Question:
Premise 1: God does not change
Premise 2: God is eternal
Logical conclusion: God has always been god and could not have once been man because that would have involved him not being god eternally and changing into god.
What is the flaw in this argument?
Answer: Your question seems to suggest that LDS doctrine concerning exaltation contradicts scripture. However, a detailed examination of the scriptures and the
teachings of modern day prophets reveals that there is no contradiction in
these principles. It is possible for an
eternal, unchanging God to also be one who began as a man, and who grew and
progressed until he became a God. In
order for me to explain this, I’m afraid I must point out that your argument may be based on a flawed or incomplete understanding of scripture. Thus, your conclusion
does not flow from your premises, because one or more of your premises (at least as you appear to have interpreted them) is based
on a misconception of doctrine.
Section One--Premise
2: God is eternal
Let’s begin with the second premise first: “God is eternal.” By this you seem to mean that God has always
been God (and never anything else), but that seems as if you are just restating your first
premise (and your conclusion). It might
therefore be helpful to discern your meaning by examining the standard
definition of the word “eternal.”
1. without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing (opposed to temporal): eternal life.
2. perpetual; ceaseless; endless: eternal quarreling; eternal chatter.
3. enduring; immutable: eternal principles.
4. Metaphysics. existing outside all relations of time; not subject to change. (Dictionary.com, n. d.)
If, by “eternal” you are referring to God as something
without beginning or end, or endless, ceaseless, or perpetual, or having always
existed, this definition does not necessarily preclude a God who has progressed
from a mortal man to become exalted as a God.
In fact, the concept of a God who has always existed might actually be
in harmony with a conception of a God who was once a man.
The scriptures are fairly clear that mortal man (you and I)
has always existed (in some form). The Lord (through Joseph Smith) taught that
we existed with Him in the beginning with God.
D&C 93:21, 23, 29 And now, verily I say unto you, I was
in the beginning with the Father, and am the Firstborn; Ye were also in the
beginning with the Father; that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth; Man
was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was
not created or made, neither indeed can be.
"The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven." (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1938, pp. 353).
Before we received a spirit body we existed in the form of
intelligence (or spirit matter). What
the precise nature of this spirit matter or intelligence is has not been
revealed, but what matters is that we were not brought into being ex nihilo (from nothing) by God’s
whim. We have always existed, in one
form or another, and we will go on existing forever. There is no such thing as oblivion—we did not
come from nothing, and we cannot return to nothing. The other thing to take from this verse is
that not only did we exist from the beginning, but that we were in God’s
presence from the beginning, because we existed as “spirit matter [that] was
eternal and co-existent with God.”
"Our spirit matter was eternal and co-existent with
God, but it was organized into spirit bodies by our Heavenly Father"
(Spencer W. Kimball, The Miracle of
Forgiveness, p. 5, Salt Lake City, 1969)
Jesus Christ is an eternal being, who was in the beginning
with God (See John 1:1-3). He is without
beginning or end (see Moses 1:3, D&C 38:1).
In the passages quoted above, we learn that we are also “eternal and
co-existent with God,” insofar as we have existed “from the beginning” with God
in the same way which Christ has. In
this context, “in (or from) the beginning” does not mean that there was a time
before when God or Christ were alone, or when they did not exist. “In the beginning,” when referring to beings
who are without beginning or end, denotes the fact that there was never a time
when such beings did not exist. You and
I are included in that eternal “in the beginning.” We have always existed, and will always exist,
in some form (intelligence/spirit matter) which was not created or made. Just
as we have always existed, and will always exist, even so it is possible for a
God who was once a man like us to have existed eternally, in the sense that he
is also without beginning or end. It is not sacrilege to compare our state with that of God, because (as Joseph Smith taught) the mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1938, pp. 353).
Section Two--Premise
1: God does not change
As for a God who does not change, or who is immutable, which
pertains to your first premise, as well as to the last definition listed under
the term “eternal,” you are limiting your definition of change too much, or
perhaps not enough.
There are many scriptures which declare that God is the same
“yesterday, today, and forever,” or that He is God “from everlasting to
everlasting,” or “from eternity to eternity.” (See the related LDS Topical Guide entry). However, these scriptures ought not be
interpreted as saying that God is perpetually frozen in the same state, or that
He is incapable of change.
When God is actually referred to as unchanging in scripture,
context is important. For example, many
of the scriptures in which it is stated outright (sometimes by the Lord Himself)
that He does not change are clearly referring to God’s fidelity and constancy
in keeping His promises and covenants (see Malachi 3:6, particularly in context
of chapter 3). This is not the same
thing as saying that God is incapable of change or progression.
On the other hand, scripture also makes it clear that God is
a God who can (and does) change his mind. In fact, God is depicted in several
places as changing his mind (for example, Genesis 6:6, Jeremiah 26:3), and this
would run counter to an image of God who is incapable of change of any kind.
When one looks at the context in which these scriptures are
found, and when one focuses on taking scripture as a whole instead of picking
out isolated verses as a basis upon which to form doctrine, one might
reasonably conclude that God’s personality and His love for us do not change;
and his word, and his constancy in keeping that word, are similarly immutable. It would also be appropriate to use the term immutable
when referring to eternal laws principles as they are taught to us by God. In
all of these things God can be said to be (and is declared in scripture to be) unchanging. However, even with all of these things taken
together, we are still a far cry from justifying an assumption that God is (and
always has been) frozen in one state of being or thinking, or that He is
incapable of change.
Jesus Christ as a Type
for the Progress of an Eternal God
That said, there is an even more significant key to this
puzzle which can be found in the life of Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day,
and for ever.”
Christ is a perfect case study because we know more about
his life and his overall progression, but we also recognize that He is divine. Jesus took upon himself the form of a man
(see Philippians 2:5-11). He was born to a woman, and he suffered all of the
things which can come upon a man as a result of mortality (see Alma 7:10-14). He
then suffered and was crucified, and rose on the third day with a glorified
body of flesh and bone (Philippians 3:20-21, Luke 24:39), and eventually
ascended to take his place at the right hand of God. While whole books have
been written about Jesus Christ’s progression from spirit being to possessing a
mortal body, to taking his place as a God at the right hand of God (Hebrews 1:3,
12:2), the point is that even Jesus Christ had to learn and grow in order to progress
to where He is today.
Hebrews 5:8-9 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the
author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
D&C 93: 11-17 And I, John, bear record that I beheld his
glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth, even the Spirit of truth, which came and dwelt in the flesh, and dwelt
among us. And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first,
but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but
continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness; And thus he was
called the Son of God, because he received not of the fulness at the first. And
I, John, bear record, and lo, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Ghost
descended upon him in the form of a dove, and sat upon him, and there came a
voice out of heaven saying: This is my beloved Son. And I, John, bear record
that he received a fulness of the glory of the Father; And he received all power,
both in heaven and on earth, and the glory of the Father was with him, for he
dwelt in him.
Jesus Christ grew “from grace to grace” until He finally
obtained the fulness of the father, and He had to “learn” until He was “made
perfect.” This is significant for a number
of reasons, however for our purposes it serves to highlight that when the
scriptures say that “Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, and to day, and for
ever,” they cannot mean that Jesus Christ is (or ever was) frozen in place, as
a perfect, immutable, unchanging being.
The scriptures as a whole do not support that interpretation. Rather than calling into question the
reliability of the scriptures, I would argue that this highlights that your interpretation
of the scriptures may be flawed, which calls into question the validity of your
premise, and your whole basis for insisting that God does not (or cannot) change.
Joseph Smith taught that God came and dwelt on an Earth as a
man, but he also compares God’s life and progression to that of Jesus Christ.
“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man,
and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! … It is the first principle of the Gospel
to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse
with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us;
yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.”
(Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith,
sel. Joseph Fielding Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1938, pp. 345–46.)
Jesus Christ is most certainly divine. He has been attested throughout scripture as
eternal, and unchanging, and yet the scriptures also make it abundantly clear
that Jesus had to learn and progress. In
light of this, Jesus Christ serves as a crucial template by which we can
understand the divine nature, and by which we can grasp how God the Father can
be eternal and unchanging, and yet somehow also grow and develop.
“It is the grand truth that in all that Jesus came to say and do, including and especially in His atoning suffering and sacrifice, He was showing us who and what God our Eternal Father is like, how completely devoted He is to His children in every age and nation. In word and in deed Jesus was trying to reveal and make personal to us the true nature of His Father, our Father in Heaven…Little wonder then that the Prophet Joseph Smith taught: “It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God.” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Grandeur of God, Ensign, Nov. 2003, lds.org).
Even though scriptures such as D&C 20:12 state that God
“is the same God yesterday, today, and forever,” it seems clear that such
phrasing does not, nor was it intended to, imply that God is incapable of
change or progression, any more that it did in Hebrews 13:8 when something similar
was said about Jesus Christ.
Just as Jesus Christ has been documented extensively in
scripture as going through a series of significant changes in terms of growth
and progression over the course of His life (both in His premortal and mortal existence,
leading up to His exaltation), it seems clear that God himself once underwent similar
growth “from grace to grace,” until He was “made perfect,” in much the same way
that Jesus Christ once was and did.
At any rate, this much has been revealed about Christ and
His progression as a divine being so that you and I can grow closer to God by
coming to know and comprehend Him and His nature better, and so we can gain a
deeper understanding of our own potential as the offspring of God.
D&C 93:19-20 I give unto you these sayings that you may
understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may
come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness. For if
you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in
me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace
for grace.
You and I existed (and will continue to exist) eternally,
and so it is more than possible for an eternal being to progress from the state
of a mortal man to that of a God. Jesus
Christ is divine, and the scriptures refer to Him as being “the same yesterday,
and to day, and for ever,” and yet they also amply describe and attribute a
process of learning, growth, and progression to Him. This suggests that it is possible for divine beings
to become perfect, and to become fully God, in the sense of possessing
God’s fulness. In other words, your
objections do not ultimately add up to a substantial contradiction.
When one understands these principles, it becomes clear that
this seeming contradiction results largely from our own limitations and
ignorance, and not from a mistake in doctrine or in the official teaching of
that doctrine. While we may not
understand all things, careful study and logical reasoning can shed much light
on this question.
However, I will admit that one can only argue so much from our
own logic and study. Without divinely
inspired teaching and scripture provided by prophets such as Joseph Smith and
those who followed after him, we would not know or understand this sublime
principle concerning the nature of God, and our own nature as His children. We therefore rely greatly upon our testimony
that modern prophets do indeed speak for God and reveal His truth in order to
fully comprehend this doctrine.
In the final analysis, you must come to your own
determination as to whether or not you choose to accept the teachings and
testimonies of modern prophets concerning the nature of God, but in order to do
that you will need to study it out in your own mind, and then seek the witness
of the spirit, with true intent and a sincere heart, to know if these teachings
are true. No amount of human logic or wisdom can unlock this problem for you,
unless you seek out the aid and insight of the spirit, that comes through
humble and diligent seeking after truth, and obedience to the commandments of
God.
You might also find these articles to be of interest:
The LDS church has published
a Gospel Topics essay called “Becoming Like God.”
Jesus was a man. The resurrected Jesus is God. Hmm. Sounds like a man can become God. Why doubt His Father also was once a man that became God?
ReplyDeleteGod is not one finite being like the resurrected Jesus, or his resurrected Father. Beings like Jesus have progressed and gained membership in "God" from all eternity. Likewise, beings like Abraham (D&C 132:37) have progressed and became joint-heirs with their Savior and also gained membership in "God" from all eternity.
The One Infinite God is an infinite unchangeable Union of perfected beings like Jesus, Abraham and Sarah in perfect John 17 type unity that has eternally existed and creates all things and rules over all things and has all tri-iomni power. But the finite beings that are members of God are all in a state of eternal progression.