Notoriuswun wrote:Most of us are aware of the story of prophet Gordon Hinkley being interviewed and saying that:
Q: There are some significant differences in your beliefs. For instance, don't Mormons believe that God was once a man?
A: I wouldn't say that. There was a little couplet coined, ``As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.'' Now [i]that's more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don't know very much about.
Q: So you're saying the church is still struggling to understand this?
A: Well, as God is, man may become. We believe in eternal progression. Very strongly. We believe that the glory of God is intelligence and whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the Resurrection. Knowledge, learning, is an eternal thing. (heh...this is unintentionally ironic...Mormons aren't taught to question anything).
Yet here...clear as day, is Joseph Smith's answer on the immortality of man:
"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!...........It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God........yea, that God himself, the father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible...." (from Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and History of the Church, 6:302-17)
Was he lying? Or was it simply a halftruth?
Furthermore, why was he so coy with a member of the press? One who could repeat the Mormon message of God-like immortality to the ignorant masses.
Lying? Why would he need to lie about the truth?
It depends on the definition of "MAN"... Does it mean Fallen Man or Imortal Glorified Man. We know next to nothing about the Fathers "mortal existance" Besides two ellusions to it in scripture.
Now as far as Mans Progression he's exactly correct.
This is from the Vatican web site... it's quoting from the 1st century Christian Father Athanasias who won the debatge at Nicea.
460 The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature":78 "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."79 "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."80 "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."81
http://www.vatican.net/archive/catechism/p122a3p1.htm