“With this doctrine of exaltation or human deification, though, Joseph Smith wasn’t actually moving away from Judeo-Christian tradition. He was returning to a forgotten strand of it. For ancient Christians and Jews also had a doctrine of human deification, which scholars call ‘theosis.’”

Scholars do indeed use the term theosis for what can be called a doctrine of human deification. Specifically, this term has its customary or primary usage with reference to the doctrine of deification taught in the Eastern Orthodox theological tradition. The roots of this Eastern Orthodox doctrine are to be found in the teachings of the early church fathers, especially (though not exclusively) the Greek-writing ones. This is the context in which Peterson offers brief quotations from Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (2nd century), Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen (all third century), and Jerome (fifth century).

It is not an accident that Peterson’s article includes more quotations from the church fathers (six) than from all of his other sources combined (two from the New Testament, one from the Book of Mormon, and one from a medieval Jewish text). The church fathers did indeed teach a doctrine of deification. The question is what they meant by it and whether it provides any support for Peterson’s claim that Joseph Smith’s doctrine of deification was a restoration of an ancient doctrine that had been forgotten.

1. The church fathers whom Peterson quotes were, from the LDS perspective, part of the Great Apostasy.

We may start with an ironic observation. The church fathers whom Peterson quotes were among the leading architects of the religious and theological tradition that Mormons regard as the Great Apostasy. These were all theologians, not prophets. The very writings in which an explicit Christian doctrine of human deification first appears are the earliest documents from what the LDS Church teaches was a growing apostasy, a spiritual and theological darkness that overcame the Christian movement in the second, third, and fourth centuries. This should be just about the last place Mormons would want to look for ancient precedent for their “restored” doctrines! Yet this is where Peterson draws the majority of his quotations. The problem may be illustrated by the following comments from Spencer W. Kimball:

“Many men with no pretense nor claim to revelation, speaking without divine authority or revelation, depending only upon their own brilliant minds, but representing as they claim the congregations of the Christians and in long conference and erudite councils, sought the creation process to make a God which all could accept. The brilliant minds with their philosophies, knowing much about the Christian traditions and the pagan philosophies, would combine all elements to please everybody. They replaced the simple ways and program of the Christ with spectacular rituals, colorful display, impressive pageantry, and limitless pomposity, and called it Christianity. They had replaced the glorious, divine plan of exaltation of Christ with an elaborate, colorful, man-made system” (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, 425).

The traditional LDS position is that this corruption of Christianity was largely an accomplished fact already in the second century. LDS apostle and teacher Bruce R. McConkie claimed, “In the Old World the great apostasy was complete sometime during the second century A.D.” (A New Witness for the Articles of Faith, 477). Similarly, LDS theologian Stephen E. Robinson states that “Latter-day Saints trace the Apostasy to roughly the second century and reject subsequent orthodoxy” (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow [New York: Macmillan, 1992], 400). Yet Peterson’s earliest explicit examples of a Christian doctrine of believers becoming “gods” come from the second half of the second century, and most come from the third century or even later.

Of course, it is theoretically possible that the church fathers might have been right about humans becoming gods and wrong about other things. A Mormon could argue that the Great Apostasy led to the loss of divine authority and to the gradual loss of some doctrinal truths but not others, with the doctrine of people becoming gods as one that was not lost right away. This might seem a sufficient explanation for how it was that the church fathers believed in humans becoming deified even while they also taught what Mormons regard as false doctrines. However, this explanation doesn’t really address the point, which is that the church fathers were the first Christian teachers to articulate an explicit doctrine of the deification of believers.

The fact that Peterson can document a patristic (church fathers’) tradition of deification from the second, third, and fifth centuries leads to another problem.

2. The doctrine of theosis cannot be “restored” because it was never lost.

The writings of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Jerome have played an ongoing, continuous role in theological studies and reflection throughout church history. We are not talking here about long-lost writings like the Nag Hammadi “Gnostic gospels” or miraculously restored texts such as Mormons believe the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham to be. We are talking about the writings of men whose writings have never stopped circulating and that have been cited, quoted, and discussed in every generation from their own time to the present.

Moreover, the specific patristic idea of deification, or theosis, was never lost in any sense. It has been taught continuously in the Eastern Orthodox Church throughout its history with no interruption. It was being taught in Eastern Orthodox congregations in Joseph Smith’s day (although the first such congregation was not established in the continental United States until 1857, thirteen years after Joseph’s death).

3. The church fathers’ doctrine of deification lacked all of the distinctive elements of Joseph Smith’s doctrine of exaltation and explicitly differed from his view in crucial respects.

Establishing that the early church fathers taught a doctrine of deification does not, in and of itself, show that Joseph Smith’s doctrine of deification is a restoration of ancient truth. One must compare the substance of the two doctrines of deification in order to determine if the two doctrines are at all close in meaning. To that end, I will repeat here the seven specific doctrinal elements of Joseph Smith’s doctrine of exaltation:

1. God has not always been God; it is not true that he has been God from all eternity (though he may have existed from all eternity, he has not always existed as God).
2. God was once a man like us before becoming God our Heavenly Father.
3. God became God and is an exalted man, an exalted being.
4. Human beings are the spirit offspring of God, our Heavenly Father. We lived in heaven with God before becoming physical beings here on earth.
5. We became human beings precisely so that we would have the opportunity to attain exaltation just as God did.
6. Human beings can become “gods” in the sense of becoming exalted beings fully like Heavenly Father in all essential respects, just as he did before us.
7. As exalted beings or gods, we can become creators and have all the power, glory, dominion, and knowledge that God the Father has (in the worlds we create).

Read through Peterson’s quotations from the church fathers and you will quickly see that they express none of these seven doctrinal elements. Readers lacking some background in the theology of the church fathers might wonder if some of the quotations at least might reflect an acceptance of the last two doctrinal elements, but nothing in the quotations would even suggest to any reader a belief in the first five elements listed above. Here are Peterson’s quotations:

Justin Martyr: “All men are deemed worthy of becoming gods, and of having power to become sons of the Highest.”

Irenaeus: “We have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods. … (Jesus Christ) became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”

Clement of Alexandria: In the “future life” we will be among “gods … those who have become perfect … and become pure in heart … They are called by the appellation of gods, being destined to sit on thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their places by the Savior.”

Tertullian: Through divine grace the saved “shall be even gods.”

Origen of Alexandria: He believed in “the Father as the one true God,” but acknowledged “other beings besides the true God, who have become gods by having a share of God.”

Jerome: “God made man for that purpose, that from men they may become gods. … They who cease to be mere men, abandon the ways of vice, and are become perfect, are gods and sons of the Most High.”

There is no suggestion in any of these quotations that God the Father was a man who progressed to Godhood, or that God has not always been God. There is also no notion in any of these statements that human beings preexisted in heaven as gods in embryo prior to their physical lives here on earth. The core theological and anthropological premises of Joseph Smith’s doctrine of exaltation are completely absent from these patristic quotations—and indeed are absent from the corpus of the church fathers’ writings as a whole.

Justin states that all people may “become gods,” and similarly Tertullian says that those saved through God’s grace “shall be even gods.” But what do these statements mean in context? They did not mean that believers will become deities possessing the same powers as the Creator of the universe. Let’s look at their statements in context. Justin wrote:

“But as my discourse is not intended to touch on this point [the fall of Satan], but 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, and yet they, becoming like Adam and Eve, work out death for themselves; let the interpretation of the Psalm be held just as you wish, yet thereby it is demonstrated that all men are deemed worthy of becoming ‘gods,’ and of having power to become sons of the Highest; and shall be each by himself judged and condemned like Adam and Eve” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 124, emphasis added).

We see here that Justin specifies precisely what he means by “gods”: that human beings were created with the intention that they be “free from suffering and death.” In other words, to be “gods” in this context means to be immortal beings. That is all that one can fairly understand Justin to mean by this language here. Furthermore, according to Justin, we are not already God’s children (as the LDS Church teaches), but may become his sons. What Justin teaches here is incompatible with the LDS doctrine that we were God’s preexistent children in heaven and that we came here to make progress toward “growing up” to become full-fledged Gods like our Heavenly Father.

Tertullian’s statement that “we shall be even gods” also does not mean that humans will become the same kind of beings as God:

“Truth, however, maintains the unity of God in such a way as to insist that whatever belongs to God Himself belongs to Him alone. For so will it belong to Himself if it belong to Him alone; and therefore it will be impossible that another god should be admitted, when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of God. Well, then, you say, we ourselves at that rate possess nothing of God. But indeed we do, and shall continue to do— only it is from Him that we receive it, and not from ourselves. For we shall be even gods, if we shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, I have said, You are gods, and, God stands in the congregation of the gods. But this comes of His own grace, not from any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods” (Tertullian, Against Hermogenes 5, emphasis added).

Tertullian here insists that certain properties belong to God alone, and that human beings will never possess those unique properties of deity. They will be “gods” only in the sense that God will declare those to be “gods” whom he graciously deems deserving of this honor, not by virtue of them attaining “any property” that qualifies them as deities. The point here must be understood very precisely. Tertullian is not merely saying that human beings can become gods only by God’s “grace.” The LDS Church could (and in some contexts does) use these same words. Tertullian, however, means by this statement that human beings are accorded a status of “gods” as a gracious honor and not, as Joseph Smith taught, that they are transformed (even if by “grace”) into beings possessing the same properties as God.

Every quotation that Peterson (and other Mormon scholars and apologists before him) quote from the church fathers is like the ones just considered from Justin and Tertullian. If one reads the statements in context, one discovers that they express a doctrine that in substance is obviously different from the doctrine of Joseph Smith.

4. The view of God, man, Christ, and salvation taught by the church fathers is radically opposed to Joseph Smith’s doctrine of exaltation.

The difference between the patristic doctrine of deification and Joseph Smith’s doctrine of exaltation can be fully appreciated only by placing these doctrines in their larger theological and worldview contexts. A full-blown treatise on this point is out of the question here; I will content myself with a brief summary and a few example statements from the church fathers.

The doctrine of God. In Joseph Smith’s teaching, all humans and all other spirit beings in our world are eternal beings that had no beginning and no creation. Thus, the idea that God is an eternal being is, for Mormonism, in no sense unique. Furthermore, God, though he has existed eternally, has not always been God, but instead became a God by a process of exaltation that we can also undergo. God, according to Joseph Smith (notably in the Book of Abraham), was also not the sole creator or maker of the world. Rather, a plurality of Gods got together and “organized” this world into its present form. God the Father is a physically embodied being, an exalted, immortal Man of flesh and bones, of the same species or kind of being as we are but in a perfected state.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the writings of the church fathers knows their view of God was radically different. For them, God is the only being with no origin, no beginning; he is the only uncreated, unbegotten, unoriginated being. God is the sole creator and everything else, including all other intelligent beings, exist solely as the result of his creative will. God is by nature an incorporeal being who transcends space, and who has been God from all eternity, and who is eternally unchanging in his divine being.

So, according to Justin Martyr, “That which always maintains the same nature, and in the same manner, and is the cause of all other things—that, indeed, is God” (Dialogue with Trypho 3). Justin denies that God is a physical or embodied being. “And again, when He says, ‘I shall behold the heavens, the works of Thy fingers,’ unless I understand His method of using words, I shall not understand intelligently, but just as your teachers suppose, fancying that the Father of all, the unbegotten God, has hands and feet, and fingers, and a soul, like a composite being; and they for this reason teach that it was the Father Himself who appeared to Abraham and to Jacob” (Dialogue 114). Robert M. Grant comments on Justin’s theological reasoning here: “Justin absolutely rejects a literal interpretation of biblical metaphors: God does not have hands, feet, fingers, or soul, for he is not composite (Dial. 114, 3); he is not moved nor does he walk, sleep, or wake. Though he can be said to be ‘in the heavens’ or ‘above heaven’ or ‘above the universe,’ he is not really located in space at all (Dial. 127, 3)” (The Early Christian Doctrine of God [Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1966], 22).

Other church fathers also taught that God is the sole uncreated Creator of all else that exists. Here are a couple of examples:

“Our God did not begin to be in time: He alone is without beginning, and He Himself is the beginning of all things. God is a Spirit, not pervading matter, but the Maker of material spirits, and of the forms that are in matter; He is invisible, impalpable, being Himself the Father of both sensible and invisible things” (Tatian, Address to the Greeks, ch. 4).

“But the things established are distinct from Him who has established them, and what have been made from Him who has made them. For He is Himself uncreated, both without beginning and end, and lacking nothing. He is Himself sufficient for Himself; and still further, He grants to all others this very thing, existence; but the things which have been made by Him have received a beginning” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.8.3).

Doctrine of Christ. According to Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ was one of God’s billions of spirit children, but the first to become a God alongside God the Father. When Christ became a physical man on earth, he was progressing toward a fuller or more complete realization of his divine potential because the Father himself is an exalted man of flesh and bones. Deity and humanity are simply two different phases of the same species or kind of being.

In the teaching of the church fathers, however, the Son was already fully God before he became a man, and he was God’s “Son” in an absolutely unique sense. To be “the Son” meant that he was of the same nature as God the Father—that he was deity by nature, just as the Father was. The Incarnation was God the Son’s gracious act of humbling himself for our salvation and the Father’s honor, not a stage of the Son’s own full deification. In becoming a man, Jesus Christ assumed human nature united perfectly and uniquely to his divine nature. Thus the incarnate Son is a paradoxical person, the union of infinite deity with finite humanity.

We see this doctrine expressed in startling clarity very early in the second century: “Look for Him who is above all time, eternal and invisible, yet who became visible for our sakes; impalpable and impassible, yet who became passible on our account; and who in every kind of way suffered for our sakes” (Ignatius, To Polycarp 3.2 [short version]). According to Irenaeus, the Logos (John’s name for the preincarnate Christ in John 1:1, 14) “took up man into Himself, the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible, the impassible becoming capable of suffering” (Against Heresies 3.16.6).

If God the Son, the Logos, was eternal, invisible, impassible Deity, who then became incarnate as a man in order to be a visible, material human being and suffer in history for our salvation, then Christ is the only human being who was or ever will be Deity. He is not a man who became a God, but was rather God who became a man for our sakes. The patristic doctrine of Christ, understood in its full context, is absolutely incompatible with Joseph Smith’s doctrine of exaltation.

Doctrine of man. We have already touched on some of the obvious differences between Joseph Smith’s doctrine of man and that of the church fathers. For Joseph Smith, human beings have existed from eternity, with no beginning; they are uncreated beings. Moreover, they were gods in embryo existing in heaven before coming to the earth for the purpose of continuing their maturation toward becoming full-fledged Gods.

For the church fathers, human beings are creatures made by God and having a definite beginning to their existence. Most of the church fathers were very clear on the point that human existence begins with our physical lives, not as preexistent spirits (the third-century Origen was a notable exception, though even he believed those spirits were created beings). Human beings are not naturally disposed toward becoming gods, but God graciously adopts humans as his children and bestows on them immortality so that they may live as honorary “gods” with eternal life. A clear statement of the sharp divide between God and man is offered, for example, by Clement of Alexandria:

“But it has escaped their notice, though they be near us, that God has bestowed on us ten thousand things in which He does not share: birth, being Himself unborn; food, He wanting nothing; and growth, He being always equal; and long life and immortality, He being immortal and incapable of growing old” (Stromata 5.11).

Doctrine of salvation. In Joseph Smith’s teaching, we were already eternal beings before coming to the earth. We came as mortals here in order to become resurrected beings with physical immortality, which is what Joseph Smith taught that God the Father had done. To become “Gods,” in his doctrine, meant to become omnipotent beings, to become beings of the same nature as our God and with the capacity to do the same sorts of divine acts (e.g., creation) as our Heavenly Father.

For the church fathers, as we have already seen, we are physical, temporal beings by nature, created as such by God, though with the intended purpose that God would eventually make us immortal. Through our faith relationship and spiritual union with Christ, we who are redeemed will participate in God’s immortality, incorruption, and holiness, and in that sense will be “gods”; but we will not become Gods by nature, that is, omnipotent beings of the same nature as God that will be able to do the same sorts of divine acts that God alone does. Irenaeus explained:

“For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality” (Against Heresies 3.19.1).

When all is said and done, the church fathers’ doctrine of deification is more notable for its sharp contrasts with Joseph Smith’s doctrine of exaltation than for its superficial verbal similarities to some of the things that Joseph said. G. L. Prestige, in his classic textbook on the patristic doctrine of God, offers an exceptionally clear statement of the nature of their view of deification:

“All such expressions of the deification of man are, it must be remembered, purely relative. They express the fact that man has a nature essentially spiritual, and to that extent resembling the being of God; further, that he is able to attain a real union with God, by virtue of an affinity proceeding both from nature and from grace. Man, the Fathers might have said, is a supernatural animal. In some sense his destiny is to be absorbed into God. But they would all have repudiated with indignation any suggestion that the union of men to God added anything to the godhead. They explained the lower in terms of the higher, but did not obliterate the distinction between them. Not only is God self-dependent. He has also all those positive qualities which man does not possess, the attribution of which is made by adding the negative prefix to the common attributes of humanity. In addition, in so far as humanity possesses broken lights of God, they are as far as possible from reaching the measure and perfection with which they are associated in the godhead. Real power and freedom, fullness of light, ideal and archetypal spirit, are found in Him alone. The gulf is never bridged between Creator and creature. Though in Christ human nature has been raised to the throne of God, by virtue of His divine character, yet mankind in general can only aspire to the sort of divinity which lies open to its capacity through the union with the divine humanity. Eternal life is the life of God. Men may come to share its manifestations and activities, but only by grace, never of right. Man remains a created being: God alone is agenetos [without origin].”—G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1959), 74-75.

In conclusion, Joseph Smith’s doctrine of exaltation was not in any meaningful sense a restoration of a lost doctrine of theosis. The doctrine of theosis was never lost, and the doctrine of deification taught by the church fathers was radically different from the doctrine Joseph Smith taught. Joseph taught that God was once a mortal man who became exalted to Godhood, and that we can do the same thing and become Gods of the same nature and powers as our God. The church fathers taught that God is the only uncreated, eternal Being, existing eternally and unchangeably as God, and that he created human beings to become “gods” in the sense that they may be adopted as his children and receive immortality as the gift of his grace.Similar Posts:

• Did Joseph Smith Restore Theosis? Part One: The Mormon Doctrine of Exaltation
• Did Joseph Smith Restore Theosis? Part Three: The Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s Doctrine of Exaltation
• Did Joseph Smith Restore Theosis? Part Four: Esoteric Jewish Theology and Joseph Smith’s Doctrine of Exaltation
• Did Joseph Smith Restore Theosis? Part Two: The New Testament and Joseph Smith’s Doctrine of Exaltation
• In What Sense Are Jesus and the Father One? Part III: One in Purpose? C: John 17:21-23

However, as of late, he does not come across quit as calm and balanced. In fact, I would say that some of what he says on his blog comes across as downright belligerent. I began to notice this years ago when he wrote a response to John Piper about the Minnesota bridge collapse. I did not find the Olson that I have come to know and love. There was hardly an irenic word on the page. It was as if it was the first time that he had come across some people’s view on God’s sovereignty. His comments were defensive and very emotionally charged. As well, lately he has taken up the blog pen (a very dangerous thing to do). He spends much of his time speaking about issues that divide Calvinism and Arminianism. He is an Arminian and seems to have less and less tolerance for Calvinists. In fact, just this week I got a book from a publisher called “Against Calvinism” by Roger Olson. Granted, he is an Arminian who does not agree with the tendencies in Calvinism to see God as one who is in charge of all things, even the most atrocious events of evil. This is understandable. While I disagree with Olson on this issue, it is not this disagreement that discourages me. It is Olson’s repeated implication that the God of Calvinism (my God) and the God of Arminianism (his God) might be different.

Here is what Olson had to say in his response to John Piper:

Many conservative Christians wince at the idea that God is limited. But what if God limits himself so that much of what happens in the world is due to human finitude and fallenness? What if God is in charge but not in control? What if God wishes that things could be otherwise and someday will make all things perfect?

That seems more like the God of the Bible than the all-determining deity of Calvinism. (emphasis mine)

Implication: His God = God of the Bible; My God = the all-determining deity of Calvinism.

Again, he goes on:

The God of Calvinism scares me; I’m not sure how to distinguish him from the devil. If you’ve come under the influence of Calvinism, think about its ramifications for the character of God. God is great but also good. In light of all the evil and innocent suffering in the world, he must have limited himself.

Although I have yet to read Against Calvinism, it would not be hard to find this kind of rhetoric (“the God of Calvinism” vs. his God) on his writing on his blog. I suppose the main redemptive thing I am getting from him lately is that he still keeps “my” God in caps! (Instead of “the god of Calvinism).

In fact, after writing my last post about Osteen, another Arminian suggested the same thing on another forum. About me he says:

“Lets see. [Michael] follows a Reformed view of theology has written blogs on being a cessationist. I have the same question when I talk to Calvinist, do we serve the same God? Why would anyone serve such a bitter vengeful and hateful God, who really doesn’t care about us that much. At least that’s been my experience when talking to [Calvinists].”

I have the feeling that this guy has been reading Olson.

Since the implications of Olson’s increasingly polemic stance against Calvinism are clear and, increasingly, influential, I feel comfortable writing this and asking this question: Is the God of Calvinism (my God) different than the God of Arminianism (his God)? Is that responsible rhetoric?

My purpose in this blog post is not to debate whose view of God is the correct view, but to initially recognize with Olson that our views of God are indeed different. Like the post with Osteen, I want to focus on this question. When does your description of God cross the line to where ones description of God is so divorced from truth that it is not longer proper for that God to go by the name Jesus? When is it proper to use rhetoric such as “his God” vs. “my God” in Christian circles?

Let me introduce some categories or “points of reference” that are all necessary when defining someone (in this case God).

#1 An ontological point of reference (What is God?). This describes the essential essence of the object. With regards to God: God is trinity (one God, three persons). God is eternal. God is transcendent. God is immutable (unchanging). God is simple (exists without reference to time, space, or matter). God is a se (aseity – God is the first cause who did not have a cause). etc.

#2 A historical point of reference or point of action (What has God done?). This describes what someone has done in history to establish who they are now. With regards to God: God created the world out of nothing. God brought the Israelites out of Egypt to the promise land. God sent His Son to die for the sins of man. Christ rose from the grace. etc.

#3 A personal or relational point of reference (Who is God?). This describes personality characteristics. With regards to God: God is sovereign. God loves the world. God is gracious and forgiving. God is offended by sin. God brings about His will. God provides for His people. God comforts us in times of trouble. etc.

With Osteen we found that his description of his God, while the same as my God with respects to his ontos and actions (#1 and #2), were very different than my God with respect to how He relates. Osteen’s God’s primary desire is for people to be rich, safe, and secure. God, in my view, while He cares deeply about our lives, calls on us to take up our cross and suffer in and with His Son. But Osteen seems to get the essence of the Gospel correct. As far as I know, he believes that Christ, the second person of the Trinity, became man, died for the sin of mankind, and rose from the grave on the third day. I dare not dismiss this as it represents significant agreement. Because of this, many are, like myself, hesitant to say that Osteen’s God was a different god, though it is a good question.

With Olson, we have a similar problem. We have some differences in our view of God. Yet, I believe, these differences are much less severe. Though an Arminian, Olson would describe the essence of God the same way that I describe the essence of God (#1). He would also describe the historical actions of God the same as I do (#2). Finally, for the most part, he would describe the personality of his God the same way I do as mine (#3).

So why is Olson using provocative language when he describes “the God of Calvinism”—”my” God—implying that I might have a different God than him? After all, we are much closer in our view of God than either of us are with Osteen (much less liberals who don’t affirm the historic essentials of the faith). What essential characteristic do we have in our views of God that cause Olson to suggest that we may have different Gods?

In fairness, I don’t believe that Olson is really suggesting this, but possibly provoking thought (as I have been doing in this series of posts). Yet, at the same time, he must see some serious character distinctions in the God of Arminians and the God of Calvinists to make such a provocation.

While Olson’s God and my God are very much alike, his description of God is different with respect to his understanding of divine sovereignty. God, to Olson, is “in charge, but not in control.” That is a bit ambiguous, so let me explain. For Olson, God is in providential control over all things. He is overseeing our lives in general but not intervening so as to violate our freedom. To Olson, God’s plans, hopes, and desires may be thwarted by human freedom. To me, God’s perfect will can and has been thwarted, but his will of decree cannot. Olson believes God is self-limited in that He will not intervene in the free will acts of men. I, on the other hand, believe that if God does not intervene in the current state of our freedom, we are all up creek skubulon. In other words, Olson has much more confidence in man’s ability to make godly choices without His direct intervention. I do not.

Again, I am not trying to solve anything here. While the question of whether Osteen and I have the same God leaves me wondering, I don’t think the same about my view of God and Olson’s view of God. I believe our devotion and love is to the same God. So, I would like to pose this question once again. Does the distinctions in our definitions of God’s sovereignty warrant Olson’s provocation that maybe, just maybe, we worship different Gods? Does the differences in the way Arminians define sovereignty and how Calvinists define sovereignty cross the line in your opinion? Do you think that Olson’s rhetoric is responsible here?

Let me say once again: though this is an important issue I bring up here, I have a great deal of respect for Roger Olson and pray that this does not come across as defensive or divisive. Even if he suggests that our Gods are different, I look forward to taking a class he may offer in glory!Similar Posts:

• Do Roger Olson and I Worship the Same God?
• Do Clark Pinnock and I Worship the Same God?
• Where Do You Stand on God’s Sovereignty?
• What is God (1)
• Does God Have Libertarian Freedom? A Response to Roger Olson

What a presumptuous question, right? The presumption is in the fact that I would even pose such a question. The question itself presumes that I might answer in the negative. Chill. It is just a question. But your are right. The presumption behind the question does evidence my uncertainty as to its answer.

I was listening to Osteen the other night. He was very pleasant and had a lot of nice things to say. For the most part, except for his interjections of the word ”God” here and there, his speech was a typical motivational speech. He did not use the Bible, but he attempted to give the impression that he was. He held it in his hand the entire time.

Why he bothered interjecting “God” into his motivational speech, I can only suppose. Maybe because his speaking venue is called a “church”? Isn’t that what you are supposed to do at church? Mention God? Maybe its because they sang hymns and if you sing hymns, God needs to be talked about afterward. Or maybe it’s because he thought attributing his thoughts to God would give his propositions and stories more authority? It would seem that his placements of the word “God” were very strategic. It would come at pivotal points in his message. “God does not want you to be sick. You can have the best life now. God does not want you to be behind on your bills. You can have the best life now. God wants to make your dreams come true! The best life is here and now. God wants you to take a hold of it.”

In the end, I thought to myself This is not a church. This is not preaching. This is not Christianity. And, I wonder . . . is his God my God? Same name, yes some of the same characteristics, but that could be said of any god. However, if Osteen’s God and my God are the same, God may have a case of bi-polar disorder.

Now, this is not as far-fetched as you might think. People DO worship other gods just like people marry other people and have other kids. They always have. Since the beginning of time, people have found replacements for the true God by filling in the “gaps” that God does not fill to their liking. Whether it be a rain god, fertility god, sun god, or god of war, people have a desire to have their perceived needs met. In the old days, people would create a new god and give it an appropriate name. Marduk, Apollo, Diana, Sol, and Cupid are all names of popular Romans gods who filled in the gaps. The Japanese even have a god for weavers named Am-No-Tanabata-Hime. For weavers!! Each of these gods had a particular function and role. The Japanese god Daikoku is the god of wealth. If you desire money, this is the god to go to. Binzuru-Sonja is the god of health. Are you sick? Do you have cancer? Binzuru-Sonja is your man . . . I mean god.

I am going to do something radical here (warning: satire forth-coming). I propose a new god. Let us combine the last two Japanese gods: Daikoku and Binzuru-Sonja. “Daikoku-Sonja” will be the initial designation of this new god. Now lets do something to make this more palatable to a monotheistic western Christianized world. Let’s call Daikoku-Sonja “Jesus.” Let’s even say that he died on a cross and rose from a grave. Let’s give him all the characteristics that would not detract from his ultimate power and will for us to be happy, healthy, and wealthy. These other characteristics can come from the Bible. Americans seem to be fond of that book. This god will have a Father, he will be gracious and kind. He will die for our sins and offer forgiveness. Then, he will reveal his ultimate plan—to make us happy. To fill our bellies and pockets with comfort and joy. Yes, that is nice. We will talk about how nice he wants to be to us. How much he wants us to be nice to others. Yes, other gods have done the same, but this one rose from the grave and has therefore proved that he wants us to be rich and healthy. This sounds nice.

Now, we must stay away from the Bible for the most part because it does not present much in favor of our god other than the basic details, names, and historical facts. We can draw from the Old Testament here and there, emphasizing the “heal all your diseases” and “shoes never wearing out” parts. But we cannot put those in context or that would narrow the application. As well, we must leave out all the parts where God’s wrath is spoken of. (The Gnostics did it, so can we!) Troublesome passages such as these cannot be mentioned:

1 Peter 4:12-13 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation.

1 Peter 5:9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

1 Thessalonians 3:2-4 And we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know.

2 Timothy 3:12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

James 1:2-3 2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

Those passages are downers. Daikoku-Sonja . . . umm . . . I mean Jesus is not about bringing people down in such a way. He wants you to have “The Best Life NOW!” The best life does not involve suffering and pain or heart-ache and loss.

We can call this movement “Christianity.” Why not? People are comfortable with the name. And, more importantly, people don’t really know what it means. Essentially they think it is about this nice guy named Jesus, who is “God’s son”, who wants us to do what is right and be nice to each other. We can capitalize on this. In the end, what we are doing is just rewarding people with positive thinking. No one should dwell on their problems. No one should think Daikoku-Sonja really wills for people to suffer.

(Okay, satire complete.)

Let me be serious. I don’t know if Osteen’s God is different than mine. What I do know is that there are characteristics and motivations in his God that are completely opposite of mine. My God allows suffering and pain for His own purpose. My God is a potter, who has sovereign right over His creation. My God does what He will, not what I will. My God is loving, but He is also one of great indignation. My God does love everyone, but He also created a terrible place called Hell for his enemies. My God does not have it high on His agenda for me to be rich, or even pay the bills and be “happy”.

I also know that this health and prosperity theology, while motivational for a time, destroys lives. It builds false expectation. It makes people put their trust in characteristics of God that just do not exist. When these characteristics fail (and they will fail —ever heard of “death”? It is hard to escape no matter how positive your thinking is!), then, in these people’s minds, God has failed. I have seen too many people doubt or walk away from the “Jesus” that they created when he failed to heal them of their cancer or when he could not seem to get them a job. But the question is Did they walk away from Jesus or from Daikoku-Sonja (aka Jesus)?

Here is the question: Where does one draw the line? When has ones description of God become so foreign to the biblical God that it should thought of as a different god with the same name? After all, a name does not mean much if that which the name represents does not mirror its true characteristics.

Where do you draw the line? What do you think? Do Joel Osteen and I worship the same God?Similar Posts:

• Do Joel Osteen and I Worship the Same God?
• Do Roger Olson and I Worship the Same God?
• Do Roger Olson and I Worship the Same God?
• How bad can a Christian’s theology be?
• Do Clark Pinnock and I Worship the Same God?

Peterson’s Proof Text

According to Peterson, that doctrine was “implicit…though perhaps unnoticed, in the Book of Mormon,” in the following statement that the Book of Mormon attributes to Jesus:

“And ye shall sit down in the kingdom of my Father; yea, your joy shall be full, even as the Father hath given me fulness of joy; and ye shall be even as I am, and I am even as the Father; and the Father and I are one” (3 Nephi 28:10).

Peterson offers the following reasoning for construing this passage to teach that people can become “like the Father”:

When we apply the transitive law of mathematics to this passage — according to which, if “a” equals “b” and “b” equals “c,” it follows necessarily that “a” equals “c” — the conclusion is inescapable that, if humans can be like the exalted Christ, and if the exalted Christ is like the Father, then humans can be like the Father.

Here it is necessary to reiterate that all orthodox Christians agree that people can and should become “like” God the Father in some respects. For example, Peter tells us that we should be holy like God (1 Peter 1:15-16). The question is whether human beings can become like God in every respect. Frankly, 3 Nephi 28:10 says nothing of the sort. It is easy to see how one might think so if one takes the line “and ye shall be even as I am, and I am even as the Father; and the Father and I are one” out of context. Consider, for example, Paul’s statement, “I wish that all people were even as I am myself” (1 Cor. 7:7). Does this mean that Paul wishes that all people were middle-aged men with poor vision? Does it mean that Paul wishes that all people were Jewish, or that they all spoke Greek, or that they all traveled around without a permanent home? Of course not. To understand Paul’s statement, all we have to do is read it in context. When he says that he wishes all people were like him, he means he wishes all people could be single and therefore free of the distractions of marriage (see vv. 8-24).

Likewise, if we want to understand the statement in 3 Nephi 28:10 correctly, we need to read it in context. The first step in this endeavor is to find out to whom Jesus was supposedly speaking. According to the text, Jesus was giving special promises to “the three” (v. 4), that is, three of the twelve Nephite disciples. The text goes out of its way to distinguish Jesus’ conversation with the nine (vv. 2-3) from his conversation with the three (vv. 4-11). This means that we should at the very least be cautious about generalizing from verse 10 as to what God’s intentions are for all of his people. Peterson glosses over this contextual element by saying without qualification that Jesus made this statement “to his Nephite disciples.”

Next, we need to take a closer look at what the text says Jesus promised the three. The special promises the text says he made to them were that they would never die or feel physical pain, sit down in his Father’s kingdom (presumably in a special place), and experience “fulness of joy” (vv. 7-10; also vv. 37-38). These are spectacular promises, but they fall far short of promising that the three would become gods of the same essential nature as Jesus and the Father. When the text goes on to quote Jesus as saying, “and ye shall be even as I am, and I am even as the Father; and the Father and I are one,” this seems to mean in context that the three disciples will share the same joy that Jesus and the Father share.

We should observe, once again, that most if not all of the essential elements of the Mormon doctrine of exaltation cannot even be thought of as implicit in this passage. (I listed seven such elements in Part One and reiterated them in Part Two.) Nothing here so much as hints that God has not always been God, that he was a man like us before becoming God, that he is an exalted man, that human beings preexisted the world as God’s spirit children in heaven, or that we became physical beings as a stepping stone to becoming Gods like the Father. One must go beyond what the text says in context to read into it (as Peterson does) the notion that human beings can become like the Father in all essential respects.

The Book of Mormon God: Unchangeable from All Eternity

Not only does this lone proof text not offer clear support to any of the seven essential elements of the LDS doctrine of exaltation, the Book of Mormon as a whole exhibits a theological framework that precludes such a doctrine. The most serious conflict between Book of Mormon theology and Joseph’s Smith exaltation theology has to do with the doctrine of God. In the Book of Mormon, there is most emphatically only one God, and he has been God from all eternity. For example, Moroni 8:18 affirms, “For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.” Some Mormons argue that God is unchangeable now that he has attained deity, but that this doesn’t require him to have been unchangeable always or from eternity. However, Moroni 8:18 flatly contradicts this idea. Its wording clearly means that God’s existence and unchangeable nature stretches backward infinitely as well as forward infinitely. That is, it means that God has always existed and been unchangeable and that he will always exist and be unchangeable. No one, I assume, is willing to deny that “to all eternity” means that God will continue to exist, as God, forever and ever, absolutely without end. Given that understanding, which I think is beyond reasonable doubt, “from all eternity” in this same context must mean that God’s existence as God goes back forever and ever, absolutely without beginning.

Moroni 8:18 isn’t the only place in the Book of Mormon where this language is used. Mosiah 3:5 describes Jesus Christ as “the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity.” Alma 13:7 states that the order of the high priesthood of the Son of God “was from the foundation of the world; or in other words, being without beginning of days or end of years, being prepared from eternity to all eternity, according to his foreknowledge of all things.” Notice here that being “from eternity to all eternity” is synonymous with “being without beginning of days or end of years.” Similarly, Moroni 7:22 speaks of “God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting.”

Other LDS scriptures outside the Book of Mormon that Joseph produced within the first couple of years after publishing the Book of Mormon reflect the same doctrine. Moses 6:7 describes Jesus Christ as “him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity.” Twice more the Book of Moses describes the Lord as being “from all eternity to all eternity” (Moses 7:29, 31). Joseph Smith’s revelations during the first two years of the LDS Church also express the same idea. Doctrine & Covenants 20:17, perhaps the most emphatic of all these statements, says, “By these things we know that there is a God in heaven, who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God, the framer of heaven and earth, and all things which are in them.” D&C 39:1 says, “Hearken and listen to the voice of him who is from all eternity to all eternity, the Great I Am, even Jesus Christ.” Here, in traditional Christian fashion, Joseph Smith uses the words “the Great I Am” as a title of deity that expresses the absolute eternity of Jesus Christ. Likewise, Joseph Smith affirmed concerning the Lord, “From eternity to eternity he is the same, and his years never fail” (D&C 76:4). D&C 61:1 describes God as the one “who has all power, who is from everlasting to everlasting, even Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.”

Such statements about God almost completely disappear in the LDS scriptures after 1832 (though see D&C 109:77, where in 1836 God was said to be enthroned “from everlasting to everlasting”). By 1843 Joseph Smith’s doctrine had changed so much that he could assert that those who faithfully practiced polygamy as part of their LDS faith would in the resurrection “be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them” (D&C 132:20). Here “from everlasting to everlasting” does not refer to divine status from all eternity, as Joseph explains (“because they continue”). Well before this revelation, Joseph had begun teaching that all of us are also eternal beings without beginning. This passage in D&C 132 is explicit in teaching the human side of Joseph’s doctrine of exaltation.

By contrast, the earlier statements quoted above from the Book of Mormon and other early revelations of Joseph Smith all rather clearly express the traditional Christian belief that God, the personal Creator of the universe, exists eternally as God, without any beginning or end of his existence or of his divine nature. This conclusion is consistent with the evidence (and there’s a lot of it) to show that before 1833 Joseph Smith accepted more or less the same generic Christian conception of God that he had inherited from his early nineteenth-century Protestant Christian environment. During the period from 1833 to 1843 Joseph’s theology underwent almost constant development, leading to his radical departure from the more traditional theology found in the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon, then, explicitly contradicts Joseph Smith’s later theological assertion that God has not always been God but instead became God.

The Book of Mormon God: A Spirit Who Became a Man, Not a Man Who Became a God

Consistent with its more traditional Christian theology, the Book of Mormon views God as a being of spirit who came to earth in the flesh, not as an exalted man of flesh and bones as Joseph later taught. The Book of Mormon teaches not that a man became God but that God became a man.

In one section, the Book of Mormon contains repeated references to God as “the Great Spirit” (Alma 18:2-5, 11, 18, 26, 28; 19:25, 27; 22:9-11), as in the following verse: “Believest thou that this Great Spirit, who is God, created all things which are in heaven and in the earth?” (Alma 18:28; cf. 22:10). This “Great Spirit” was not going to remain mere spirit forever, though, but was going to come to the earth as Christ. Later the book of Alma describes a group of people called the Zoramites who believe in God but with some false beliefs, including both a denial of the coming of Christ and a doctrine of election that sounds suspiciously like a modern caricature of Calvinism:

“Holy, holy God; we believe that thou art God, and we believe that thou art holy, and that thou wast a spirit, and that thou art a spirit, and that thou wilt be a spirit forever. Holy God, we believe that thou hast separated us from our brethren; and we do not believe in the tradition of our brethren, which was handed down to them by the childishness of their fathers; but we believe that thou hast elected us to be thy holy children; and also thou hast made it known unto us that there shall be no Christ. But thou art the same yesterday, today, and forever; and thou hast elected us that we shall be saved, whilst all around us are elected to be cast by thy wrath down to hell; for the which holiness, O God, we thank thee; and we also thank thee that thou hast elected us, that we may not be led away after the foolish traditions of our brethren, which doth bind them down to a belief of Christ, which doth lead their hearts to wander far from thee, our God” (Alma 31:15-17).

We should not understand this passage to be criticizing all of the beliefs the Zoramites affirmed but to be condemning their rejection of the traditions, their denial of Christ, and their belief in election. Their affirmation that God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever,” for example, is explicitly stated with obvious approval elsewhere in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 10:18; 2 Nephi 2:4; 27:23; 29:9; Mormon 9:9; 10:19) and in two early sections of Doctrine & Covenants dating from 1830 (20:12; 35:1). When the Zoramites say the same thing, however, they say it in support of their denial that God is going to come in the flesh as Christ. Their belief that God was, is, and always will be spirit is held up as false insofar as it denies that God will come in the flesh as a human being—as Jesus Christ. This passage, then, does not deny that God was simply spirit prior to his coming in the flesh as Christ.

Two passages that Mormons often cite to show that the Book of Mormon agreed with Joseph Smith’s later doctrine that God the Father was an exalted Man with a body of flesh actually show otherwise:

“And because he said unto them that Christ was the God, the Father of all things, and said that he should take upon him the image of man, and it should be the image after which man was created in the beginning; or in other words, he said that man was created after the image of God, and that God should come down among the children of men, and take upon him flesh and blood, and go forth upon the face of the earth” (Mosiah 7:27).

“Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image. Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh” (Ether 3:15-16).

Mormons assume that if these texts say that human beings were created in God’s “image” then the texts must imply that God had a physical body. However, the texts do not say this, and in fact Mosiah 7:27 implies otherwise and Ether 3:15-16 explicitly says otherwise. Mosiah 7:27 asserts that God created man after his image and that he was going to “come down…and take upon him flesh and blood.” It might be possible to quibble that here “flesh and blood” denotes the mortal human condition and not the physical body per se. However, Ether 3:15-16 is explicitly contrary to such an interpretation. The conventional belief (based on Genesis 1:26-27) that God created man after his image is interpreted here to mean that God created man “after the body of [his] spirit.” We see here the notion, which though not strictly orthodox has been a fairly popular belief in the history of Christianity, that God has a “body of spirit,” that is, an anthropomorphic shape composed of pure spirit rather than of flesh. That this is what the text means is confirmed by the conclusion of the verse, in which Christ (who in Book of Mormon theology is God in the flesh) announces that later he will appear to his people “in the flesh.”

Elsewhere, the Book of Mormon states that Christ “shall manifest himself unto them in the flesh” (2 Nephi 25:12; see also 2 Nephi 32:6; Jacob 4:11; Enos 1:8; Mosiah 15:2-7). It affirms that “the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay” (Mosiah 3:5). The Book of Mormon also says that God “created all flesh” (Jacob 2:21), which would again seem to presuppose that God was not himself a being of flesh. The early sections of Doctrine & Covenants also express this same idea that Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh (D&C 20:1, 26; 93:11).

The Book of Mormon, then, disagrees with the idea that God the Father was a man of flesh who then went on to become a God. It teaches, rather, that God was a being of spirit who became a man of flesh by the name of Jesus Christ.

Book of Mormon Humanity: Not Preexistent Spirits

An essential element of the LDS doctrine of exaltation is that human beings preexisted in heaven as God’s spirit sons and daughters before coming to earth with physical bodies. This idea is essential to Mormon exaltation doctrine because that doctrine views God, humans, and angels as beings of the same species but at different stages of progression or development. In Joseph Smith’s later theology, as in Mormon theology now, it would not be correct to say that God created us. God may have created or made our physical bodies (or those of the first earth people, Adam and Eve), but in LDS doctrine we are eternal beings, just as much as God or Christ, and with the same divine potential.

The Book of Mormon, however, does not teach this idea that human beings preexisted as God’s spirit children in heaven. In fact, what it does say undermines or contradicts that idea. We have already noted the fact that it repeatedly refers to God as “from eternity to eternity” or “from everlasting to everlasting,” in contexts where this description clearly marks God apart from human beings and the rest of creation. Those affirmations about God, then, implicitly deny that we are also eternal spirits that have always existed.

The Book of Mormon presents much more evidence on this point in the form of statements that directly pertain to the nature of humanity. For example, the Book of Mormon refers ten times to Adam and Eve as “our first parents” (1 Nephi 5:11; 2 Nephi 2:15; 9:9; Mosiah 16:3; Alma 12:21, 26; 42:2, 7; Helaman 6:26; Ether 8:25). Since it never qualifies this description in any way (for example, by calling them “our first parents on earth”), the natural way to take these words is that Adam and Eve were literally our very first parents. By contrast, in Joseph Smith’s later theology, God the Father was our first literal parent (and in Mormon doctrine soon after Joseph Smith’s death, the idea arose that we were all spirit children of heavenly parents, Heavenly Father and a heavenly mother).

In a passage I quoted earlier, the Book of Mormon quotes Jesus as saying:

“Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son. In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and my daughters” (Ether 3:14).

This statement presupposes that human beings are not already God’s literal sons and daughters but affirms that they can become his sons and daughters through faith in Christ. We saw in Part Two that this is also the teaching of the New Testament. Mormons today sometimes try to explain such statements by a theological distinction not found in any of these texts. They suggest that human beings are already literal children of Heavenly Father but that through faith in Christ they can also become in a spiritual sense children of Jesus Christ. Such an explanation seems especially artificial when Ether 3:14 explicitly identifies Jesus Christ as both “the Father and the Son.” Of course, in the New Testament Christians become children of God the Father through their faith in his Son Jesus Christ (e.g., John 1:12-13; Rom. 8:14-17, 29; Gal. 4:4-7).

Elsewhere, the Book of Mormon consistently speaks of human beings as having the beginning of their existence as physical beings. God creates us as beings of flesh, formed from the dust (Jacob 2:21; Mormon 9:17). We owe our lives and continued existence from day to day to his creating and sustaining us (Mosiah 2:20-23). God “created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are,” and specifically “created our first parents” (2 Nephi 2:14-15). All of these statements reflect quite traditional Christian beliefs that were common to Joseph Smith’s theological environment in early nineteenth-century America, and there is no reason to take them in any other way than just as they sound in that context.

Let me comment briefly on one passage in the Book of Mormon that some Mormons cite as reflecting a belief in the preexistence of human spirits. That passage states that priests were “called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God…. this holy calling being prepared from the foundation of the world for such as would not harden their hearts” (Alma 13:3, 5). Surely, though, we should understand this passage to mean not that the priests themselves existed “from the foundation of the world,” but rather their “calling” was “prepared” for them “according to the foreknowledge of God.” That is, God knew ahead of time that these men would be suitable for the priestly office and so “prepared” that calling for them. Such a passage cannot overturn the considerable evidence from the more than a dozen passages cited above that show that the Book of Mormon reflects the traditional Christian belief that our existence begins on earth as physical beings.

Conclusion: The Book of Mormon Does Not Teach the Exaltation Doctrine

If, as we have seen, the Book of Mormon teaches a more traditional view of God and man, one that is not compatible with Joseph Smith’s later doctrine of exaltation, then clearly the Book of Mormon does not teach that doctrine. And in fact no passage in the Book of Mormon supports the LDS belief taught later by Joseph Smith that human beings can become Gods with the same powers as God the Father and creating and ruling over their own worlds. It does not even teach anything that might be described as a form of theosis, or the Greek Christian doctrine of deification.

The Book of Mormon affirms, as Christians traditionally have also believed, that God’s people can do anything that he empowers and authorizes them to do (e.g., 1 Nephi 9:6; 17:50; 2 Nephi 1:10; Mosiah 5:3; Alma 20:4; 26:12; 37:16; Helaman 10:5; Moroni 10:23). However, these affirmations are not eschatological statements about our future, post-resurrection glorified state, but assurances of God’s powerful presence among God’s people in the here and now. They are not teaching that we will become omnipotent beings, but rather that the Omnipotent One is able to accomplish anything he wishes through the agency of his people when they trust him and obey his direction.

The disparity between the theology of the Book of Mormon and the theology of Joseph Smith in his last years cannot be overcome by citing isolated proof texts. The evidence is overwhelming that in teaching his doctrine of exaltation, Joseph Smith was not restoring a doctrine attested by the Book of Mormon.

 Similar Posts:

• Did Joseph Smith Restore Theosis? Part One: The Mormon Doctrine of Exaltation
• Did Joseph Smith Restore Theosis? Part Five: Early Church Fathers and Joseph Smith’s Doctrine of Exaltation
• Did Joseph Smith Restore Theosis? Part Two: The New Testament and Joseph Smith’s Doctrine of Exaltation
• Did Joseph Smith Restore Theosis? Part Four: Esoteric Jewish Theology and Joseph Smith’s Doctrine of Exaltation
• In What Sense Are Jesus and the Father One? Part III: One in Purpose? C: John 17:21-23

Let me begin by explaining libertarian freedom, and the reason why most Calvinists deny the concept. (Just scroll to the end if you already know what libertarian freedom is.)

Libertarian Freedom

Libertarian Freedom is often described as “the power of contrary choice.” In other words, the one who believes in libertarian freedom believes that in any given circumstance, when a choice is made, the chooser had the “power” or ability to choose differently. For example, even though this blog is already written, I could have chosen not to write it.

That seems self-evident and rather intuitive as our days are made up of the sum total of all our choices. We make thousands of conscious and unconscious decisions every day in which there are multiple options present. As well, we hold people accountable for their choices because we assume that they could have done otherwise. We tell our children to clean up their room. If they disobey, we discipline them, believing that they had the power of contrary choice (i.e. they could have obeyed!).

As easy as this concept is to accept from a very practical standpoint, from both a philosophical and theological point of view, it is hardly so cut and dry. If you ask me whether a person has the power of contrary choice, I would answer “no.”

Hang with me. The basic argument would be this. Any given choice that a person makes is not made in a vacuum. In other words, none of our choices are birthed out of neutrality. It is a person who makes the choice, not some innocent bystander called “free will.” By the time any given choice is made, the person making the choice will already be, by nature, predisposed to make that choice. This does not mean that the outcome is determined by an outside agency (determinism) nor does it mean that the choice in inevitable (fatalism), but that it is self-determined. Simply put, a person’s nature makes up who they are. Who they are determines their choice. Therefore, people always choose according to who they are at the moment. There is no “power” of contrary choice, for we cannot identify what or who this “power” might be.

Arminians such as Roger Olson believe that when we reject God, we do so out of a neutralized will (total depravity + previenient grace).

Calvinists such as myself believe that when we reject God, we do so out of a fallen will (total depravity).

Think about all that goes into making who you are. We are born in the fallen line of Adam. Spiritually speaking, we have an inborn inclination toward sin. All of our being is infected with sin. This is called “total depravity.” Every aspect of our being is infected with sin, even if we don’t act it out to a maximal degree.

But even if this were not the case—even if total depravity were a false doctrine—libertarian freedom would still be untenable for humans. Not only are you who you are because of your identification with a fallen human race, but notice all these factors that you did not choose that go into the setup for any given “free will” decision made:

• You did not choose when you were to be born.
• You did not choose where you were to be born.
• You did not choose your parents.
• You did not choose your influences early in your life.
• You did not choose whether you were to be male or female.
• You did not choose your genetics.
• You did not choose your temperament.
• You did not choose your looks.
• You did not choose your body type.
• You did not choose your physical abilities.

All of these factors play an influential role in who you are at the time of any given decision. Yes, your choice is free, but it has you behind it. Therefore, you are free to choose according to you from whom you are not able to free yourself!

Now, I must reveal something here once again that might surprise many of you. This view is held by both Calvinists and Arminians alike. Neither position believes that a person can choose against their nature. However, Arminians (such as Olson) differ from Calvinists in that they believe in the doctrine of “prevenient grace,” which essentially neutralizes the will so that the inclination toward sin—the antagonism toward God—is relieved and the person can make a neutral decision.

However, we still have some massive difficulties. Here are a few:

A neutralized will amounts to your absence from the choice itself.

Changing the nature of a person so that their predispositions are neutral does not really help. We are back to the question What does a neutralized will look like? Does it erase all of the you behind the choice? If you are neutralized and liberated from you, then who is making the choice? How can you be held responsible for a choice that you did not really make, whether good or bad?

A neutralized will amounts to perpetual indecision.

Think about this, if a person had true libertarian freedom, where there were no coercive forces, personal or divine, that influenced the decision, would a choice ever be made? If you have no reason to choose A or B, then neither would ever be chosen. Ronald Nash illustrates this by presenting a dog who has true libertarian freedom trying to decide between two bowls of dog food. He says that the dog would end up dying of starvation. Why? Because he would never have any reason to choose one over the other. It is like a balanced scale, it will never tilt to the right or the left unless the weight (influence) on one side is greater than the other. Then, no matter how little weight (influence) is added to a balanced scale, it will always choose accordingly.

A neutralized will amounts to arbitrary decisions, for which one cannot be held responsible.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that libertarian choice could be made. Let’s say that the dog did choose one food bowl over the other. In a truly libertarian sense, this decision cannot have influences of any kind. Any decision without influences is arbitrary. It would be like flipping a coin. I chose A rather than B, not because of who I am, but for no reason at all. It just turned out that way. But this option is clearly outside a biblical worldview of responsibility and judgment. Therefore, in my opinion, the outcome for the fight for true libertarian free will comes at the expense of true responsibility!

Bottom line:  while I believe people have free will, I don’t believe people have libertarian free will. We make the choices we make because of who we are. We are responsible for these choices. God will judge each person accordingly with a righteous judgment.

Is there tension? Absolutely. We hold in tension our belief in God’s sovereignty, determining who we are, when we live, where we will live, who our parents will be, our DNA, etc. and human responsibility. While this might seem uncomfortable, I believe that it is not only the best biblical option, but the only philosophical option outside of fatalism, and we don’t want to go there.

Acts 17:26-28
“From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.”

Does God have libertarian freedom?

Now we come to the question of the hour. Roger Olson asks, in essence, Does God have libertarian freedom?

You see, pantheism believes that God (an impersonal being) created the world out of necessity. He did not make a choice, much less a libertarian free choice. But Christians are not pantheists. We do not believe that God was compelled to create the universe, but did so out of his own freedom. In other words, he could have chosen not to make the universe. Therefore if you are a Christian, no matter what tradition you are from, I think you must believe that God has the power of contrary choice. God has true freedom in a way that we don’t.

However, this does not mean we believe that God has the ability to choose against his nature. Roger Olson asks, “Is God the prisoner of his own wisdom (or of anything)?” “Prisoner” is loaded term. I could load it another way: “Is God faithful to his own wisdom (or to anything)?” The answer must be qualified.

God’s wisdom cannot be separated from who he is. We call this the doctrine of simplicity. God is a simple being. No, this does not mean that he is easy to figure out. It means that God is not composed of parts. It means that God is one. It means that God is indivisible. We cannot separate God’s wisdom from his nature. Though we often distinguish between God’s attributes in ways that imply separation, we need to be careful. God is righteous. God is love. God is holy. God is wise. But these are not separate attributes, as if the sum total of them define his being or essence. They are all who he is. He is wise-loving-holy-righteous. They are the same in essence.

Therefore, when we ask if God is a “prisoner” to his wisdom (or any one of his attributes), it is like asking “Is God a prisoner to who he is?” The answer is an unqualified “yes.” If he is not, then all of Christianity is in jeopardy and our salvation is contingent upon God’s submission to outside principles such as wisdom and faithfulness. But God is wisdom. God is faithful. His very nature defines these concepts. God could no more act unwise or unfaithful then he could cease to be God. God is who he is, eternally and immutably (unchangeably).

So when we talk about libertarian freedom with regard to God, we must distinguish between two aspects of it:

1. Could God have chosen differently than he chose (say in making the universe)? Yes. God, being transcendent to cause and effect relationships—being beyond time—does not have any prior causes to his actions. He has no parents, events, or culture which influences any decision. All his actions are birthed out of the “eternal now” and are, therefore, truly free. We are not pantheists. We are theists. God’s transcendent nature necessitates a freedom that we don’t experience.

2. Can God act against his own nature? No. God always acts according to who he is. By definition, God will always remain faithful to himself. 2 Timothy 2:13 puts it this way: “He cannot deny himself.” He is righteous and will always act accordingly when justice is on the table. God is love and will always act in accordance with his love. God is wise and cannot ever make an unwise choice. Therefore, when the choice involves God choosing or not choosing in accordance with his character, he will always choose according to who he is.

Was the creation of the universe necessitated out of his character? No. God did not have to create this universe. He did not have to create me. He did not have to choose you for salvation. He did not have to send his Son to die for us. These are true free will decisions.

So, I am willing to say that God has a qualified libertarian freedom: God has the power of contrary choice so long as it is not contrary to his nature.

While I don’t think that this is a “soft-ball” question, I do think it is something that Calvinists can answer with some degree of confidence. Understanding God’s decisions in relation to his eternality is inscrutable. We can only explain what must be. Now, if I were asked where Satan’s decision to rebel came from, I would have no satisfying answer as a Calvinist.

That is the best I’ve got, Dr. Olson. Love your stuff.Similar Posts:

• A Calvinist’s Understanding of “Free-Will”
• Why I Reject the Arminian Doctrine of Prevenient Grace
• Why Calvinism is the Least Rational Option
• Some Misconceptions about Calvinism
• Do Roger Olson and I Worship the Same God?

This book will be written chapter-by-chapter through the Parchment & Pen blog. The printed form of the book, along with a study guide, will be released in connection with the DVD/Workbook study entitled: The Discipleship Program. A projected release date is May 2011.

I remember one of my first jobs. It was selling cars at a Mitsubishi dealership. I got the job through some connections from my dad. I had never sold anything before and was not sure what to expect. But, as is the case with many types of car dealers, they didn’t care too much. As long as I was willing to take a chance with them, they were willing to take a chance with me.

It was my first day and my first customer. “Michael,” the manager said, “You’ve got point. Those people are yours. Go get ‘em.” It was then that I realized I didn’t know the first thing about the cars. Sure, I knew their name, could tell the customer their price, knew how to drive, and could find the key to take them on a drive, but what if they asked questions? What if they asked if it was fuel injected? What if they asked how many pistons it had? What if they asked about the cylinders, spark plugs, frame, or gas pump? While there are people out there who know a lot about cars and could tell you how they work, I didn’t know the first thing. I thought I could just “wing it”, but I knew the right person would make me look like a buffoon. All I knew is that you get in, turn the key, and it starts. The rest was a complete mystery to me. I had no business selling any type of car.

Multiply that by one million and you will see how I feel about writing this chapter. Intimidation, fear, mystery, and all sorts of “buffoonness” are my claim. “Hey Michael, you got point. Go tell these people about GOD! . . . Oh, and don’t forget to talk about the Trinity.” Yeah right.

However, my confidence is my insecurity. (Or is it my insecurity that is my confidence?) Really, that is the first lesson. Cars, to me, are mysterious. However, one can spend some time and eventually alleviate themselves of all ignorance. God, to all, is mysterious. All the time in the world would not relax our ignorance one bit. We are completely dependent upon him to introduce himself to us.

This chapter is entitled “Trinity” not only because I am going to introduce you to the doctrine of the Trinity, but because we are going to spend some time coming to know our Trinitarian God.

Ineffability

Some people may start at other places when writing a chapter about God. But I think it’s best to put us all in our place right when the start gun is fired. Simply put, we are finite; God is infinite. So far so good? Let’s try again. We are limited; God is unlimited. Better? One more time. God’s nature, knowledge, and power knows no bounds; we have trouble learning about cars.

I was watching a clip on the internet the other day which showed the expanse of our universe. It started with a person in a park in Florida. It then zoomed out ten meters. The rest of the show was zooming out further and further in multiples of ten. We passed the moon, sun, our solar system, and our galaxy. Pause for a moment: Did you know that the closest star to us besides our sun is 4.24 light years away? Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Per second! Even at this speed, it would take over four years to get to the first star in our galaxy. And there are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy! Back to the clip. Passing the Milky Way, after hundreds of thousands of light years, we finally pass the nearest galaxy. Yes, that is right, we are only one galaxy among many. In fact, eventually, you will pass hundreds of billions of galaxies! Where does it end? We don’t really even know how to define “end”. New discoveries are doing nothing but making us shrink and cower in amazement. The discoveries are real and true, but they only serve to make us see how small we are.

When we are talking about God, I think the universe is a good illustration. In fact, I think that is why God made it so vast, so incomprehensible. God is infinitely greater than our universe. There are so many things we can understand about him so long as he chooses to reveal himself, but we will never look him eye to eye. Nor should we be arrogant enough to think we can figure him out or even any one thing about him. Any study of God, I believe, must start with his infinite ineffable nature.

However, we must not make an error and say that he is so great, we cannot come to know him at all. Or that his nature is so infinite that he cannot communicate himself to finite people. It would be like saying “God is so powerful that he can’t tell us about himself.” This would make no sense. We can understand exactly as much as he desires us to understand about him.

Notice what God says in Jeremiah:

Jeremiah. 9:23-24
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; 24 but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me’.”

The old dictum is appropriate here: “While we cannot come to know God fully, we can come to know him truly.”

Attributes

Theologians like to talk about the attributes of God. It would be a glaring blind spot in this chapter if I did not at least mention of few. Attributes are simply a way of describing characteristics. Take for example the desk I have my feet on right now. It has many attributes. For example, it is made of wood. It is painted black. It has four legs and a flat counter surface. There are three drawers. Now, some of these attributes are essential to this desk being a desk and some are not. For example, a desk must have a counter surface. Without a counter surface, it is, by definition, not a desk. It must also be made of a solid substance. If it is made of water, it would not qualify. However, there are some characteristics that are “non-essential” but are nevertheless a part of my desk. Its “blackness” is not an essential desk characteristic, but it is, nonetheless, an attribute of my desk. As well, while my desk has three drawers, it is not essential for a desk to have any drawers.

When it comes to God, there are certain attributes that are necessary qualifications to being God and there are ones that are not necessary, even though he still possesses them. That is why I have chosen to divide my short list of attributes into “essential” and “non-essential” attributes.

Essential Attributes

Eternity: God is eternal. This does not simply mean that no matter how far back or how far forward in time you go, God is there. It means that God transcends time. He created time space and matter all at once, out of nothing (a doctrine we like to call “creation ex nihilo”). God’s essence does not exist in time. While God acts within time, his essence exists in an “eternal now”. Mind blown? We’re just getting started.

Psalm 90:2
“Before the mountains were born, Or Thou didst give birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.”

2 Peter 3:8
“But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Aseity: God is “a se“. This means God is “of himself.” Simply put: God is not dependent on anything. You and I are not a se. We are not “of ourselves.” You had nothing to do with your birth. You have to depend on food, air, temperature, and a thousand other factors that help you live and breath. God depends on nothing. He needs nothing. He does not even need us. He is completely self-dependent.

Notice here in the Psalms, God expresses that he does not even need our worship:

Psalm 50:8-12
8 “I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, And your burnt offerings are continually before me. 9 “I shall take no young bull out of your house, Nor male goats out of your folds. 10 “For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. 11 “I know every bird of the mountains, And everything that moves in the field is Mine. 12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all it contains.

Ponder on that for a bit: The God you serve does not need you in any way, but he does desire a relationship with you. Amazing!

Omnipresent: God is everywhere. The best way to think of this without getting into error is to say that there is no place that is outside of God’s immediate presence. Wherever you go in the universe, you are right there in God’s sight.

Psalm 139:7-10
“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. 9 If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, 10 Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.”

Omniscience: God knows everything. God knows the past, present, and future exhaustively. He even knows your thoughts before you have them. Advancements in technology are simply God’s daily allowance. Of all the hundred of billions of stars and galaxies, God is perfectly aware of every one, and even names them all. God’s knowledge is perfect and He even knows our hidden motives (something that we are not aware of ourselves).

Isaiah 40:26
“Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.”

Psalm 139:4
“Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You know it all.”

Psalm 139:23-24
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; 24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.”

Omnipotence: God has unlimited power. In the Scripture, in order to dignify God above all the other God’s, he is often called the “All-Mighty”. While people and things have “might”, no one has all-might. God alone is almighty. There is nothing too difficult for him. The only things God can’t do are things that are inconsistent with his character. For example, God cannot sin. He cannot lie. He cannot cease to be God. He cannot make a rock so big he can’t pick it up. In other words, God can do all things that are logically possible.

Gen 18:14
“Is anything too difficult for the LORD?”

Job 42:2
“I know that Thou canst do all things, And that no purpose of Thine can be thwarted.

Rev 19:6
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.

Sovereignty: Simply put, God is in control over everything. There is not a maverick molecule in the universe. There is no one that he answers to other than himself. He is the top dog. The buck stops with him. All things, good and evil, happen according to his permissive will. This does not mean that he likes all things that happen by any means, but we must understand that everything must pass by his desk for approval—even those things he does not like (which he has reasons for).

Ephesians 1:11
“Also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will.”

Dan 4:34-35
“For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom endures from generation to generation. 35 “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’”

Non-essential attributes

Grace: God is a God of grace. Grace means “gift”. It often carries the idea of “stooping.” It is like when a king stoops to bless a commoner who does not deserve it. Grace gives us what we don’t deserve. God is gracious. Grace or stooping are built into his very nature. He stoops to sinners, giving us gifts and love even we don’t deserve it.

Titus 2:11
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men.”

Love: God is love. Love is not merely a compassionate feeling for someone (though it does include this), but a disposition that continually expresses itself through acts of mercy, grace, forgiveness, and kindness. God’s love continually seeks us and is the motivation behind Jesus going to the cross.

1 John 4:16
“God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Righteousness: God is morally perfect. Not only this, but he is a perfectly just judge. He hates sin. He will never leave sin unpunished. As a disciple, you must learn to balance the love and grace of God with the righteousness of God. Fail to do this, and you will fail to get the Christian message of the Cross. God sent his Son to die for us not only because of his love, but because his eternal righteous indignation toward sin and evil demanded punishment. Because of God’s love, in grace he sent his Son to satisfy his own righteousness.

Exodus 34:7
“Who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.”

Rev 16:7
“And I heard the altar saying, “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”

Trinity

Having looked at some of the attributes of God, now we turn briefly to the doctrine of the Trinity. The word “Trinity” cannot be found in Scripture, but the concept is found throughout. The doctrine of the Trinity has been held by all orthodox Christians throughout all of church history. Whether it be Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Historic Protestants, this doctrine is a central component of Christian truth that cannot be denied without great sacrifice of the Christian witness. Cults such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have denied the doctrine of the Trinity and have, therefore, fallen into great error. Their denial of the Trinity is the central reason why they are not considered a “Christian” tradition, but “cults”.

The Doctrine of the Trinity: We believe in one God who eternally exists in three persons, of whom are fully God, all of whom are equal.

One God

This is a central confession of monotheism (i.e. belief in one God). We do not believe in three God’s. There is and can only be one God. He is the singular source of all things.

Deuteronomy 6:44
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!”

This is the first “creedal statement” in the Bible. A creedal statement is simply a summary of belief. Central to the confession of the nation of Israel (from which Christianity finds its roots) is a belief in one God.

Three Persons

Progressively revealed through the Bible is an understanding of the plurality of God. God is one in essence, but the Bible tells us that he is three in person. In other words, the Father is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but they are not each other. Another way to put it is that we believe in one “what” and three “whos”.

John 1:1
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Notice here that Jesus (“the Word”) was both with God and was God. This relationship between the essence and person of God forms the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. All three members are with each other and they are God.

Matthew 28:19
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Notice the threefold division of the “name” (singular) of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Trinitarian Errors

Modalism: The belief that there is one God who displays himself in three different ways, sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Holy Spirit. For example, I (Michael) am a son, father, and husband; three roles, one person. But God is three separate persons, one essence. Modalism has been universally condemned as heresy (seriously wrong teaching) throughout church history. Modalism destroys the eternal relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit.

Matthew 3:16-17
“After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him,17 and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased’.”

Notice here that we have all three members of the Trinity together in one place, yet very distinct.

Tritheism: The believe that there are three Gods. While it is easy to fall into this error, we must never think of God as three distinct beings. God is one being, three persons.

Subordinationalism: This is the idea that one member of the Trinity is greater than the others. Sometimes people think that God the Father is the greatest, while God the Son comes in a close second, with God the Holy Spirit placing last. Yet this is error as well. Being one in essence, they all share the same divinity. Therefore, they are equal in everything. This does not mean that they don’t take roles in which allow for “functional subordination”. They do, but this does not say anything about their essence. For example, a servant is subordinate to a king, but this does not mean that the kings nature is greater than the servants. It is just his role that is greater. This is why Christ could say “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). He did not mean “greater in essence” (as that would necessarily produce two gods), but greater in role or function.

Bad illustrations

You may be tempted to use some illustrations to help you understand the doctrine of the Trinity. While I understand how mysterious this doctrine can be (Tim won’t let me use the word “confusing”!), every illustration I have ever heard simply is an illustration of error.

The egg: One egg, three parts: shell, white stuff (its actually got a name: albumin), yoke. This is tritheism since each part of the constitution of the egg is separate.

Water: Can be liquid, ice, or steam. This is modalism since these are merely modes that water can exist in. God is Father, Son, and Spirit always simultaneously.

Shamrock: Three parts, one leaf. This is tritheism since each part of the leaf is essentially distinct from the other. In other words, they don’t share in the same essence.

Three People: Three people, one human nature. This, again, is tritheism. While three people may share in a like nature, being of the species Homo Sapien, they do not share in the exact same nature. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit do not share the nature of a species called “deity,” they share the exact same nature. Its a one to one correspondence.

In short, well intentioned illustrations only serve to illustrate heresy.

Here is the best we can do. It is called the “Shield of the Trinity.”

Conclusion

We started this chapter talking about the ineffability of God. God is, in so many ways, beyond our comprehension. However, take heart, if we could exhaustively comprehend all that God is, then it would not really be God we are comprehending!

As a disciple of Christ, you have been introduced to God. Our job is not to make the ineffable, effable, the inscrutable, scrutable. Our job is to believe what he has revealed because he is trustworthy. If you are finishing this chapter with a bit of wonder, awe, and maybe even some “buffooness”, that is okay. You have just joined hands with all the great saints of the past. God is infinitely more complex than a car. Yet he has made himself known to us and in this we can confidently rejoice in our understanding. Let the revealed mystery of the God we serve bring us to our knees.Similar Posts:

• Heresies: Subordinationalism – A Lesser Christ
• "The Trinity is Like 3-in-1 Shampoo". . . And Other Stupid Statements
• Another Illustration of the Trinity
• Must One Believe in the Trinity to be Saved?
• The Essence of God: Sovereign, Holiness, or Love?

Chuck Swindoll used to say, “Sometimes you think you are something on a stick. You are not something on a stick.”

The truth is when I am at my best, I realize how little I know. God is infinite, I am not. People often get insecure when they encounter someone who, from the world’s perspective, is “learned.” We call them “academicians,” “experts,” and, my favorite, ”scholars.” Sometimes we put Ph.D.s and Th.M. after their names. In Christ’s day, they were called “scribes.” Same meaning, different time. We give away awards and prizes for people whom, from the perspective of the awarder, has made significant contributions in this field or that.

I wonder what God thinks of these type of things? Does he think we are something on a stick?

Simply put, God is incomprehensible. I was reminded of this as I have been in correspondence with a “seeking” atheist over the last few weeks. Her inability to even grasp the concept of God as I explained him caused me to once again realize that I don’t grasp it either. As I described his infinite, transcendent, holy nature, I was describing things that were beyond my ability to fathom. The conversation was pushing my buttons of ignorance and finitude. My theological legs began to shake as I realized once again the ineffability of God. Our inability to fathom these things does not make it any less true. It just puts us in our place.

1Co 1:20
“Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”

Problems arise when we begin to think we can comprehend the incomprehensible. Bigger problems arise when we think that in order to qualify for belief, it must be understood. So many people our there are like this young atheist saying, “Explain it to me until I comprehend it, then and only then will I believe it.” We think that we are something on a stick. We think that we can rise to the heights of God and look him in the eye.

I love what A.W. Tozer say in Knowledge of the Holy when speaking about the doctrine of the Trinity:

“Some persons who reject all they cannot explain have denied that God is a Trinity. Subjecting the Most High to their cold, level-eyed scrutiny, they conclude that it is impossible that he could be both One and Three. These forget that their whole life is enshrouded in mystery. They fail to consider that any real explanation of even the simplest phenomenon in nature lies hidden in obscurity and can no more be explained than can the mystery of the Godhead.”

What naive people we so often are. How lofty are our thoughts of ourselves. In reality, we don’t understand much. Oh when surrounded by others of our caliber (humanity in general) and then comparing ourselves to the most base of animals, we can push our self-admiration up a notch or two. Our IQ can get to 150 and we are placed on a pedestal for being fifty points smarter than the next, while the IQ of God cannot be gaged with human numbers. We look through a microscope or telescope and describe what we don’t understand. We are ants looking out of the ant farm window describing, as best we can, the anatomy of the world, and then giving each other high fives for our great wisdom.

In reality, we don’t understand much. Yet, ironically, when the One who understands all speaks and graciously explains reality, we test him by the standard of the “best of” in our ant farm.

We love the truth of God. We love understanding. In fact, God has said himself, “let him who rejoice, rejoice in this: that he understands and knows me” (Jer. 9:24). God has revealed himself to us truly, but not fully. We can be confident that when he speaks, he speaks the truth. The comings and goings our our “great understanding” are just that: comings and goings. While there is no sense I would advocate giving up our pursuit of knowledge and understanding, there is a time when our accolades and pats on the back must make God laugh.

Who are the scientists of the ant farm? Who are the philosophers? Who are the theologians? Where are the scholars?

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Where were we when I thought of the idea of light? Where where you when I made the hydrogen molecule? Where were you when I created Andromeda? Where were you when I created the color blue? Where were you when I had the idea of taste, touch, and smell? Your ant farm had not even been created yet. And you think you can look me in the eye?”

We are not “something on a stick.”Similar Posts:

• Belated Twelve Days of Calvinism
• Can God contradict Himself? God’s relation to the law of non-contradiction
• The Incoherency of the Christian Faith or Why Calvinism is Confusing, Yet True
• Can the Christian faith violate reason?
• Is Natural Revelation Also God’s Word?

Similar Posts:

• Credo Clip: What is a Commentary?
• What is the Council of Nicea and Why Should Evangelicals Care?
• Credo Clip: What is Theology?
• Credo Clip: Should a Christian Believe in Hell?
• Credo Clip: Can Christians Doubt?

Just the other day, I was talking to Zach, my three year old, about God. He asked me where God was. I am always at a bit of a loss with that question when kids ask it. When my daughter Katelynn was his age and asked the same question, I told her that he was right here with us. “In this room?” She said, “Yep,” I told her. She then ran and hid. She thought Jesus was a ghost walking around in our house. Zach asks, “Where is God. I don’t see him.” I told him, “I don’t know. Where do you think he is? “Up in the sky,” he responded. I said, “God is everywhere. No matter where you go, you cannot get away from him.” For a three year old, that is about the best I can do right now. But we need to be careful. Technically speaking, the “God is everywhere” response can be very misleading.

My associate, Tim Kimberley, executive director of Credo House Ministries, was recounting how a professor of ours in seminary, Dr. Jeffery Bingham, chair of the theological studies department at Dallas Theological Seminary, used to have fun with the notion that God is everywhere. While speaking about it in class, he would pause, take a deep breath, and say, “Wait, did I just breathe in some God?”

Transcendence

When we talk about the essence of God, we are talking about a God that does not have a relationship to time, space, and matter. In other words, God created everything (time, space, and matter) out of nothing and does not share in its physical attributes. This is such an important statement that it bears repeating: God created everything (time, space, and matter) out of nothing and does not share in its physical attributes. The theological term for this is “Transcendence.”

The dictionary defines transcendence as “Having continuous existence outside the created world.” Good, but not quite as much as we need. God does not really have an extension in space. One cannot measure the breadth of his stature. In his trinitarian essence, he has no height, weight, color, or gait to his walk. Being transcendent is another aspect of God’s “holiness.” To be “holy” means “to be set apart,” “to be different.” God is not only morally holy, but he is also ontologically holy. In other words, his very being—his essence, his ontos—is separate, distinct, and beyond us. This means that in a very real sense, we will never “see” God with our eyes. Notice what Paul says here:

1 Timothy 6:16
[God] who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen. (NAS)

I love this verse. Notice that he dwells (or has his place of existence) in a light that is unapproachable (apositon; a negation of positon, meaning “to come before” or “approach”). And if that were not enough to convince us of the utter transcendent holiness of God’s nature, Paul goes on to say that no one has seen or can (dunatai; “has the ability”) see him. I have heard people say that the Western Evangelical concept of God and his transcendence are not found in the Bible, but are left overs from distorted Greek thought. Someone forgot to tell Paul!

I know that some of you are disappointed since you don’t think you will be able to see God. While it is true that we won’t ever see his essence, we do see real manifestations of him in his relational presence.

Immanence

If I stopped with transcendence, we would have nothing but the primary ingredients for a worldview called “Deism.” Deists believe that God is transcendent to all of creation, but they also think that he cannot, due to his utter transcendence, interact within creation. Hence the uniqueness of the Christian worldview. The Bible teaches us that God is both transcendent and immanent. He is both far off and near. He is both creator and sustainer. He is beyond time and acting within it. He is holy and active. God is relationally present, manifesting his love and power in many ways, not the least of which is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Each member of the Trinity are active in time, space, and matter in a very real way.

Is God Everywhere?

Having run through some of this theological prologue, I think we can now begin to deal with the idea that God is everywhere. We believe that God is omnipresent (omni “all” + present). But his omnipresence does not have to do with his extension in space as if God’s being is spread out all over the universe (Stop. Did I just breathe in some God?). It has to do with space’s relationship to him.

Here is what I believe to be a better definition of God’s omnipresence:

“God is Everywhere.”

“Everywhere is in God’s immediate presence.”

I write this because I see many Christians describing God in such a way that toys with pantheism. While  we might accommodate to some degree to such concepts when our children are three-years-old, we must quickly graduate to a proper view of God that recognizes the tension between the transcendence of God’s being and the immanence of his presence and activity.

Pantheism is the belief that God’s being is present everywhere and in every thing. Indeed, for the pantheist, when you breath, you do breath in God. The “god” of pantheism is an impersonal being who created all that there is out of necessity. The universe is what he is. The God of the Bible is in no way physically dependent or a part of his creation. He freely created all things out of nothing (ex nihilo).

However, sometimes the Christian definition of God’s omnipresence feels very pantheistic (Hold on. Did I just breathe in some more God?). Often our understanding of God’s omnipresence suggests that God is some extremely large being, taking up a vast amount of space, or that he is somehow evenly spread out across the entire universe. Folks, we are not pantheists. We believe in a God who stands in a transcendent relationship with all his creation, yet is actively and relationally engaged in it. This is a great mystery to be sure, but it is a mysterious necessity and should not yield to descriptions that do more harm than good.

While God’s essence is not everywhere, God’s presence is everywhere. Therefore, there is nowhere that can flee from God’s immediate presence.

Psa 139:7-12
“Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.9 If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,10 Even there Thy hand will lead me, And Thy right hand will lay hold of me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,” 12 Even the darkness is not dark to Thee, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to Thee. (NAS)Similar Posts:

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“Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31 31

“It is absurd to believe that the deity has human passions, and one of the lowest human passions, a restless appetite for applause.” -David Hume

There is a popular notion among Evangelicals that I think has become part of our folklore. Indeed, it is the shibboleth (secret pass code) of my fellow Calvinists. When I call this “folklore” I don’t necessarily mean “not true” (as we will see), I simply mean that it is uncritically accepted without much thought. Many would say that God’s sole purpose, intent, and motivation for creating humanity and all of creation was for His own self-glorification. If you were to ask this question to God: “God, why did you create us?” His answer, without hesitation, would be, “Easy, to glorify myself.”

Many unbelievers will bring this up as a primary point of departure from the Christian faith. They would say that the Christian God is an egotistical maniac, only out for his own self-glory. As one person put it: “If I had a child I would not bring him into this world and say, ‘Congratulations, I created you to worship me’. I would not want a son simply to serve me.” He goes on, “I never asked to participate in this game of life. I was nothing and then I was created simply to serve him or I’d have to burn for eternity?” He goes on to accuse God of being egotistical, sharing in the most base traits of humanity. Is this true? Does God have a “relentless appetite for applause”?

Wrong Answers

Wrong answer #1: Yes, God is an ego maniac. But it is okay since he is God.

This is the answer that many people would give (though not in so many words!). The idea is that being self-serving and demanding of recognition is acceptable so long as the recognition is warranted. What makes it bad for us is because we don’t deserve it. Therefore, God’s egotism is a “righteous egotism.” What is base and sinful for man is not so with God.

I am going to let you in on a little secret. I am from Oklahoma. We have a certain way of getting by with things here though the way we talk. We can sanctify many conversations by using certain qualifiers. For example, we can get by with any gossip by simply adding the words “God bless his/her/their soul” to the end of the sentence. “Did you hear about Bobby and Susan? They are having marital problems, God bless their soul.” “I hear that Rick is starting to drink again, God bless his soul.” I think we have something similar in Christianity. We can attribute just about anything to God so long as we tag it with the word “righteous.” God is vindictive, but it is a “righteous vindictiveness.” God is jealous, but it is a “righteous jealousy”. God is cruel, but it is a “righteous cruelty.” I think we need to be careful here. Sometimes these things are true such as God’s jealousy (Deut. 5:9). But simply placing the word “righteous” in from of it does not often do justice to what is trying to be said.

To say that God is egotistical or a glory monger without lots of qualification can do great damage to his character. It is not okay for us to ascribe attributes that do not fit God’s personality as revealed in Scripture.

However, let me first say this: God could very well be egotistical and self-consumed and we, as His creation, could not say anything to change that. We don’t have a vote in truth. Our ballots won’t get tallied in the heavens. God is who he is and we simply discover this. We don’t create him. But the fact still remains that even among the best and brightest of our kind, we do not honor glory mongers. Why? Because anyone who only seeks to draw attention to themselves is seen as a dysfunctional human who needs physiological help. We understand that one of the greatest characteristics that humans can possess is being focused upon others even in their own greatness. Do we really want to allow God to bear a great dysfunction and call it a virtue simply because His is deserving? I would be very careful with this.

Theological Considerations: When we, without qualification, concede that God is only out for his own glory we can implicitly deny His aseity thus implying some sort of lack or need in God. The aseity of God is a doctrine which says God is without any need. Literally, he is “of himself.” This means that God does not need man in any way whatsoever. He was not in heaven twiddling his thumbs before creation and therefore decided to create us to avoid eternal boredom. It was not that God was lonely and needed companionship. Neither was God in need of someone to respond to him by giving him glory.

I love this passage of Scripture:

Psalm 50:7-12
“Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you; I am God, your God. 8 “I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, And your burnt offerings are continually before Me. 9 I shall take no young bull out of your house Nor male goats out of your folds. 10 For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills. 11 I know every bird of the mountains, And everything that moves in the field is Mine. 12 If I were hungry I would not tell you, For the world is Mine, and all it contains.”

God does not need people’s sacrifices. God does not need people’s prayers. God does not need people’s love. God owns everything. He is fully self-satisfied. And God did not and does not need us to glorify Him. Unless qualified with the reality of God’s aseity, saying God created us to glorify himself will do more harm than good.

Analogous Consideration: Consider an analogy for a moment. The closest that you and I can come to understanding the motive for creation is in having children. We have the ability to decide whether or not to have children. While we are not the ultimate creator of our children, we do serve as secondary causes and, from a human standpoint, do have a choice to make in the decision making process. When Kristie and I decided to start having children, we had reasons. But what if someone were to ask me why I had my first daughter Katelynn and I said, “Because I wanted to glorify myself. My primary purpose is that she would one day know how great I am.” You would probably send me off somewhere in a paddy wagon and rightly so. But this is not the case. Kristie and I had Katelynn because it was a joy to share life with others. We receive great pleasure from this. We wanted someone to love, not necessarily someone who would love us. Katelynn will naturally respond in recognition of us and bring honor and glory to us so long as we deserve it. But our deserving of this does not equate to the motive behind our decision. I believe it is the same way with God. God is perfect and deserving of glory, and we, as His children, should recognize Him for who He is and thereby give Him glory. But this does not imply that His purpose in creation was for this end (again, unless qualified).

Biblical Consideration: If I were to hand a person a Bible who has never read it before and ask them to tell me why they think God created everything, I doubt that they would ever say at the end of the day, “The best I can tell is that God has created all things with the purpose that He receives glory.” What they would probably do is be overwhelmed by the generosity and mercy of God. I think the most natural conclusion from Scripture is to say that the God of the Bible created all of creation so that He could share of Himself. Therefore, generosity and grace would be the primary motive in creation, not self-glorification.

Notice, from the very beginning, God is seen as a giving God with no explanation as to why. I flip the pages of Scripture as if reading it for the first time and ask “Why is he doing all of this for man?” Adam was given life. God gave Adam the earth to rule over. He gave him the animals. If that weren’t enough, He then gave him Eve. Even when they rebelled, God initiated a plan to give man redemption. He gave them children and began to work through the line of one of them so that He could eventually redeem man who did not deserve to be redeemed. He gave Abraham a promise that He would be a father of many nations and that through him he would give the world a great blessing. When the fullness of time came, He gave His own Son over to a terrible death for man.

I am sorry, but I do not find an egotistical God whose sole unqualified purpose in creation is self-glorification. It is just not there, but maybe I have missed something.

But we are not done. If God is so concerned about some egotistical self-glorification, why is it that he is found consummating all things by sharing in his glory with us. Finally, when all is complete and the restoration of all things has come to pass, he gives his own glory over to humans.

“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” (Romans 8:16-17; emphasis added)

“And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.” (Romans 8:30; emphasis added)

“Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” (Daniel 12:3)

Shining like the stars is a vivid illustration of receiving glory. I do not believe that God is presented in the Scripture as one who is egotistically seeking to puff himself up. On the contrary, he is one who is continually giving of himself and sharing in his glory.

Wrong answer #2: No, God does not care about his own glory.

I think that this answer is just as bad as the first. God does care about his own glory. God does seek to be worshiped. God does demand the allegiance of every created thing. But the reason is not because he needs these things. Nor is it because he has this one small eternal vice. The reason why he seeks his own glory because he wants all of creation to be brought into concert with reality. He wants his beauty to be seen because he created us in such a way to find the most fulfillment and satisfaction in a recognition of the way things actually are. And the way things actually are is found in his glory.

Is it egotistical for the ocean to roar. Is it egotistical for the sun to shine so bright. Is it egotistical for romantic love to make our hearts drop? Is it egotistical for chocolate to make our mouth water? Is it egotistical for the expanse of the universe to cause us to stand in awe? Is it egotistical for sex to feel good? Is it egotistical for music to effect our emotions? Is it egotistical for the sky to be blue? Yes, all of these are attributes of impersonal things. But they all call out for recognition nonetheless. This recognition brings fulfillment to us, not to the things themselves. When we see a personal God who not only created all these things that beacon us to joyful recognition but is also the very embodiment of them calling on us to glorify him, he is doing nothing else but what is expected from a loving God. He is calling us to recognize him and his beauty. In doing so, we experience the greatest pleasure existence has to offer. His call for us to recognize him is nothing other than a call for our own ultimate fulfillment.

Not only this, but it brings glory to God to be who he is and to act out his character. When God says through the prophet Isaiah “Everyone who is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made” (Isa. 4:7; emphasis mine), he is not talking about an egotistical trip that he went on at creation, but the glory that he receives by being who he is—the creator.

My Answer:

The reason why this made my list of questions that I hope no one asks is not because the answer is that mysterious. Neither is it because (like so many of these) I don’t really want anyone to ask it. It is because it takes some deep thinking and is so often misunderstood. God is not an egomaniac. Far from it. I think it is clear from Scripture that he is the most giving and loving God that we could imagine. He is a God who created us to share with us all things, including his glory.

While becoming man was the most humbling thing God has ever done (Phil. 2:5-8), I think creating man has to come in a close second. He knew that man would reject him. He knew that without drastic intervention the very work of his hands, to whom he gave so much, would raise their fists in the air in defiance. He knew that he would have to sacrifice his own Son to rescue the ones who hated him. Yet he did it anyway. And we want to call that egotistical? An egotistical God would not have dared creating man knowing how much his ego would suffer from such a cause.

God’s purpose in creating us was to give to us life, love, and joy. His purpose in creating us was for us to share in his glory. He calls on us to worship, serve, and adore him precisely because he wants us to be fulfilled. His glory is reality. Our glorifying him is merely a recognition of that reality. Therefore, our purpose in life is to bring God ultimate glory in hopes that all of creation will be completely fulfilled.

“Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31Similar Posts:

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