Restoring the Ancient Church, The Doctrine of God and the Nature of Man. (Mormon) Part 3

Here is the problem with all these discussions:

1. The anti-Mormons can't make a point without insulting the motives of the Mormons.

For example: Mormons think they are "superior", are a cult, secretly agree with the FLDS, and they are probably torturing baby kittens.

2. Mormons don't give straight answers.

Question: Do you believe there is more than one God? Yes or No?

Well, we only worship one God, but CS Lewis and St. Augustine and Frosty the Snowman implied that there is more than one god, plus the question is "beyond the mark", and there is this verse in Psalms, so the real answer is ... whoa ... how about this weather we are having?

To sum it up: The anti-Mormons are hysterical, angry, and insulting, and the Mormons either don't know or won't admit what they really believe.

To sum it up: The anti-Mormons are hysterical, angry, and insulting, and the Mormons either don't know or won't admit what they really believe.

It's polite to ping those you are insulting...here, I'll do it for you.

FI ping to 121.

The anti-Mormons are hysterical, angry, and insulting...

Pot meet kettle.

The anti-Mormons are hysterical, angry, and insulting,

Darn I didn't know I was any of those things...I don't think I bash them. I just don't like the FLDS. So if I dislike the FLDS I am now a Mormon basher??? Yikes. Its getting kooky here.

I just don't like the FLDS.

The mainstream Mormons agree with you, but some on these threads accuse the Mormons of secretly supporting them. Ironically, the FLDS is the one issue on which they will give a concise answer.

To sum it up: The anti-Mormons are hysterical, angry, and insulting, and the Mormons either don't know or won't admit what they really believe.

That was a downright hysterical, angry and insulting comment!

To sum it up: The anti-Mormons are hysterical, angry, and insulting, and the Mormons either don't know or won't admit what they really believe.

Actually, according to some LDS members on prior posts, I am a dimwitted troll who eats viper food.

I personally prefer that descriptive moniker to hysterical, angry, and insulting.

Nope.

“I am a dimwitted troll who eats viper food”

catchy!

According to some here I’m an anti-Jesus-going-straight- to-hell-in-a-handbasket-heathen because I don’t pray to Mary.

Gotta love the Religion threads!

Still gnashing on meat. I don't even pretend to understand it. But I do know that it is a doctrine, both ancient and modern. I leave it in the Lord's hands. You may find this of interest.

Irenaeus (ca. AD 115-202)

Saint Irenaeus, who may justly be called the first Biblical theologian among the ancient Christians, was a disciple of the great Polycarp, who was a direct disciple of John the Revelator.^[4] Irenaeus is not a heretic or unorthodox in traditional Christian circles, yet he shares a belief in theosis:

While man gradually advances and mounts towards perfection; that is, he approaches the eternal. The eternal is perfect; and this is God. Man has first to come into being, then to progress, and by progressing come to manhood, and having reached manhood to increase, and thus increasing to persevere, and persevering to be glorified, and thus see his Lord. ^[5]

Like the LDS, Irenaeus did not believe that this belief in any way displaced God, Christ, or the Holy Ghost:

there is none other called God by the Scriptures except the Father of all, and the Son, and those who possess the adoption....Since, therefore, this is sure and stedfast, that no other God or Lord was announced by the Spirit, except Him who, as God, rules over all, together with His Word, and those who receive the Spirit of adoption.^[6]

Yet, Irenaeus—whom it is absurd to exclude from the ranks of orthodox Christians—believed in theosis in terms which agree with LDS thinking on the matter:

We were not made gods at our beginning, but first we were made men, then, in the end, gods.^[7]

Also:

How then will any be a god, if he has not first been made a man? How can any be perfect when he has only lately been made man? How immortal, if he has not in his mortal nature obeyed his maker? For one's duty is first to observe the discipline of man and thereafter to share in the glory of God.^[8]

And:

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, of his boundless love, became what we are that he might make us what he himself is.” ^[9]

And:

But of what gods [does he speak]? [Of those] to whom He says, "I have said, Ye are gods, and all sons of the Most High." To those, no doubt, who have received the grace of the "adoption, by which we cry, Abba Father."” ^[10]

And, Irenaeus considers the doctrine clearly Biblical, just as the LDS do:

For he who holds, without pride and boasting, the true glory (opinion) regarding created things and the Creator, who is the Almighty God of all, and who has granted existence to all; [such an one, ] continuing in His love and subjection, and giving of thanks, shall also receive from Him the greater glory of promotion, looking forward to the time when he shall become like Him who died for him, for He, too, "was made in the likeness of sinful flesh," to condemn sin, and to cast it, as now a condemned thing, away beyond the flesh, but that He might call man forth into His own likeness, assigning him as [His own] imitator to God, and imposing on him His Father's law, in order that he may see God, and granting him power to receive the Father; [being] the Word of God who dwelt in man, and became the Son of man, that He might accustom man to receive God, and God to dwell in man, according to the good pleasure of the Father.^[11]

Further quotes from Irenaeus available here.

Said one Protestant theologian of Irenaeus:

Participation in God was carried so far by Irenaeus as to amount to deification. 'We were not made gods in the beginning,' he says, 'but at first men, then at length gods.' This is not to be understood as mere rhetorical exaggeration on Irenaeus' part. He meant the statement to be taken literally.^[12]

Clement of Alexandria (AD 150-215)

Clement, an early Christian leader in Alexandria, also taught the doctrine of deification:

yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god.^[13]

And:

...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 god, since God wills it. So Heraclitus was right when he said, "Men are gods, and gods are men."^[14]

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.^[15]

Origen (ca. AD 185-251)

And thus the first-born of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written, "The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth." It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own bounty. The true God, then, is "The God," and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype. ^[16]

The Father, then, is proclaimed as the one true God; but besides the true God are many who become gods by participating in God. ^[17]

Origen also defined what it means to "participate" in something:

Every one who participates in anything, is unquestionably of one essence and nature with him who is partaker of the same thing. ^[18]

Justin Martyr (d. ca. AD 163)

Justin the Martyr said in 150 A.D. that he wishes

to prove to you that the Holy Ghost reproaches men because they were made like God, free from suffering and death, provided that they kept His commandments, and were deemed deserving of the name of His sons... 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...^[19]

Also,

[By Psalm 82] it is demonstrated that all men are deemed worthy of becoming “gods,” and even of having power to become sons of the Highest.^[20]

Hippolytus (AD 170-236)

Now in all these acts He offered up, as the first-fruits, His own manhood, in order that thou, when thou art in tribulation, mayest not be disheartened, but, confessing thyself to be a man (of like nature with the Redeemer,) mayest dwell in expectation of also receiving what the Father has granted unto this Son...The Deity (by condescension) does not diminish anything of the dignity of His divine perfection having made you even God unto his glory. ^[21]

Athanasius

In 347, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria and participant in the council of Nicea, said:

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...[we are] sons and gods by reason of the word in us.^[22]

For as Christ died and was exalted as man, so, as man, is He said to take what, as God, He ever had, that even such a grant of grace might reach to us. For the Word was not impaired in receiving a body, that He should seek to receive a grace, but rather He deified that which He put on, and more than that, gave it graciously to the race of man. ^[23]

He also states that Christ "became man that we might be made divine." ^[24]

Augustine (AD 354-430)

Augustine, considered one of the greatest 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.^[25]

Jerome (AD 340-420)

Jerome also described the deification of believers as an act of grace, which matches the LDS understanding precisely:

“I said 'you are gods, all of you sons of the most high.’" let Eunomius hear this, let Arius, who say that the son of God is son in the same way we are. That we are gods is not so by nature, but by grace. “but to as many as receive Him he gave power to becoming sons of God” I made man for that purpose, that from men they may become gods. We are called gods and sons!...[Christ said] "all of you sons of the Most High," it is not possible to be the son of the Most High, unless He Himself is the Most High. I said that all of you would be exalted as I am exalted.^[26]

Jerome goes on to say that we should

give thanks to the God of gods. The prophet is referring to those gods of whom it is written: I said ‘you are gods’ and again ‘god arises in the divine assembly’ they who cease to be mere men, abandon the ways of vice an are become perfect, are gods and the sons of the most high...^[27]

Modern Christian exegesis

The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology describes "deification" thusly:

Deification (Greek Theosis) is for orthodoxy the goal of every Christian. Man, according to the Bible, is ‘made in the image and likeness of God’...it is possible for man to become like God, to become deified, to become God by grace. This doctrine is based on many passages of both O.T. and N.T. (Ps. 82: (81) .6; 2_Pet. 1:4), and it is essentially the teaching both of St. Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (Rom. 8:9-17, Gal. 4:5-7) and the fourth gospel (John 17:21-23).^[28]

Joseph Fitzmyer wrote:

The language of 2 Peter is taken up by St. Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, ‘if the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods; (adv. Haer v, pref.), And becomes 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 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.^[29]

According to Christian scholar G.L. Prestige, the ancient Christians “taught that the destiny of man was to become like God, and even to become deified.”^[30]

William R. Inge, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote:

"God became man, that we might become God" was a commonplace of doctrinal theology at least until the time of Augustine, and that "deification holds a very large place in the writings of the fathers...We find it in Irenaeus as well as in Clement, in Athanasius as well in Gregory of Nysee. St. Augustine was no more afraid of deificari in Latin than Origen of apotheosis in Greek...To modern ears the word deification sounds not only strange but arrogant and shocking.^[31]

Yet, these "arrogant and shocking" doctrines were clearly held by early Christians!

This view of the early Christians' doctrines is not unique to the Latter-day Saints. Many modern Christian writers have recognized the same doctrines. If the critics do not wish to embrace these ancient doctrines, that is their privilege, but they cannot logically claim that such doctrines are not "Christian." One might fairly ask why modern Christians do not believe that which the ancient Christians insisted upon?

UnBiblical?

The previous section demonstrates that theosis has been taught by many Christians through the centuries. They pulled these beliefs from the Bible itself.

Scriptures

Theosis or deification is discussed in the following biblical scriptures:

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is proper to cite Origen:

Now it is possible that some may dislike what we have said representing the Father as the one true God, but admitting other beings besides the true God, who have become gods by having a share of God. They may fear that the glory of Him who surpasses all creation may be lowered to the level of those other beings called gods. They may fear that the glory of Him who surpasses all creation may be lowered to the lever of those other beings called gods...[However], as, then there are many gods, but to us there is but one God the Father, and many Lords, but to us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 8:5-6). ^[32]

True, some may dislike this doctrine, but it is ancient, Biblical, and true.

In regard to the Mormon doctrine, non-LDS scholar Ernst W. Benz has observed:

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.^[33]

For more quotes about theosis see: Primary sources:Theosis

OK, I grasp the deification of humans belief. I don’t agree with some of it. Certainly, in heaven we will be far greater than what we are now, and perhaps there will be some sort of progression, though I see no New Testament evidence for that.

But, I get it.

However, you are extremely evasive on other issues that ought to be fundamental to any religion. You do not seem to be able to answer one simple question:

Other than the God who created earth, and all the little gods that the God of earth created, is there another God?

Yes or No. Pretty simple.

Then I take it you understood my question and why I asked it. It’s amusing to see folks interpret the Bible for the rest of us, specifically Revelation, and they can’t even get the name of the book correct.

Then it seems to me that you don’t get the deification of man, as stated so clearly by these ancient Christian Fathers.

All the rest of it is a mystery. Assuming that you believe these early Christians, and what they said, we both also believe that to us, there is but one God, or Godhead, to which we worship and have anything pertaining to our life, and existence, period. Namely, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

In the meantime, as Isaiah, said, we learn and progress line upon line, precept on precept, here a little and there a little.

We’re all at different stages in our ‘lines’

Cheers

Exactly, Tang Soo.

Stand fast in the faith once (for all) delivered unto the saints.

Terry