Human Deification--Why did GBH downplay it?

[_Pollypinks]

I need to know where to find in the Bible references to human deification. I'll be waiting....

[_jon]

Human Deification--Why did GBH downplay it?

I'm glad you interpreted that correctly which few critics seem able to do. The reason he downplayed it is because of the "milk before meat" and "pearls before swine principles" which are both PR principles. He wants people to focus on things other than the deep doctrines of the Church since they are not likely to understand them or find them strange because they don't understand them.

This would be a sensible point of view but for the panic stricken attempt to reassure the members that actually he did know somewhat more about it than he was letting on to Larry King.
He knew he'd cocked up as soon as the Church PR man started making temple throat gestures at him from behind the camera...

[_Nevo]

I need to know where to find in the Bible references to human deification. I'll be waiting....

I provided a link in my post but I guess you missed it. The most significant biblical references, in my view, are Romans 8:17 (cf. Gal. 4:7) and Revelation 3:21. I think 2 Peter 1:4 is also relevant.

Of course, when I said that the doctrine of human deification is thoroughly scriptural, I wasn't thinking only of the Bible. Latter-day revelation is clear on the point (see, e.g., D&C 76:50-70; 132:19-20, 37).

[_Phillip]

Deification (properly understood) has always been a doctrine of the apostolic churches in both the East and the West. The real issue that divides the LDS from Catholic and Orthodox Christians is their views on the nature of God. From the current Catechism of the Catholic Church (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

78: 2 Pet 1:4.
79: St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3, 19, 1: PG 7/1, 939.
80: St. Athanasius, De inc., 54, 3: PG 25, 192B.
81: St. Thomas Aquinas, Opusc. 57: 1-4.

[_sock puppet]

In the space of just three years, how and why did human deification really go from being pronounced at General Conference as the end goal of 'the whole design of the gospel' to the Mormon prophet not knowing if the Mormon Church teaches it, explaining the Mormons do not emphasize it?

I thought you were a better reader than this. The second quote you cite isn't incompatible with the first. Helping humans attain exaltation—eternal life—is "the whole design of the gospel" (cf. Moses 1:39). The doctrine of human deification is thoroughly scriptural.

But Larry King's question wasn't about humans' divine destiny but God's past—specifically, whether God was once a man "like we are." I think President Hinckley was right to demur on that point. In what sense was God the Father once like we are? We don't exactly know. The scriptures are silent on this point. Since the Father has a glorified (presumably resurrected) body of flesh and bone, we can infer that he was once mortal, but beyond that we can only speculate.

To affirm on national TV that "God was once a man like we are" could easily lead to confusion about the LDS understanding of God. Do Mormons deny God's transcendence? Are they saying that God had a beginning? That God wasn't always God? Are they saying that God was once sinful and imperfect ("like we are")?

I think President Hinckley was wise to avoid the issue. We really don't know much about it.

So JSJr was making up stuff on the fly when he gave the King Follett sermon, and Prophet Lorenzo Snow got deluded all along about decades later, but it's now a reading comprehension problem? Really? That should elevate you to top-tier apologist at NAMIRS if you want it.

Really willing to throw JSJr (and Lorenzo Snow) under the bus to save GBH?

I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth, for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why He interferes with the affairs of man.

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.

In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.

These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.

Seems old GBH didn't understand his church history much for having spent a lifetime as a general authority. The Mormon Church had been teaching it since at least April 1844, so by 1997, that's what, 153 years? And look at the detail JSJr went into in explaining back a century and a half earlier. Maybe it was GBH who had the reading comprehension problem. Maybe he was just being disingenuous to millions of people watching Larry King Live that night.

[_sock puppet]

Good point, jon. Here are all three relevant quotes:

...[T]he whole design of the gospel is to lead us onward and upward to greater achievement, even, eventually, to godhood. This great possibility was enunciated by the Prophet Joseph Smith in the King Follet sermon and emphasized by President Lorenzo Snow. It is this grand and incomparable concept: As God now is, man may become!

The 'whole design of the gospel', but then this zig

Larry King: Just another related question that comes up is the statements in the King Follet discourse by the Prophet.
GBH: Yeah.
Larry King: ...about that, God the Father was once a man as we were. This is something that Christian writers are always addressing. Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?
GBH: I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don't know a lot about it and I don't know that others know a lot about it.

before this zag

The media have been kind and generous to us. This past year of pioneer celebrations has resulted in very extensive, favorable press coverage. There have been a few things we wish might have been different. I personally have been much quoted, and in a few instances misquoted and misunderstood. I think that's to be expected. None of you need worry because you read something that was incompletely reported. You need not worry that I do not understand some matters of doctrine. I think I understand them thoroughly, and it is unfortunate that the reporting may not make this clear. I hope you will never look to the public press as the authority on the doctrines of the Church.

Too bad GBH's counselors didn't insist he not give interviews, and allow for only correlated answers to written questions.

[_Nevo]

Really willing to throw JSJr (and Lorenzo Snow) under the bus to save GBH?

That's not a very charitable reading of my post.

You think President Hinckley was dissembling. I disagree. I don't deny that "[God] was once a man like us" is a teaching of the Church (and neither did President Hinckley). But President Hinckley was correct to observe that the doctrine isn't particularly emphasized or well understood (contrast, for example, Van Hale's take on an infinite regression of Gods vs. Blake Ostler's). Given the lack of revealed knowledge on the subject, and the potential for misunderstanding on the part of his hearers, I think President Hinckley was right to reserve comment.

I don't see this as "throwing Joseph Smith under the bus." That said, however, I don't think the current president of the Church should be obliged to publicly defend every statement made by any of his predecessors.

[_moksha]

I think President Hinckley was clarifying past speculations by admitting that we really don't know much about those speculations, especially when those speculations were advanced as extentions of Polygamy Theology.

[Guest]

Well, let's look at Larry King's question:

Larry King: Just another related question that comes up is the statements in the King Follet discourse by the Prophet.
GBH: Yeah.
Larry King: ...about that, God the Father was once a man as we were. This is something that Christian writers are always addressing. Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?

So Larry King wasn't asking about every detail, or infinite regression, was he? He asked very specifically asking about one specific being, God the Father.

Now, let's look at what JSJr said about God having once been a man:

I will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears and hear, all ye ends of the earth, for I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, and to tell you the designs of God in relation to the human race, and why He interferes with the affairs of man.

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.

In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.

These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.

In JSJr's King Follett sermon is the exact answer to Larry King's question. Larry King wasn't asking about whether there has been an infinite regression of gods. If what JSJr said on theological questions during his prophethood is yet to be considered part of Mormon 'policies', there was ample 'revealed knowledge on the subject' to answer the exact question posed by Larry King. GBH didn't need to know a lot about the topic to answer the very succinct question posed by Larry King. So obviously, GBH was like a deer caught in the headlight, and dodged and weaved.

How would a direct answer to the concise question posed by Larry King, an answer consistent with the exact words of JSJr on the topic, have led to confusion and misunderstanding?

[_sock puppet]

I think President Hinckley was clarifying past speculations by admitting that we really don't know much about those speculations, especially when those speculations were advanced as extentions of Polygamy Theology.

How can you tell that JSJr was merely speculating in the King Follett Sermon when announcing and preaching that God was once a man, like us, as compared to when JSJr was giving God-directed 'policies'?