WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO TRUTH AND OPENNESS?On Tuesday April 15, 1997 I was sent an e-mail message about an interview Mormon President Gordon B. Hinckley had with Don Lattin, the San Francisco Chronicle religion writer. The article was dated Sunday, April 13, 1997, page 3/Z1. I found the article at http://www/sfgate.com/search/, from which you enter 4-13-97 in both "To" and "From" date boxes. The interview article is the second one on the list that comes up.
On pages 2-3 of the interview, which in this part was a question/answer format, we find:Q: There are some significant differences in your beliefs. For instance, don't Mormons believe that God was once a man?
At this point the subject changes.
A: I wouldn't say that. There was a couplet coined, "As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become." Now 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. And for that reason, we stress education. We're trying to do all we can to make of our people the ablest, best, brightest people.
Was this an isolated case? No, it was not. It was repeated twice again within four months. Time magazine of August 4, 1997, in an article titled "Kingdom Come," page 56, middle column (bottom) had the following.On whether his church still holds that God the Father was once a man, he sounded uncertain, ‘I don't know that we teach it, I don't know that we emphasize it...I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don't know a lot about it, and I don't think others know a lot about it.
In what appears to be a related interview, Time magazine's religion correspondent, Richard Ostling reportsRICHARD OSTLING: President Gordon Hinckley says the concept of God having been a man is not stressed any longer, but he does believe that human beings can become gods in the afterlife.
Note how Ostling already knew Hinckley's answer and that President Hinckley did not correct him..PRESIDENT GORDON HINCKLEY: Well, they can achieve to a godly status, yes, of course they can, eternal progression. We believe in the progression of the human soul. Ours is a forward-looking religion. It's an upward-looking religion. We believe in the eternity and the infinity of the human soul, and its great possibilities. (This can be found on a Public Broadcasting System web page, http://www.pbs.org/plweb-cgi/fastweb?getdoc+pbsolbeta+all+23077+0+wAAA+ , this transcript is dated July 18, 1997)
Now assuming all three interviews were accurate, did President Hinckley tell the truth? Did he just side-step the question or did he really not know the answer? Is it unreasonable to assume he would know what many elders in his organization know, and what his church's teaching manuals say? While I cannot name names, I can clearly remember many Mormons saying that God the Father was once a man that progressed to Godhood and that we can do the same thing. Should President Hinckley have known that his church's teaching manuals clearly teach the following?God Was Once a Man As We Are Now...The Prophet Joseph Smith said: "...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" (Teachings, pp. 345-346; italics in original).... President Joseph Fielding Smith said: "Our Father in heaven according to the Prophet, had a Father, and since there has been a condition of this kind through all eternity, each Father had a Father" (Doctrines of Salvation 2:47)...President Joseph F. Smith taught: "I know that God is a being with body, parts and passions...Man was born of woman; Christ, the Savior, was born of woman; and God, the Father was born of woman" (Church News, 19 Sept, 1936, p.2)..."he is our Father - the Father of our spirits - and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are......"It appears ridiculous to the world, under their darkened and erroneous traditions, that God has once been a finite being"..... (Search These Commandments, Melchizedek Priesthood Personal Study Guide, Copyright 1984 by Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, pages 151-153)
Even a semi-official LDS text says the same thing.As shown in this chapter, our Father in heaven was once a man as we are now, capable of physical death...he and our mother in heaven were empowered to give birth to spirit children... (Achieving a Celestial Marriage, Copyright 1976, 1992 by Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, page 132)
Mormon prophets have continuously taught the sublime truth that God the Eternal Father was once a mortal man who passed through a school of earth life similar to that through which we are now passing. He became God - an exalted being - through obedience to the same eternal Gospel truths that we are given opportunity today to obey. (The Gospel Through The Ages, by Milton R. Hunter, page 104, 1945. The title page has: "Written and published under the direction of the General Priesthood Committee of the Council of the Twelve of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
Latter-day Saints are monophysite in their christology; that is, they believe Christ has only one nature, which is simultaneously both human and divine. This is possible because the human and the divine are not mutually exclusive categories in LDS thought, as in the duophysite christology of much orthodoxy. As Lorenzo Snow said, "As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be" (Snow, p. 46). Most Christians would agree with the first half of this couplet as applied to the person of Christ, but Latter-day Saints apply it also to the Father. (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Vol.1, under Doctrine, page 401; 1992)
One general authority said:We read in the scriptures that God is "infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God";" that he is "the same yesterday, today, and forever"; that he "is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity." How does this conform to the Prophet's teaching: "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, . .. . 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"?
With so many examples, why is it President Hinckley did not know, on three different occasions, what so many others seem to. Why did he say, " That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don't know very much about." Why did he say, "I don't know a lot about it, and I don't think others know a lot about it."? Did he forget about two teachings of Joseph Smith? Joseph Smith said, "It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God...." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 345; Journal of Discourses, 6:3). On another occasion he said, "2 Let us here observe, that three things are necessary, in order that any rational and intelligent being may exercise faith in God into life and salvation. 3 First, The idea that he actually exists. 4 Secondly , A correct idea of his character, perfections and attributes. "(1835 Doctrine and Covenants, Lecture Third of Faith, p. 36). Does President Hinckley have a correct idea of God's character, perfections and attributes?
.....The Prophet says: "If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that he had a Father also." Then he asks: "Where was there ever a son without a father? And where was there ever a father without first being a son?" He points out that the Savior declared that he would do the things his Father did, that is, lay down his life and take it again.
Let me ask, are we not taught that we as sons of God may become like him? Is not this a glorious thought? Yet we have to pass through mortality and receive the resurrection and then go on to perfection just as our Father did before us. The Prophet taught that our Father had a Father and so on. Is not this a reasonable thought, especially when we remember that the promises are made to us that we may become like him? (Doctrines of Salvation, Joseph Fielding Smith Jr., .1:11-12; 1954)John Farkas
Berean Christian Ministries
P.O. Box 1091
Webster, NY 14580E-mail: bcmmin@frontiernet.net Web page: http://www.frontiernet.net/~bcmmin
art/lies; 4-17-97; Rev. 8-31-97