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The church released another new essay today, Becoming Like God. https://www.lds.org/topics/becoming-like-god?lang=eng Like.
:clap: LDSThomas
Excellent. I really like this one. I do really like the article. When I started reading it, I was honestly hoping that it would refute the concept of becoming gods as knowable doctrine and that it would focus on attaining ‘godliness’ or taking on attributes of God without necessarily becoming a god. So… I was mildly disappointed as I read, but by the end, I was very happy to have such a well-written and coherent statement. I love how it emphasizes LDS anticipation of exaltation as being very different from the pop-culture caricature. What is interesting to me is that I believe this article is actually an expansion of what is accepted as doctrine. Some of the statements in the article are not what I would have considered to be stated doctrine. I have always viewed concepts like Mother in Heaven, statements like Lorenzo Snow’s or even JS’s King Follet discourse to be slightly fringe and ‘possibilities’ rather than hard doctrine, borderline mysteries that were hinted at, but not understood well enough to declare. Yet, this article talks about those as specific and clear teachings of the Church. The conclusion positions these teachings as doctrine.
I think most people would have to work hard to be critical of this essay. Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
This article represents the best of Mormonism, IMO. Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
cwald wrote:This article represents the best of Mormonism, IMO.
Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
I agree. This essay was well done. This is the stuff that keeps me around.I liked it. So much better than the apologetic garbage of the first essays. I have always thought this was the central tenant of Mormonism. Without this the church is nothing, The church should embrace this and expand on it. The Prophet should get revelation to enhance our understanding. This should be the whole of Mormonism. But sadly we miss the mark and stew in trivial and mundane issues of sexual morality and arcaic ordinances as though those things elevate us to being like god. Now it is probably all bogus, but if Joseph got anything profound this was it.
Almost thou persuadest me to be a Mormon . . . I couldn’t agree more – this is Mormonism at its absolute best, embracing what is our unique doctrine, and doing so in a way that makes it sound perfectly rational and beautiful. Bravo!
I appreciate the honestly in this essay but is it really doctrine because JS made a comment about it in a speech and decades later another leader added to it. It is not really part of the scriptures and there is no modern canonized scripture on it, so why do we believe it? He said that the garden of Eden was in MO, so does that make it so. Many of the things he declared in the D & C did not happen, but we believe this. He couldn’t be honest about his wives but we base what happens in the afterlife on his word? I just don’t think we know or at least I don’t know. I like the thought of always progressing but I don’t think I want to become a god some day. I don’t even want to be a home teacher most of the time. church0333, as the explanation points out, this isn’t a uniquely Mormon concept that is based on a comment by Joseph Smith. That would be the idea that God used to be a mortal man – and that certainly isn’t modern Mormon doctrine in the sense of being taught from the General Conference pulpit or emphasized in manuals – and the explanation clearly doesn’t label that idea solid doctrine. It merely mentions the couplet and then focuses on the last part. Becoming like God is a central theme in the Bible (with FAR more references in both the OT and the NT than are listed that at least imply the goal of becoming like God, I would say it is THE central theme), and theosis is alive and well within the Eastern Orthodox tradition. One of the reasons I like this explanation is that it clearly states that the idea of becoming like God is not a new thing taught by Joseph Smith but rather an old teaching that was restored by Joseph. Many Mormons don’t understand that, so I would love to have this be the source of Sacrament Meeting talks throughout the Church. I know I will use it next month when the topic of our Sunday School lessons is the Atonement.
Church, I see the concept as a model that gives us the opportunity to reflect and imagine human potential in a way that promotes the growth and maturing of mankind. Whether anything is actual or literal takes a back seat in my mind to the potential that it may have to motivate personal striving to new heights in compassion, unity, and love. I liked the article. I feel that it was distinct from past articles in that it wasn’t an attempt to distance the church from past church teachings and misunderstandings (over race, priesthood, polygamy, or BoM hemispheric models). Rather than a defensive – “Yeah some of our past leaders and members were overly dogmatic about XYZ – we don’t really know that to be true.”, this article seems to lead with what we do believe.
I believe the content of the article (theosis, deification, exaltation) is perfect for this because it is unprovable (there is no real evidence one way or the other) and it is not particularly controversial in that most all LDS members could agree with most of it.
This is the current thread about the new explanation on lds.org. dash’s post about the SL Tribune article expands on this one. cwald wrote:This article represents the best of Mormonism, IMO.
Indeed. one of the very best doctrinal dissertations i have ever seen by the church.church0333 wrote:I appreciate the honestly in this essay but is it really doctrine because JS made a comment about it in a speech and decades later another leader added to it. It is not really part of the scriptures and there is no modern canonized scripture on it, so why do we believe it? He said that the garden of Eden was in MO, so does that make it so. Many of the things he declared in the D & C did not happen, but we believe this. He couldn’t be honest about his wives but we base what happens in the afterlife on his word? I just don’t think we know or at least I don’t know. I like the thought of always progressing but I don’t think I want to become a god some day. I don’t even want to be a home teacher most of the time.
the concept of divine nature as opposed to human depravity clearly distinguishes LDS thought from mainstream christianity. That we share a divine nature is more important than how we derive that doctrine. there is abundant evidence in scripture that we have a divine nature and are gods and children of god, as shown by the article. no, we don’t teach very often from King Follett, because amidst the notions of divine nature, there are mentions of God coming from a different planet, and other speculations that are very hard to square with christian thought.As disaffected LDS, we are often forced into a false dichotomy of “all true or all false”. We think that because JS made profound prophetic errors we cannot trust his insight of the divine. When I came to realize that Joseph Smith was profoundly human, and that the book of mormon cannot be a true history of the Amerinds, I had to realize that there is a Middle Way between all true and all false: that the church and its profoundly uplifting teachings such as divine nature are completely “true” for me in the sense of how a compass points to the direction i should go.
Wayfarer – I just wanted to thank you for your blog. I have spent a large portion of the day reading your entries. They remarkable. Thank you for standing strong in the middle way.
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