And so went the King Follett Discourse, named after the Latter-Day Saint whose death they were gathered to remember. It’s unknown how the crowd reacted to the Prophet’s words. There seems to have been no great disturbance - not surprising, since the teachings were, for Mormons, nothing new. For Catholics, though, these claims are shocking if not offensive. This raises an important question: What is the Mormon view of God and how does it compare with that of classical Christianity? The answer may surprise you.

The late B.H. Roberts, the most influential scholar in the history of the LDS church, boiled the main differences down to three:

“First, we believe that God is a being with a body in form like man’s; that he possesses body, parts and passions; that in a word, God is an exalted, perfected man. Second, we believe in a plurality of Gods. Third, we believe that somewhere and some time in the ages to come, through development, through enlargement, through purification until perfection is attained, man at last, may become like God - a God” (Mormon Doctrine of Deity [Infobase Collector’s Library, Infobases, Inc.], chapter 1). Let’s examine the three points.

One god, two god, three god, four. . .

It’s a big universe out there - plenty of room for a plurality of gods. Well, at least that’s what LDS would have us believe. One of the central tenets of Mormonism is that while this world has but one God (Heavenly Father), there are countless other gods out there, each governing his own world or system of worlds. This position can be best labeled “henotheism,” that is, the belief in many gods, coupled with the worship of only one. The idea of a plurality of gods is found clearly in the Book of Abraham, one of Mormonism’s inspired writings. In it, the Genesis creation story is restated, with a significant modification:

“And they (the Gods) said: Let there be light; and there was light; And they (the Gods) comprehended the light, for it was bright. . . . And the Gods called the light Day, and the darkness they called Night” (Abraham 4:3-5). It goes on from there, adding “Gods” to every action in the original Genesis account.

Is there a biblical basis for this belief in a plurality of gods? Mormons say yes, and fasten onto Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 8:5 that there are “many gods and many lords,” as evidence. This claim breaks down, however, when the passage is read in its entirety. St Paul said:

“Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one.’ For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth - as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’ - yet for us there is one God, the Father. . . and one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6).

Notice that the “many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’” mentioned are idols, not actual Gods. This passage, far from proving a plurality of Gods, actually refutes it.

Mormon apologists will also frequently refer to Psalm 82:1, 6 to buttress their belief in more than one God: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. . . . I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall like any prince.’”

Unfortunately, like the 1 Corinthians passage, this text is also ripped from its context. When read together with verses 2-4, we see that the “gods” mentioned are really unjust human judges who are oppressing the people: “‘How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?’” (82:2) God demands of them. Indeed, the “gods” in this passage are doomed to “die like men, and fall like any prince” (82:7). Why? Because they are men. Not exactly the immortal gods of Mormonism. We see then that the LDS interpretation of this verse doesn’t hold up under careful scrutiny.

Psalm 86:10 repeats this point: “For thou art great and doest wondrous things, thou alone art God.” God is not one among many; He is utterly unique in His divinity. There is none like Him.

What, then, are we to make of Genesis 1:26, where God says “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”? Doesn’t this imply the existence of more than one God? Not at all. The author of Genesis is simply employing a common literary device known as the plural of majesty. Historically, popes or kings or royalty will speak of themselves in the plural form to underscore their grandeur. I often write my Christmas cards using the plural of majesty. It gives me a certain class, I think. Of course, my friends attribute it to the numerous voices I hear in my head day and night, night and day. (Thankfully, the voices shut up when I have to write articles or at least they talk softly and are very polite.)

Another tact Mormons often take is to point to the deity of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as evidence that there are at least three Gods. For the LDS, the three members of the Godhead are separate personages - three Gods distinct from one another, but united in purpose. Joseph Smith stated as much in his King Follett Discourse:

“I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit; and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 370).

The Catholic Church, of course, rejects this view because it is polytheistic. Joseph Smith didn’t have the advantage of a good course in Catholic theology. If he had, he would have been able to move past this problem of God being one yet three persons, a problem that has tripped up many a sincere Christian before him.

Frank Sheed, the famous Catholic apologist, explains that, “Nature answers the question what we are; a person answers the question who we are. Every being has a nature; of every being we may properly ask: What is it? But not every being is a person: Only rational beings are persons. We could not properly ask of a stone or a potato or an oyster: Who is it?” (Theology and Sanity [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993], 92).

He goes on to show how this person/nature distinction applies to the Triune God: “We must not use any phrase which suggests that the three persons share the Divine nature . . . The Father possesses the whole nature of God as his own, the Son possesses the whole nature of God as his own, the Holy Spirit possesses the whole nature of God as his own. . . .

“The phrase ‘three men’; would mean three distinct persons, each with his own separate human nature, his own separate equipment as a man; the phrase “three gods” would mean three distinct persons, each with his own separate Divine Nature, his own separate equipment as God. But in the Blessed Trinity, that is not so. The three Persons are God, not by the possession of equal and similar natures, but by the possession of one single nature. They do in fact, what our three men could not do, know with the same intellect and love with the same will. They are three persons, but they are not three Gods; they are One God” (Ibid. 97-98).

Gee, you’re a lot shorter than I imagined.

Catholics learn from childhood that God is a Spirit - a being without a material body. In Jesus Christ, He was incarnated as a man. Nevertheless, the human nature of the Son was something that He took on; it was not part of His original nature. The Mormon view of God is vastly different. To begin with, the LDS God looks an awful lot like your neighbor: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22). Indeed, for the Mormon, God the Father is an exalted man, not an omnipresent Spirit:

“Latter-day Saints perceive the Father as an exalted Man in the most literal, anthropomorphic terms. They do not view the language of Genesis as allegorical; human beings are created in the form and image of a God who has a physical form and image (Genesis 1:26)” (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, “God”). In this way, God has arms, legs, flesh, passions - all things that we, his children, have ourselves.

But wait, there’s more. Not only is Heavenly Father a man, but he lives with his wife on a planet near the star Kolob (Abraham 3:2-3, 16). There, from a distance, he reigns over the earth. To say these beliefs are outside the mainstream of Christianity is like saying Hitler wasn’t a very observant Jew. So divergent is the Mormon theology of God from that of orthodox Christianity, that the two can hardly be said to be related. The controversy over whether or not Mormonism is Christian springs from this fact.

The Bible is very clear in its distinction between man and the Divine. In Hosea 11:9 God declares, “I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst.” Numbers 23:19, a well known passage, underscores this point: “God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should repent.” The LDS God is indeed a man - an exalted man - but a man, nonetheless. It’s hard to see the God of Mormonism described here.

Not only is that the case, but additionally, God created all things: “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: ‘I am the Lord, who made all things, who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the earth - Who was with me?’” (Isaiah 44:24) God created all things, even the heavens themselves. There’s nothing in the universe that God didn’t create. If this is the case, He had to have always been God, for if He had, at some point, lived as a man on a planet somewhere, He could not be the Deity described in Isaiah 44:24. The God that creates all things is the One who precedes all things; He doesn’t need to progress to Deity - He alone is Deity.

So, where does this put humanity? Can we, through faithful adherence to the Mormon gospel, expect to be gods ourselves one day, as Joseph Smith claimed? Sorry, but no. The hope for the Christian is to be united with God, to share in His Divinity. This sharing, however, does not give us our own Divine nature. Rather, we take part in the unique, untransferable Deity of God; we enjoy eternal fellowship with Him (Revelation 21:1-5). The old example of the metal rod in the fire is a good one here. If the heavenly glory of God can be represented as a fire, then we are like metal rods thrust in. As the rods glow white, they participate in the fire. The moment they are removed from it, however, they return to their natural state. In this way, we have no measure of Godhood that is independent to us, apart from that found only in the one God Himself.

A final view from Kolob

In the end, the God of the LDS church is incompatible with that of traditional, orthodox Christianity. An exalted man who lives on a planet near the star Kolob is a world away from the omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal and unchanging God of Catholicism. This fact is vitally important, for the LDS church and the Catholic Church (in union with Protestant and Orthodox Christianity) have two very different Gods. If one of those Gods is true, the other must necessarily be false - the flickering, phantasm of man’s imagination. It’s our solemn obligation to find and know the one true God, for no false Deity has the power to save (John 17:3). If we get the question of God wrong, nothing else will really matter. It’s the foundation for all other truths, and the key to our salvation. So said the Mormon Prophet himself:

“It is necessary for us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning. If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time; but if we start wrong, we may go wrong, and it be a hard matter to get right” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 343).

At last, Joseph, something we can agree on.

Learn more in Elders at Your Door.