Anti-Mormon Claimsking follettlorenzo snowexaltationgod once a man

Was God Once a Man?

Did Joseph Smith teach that God the Father was once a man, and does that mean Latter-day Saints worship an exalted human instead of the eternal God of the Bible?

Bible

The Bible answers

Bible · John 5:19

KJV + NRSVUE

The Son does what He sees the Father do. That is the verse Lorenzo Snow was riffing on.

King James Version
The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

NRSVUE
the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.

Bible · Philippians 2:6–8

KJV + NRSVUE

The Son was in the form of God and took a body. Embodiment is not a demotion in the New Testament.

King James Version
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

NRSVUE
who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

Book of Mormon

Also restored

Doctrine and Covenants 20:17, 28
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God, infinite and eternal.
There is a God in heaven, who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God… Which Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God, infinite and eternal, without end. Amen.

Moses 1:3
Endless and eternal is His name. A couplet is not the canon.
And God spake unto Moses, saying: Behold, I am the Lord God Almighty, and Endless is my name; for I am without beginning of days or end of years; and is not this endless?

Ancient witnesses

Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.38; 5.pref. — ‘He became what we are’

Our Lord Jesus Christ, through His transcendent love, became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.

The incarnation is the authorized Christian statement that God has a human history — the Son’s. Restoration speculation about the Father should never be allowed to outshout that. When critics treat a conference couplet as our creed and ignore D&C 20, they are not describing our religion. They are describing a tract.

Faithful answers

Gospel Topics Essays

Becoming Like God

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Joseph taught in the King Follett discourse that God was once as we are now. Lorenzo Snow’s couplet compressed it. The Church’s official essay is careful: we know we have a Father; we know we may become like Him through Christ; ‘little has been revealed’ about the first half of the couplet, and it is not emphasized. What is canon is D&C 20: an infinite, eternal, unchangeable God. What we preach is the gospel of the Son. A critic who leads with ‘God used to be a man on another planet’ is not summarizing our Sunday worship. He is hunting a gasp.

Little has been revealed about the first half of Lorenzo Snow’s couplet. What the Church emphasizes is the biblical hope: as God is, man may become — through Christ, never instead of Him.

D&C 20 is scripture. The King Follett report is a sermon. Start with the canon.
Christians already confess that God the Son became man. That is Philippians 2, not Joseph Smith.
President Hinckley distinguished deep, little-taught questions from the firmly taught hope of becoming like the Father.
We pray to the Eternal Father. We do not pray to a planetary biography.

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