Let me tell you a story of the Gods. They may not quite be the Gods you think of, but hopefully you will see a Mormon God in them.
Imagine a universe where Nature rules. Gods have evolved with such understanding, power, and unity that they shape Nature, fostering generations of new Gods and inviting all that is to join their great song of creation. Out of chaos arose Great Ones who call forth order of unimaginable complexity and beauty. It is a beautiful picture, to me, with one little problem–we can only glimpse a tiny piece of this grandeur. Maybe we are already Gods, like my three little boys are already humans, but we clearly fall short of comprehending, or even seeing, the vast expanses of knowledge that are likely so commonplace to our parents that they hardly even notice the details anymore. We may be co-participants in creation with God, but mostly unconsciously simply because we are growing up. The things we consciously create are like making our spaceships and castles out of Lego blocks. If we are so immature, what does our path to Godhood look like? What is the plan to become a God? Does evolution support the scriptural notion that strait is the way and narrow is the gate that leads to eternal life, and few there be that enter? Do evolved Gods just happen without obeying the rules of righteousness that religion teaches, obeying instead the law of the jungle? Or will science and nature make us Gods without the help of a redeemer? Let’s explore the question together.
You may have heard said, the more you know, the more you find there is to know? In the universe (or multiverse, or cosmos, or reality) of evolved Gods, this never stops. It is so vast and varied that Gods can be infinite and eternal and still not comprehend the scope of it. These are Brigham’s Gods of eternal progression. What does it take to become one of (or part of?) these Gods?
We must become radically compassionate. There can be no will left among us to destroy one another. We must get to the point where every one of us is seeking to ennoble all the Gods to the extent of our abilities. There is a glimpse of this order in Doctrine and Covenants 76, where even those in the telestial glory eventually submit and becomes servants of God. Doing what? Bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of humanity, presumably.
We must become creators. Without seeking to bring forth additional Gods, we may not cease to be (I’m not sure about this), but we will cease to be numerically significant in the cosmos. And I’m not sure beings who lack the desire to create could achieve eternal life. Life is not a static state. It is a continually adjusting, dynamic near-equilibrium. This is true of all life we know and of the universe that sustains it. We can imagine entirely different sets of laws, but it is difficult to imagine laws responsible for dynamic and eternal beings like our Gods that are not subject to and sustained by laws at least analogous to our laws of thermodynamics.
We must have faith. We must have faith in what we can become, but we must also have faith in the rest of humanity. We can’t achieve Godhood alone. As has been repeatedly taught in Mormonism, we cannot be saved by ourselves. We need our families. We need our ancestors. We need our communities. Gods trust one another not to destroy each other. They arrive at that trust through trials, but it is still something that they must give. In a cosmos founded on agency, we can only know the future of our fellow agents on trust. We must trust their yet unmade decisions, and we must even empower those decisions. We must give each other the power to create, and with it the power to destroy. We must be leaders and enablers, not managers and enforcers.
Thus far Evolution lays out quite a strict path. Just look at your own life, setting aside other people’s choices, and ask how easy it is to be as compassionate, creative, trusting, and empowering as is required for Godhood? If this isn’t a strait way, I’d be hard pressed to find one harder. But how many paths can arrive at this goal? We’ve seen time and again that Evolution often provides multiple, independent solutions to the same problem. How could this path be compatible with the requirements of LDS priesthood ordinances for salvation? This is where I suspect many Latter-day Saints will stick at these evolved Gods (if they’ve managed to get past the sticking point in my second paragraph). This is either a hard question or an easy question, and I’m not sure which. I’ll venture some thoughts without many answers, and refer you to a very interesting and relevant talk related to this issue (Divine Aspirations: Creation, Ritual, and Authority).
The path I’ve laid out matches well with the great commandments–love God and love your neighbor as yourself. It even provides evolutionary reasons for these being the greatest commandments. It matches well with the admonition that not all who say Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of God. It provides evolutionary motivation for the requirements of community and why salvation must be communal. It explains why Christ had to Atone for all humanity, and why each of us must fully partake of this at-one-ment, in a way that is practical and natural and not simply an abstract notion of justice. But it doesn’t explain why someone needs to be dunked under water by another who pronounces some claim to divine authority. In fact, at first glance it may make sacred ordinances like baptism appear to be the silly and pretentious acts implied by my last words. Where does that leave me? It leaves me wondering.
I have experienced the power of priesthood ordinances. I believe my life is richer and I am a better person because of them. I think it’s easy to argue for the value of ritual and covenant. They have great power to strengthen individuals and communities. As tools for bringing about great good or great harm they are unmatched in the history of humanity. I have found them to do much good in the LDS church as expressed by the lives of members who strive to keep them.
My baptism in Lake Mendota, Madison, WI. I painted this in 1999.
I long ago accepted that God sees more than I. Maybe God sees a reason that this set of particular LDS ordinances, performed in approximately a certain way (minor variation is allowed), by a certain set of priests, is essential. I can accept this based on my personal experiences with God. It could be necessary. I can’t give a reason why, though. I can share other people’s testimonies. I can cite scripture. I can even share my blessed experiences with priesthood power. I can intellectually assent to the requirement because of the LDS doctrine that all who desire–past, present, and future–may receive these ordinances. But I can’t give a reason. I can say I trust God to have a reason for the mysteries, but I will not compel another to act on that trust. So evolution leaves me a universalist. Any solution that makes you into a God-like being–loving, creative, faithful, empowering, atoning–is sufficient. It is likely there are numberless solutions to this problem. Think about how each life is different, even among faithful LDSs, and we say of course. But there must be some things in common among the exalted. Evolution doesn’t explain how one particular set of ordinances can be among those, at least not at this level of exploration.
So do I throw away the prophetic claims of essential ordinances and just take them as valuable but non-essential, ritual acts? Do I say, it’s fine for the community to have this myth, but it’s only in their imaginations? By now we know that I don’t go to the other black and white extreme of rejecting the real power of ordinances and priesthood, but that is a predictable position some would take from my evolutionary view of Gods. For now, I can defend the value of ritual and covenant on scholarly grounds. I can trust my personal experience of priesthood ordinances and how they connect me to something mystical–something greater. Evolution does tell me that the path is strait and the gate is narrow, and it’s likely that many won’t make it in. Evolution even confirms the greatest requirements for entering into that gate. But the numbers of ways to walk the path are as varied as the people who follow it.
Jonathan Cannon
Jonathan lives in rural Georgia with his wife and three boys, teaching Chemistry and enjoying the good people of his community. He studied Molecular Biology at Brigham Young University, and Biophysics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Jonathan is passionate about fatherhood, teaching and learning, Mormonism, and dance (he's much better at the first three), and dabbles in home repairs, various crafts, poetry, music, gardening, and Transhumanism. He has enjoyed many years working in Primary, with Young Adults and Ward Missions in various capacities. He currently enjoys serving in his ward and community however he is able. He posts on whatever interests him at the moment at http://jonathan.metacannon.net/
All posts by Jonathan Cannon
Great, thought-provoking post! You wrote:
“I can intellectually assent to the requirement because of the LDS doctrine that all who desire–past, present, and future–may receive these ordinances. But I can’t give a reason.”
I believe there are several reasons. You actually mentioned one of them:
“As has been repeatedly taught in Mormonism, we cannot be saved by ourselves. We need our families. We need our ancestors. We need our communities.”
The ordinances are an *outward* manifestation to our communities (which include God) of our *inward* willingness to accept the promises those ordinances represent:
“What have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?” (Mosiah 18:10.)
Another reason is that the ordinances give reality to the promises they represent. We witness with our bodies that we are committed in our hearts. This moves the decision from the immaterial world into the physical universe around us–it *real-izes* our choice, turning faith into action.
Another reason is that the ordinances *teach us* as we participate in them. By doing, we learn more than we would through mere intellectual assent. The ordinances are designed to make us *think,* to raise questions in our minds. Too often we simply shrug off these questions, but we need to give them our attention. Why is bread used in the sacrament? Why water? Why originally wine? We are told the denotational meanings of these things, but what about the connotational meanings? We should think on these things (with all of the ordinances).
You are right that my views support these covenant, community, and instructional purposes of ordinances. What I can’t explain from an evolutionary perspective is the necessity of our particular LDS ordinances. The need for communities in salvation is very clear from our current evolutionary trajectory, but I can give no reason that ordinances must be LDS ordinances done in the way we do them today.
If another community, through their ordinances and other practices, were able to achieve the qualities necessary for godhood, then the evolutionary pressures that result in Gods would save these groups of people as well–unless there is something uniquely special about LDS authority. In addition, evolutionary pressures would reject LDS ordinances whenever they fail to create god-like people. Evolutionary pressures don’t recognize top down authority, or even delegated authority from a creator God. The issue of top down vs. bottom up authority within Mormon theology is treated very interestingly in the youtube video I linked to.
So while I’m a Mormon, and I accept LDS ordinances and authority to a very great degree, I am intellectually more of a universalist than I was in the past. I expect many will become Gods who never become Mormons in the sense of belonging to the LDS church–even in the Millennium. I feel called to build my community and be saved with it because salvation requires such a community, and such communities need ordinances and organization, not because evolutionary principles lead me to believe in a an essential, exclusive, authoritative sequence of ordinances.
Jonathan Cannon,
If you don’t believe that, why would you be LDS?
“not because evolutionary principles lead me to believe in a an essential, exclusive, authoritative sequence of ordinances.”
Unless they were specifically given to that community by God, to serve his own purposes?
God could have given them to us. What I don’t have is any intellectual argument to support that God would do such a thing in an exclusive way.
I can see many reasons for me to be LDS. I can see many reasons for others who find this path beneficial to their progress to remain or become LDS. I believe in a historical Book of Mormon and called and inspired prophets, and at the same time it causes me very little stress to discount claims of exclusivity. Such claims could be true, but I don’t think so, and Mormonism doesn’t stand or fall based on them, for me. I do not consider a prophet’s (or many prophets’) mistaken understanding binding on my soul, even when striving to follow that prophet. I am more likely to consider and struggle with their mistaken teachings than with the errors of my internet acquaintance, however. Bias at work.
Jack Lyon,
Sorry, I wasn’t clear:
“unless there is something uniquely special about LDS authority.”
That *is* the LDS claim. If you don’t believe that, why would you be LDS?
Jack Lyon,
Some people find more value in the church that just its exclusive authority claims. I’m sure Jonathan finds many reasons to be LDS.
For me on the other hand, it’s abundantly clear that the LDS church is not God’s one true church, and since the cost of full participation both monetarily and particularly in time spent away from my young children outweighs the benefits the church provides me, I’m slowly transitioning me and my family out.
At the end of the day, stay or leave, we should all do what seems best to us individually.
Jonathan,
So you’re inferring that you’re a believer in intelligent design? It seems to me that Mormon intellectuals, and particularly the BYU biology department, are about as fervent believers in ID as anybody, and yet they’re silent on the subject when ID proponents are being attacked in the press and in academia. I suspect that as usual they are too concerned about appearances and keeping their academic credibility. It’s a shame that Mormon believers in evolution are cowardly about standing up for ID when in essence, their beliefs are essentially ID with a Mormon bent. I look forward to your vocal support of ID going forward.
In my experience, when most Mormons think they believe in Intelligent Design, they don’t really agree with the proponents of Intelligent Design, they just mean they believe that God made the universe and that God is intelligent. ID carries way too much baggage for me to adopt the terminology, however superficially it may appear I believe in the concept.
My main problem with ID is that it is used in an attempt to prove the existence of God. Not only do I think it fails (as I do with all attempted proofs of God), it makes God smaller and smaller, looking for Him in the gaps of what we don’t understand. The Gods I am proposing are found throughout all the things we do understand. This is an extremely different approach, even if the conclusions are similar on the surface. I am exploring an understanding of what Gods could be there rather than deciding what God is there and making the evidence fit.
Great stuff, Jonathan. Seriously, just great.
Jack Lyon,
Something being uniquely special doesn’t have to be exclusionary. I.e. – one can accept that God is doing something unique, even paramount, without accepting that it is the only thing God is doing. Indeed, that God is doing things with his children everywhere is explicit in scripture.
Beyond that, I’m struck by this question. Is that really the totality of Mormonism to you?
Why would you question someone’s desire to be LDS? I mean, isn’t being LDS a good thing? Isn’t the gospel message a profound, deep, enriching theology? Why would someone not want to be LDS?
Leonard R,
Leonard R. wrote: “Why would someone not want to be LDS?”
Let me count the ways:
1. Folding chairs.
2. Three-hour block of Sunday meetings.
3. No wine with dinner.
4. Meetings for meetings’ sake.
5. Social expectations.
And, as Adam said, “the cost of full participation both monetarily and particularly in time spent away from my young children.”
That being said, there are plenty of benefits as well–but most of those can also be found in other churches.
I am a member of the LDS Church not because of the Church’s claims to authority but because but because *I believe* those claims to be true. I base my belief on my own spiritual experiences and on the Church’s distinctive doctrines about the nature of God and man, which are the only explanation of reality that has ever made any sense to me.
Leonard R,
“Something being uniquely special doesn’t have to be exclusionary. I.e. – one can accept that God is doing something unique, even paramount, without accepting that it is the only thing God is doing.”
That, of course, is true. Mormons do not have a monopoly on truth, and God loves and is working with (and through) all of his children.
“Indeed, that God is doing things with his children everywhere is explicit in scripture.”
Yes (as in the book of Jonah) and no. Sometimes God is exclusionary, whether we like it or not:
“I will establish my covenant between me and thee [Abraham] and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” (Genesis 17:7.)
“The priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them the Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto him, and to bless in the name of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 21:5.)
“These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 10:5-6.)
As President John Taylor said, “[God’s] ways are not as the ways of man, neither are His thoughts limited by our limited thoughts or conceptions. But He does as He pleases.” (Journal of Discourses 22:33.)
“Beyond that, I’m struck by this question. Is that really the totality of Mormonism to you?”
No.
Jonathan Cannon,
“I do not consider a prophet’s (or many prophets’) mistaken understanding binding on my soul.”
Nor do I. As Henry Eyring once said, “In this church, you don’t have to believe anything that isn’t true.”
And I believe it is up to us to determine what is or isn’t true.
Jack Lyon,
But I read Jonathan as saying he accepted the claim to authority, but not necessarily all the church leaders’ claims about that authority (though I didn’t read him as necessarily discounting either.)
I.e. – is it not possible to accept the church’s authority while not accepting all it’s claims about it?
That’s the part of your question I didn’t get.
Jack Lyon,
But you’re reading from our experience with God…
Let’s believe the BoM teaching that God reveals himself to all nations according to their understanding. According to their understanding will also likely be exclusionary (which is what we typically see in most peoples’ beliefs.
Is not possible that our exclusionary views are also, at least in part, based on our own understanding? Again, I believe in the restored gospel, including the priesthood.
But I also believe God is dealing with more than us.
Certainly. It’s possible to accept whatever you like.
Undoubtedly our exclusionary views are also, at least in part, based on our own understanding. How else could it be?
“Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12.)
And yes, I agree that God is dealing with more than us–way more. During a stay in Paris several years ago, I stepped into a crowded metro car and looked around at all those people, most of whom had probably never even heard of the Church. The Spirit whispered, “These, too, are part of my plan.” It was a beautiful, eye-opening experience.
Jack Lyon,
Indeed. C’est parfait, ça.
Merci! C’etait formidable!
I have been intentionally circumspect about stating my exact views on authority for at least two reasons:
1. I wanted to focus on what my evolutionary model predicts rather than on what I believe. I believe more than the model predicts.
2. What I believe, even what is predicted by my model, I think is unprovable until we actually experience the fruits. Consequently, I share my detailed personal opinions more selectively than this public forum because they could be wrong and they are subject to frequent tweaks and changes.
3. I too am a believer for more reasons that reason, but I generally don’t find that a fruitful path for my blog writing and discussions.
I appreciate the discussion Jack and Leonard have carried on here, and your observation as well, Trevor. Adam, I’m sorry the LDS church isn’t working for you, but I wish you the best and expect you will figure out a good path for you and your family.
This expresses so well so many of my own thoughts, but I do not understand how this evolutionary model requires the divinity of Jesus, and his atonement. As one who struggles to understand why it would be necessary (or, who currently believes it is unnecessary), will you feels onto that argument a little more?
Hi Maggie,
As best I can tell this model doesn’t require a unique divinity for Jesus or a unique necessity for His atonement. It requires the divinity of all who will become Gods, and requires that all who will become Gods atone–including Jesus, but not exclusive to him. Just as I can’t arrive at a unique priesthood authority through this model, I can’t arrive at a unique atonement or a unique divinity. Such uniqueness is not strongly contradicted by this model, but it has no support in the model. Since my model includes many approximations, and doesn’t account for the sum of all data, I allow that such uniqueness is possible, but I’m not inclined to believe in it right now.
At the same time, I believe I could benefit greatly from a stronger experiential connection with the divine in my life, and I believe people when they share how the disciplines of communing with Jesus improve their lives. I would even like to practice the disciplines more, and I have a moderately strong trust in the divinity of Christ.
I guess I’m saying I’m in roughly the same position you are, so I can’t offer a fix.
I have been struggling with and contemplating on the atonement of Jesus for some time now. Jesus was the first person to achieve the resurrection of the dead. In his great suffering in the garden and on the cross, he became at one with God. He now was and is completely God (not just a child god). Somehow, in being the first to break that bond that held us all back, He made it possible for us to also break the bond. (maybe similar to a Roger Bannister and the 4 minute mile, Roger did the impossible and now the ‘four minute barrier’ has been broken by many athletes, and is now the standard of all professional middle distance runners). I am still pondering….waiting for further light and knowledge.
Jesus is now God and the standard for all those striving for Godhood.