Brigham Young “All those who are counted worthy to be exalted and to become Gods, even the sons of God, will go forth and have earths and worlds like those who framed this and millions on millions of others.” (Journal of Discourses 17:143) “Having fought the good fight we then shall be prepared to lay our bodies down to rest to await the morning of the resurrection when they will come forth and be reunited with the spirits, the faithful, as it is said, receiving crowns, glory, immortality and eternal lives, even a fulness with the Father, when Jesus shall present His work to the Father, saying, ‘Father, here is the work thou gavest me to do.’ Then will they become Gods, even the sons of God; then will they become eternal fathers, eternal mothers, eternal sons and eternal daughters; being eternal in their organization they go from glory to glory, from power to power; they will never cease to increase and to multiply, worlds without end. When they receive their crowns, their dominions, they then will be prepared to frame earths like unto ours and to people them in the same manner as we have been brought forth by our parents, by our Father and God” (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 283; Journal of Discourses 18:259, October 8, 1876) Apostle Orson Pratt “But another and still greater object the Lord had in view in sending us down from yonder world to this is, that we might be redeemed in due time, by keeping the celestial law, and have our tabernacles restored to us in all the beauty of immortality. Then we will be able to multiply and extend forth our posterity and the increase of our dominion without end. Can spirits do this? No, they remain single. There are no marriages among spirits, no coupling together of the males and females among them; but when they rise from the grave, after being tabernacled in mortal bodies, they have all the functions that are necessary to people worlds. As our Father and God begat us, sons and daughters, so will we rise immortal, males and females, and beget children, and, in our turn, form and create worlds, and send forth our spirit children to inherit those worlds, the same as we were sent here, and thus will the works of God continue, and not only God himself, and His Son Jesus Christ have the power of endless lives, but all of His redeemed offspring.” (Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 14:242) “Each God, through his wife or wives, raises up a numerous family of sons and daughters; indeed, there will be no end to the increase of his own children: for each father and mother will be in a condition to multiply forever and ever. As soon as each God has begotten many millions of male and female spirits, and his Heavenly inheritance becomes too small, to comfortably accommodate his great family, he, in connection with his sons, organizes a new world, after a similar order to the one which we now inhabit, where he sends both the male and female spirits to inhabit tabernacles of flesh and bones. Thus each God forms a world for the accommodation of his own sons and daughters who are sent forth in their times and seasons, and generations to be born into the same. The inhabitants of each world are required to reverence, adore, and worship their own personal father who dwells in the Heaven which they formerly inhabited.” (The Seer, 37, March 1853) Apostle Moses Thatcher “There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth it understanding; the sinful who listen and obey are led to repentance, and, through the doors of baptism of the water and spirit are brought out of wickedness to the enlightenment of pure knowledge, until in obedience to heavenly law they secure the keys of power authorizing them to pass by the angels, inherit glory, become heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ; and, having abiding in them eternal lives shall beget, throughout the endless ages of eternity, the souls of the children of men to the honor and glory of God, and create and have dominion over worlds.” (Moses Thatcher, Journal of Discourses 26:305) Apostle Melvin J. Ballard “What do we mean by endless or eternal increase? We mean that through the righteousness and faithfulness of men and women who keep the commandments of God they will come forth with celestial bodies, fitted and prepared to enter into their great, high and eternal glory in the celestial kingdom of God; and unto them, through their preparation, there will come children, who will be spirit children. I don’t think that is very difficult to comprehend and understand” (Three Degrees of Glory, 10, 1922). Apostle L. Tom Perry Elder L. Tom Perry, Receive Truth, Ensign (CR), November 1997, p.60 “Peter and John had little secular learning, being termed ignorant. But they knew the vital things of life, that God lives and that the crucified, resurrected Lord is the Son of God. They knew the path to eternal life. This they learned in a few decades of their mortal life. Their righteous lives opened the door to godhood for them and creation of worlds with eternal increase. For this they would probably need, eventually, a total knowledge of the sciences. But whereas Peter and John had only decades to learn and do the spiritual, they have already had nineteen centuries in which to learn the secular or the geology of the earth, the zoology and physiology and psychology of the creatures of the earth. Mortality is the time to learn first of God and the gospel and to perform the ordinances. After our feet are set firmly on the path to eternal life we can amass more knowledge of the secular things” (President Kimball Speaks Out [1981], 91). In an October, 1997 conference address titled, “Receive Truth,” Apostle L. Tom Perry cited 12th President Spencer W. Kimball who taught, “Peter and John had little secular learning, being termed ignorant. But they knew the vital things of life, that God lives and that the crucified, resurrected Lord is the Son of God. They knew the path to eternal life. This they learned in a few decades of their mortal life. Their righteous lives opened the door to godhood for them and creation of worlds with eternal increase” (President Kimball Speaks Out [1981], 91). (See Ensign, November 1997, p. 60). Apostle Bruce McConkie “Exalted parents are to their children as our Eternal Parents are to us. Eternal increase, a continuation of the seeds forever and ever, eternal lives — these comprise the eternal family of those who gain eternal life. For them new earths are created, and thus the on-rolling purposes of the Gods of Heaven go forward from eternity to eternity.” (Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, The Millennial Messiah, 23, 1982) LDS Church Manuals “To live in the highest part of the celestial kingdom is called exaltation or eternal life. To be able to live in this part of the celestial kingdom, people must have been married in the temple and must have kept the sacred promises they made in the temple. They will receive everything our Father in Heaven has and will become like Him. They will even be able to have spirit children and make new worlds for them to live on, and do all the things our Father in Heaven has done. People who are not married in the temple may live in other parts of the celestial kingdom, but they will not be exalted” (Gospel Fundamentals [2001], 201). “An essential requirement for exaltation is celestial marriage, for exaltation depends upon the continuation of the family in eternity and the power to populate other worlds as our Father did this one.” (Principles of the Gospel, published by the LDS Church, 1976) Other sources “And so through the power of the priesthood the man has the opportunity of obtaining that degree of perfection by which he may create worlds and populate them with his own offspring” (Patriarch Eldred G. Smith, BYU Speeches of the Year, March 10, 1964, p.7). “Long before our God began his creations, he dwelt on a mortal world like ours, one of the creations that his Father had created for him and his brethren. He, with many of his brethren, was obedient to the principles of the eternal gospel. One among these, it is presumed, was a savior for them, and through him they obtained a resurrection and an exaltation on an eternal, celestial world. 8 Then they gained the power and godhood of their Father and were made heirs of all that he had, continuing his works and creating worlds of their own for their own posterity—the same as their Father had done before, and his Father, and his Father, and on and on. . . Nothing is more basic in the restored gospel than these truths that, because of recent events of space travel, are so timely. The great hope of the gospel for us is that we may come to a oneness with our Lord and our Father and partake of this same work and glory and godhood. Being joint-heirs of all that the Father has, we may then look forward to using those powers to organize still other worlds from the unorganized matter that exists throughout boundless space. Creating other worlds, peopling them with our own eternal posterity, providing a savior for them, and making known to them the saving principles of the eternal gospel, that they may have the same experiences we are now having and be exalted with us in their turn—this is eternal life. No wonder this possibility continues to fascinate and inspire Saints of all ages.” (BYU Professor Kent Nielson, “People on Other Worlds”, Ensign, April 1971) “Brigham Young believed that man is sovereign over his own actions; yet he did not rule out the omnipotence of God. He recognized the possibility of divine intervention, such as the religious experience of Paul, but believed the ultimate decisions of life affecting man’s eternal destiny are to be left to man. This idea was so important to Brigham Young as he conceived the purpose of this mortal existence that he said that ‘the consent of the creature must be obtained before the Creator can rule perfectly.’ Explaining this with eternal perspective, Brigham Young said: ‘Man is made an agent to himself before his God; he is organized for the express purpose, that he may become like his master. The Lord has organized mankind for the purpose of increasing in that intelligence and truth. . . until he is capable of creating worlds on worlds, and becoming Gods, even the sons of God.’ Believing that ‘the power of choice all intelligent beings inherit from the Gods of eternity. . . is innate,’ ” (“The Reflections of Brigham Young on the Nature of Man and the State,” by J. Keith Melville, BYU Studies, vol. 4 (1961-1962), Num. 3 and 4 – Spring and Summer 1962, p.257) “So far as the stages of eternal progression and attainment have been made known through divine revelation, we are to understand that only resurrected and glorified beings can become parents of spirit offspring. Only such exalted souls have reached maturity in the appointed course of eternal life; and the spirits born to them in the eternal worlds will pass in due sequence through the several stages or estates by which the glorified parents have attained exaltation.” (A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency [Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund, Charles W. Penrose] and the Twelve, “The Father and the Son,” Improvement Era, June 1916, 942, quoted in Achieving a Celestial Marriage Student Manual, 131, 1976) In his book Doctrinal Details of the Plan of Salvation (2005), Mormon educator David J. Ridges, who served 35 years with the Church Educational System, listed 44 true or false questions in what he called a “Plan of Salvation Pretest.” Question 31 (page 4) states “Those who receive exaltation will actually be making and peopling worlds of their own.” On page 13 he states that the answer is true, “President Brigham Young said, ‘After men have got their exaltations and their crowns—have become Gods, even the sons of God. . . they have the power then of propagating their species in spirit; and that is the first of their operations with regard to organizing a world’ (Journal of Discourses, 6:275).” Next time, I recommend you define “core belief” before you get started on something like this. Joseph Smith’s statement is a great reference: “The fundamental principles of our religion is the testimony of the apostles and prophets concerning Jesus Christ, “that he died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended up into heaven;” and all other things are only appendages to these, which pertain to our religion. “But in connection with these, we believe in the gift of the Holy Ghost, the power of faith, the enjoyment of the spiritual gifts according to the will of God, the restoration of the house of Israel, and the final triumph of truth.” Of course, Joseph Smith had a lot of revelations and appendages between 1838 when he said this and 1844 when he died. I take his revelations and translations that address the power of creation (spirits, worlds, whatever) and descriptions of celestial habitations and exaltation to be one of many appendages. You’ve got only 2 dozen quotes about it over a 155-year timeframe. Is that all, especially compared with the other “appendages” expounded upon during the same time period? What have the saints and proselytes needed to hear by way of appendages in the places across the world where the message of the restored gospel has been growing since 2006? “Somebody” is missing the point; the attention given here is in the appeal to ridicule, a sign of having dispensed with critical thinking, reasoning and examination. How important is David Butler to you, that you have to introduce him into the OP as you have? Why do you think he chuckled? Edited April 22, 2024 by CV75
Daniel2 Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 (edited) 1 hour ago, MiserereNobis said: Just a small quibble. If it was clearly there, then it would be a part of non-LDS Christianity. Otherwise you’re saying we’re too obtuse to recognize something that is so clear. Throughout history, there have been other Christian theologians, including Catholics, who have discussed the idea that the pinnacle of human salvation encompasses the co-heir deification of humanity. In his book, "Are Mormons Christian?," LDS author Stephen Robinson gathers several such historical quotes in a chapter on Deification, as well as the Biblical passages regarding such. There are several gathered on a website by Jeff Lindsay: Quote Doesn't historical Christianity contradict the idea that there can be multiple "gods"? (This question and related ones are addressed in more detail on my LDSFAQ page about the divine potential of human beings.) If we fully follow Christ, we can become "joint-heirs" with Him (Romans 8:14-18), becoming like him (1 John 3:2) by putting on the divine nature (2 Peter 1: 4-10). Such Christ-centered beings are sons and daughters of God (Acts 17:28; Heb. 12:9) who can become the kind of beings that Christ called "gods" in John 10:34-36: Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of god came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? Such beings are "gods" in a limited sense, called so because they can represent God and serve Him with power. They could be called heavenly servants, but the Bible uses the term "gods" (the Hebrew "elohim") several times to describe non-ultimate beings who are still subject to God. In Latter-day Saint theology, we are here on this earth as part of a divine process that can - if we follow Christ and fully accept his grace allow us to become one with Christ, as Christ is one with the Father (John 17:20-23); to sit with Christ on His throne (Rev. 3:21); to receive a glorified, immortal body like the body that Christ has (Philip. 3:21); and to partake of the divine nature and be given all things pertaining to life and godliness, receiving glory from God (2 Peter 1:3-4). All this adds to the glory of God, just as a parent is pleased and "glorified" by the success and happiness of his children. In 1 Corinthians 8:5,6, Paul notes that there are many gods (in the small "g" sense), but these are not beings that we worship, for to us, there is only one God, the Eternal Father. We believe that there may be and will be many resurrected beings who have become joint-heirs with Christ and can thus be called "gods," but they are not our Savior, our Creator, our Lord, and our God. To us, there is and always will be but one God, that Being who is properly called the "God of gods" (Deut. 10:17), the Almighty God, even Elohim, the Eternal Father. We will always worship and follow Him. Are these views non-Biblical? No. Do they contradict the views held in early Christianity? No. The widely respect ancient Christian saint, Clement of Alexandria, expressed this view: "Those who have been perfected are given their reward and their honors. They have done with their purification, they have done with the rest of their service, though it be a holy service, with the holy; now they become pure in heart, and because of their close intimacy with the Lord there awaits them a restoration to eternal contemplation; and they have received the title of 'gods' since they are destined to be enthroned with the other 'gods' who are ranked next below the savior." (Stromata 7:10 (55-56), in Henry S. Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers, London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1969, pp. 243-244.) Likewise wrote Saint Jerome: "'Give thanks to the God of Gods.' The prophet is referring to those Gods of whom it is written, I said 'ye are gods;' and again: 'God arises in the divine assembly.'" ("Homily 47 on Psalm 135," in The Homilies of Saint Jerome, ed. Marie L. Ewald, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1964, 1:353.) Even the great John Chrysostom (A.D. 407) wrote that "man can, by his own efforts, attain the likeness of God by mastering his passions." (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Rev. edition, Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1978, p. 348, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, Offenders for a Word, Aspen Books, Salt Lake City, UT, 1992, p.79.) Though less widely respected than Clement or Jerome or other early saints, the early Christian writer, Origen, was hardly engaging in non-scriptural or apostate doctrine when he wrote the following comments on the Gospel of John while serving as head of the Christian Church in Alexandria, Egypt: "There are some gods of whom God is god, as we hear in the prophecy, 'Thank ye the God of gods,' and "The God of gods hath spoken, and called the earth.' Now God, according to the Gospel, 'is not the God of the dead but of the living.' Those gods, then, are living of whom God is god. The Apostle, too, writing to the Corinthians, says, 'As there are gods many and lords many,' and so we have spoken of these gods as really existing. Now there are, besides the gods of whom God is god, certain others." (Origen, "Commentary on John, in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1886-1890, reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978-1981, 10:315.) Are these views incompatible with modern mainstream Christianity? Many churches are appalled with our doctrine, no doubt, but consider this quote from that wonderful Christian, C.S. Lewis: "The command Be ye perfect [Matt. 5:48] is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were "gods" and he is going to make good His words. If we let Him - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what he said." (Mere Christianity, Collier Books, MacMillan Publ. Co., New York, 1943; paperback edition, 1960, p. 160 - it's the last paragraph of Chapter 9, "Counting the Cost," in Book IV) As further food for thought, recent studies of ancient Judaism and early Christianity have identified the doctrine of "theosis" - the idea than man can become divine or godlike - as an important theological element, one which has been largely abandoned in recent centuries. The earliest Biblical occurrence of this idea is in Genesis 3:22, for when Adam partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, God said, "the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." Adam became godlike - in a sense - through the knowledge that he gained (cf. Psalms 82:6). This concept is prevalent in Biblical and post-Biblical Judaism, according to a recent scholarly, non-LDS work by Peter Hayman ("Monotheism - A Misused Word in Jewish Studies?," Journal of Jewish Studies, 42: 1-15, Spring 1991, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, p.78), who writes: The theme of 'becoming like one of us' reveals itself as the lurking subtext of Judaism from Adam to Nachman of Bratslav. But how does this material square with the supposed transcendental monotheism of Judaism from the post-exilic period on? Not at all, as far as I can see!... [Many Jewish mythical texts] presuppose that humans can become divine and dispose of the powers of God." (Hayman, pp. 4-5) Extensive literature, for example, deals with human ascension to heaven as deification, with Enoch as a common example. Evidence for this from early Christianity and the Enoch literature is treated by Alan F. Segal in Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (Yale, New Haven, CT, 1960, pp. 22, 34-71, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, p. 78). In addition to the quotes above from Jerome, Origen, John Chrysostom and Clement of Alexandria, the possibility of human deification was held by that "champion of orthodoxy," Athanasius (e.g., see Keith E. Norman, "Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology," Ph.D. Dissertation, Duke University, 1980, pp. 77-106; and Clyde L. Manschreck, A History of Christianity in the World, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1985, p. 62, both as cited by Ricks and Peterson, p. 78). We find it in early Orthodox tradition as well, for the 'chief idea of St. Maximus [who died in 662 A.D.] as of all of Eastern theology, [was] the idea of deification" (S.L. Epifanovic as quoted by Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700). The Christian Tradition, vol. 2, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1974, p. 10, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, p. 79). So what does all this mean in terms of LDS doctrine and our relationship to "historic Christianity"? The German Protestant church historian, Ernst Benz, speaks of this doctrine as a Christian doctrine, and says: "One can think what one wants of this doctrine of progressive deification, but one thing is certain: with this anthropology Joseph Smith is closer to the view of man held by the Ancient Church than the precursors of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin were, who considered the thought of such a substantial connection between God and man as the heresy, par excellance." Ernst W. Benz, "Imago Dei: Man in the Image of God," in Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. Truman G. Madsen, Religious Studies Center, BYU, Provo, UT, 1978, pp. 215-216, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, p. 80. The LDS belief that man can become more like God (theosis) is commonly said to prove that we have departed from the Bible and historic Christianity, but this attack is patently unfair. It is found in the Bible, in early Jewish and Christian writings, and in a direct quote from Christ himself (John 10:34). It is an important concept in the writings of C.S. Lewis. Does acceptance of this doctrine make one a pagan? Some say so, but they are not quite being fair. If "historic Christianity" is taken to mean modern Protestant fundamentalism, then I'll admit we have departed in a big way. But who has really departed from what? Now I think you'll never hear a Latter-day Saint saying that Protestants aren't Christian because they don't accept our views, but if we were as nasty as some say we are, we could make the old sword of exclusion swing both ways. But we accept all as Christians who sincerely believe in Christ, regardless of how well we think they interpret the Bible or how well they heed the words of past and living prophets of God. Actually, when it comes to God, we are all infants and know almost nothing. Latter-day Saints especially must be very cautious in how they interpret and understand the doctrine of becoming more like God. It is too heavy and ponderous for us to understand or contemplate, and should only be treated reverently and cautiously. In any case, all glory is to the Father, whom we will forever worship and adore. May we learn to know Him and His Son (John 17:3), for that is eternal life. Are we Christians? Absolutely. We are different in our views from many modern Churches, but it is Christ through whom we gain salvation, Christ that gives us hope, Christ that breaks the bands of sin and death for us and offers us eternal life in His presence with the Father. Through Christ, we can become more like Him and even become joint-heirs of the Father. May we learn to fully accept Christ and follow Him with all our hearts. 2003 Update: The strong relationship between early Christian teachings and LDS doctrine on the divine potential of human beings was explored in a recent master's thesis by a Roman Catholic Dominican monk, Father Jordan Vajda, at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2003, after publication of his thesis, he took the missionary discussions and became LDS, but he was a faithful Catholic when he wrote his thesis. I discuss a couple aspects of his work on my new page of questions for LDS critics, "My Turn." The work in question is Jordan Vajda, OP, "Partakers of the Divine Nature": A Comparative Analysis of the Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization, master's thesis, Graduate Theological Union at the University of California, Berkeley, 1998, published under the same title as Occasional Paper No. 3 by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (Provo, Utah, 2002). Father Vajda's conclusion (pp. 56-57) contains this interesting passage, referring to the critics who published the lurid anti-Mormon film, "The Godmakers": Yet what was meant to be a term of ridicule ["godmakers"] has turned out to be a term of approbation, for the witness of the Greek Fathers of the Church, described in chapter two, is that they also believed that salvation meant "becoming a god." It seems that if one's soteriology cannot accommodate a doctrine of human divinization, then it has at least implicitly, if not explicitly, rejected the heritage of the early Christian church and departed from the faith of first millennium Christianity. . . . 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." Father Vajda was a faithful Catholic who, at the time of his writing, saw Catholicism as a viable dispensation of original Christianity that can be consistent with early Christian teachings. He did not agree with the LDS view on the Trinity at that time, but recognized that there are significant parallels between early Christian doctrines on "becoming a god" and what we claim to be the restored doctrine of exaltation, and correctly pointed out the fallacies of our critics who charge us with being non-Christian for having such truly Christian doctrines. And I agree that our evangelical critics would do well to consider how far they have departed from early Christianity and to investigate the Restoration found in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now that Father Vajda has become Brother Vajda, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, critics will use that as an excuse to ignore the scholarly work that he published as a Catholic. However, the fact that he eventually converted after examining the LDS position ought to weigh heavily in the thinking of those who are sincerely seeking truth. And several more here: Quote Actually, there have been some rather surprising changes in "mainstream" theology over the centuries, especially in terms of doctrine about the divine potential of human beings. In fact, many early Christians believed in theosis, the Greek term meaning deification, conveying the concept that Christians can become like Christ and like God. An excellent review of several early Christian writers on the topic of theosis is given by Stephen Robinson in Are Mormons Christians?, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1991, pp. 60-70. Robinson begins by discussing modern reactions to Lorenzo Snow's statement ("As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be"). I quote from pages 60 and 61: It has been claimed by some that this is an altogether pagan doctrine that blasphemes the majesty of God. Not all Christians have thought so, however. In the second century Saint Irenaeus, the most important Christian theologian of his time, said much the same thing as Lorenzo Snow: If the Word became a man, It was so men may become gods. [1] Webmaster's note (update by Jeff Lindsay, Dec. 16, 2006): This quote from Irenaeus is actually incorrect, having been taken from a secondary source that had it wrong. The quote from Irenaeus can be seen at in the English translation at NewAdvent.org of Book V, Adversus Haereses, where the closest thing to the passage given by Robinson citation is this: [T]he Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself. Critics are correct in noting that Irenaeus in this passage is talking about the Incarnation of the Son rather than any mortal history of the Father. I agree that early Christian discussions of theosis generally do not point to any mortal history of the Father, but compare the path of the Son to the path that mankind can take: the path from mortality to the divine nature of the Godhead. Indeed, Saint Irenaeus had more than this to say on the subject of deification [Webmaster's note: see a slightly different translation of this excellent passage for yourself at https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.vi.xxxix.html, where it is in Chapter 38, paragraph 4]: Do we cast blame on him [God] because we were not made gods from the beginning, but were at first created merely as men, and then later as gods? Although God has adopted this course out of his pure benevolence, that no one may charge him with discrimination or stinginess, he declares, "I have said, ye are gods; and all of you are sons of the Most High." ... For it was necessary at first that nature be exhibited, then after that what was mortal would be conquered and swallowed up in immortality." [2] Also in the second century, Saint Clement of Alexandria wrote, "Yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god." [3] - almost a paraphrase of Lorenzo Snow's statement. [Note: An alternate translation available at CCEL.org is "the Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God."] Clement also said that "if one knows himself, he will know God, and knowing God will become like God.... His is beauty, true beauty, for it is God, and that man becomes a god, since God wills it. So Heraclitus was right when he said, 'Men are gods, and gods are men.'" [4] Still in the second century, Saint Justin Martyr insisted that in the beginning men were "made like God, free from suffering and death," and that they are thus "deemed worthy of becoming gods and of having power to become sons of the highest." [5] In the early fourth century Saint Athanasius - that tireless foe of heresy after whom the orthodox Athanasian Creed is named - also stated his belief in deification in terms very similar to those of Lorenzo Snow: "The Word was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods.... Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life." [6] On another occasion Athanasius stated, "He became man that we might be made divine" [7] - yet another parallel to Lorenzo Snow's expression. [An alternate translation is available at CCEL.org: "He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God."] Finally, Saint Augustine himself, the greatest of the Christian Fathers, said: "But he himself that justifies also deifies, for by justifying he makes sons of God. 'For he has given them power to become the sons of God' [John 1:12] If then we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods." [8] Notice that I am citing only unimpeachable Christian authorities here - no pagans, no Gnostics. All five of the above writers were not just Christians, and just orthodox Christians - they were orthodox Christian saints. Three of the five wrote within a hundred years of the period of the Apostles, and all five believed in the doctrine of deification. This doctrine was a part of historical Christianity until relatively recent times, and it is still an important doctrine in some Eastern Orthodox churches. References cited above by Robinson: 1. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, bk. 5, pref. 2. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.38. [Alternate translation available online at NewAdvent.org. See also CCEL.org.] Cp. 4.11 (2): "But man receives progression and increase towards God. For God is always the same, so also man, when found in God, shall always progress toward God." 3. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks, 1. [Alternate translation available online at CCEL.org - search for "the Word of God became man".] 4. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 3.1. [Alternate translation available online at CCEL.org.] See also Clement, Stromateis, 23. 5. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 124. [Available online at CCEL.org.] 6. Athanasius, Against the Arians, 1.39 [alternate translation available online at CCEL.org], 3.34. 7. Athanasius, De Inc., 54. [Alternate translation available online at CCEL.org.] 8. Augustine, On the Psalms, 50.2 [Alternate translation available online at CCEL.org.] Augustine insists that such individuals are gods by grace rather than by nature, but they are gods nevertheless. Robinson also quotes from the non-LDS Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology from the article titled "Deification": 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 OT and NT (e.g., Ps. 82 (81).6; II Peter 1.4) and it is essentially the teaching both of St. Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (cf. Rom. 8:9-17; Gal. 4:5-7) and the Fourth Gospel (cf. 17.21-23). The language of II Peter is taken up by St Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, 'if the Word has been made man, it is so men may be made gods' [Webmaster's note: the quote should be "[T]he Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself" - see my note above] (Adv. Haer V, Pref.), and become the standard in Greek theology. In the fourth century St Athanasius repeats Irenaeus almost word for word, and in the fifth century St Cyril of Alexandria says that we shall become sons 'by participation' (Greek methexis). Deification is the central idea in the spirituality of St Maximus the Confessor, for whom the doctrine is the corollary of the Incarnation: 'Deification, briefly, is the encompassing and fulfillment of all times and ages',... and St Symeon the New Theologian at the end of the tenth century writes, 'He who is God by nature converses with those whom he has made gods by grace, as a friend converses with his friends, face to face.'... Finally, it should be noted that deification does not mean absorption into God, since the deified creature remains itself and distinct. It is the whole human being, body and soul, who is transfigured in the Spirit into the likeness of the divine nature, and deification is the goal of every Christian." (Symeon Lash, "Deification," The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. Alan Richardson and John Bowden, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983, pp. 147-148.) Recently, while reading the works of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, an early Christian bishop, I encountered this fascinating quote from his Prologue to the Catechetical Lectures: When thou shalt have heard what is written concerning the mysteries, then wilt thou understand things which thou knewest not. And think not that thou receivest a small thing: though a miserable man, thou receivest one of God's titles. Hear St. Paul saying, God is faithful. Hear another Scripture saying, God is faithful and just. Foreseeing this, the Psalmist, because men are to receive a title of God, spoke thus in the person of God: I said, Ye are Gods, and are all sons of the Most High. But beware lest thou have the title of "faithful," but the will of the faithless. Thou hast entered into a contest, toil on through the race: another such opportunity thou canst not have. Were it thy wedding-day before thee, wouldest thou not have disregarded all else, and set about the preparation for the feast? And on the eve of consecrating thy soul to the heavenly Bridegroom, wilt thou not cease from carnal things, that thou mayest win spiritual? As further food for thought, recent non-LDS studies of ancient Judaism and early Christianity have identified the doctrine of "theosis" - the idea than man can become divine or godlike - as an important theological element, one which has been largely abandoned in recent centuries. The earliest Biblical occurrence of this idea is in Genesis 3:22, for when Adam partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, God said, "the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." Adam became godlike - in a sense - through the knowledge that he gained (cf. Psalms 82:6). This concept is prevalent in Biblical and post-Biblical Judaism, according to a recent scholarly, non-LDS work by Peter Hayman ("Monotheism - A Misused Word in Jewish Studies?," Journal of Jewish Studies, 42: 1-15, Spring 1991, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, 1992, p.78), who writes: The theme of 'becoming like one of us' reveals itself as the lurking subtext of Judaism from Adam to Nachman of Bratslav. But how does this material square with the supposed transcendental monotheism of Judaism from the post-exilic period on? Not at all, as far as I can see!... [Many Jewish mythical texts] presuppose that humans can become divine and dispose of the powers of God." (Hayman, pp. 4-5) Extensive literature, for example, deals with human ascension to heaven as deification, with Enoch as a common example. Evidence for this from early Christianity and the Enoch literature is treated by Alan F. Segal in Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (Yale, New Haven, CT, 1960, pp. 22, 34-71, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, 1992, p. 78). The possibility of human deification was held by that "champion of orthodoxy," Athanasius (e.g., see Keith E. Norman, "Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology," Ph.D. Dissertation, Duke University, 1980, pp. 77-106; and Clyde L. Manschreck, A History of Christianity in the World, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1985, p. 62, both as cited by Peterson and Ricks, 1992, p. 78). We find it in early Orthodox tradition as well, for the 'chief idea of St. Maximus [who died in 662 A.D.] as of all of Eastern theology, [was] the idea of deification" (S.L. Epifanovic as quoted by Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700). The Christian Tradition, vol. 2, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1974, p. 10, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, 1992, p. 79). In fact, the concept of theosis was so widespread that Athanasius AND his archenemies, the Arians, subscribed to that doctrine. And Origenist monks in Jerusalem debated "whether all men would finally become like Christ or whether Christ was really a different creature" (Clyde L. Manschreck, A History of Christianity in the World, 2d. ed., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1985, p. 52, as cited by Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks in "Comparing LDS Beliefs with First-Century Christianity," Ensign, March 1988). And many early Christians were "were invited to 'study' to become gods" (P. Barlow, "Unorthodox Orthodoxy: The Idea of Deification in Christian History," Sunstone, Vol. 8, Sept./Oct. 1983, pp. 16-17, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, 1988). So what does all this mean in terms of LDS doctrine and our relationship to "historic Christianity"? The German Protestant church historian, Ernst Benz, speaks of this doctrine as a Christian doctrine, and says: "One can think what one wants of this doctrine of progressive deification, but one thing is certain: with this anthropology Joseph Smith is closer to the view of man held by the Ancient Church than the precursors of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin were, who considered the thought of such a substantial connection between God and man as the heresy, par excellence." (Ernst W. Benz, "Imago Dei: Man in the Image of God," in Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. Truman G. Madsen, Religious Studies Center, BYU, Provo, UT, 1978, pp. 215-216, as cited by Peterson and Ricks, 1992, p. 80.) Not only did early mainstream Christians understand the Bible to teach deification, but some modern mainstream Christians have as well. The indisputably Christian author, C.S. Lewis, who is also highly respected in LDS circles, wrote, "It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship." (The Weight and the Glory and Other Addresses, rev. ed., New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1980, p. 18.) Question: if Athanasius, Augustine, Saint Irenaeus, Saint Cyril, Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint Clement of Alexandria, and others, including C.S. Lewis in modern days, can teach the doctrine of deification and still be accepted as Christians, why are Latter-day Saints said to be non-Christian for such beliefs? To me, the evidence is consistent with our claim that the original Church of Jesus Christ has been restored. Our doctrines are clearly at odds with mainstream churches of the day, but that's not because Joseph Smith was making up ludicrous doctrine. In my view, it's because long lost but true doctrines were restored through him as a divinely authorized prophet. Is there proof for such a wild claim? Yes - the Book of Mormon is proof that begs to be examined. But that's another story - and another web page. For further insights into early Christian statements related to theosis, see "Nature of God/Deification of Man" at FairMormon.org. While I'm no longer a believing Latter-day Saint, the concept that we are children of heavenly parents who can become like them and should aspire to be so is one of the doctrines I truly love and find both inspiring and empowering. Edited April 22, 2024 by Daniel2 1
bluebell Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 (edited) 1 hour ago, Craig Speechly said: So what's changed? Why are current leader hesitant to loudly proclaim this doctrine and why weren't former church leaders? Why would Butler deny that it's a belief in that podcast? He's no dummy. I think our leaders are more aware of how easy it is for even well-reasoned opinions to be wrong, and they've seen the collateral damage that happens to members when leaders teach stuff that ends up being incorrect and so are much more careful about what they espouse. I listened to the podcast you linked to and I guess I'm not really seeing the issue. I think you might be jumping to some conclusions about what Butler was saying. First, the host (non-lds) asks if it's every member's "desire to arrive at the celestial kingdom...so that they are able to be a god of their own planet", and Butler replies that while that idea can make a good play (alluding to the Book of Mormon musical), it's not very accurate. And I agree with him, because I don't know any members personally whose goal is to get their own planet and who are active in the church so that that can happen. While we may believe that is what will happen eons from now through the grace of Christ and by becoming joint-heirs with Him, getting our own planet isn't anyone's focus. Beyond that, Butler doesn't deny that while we might each get our own worlds, that's interpretation of doctrine but not anything that has been revealed specifically. He remarks that it's an implication of what eternal life is (eternal life means the kind of life that God lives, so that could imply that we will be doing what God does) but there is a lot of space between implication and actual. He says that we go to far when we say that we know what it looks like to have the kind of life God has, for certain, though he acknowledges that in the past many leaders and prophets have fleshed out those doctrines. So, again, what has changed is that as a church we are less willing to take implications and extrapolations as doctrinal fact. Butler doesn't deny any doctrine, but he does push back against some interpretations of doctrine that have been popular in the past. Edited April 22, 2024 by bluebell 1
bluebell Posted April 22, 2024 Posted April 22, 2024 1 hour ago, MiserereNobis said: Just a small quibble. If it was clearly there, then it would be a part of non-LDS Christianity. Otherwise you’re saying we’re too obtuse to recognize something that is so clear. I think it's more like how we ignore stuff in the scriptures that we don't believe is correct (rather than the idea that we are too obtuse to recognize it). I think of how Paul taught that women should be silent in the churches. It couldn't be any more clear, but most churches completely ignore it. 2
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