Refutation of Brigham Young University’s (Mormon) Teaching
That Man Can/Will Become a “god”

By: John A. Bonin

Bible Verses Powered by RefTagger

• We are mere humans. Created beings. Created by God, and
• God, our creator, is the One who authored the verses we are trying to understand.
• When something in Scripture seems inconsistent, it is our interpretation that is at fault, and certainly not the fault/mistake of God, the Author.
• When something seems inconsistent, we must change our interpretation to one that is consistent with the entirety of Scripture.

• Psalm 82:1: "God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the "gods"" and Psalm 82:6-7: "I said, 'You are "gods"; you are all sons of the Most High. But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler.’" (Both of these verses taken from the NIV.)
  • The object of his judgment is earthly. As for "gods," the meaning of the Hebrew elohim here, translated "gods" is somewhat flexible. In most of its Old Testament (OT) uses it denotes God himself and is translated "God." Less often it is plural in meaning referring to the false "gods." In this use the word identifies supernatural, created beings who wield authority in heavens over the nations. Although the most common reference is to false gods (therefore associated with demons rather than with angels), at least some angelic powers could easily be categorized as "gods" by virtue of their nature and authority. In a related use it sometimes refers to human rulers, as we will see in chapter 82. Possibly the best interpretation understands the "gods" as human judges in Ex 21:6, as well as 22:8 and following. The human nature of these "gods" is indicated in verses 6-7 (above), of which a rough interpretation paraphrase might be, "you are like God as judges, but you are like everyone else, since you are mortal."¹
  • When you consider the tremendous power of Satan versus man, it almost seems like Satan is a god. The Bible even calls him "the god of this world." (2 Cor 4:4). (We know that he is not a “god.” No one seems to propose that Satan is a god.) Compare a man to an ant, and it likewise seems like the man is a god (by comparison). Keeping in mind that Scripture says there is but one God,² we can (using proper exegesis) interpret the above verses to mean any of several possible things, but never men becoming gods in the sense of becoming like God in power, wisdom, and His many other deistic traits.
  • Jesus responded in John 10:34 by quoting Psalm 82:6, which says, "I said, you are gods." This psalm addresses judges who are judging unjustly. The title of "gods" is not addressed to everyone, but only to these judges about whom Jesus said are those to "whom the word of God Came" (v35). Jesus was showing that if the OT Scriptures could give some divine status to divinely appointed judges, why should they find it incredible that He should call Himself the Son of God? Thus, Jesus was giving a defense for His own deity, not for the deification of man.³
  • Dr. Gleason L. Archer expands on this further: John 10:34 reads: “Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your law, “I said, you are gods’.” This remark came right after the Jews had made preparations to stone the Lord because of His affirmation in v.30: “I and the Father are one.” Jesus’ audience rightly understood Him as asserting His deity, in terms suggestive of the Trinity. They therefore concluded that He had blasphemed God; “for though He was only a man (as they supposed), He was making Himself out to be God” (v.33). To counter their hostility and rejection, Jesus quoted from Psalm 82:6, which reads as follows: “I said, ‘You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High God.’” In citing Psalm 82:6 Jesus was appealing to a verse from the infallible Scriptures (infallible because they cannot be broken) that attaches the name or title “god” to certain men, not to all men, of course, but only “those to whom the word of God came,” John 10:35). A divine dimension was added to those people who had been especially chosen by God to be bearers of His saving truth and administrators of His holy law. In Psalm 82 God is addressing judges and administrators who have been chosen to serve as His representatives in teaching and enforcing His holy way. To be sure, some of these solemnly commissioned judges exercised their office unjustly and showed partiality to the rich, even though they were in the wrong (v.2). Essentially the psalm expresses a condemnation of these unjust jurists, saying, in effect, “Although you have the status of membership in the family of God, and although you have been called after His name, nevertheless because of your unfaithfulness to sacred duty you will die like other men and will fall to ruin like one of the princes of the unsaved world.”⁴
• 1 John 3:1-3: "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure."
  • Fallen human beings are not children of God by nature. Only those who have saving faith generated in them by the sovereign action of God have the privilege of being his children.⁵
  • “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.”⁶
  • Because believers are God’s children, they will be glorified like Christ when he returns. “And those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”⁷
  • Children of God refers only to those who have accepted Christ as their redeemer from their sins. “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of god – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”⁸
  • This may shock you to read, but scripture teaches that not everyone is a child of God. The old expression/teaching that many of us have heard down through the years, “We are all children of God”⁹ is not scriptural. Rather, we become “children of God” only through “adoption” into His family through His Son, Jesus Christ. Everyone knows that an adopted child does not have the blood-line of the adopting parents. The child is adopted and raised out of love, but can never have the genes of the adopting parents. Likewise, adopted children of God are not “gods.” “He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves.”¹⁰
  • Yes, we become sons of God when we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”¹¹ “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.”¹²
  • Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”¹³ The rest of us are adopted (see above.)
• 2 Peter 1:2-4: “Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”
  • Believers are not absorbed into deity, nor do they become divine. Rather, believers receive the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9-21) and are thereby being conformed to the likeness of Christ in true righteousness (Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10).¹⁴
  • “and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”¹⁵
  • That is, the promises of abundant and eternal life. This expression is not different from the concepts of being born again, born from above (John 3:3: James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:23), being in Christ, or being the home of the Trinity (John 14:17-23). The precious promises of salvation result in becoming God's children in the present age (John 1:12; Romans 8:9; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:27), and thereby sharing in God’s nature by the possession of his eternal life. Christians do not become little gods, but they are "new creations" (2 Corinthians 5:17) and have the holy spirit living in them (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). Moreover, believers will partake of the divine nature in a greater way when they bear a glorified body like Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:20, 21; 1 John 3:1-3).¹⁶
  • Peter was combating heretical teaching, and one of the best antidotes for heresy is true knowledge. God has made available all that we need spiritually through our knowledge of him. If 2 Peter was written to combat and incipient Gnosticism, the apostle may be insisting that the knowledge possessed by those in apostolic circles was entirely adequate to meet their spiritual needs. No secret, esoteric knowledge is necessary for salvation.¹⁷
  • Although the statement lends itself to many interpretations, we ought to notice how precisely Peter has chosen his words. He says that we participate in God's nature, not in God's being. He has chosen the term nature because it indicates growth, development, and character. The expression being, by contrast, points to the essence and substance. We can never participate in God's essence, for we are and remain human beings who have been created by God. What Peter discloses is that we shared God's holiness, which we experience through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our hearts (see 1 Corinthians 6:19). Peter borrows the term divine nature from the philosophical vocabulary of the Greeks. To refute his opponents he employs their terminology but gives the words a Christian meaning. Greek philosophers taught that man who is living in a corrupt world of physical pleasure must become like the gods. They advised their followers to share the divine nature. Peter resorts to using the same expression, "participate in the divine nature." But whereas the philosophers took their point of departure in man and claimed for him a share in the nature of the gods, Peter views our sharing of God's nature in the light of God's promises. There is a world of difference between these two concepts. The first is humanistic and reflects the vaulted self-appraisal of natural man. The other is Christian and exalts the gracious provision of God.¹⁸
• Romans 8:15-17: “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
• The NIV uses the word “sonship,” whereas the New American Standard Bible (as well as the King James) uses the word “adoption” instead. Since we were originally born as sinners, we become adopted into the family of God when we accept Christ as our Savior.
• The Greek word is huiothesia, which means "to have an installation or placement as a son" and is the technical Greek word for "adoption" (the term used in the NASB and the KJV). Adoption is the procedure by which a person is taken from one family (or no family) and placed into another. In this context, it refers to removing a person from the family of Adam (or Satan) and placing him or her in the family of God. Adoption is related to regeneration, or the new birth, but they are not the same thing. Regeneration has to do with our receiving a new life or new nature. Adoption has to do with our receiving a new status.¹⁹
• To take the meaning here that we are any more than adopted sons of God is inconsistent with other Scripture. Gal 4:4-7 says ”…God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, farther"! Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”²⁰ (How can we go from being a slave to being a god? The true God is eternal. He was never born and will never die. He never had a beginning.) "The eternity of God is usually understood as related to time. By definition it means that God is not limited or bound by time; with God there is no succession of events; he is above all temporal limitations. With him there is no distinction between the present, past, and future; but all things are equally and always present to him."²¹ His eternity is expressed in Psalm 90:2, "from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." God's eternity extends backward to infinity and foreword to infinity. Moreover, God's eternity is also related to his eternal rule in his universal kingdom (Psalm 102:12). God’s eternity is also related to his name. In Exodus 3:14 he informed Moses that his name is "I AM WHO I AM." Some scholars relate his name, Lord, to "I AM WHO I AM" and to the present tense of the Hebrew verb hayah, meaning "to be." Hence, God’s name reflects his eternity in that he is the "continually existing one." However, this is not to suggest that time is unreal or nonexistent with God. While God sees everything as an eternal now, he nonetheless, in relation to man and creation, sees a succession of events in time."²²
• A spirit produced awareness of the rich reality that God has made us his children, and, therefore, that we can come before him without fear or hesitation as our beloved father. It includes the confidence that we are truly sons of God. Abba, an informal, Aramaic term for father conveys a sense of intimacy. Like the English term “daddy” or “papa,” it connotes tenderness, dependence, and a relationship free of fear or anxiety.²³
• Revelation 2:7: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
• Access to God's life-giving blessings, which was barred after the fall, is here renewed.
• This is an affirmation of John 3:16, which says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It is not a logical conclusion to assume from this that we will become “gods” because we have eternal life.
• Revelation 21:7: “He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”
  • This is another assertion that because we are "sons of God" that we are "gods." As we have already discussed (above) the whole of Scripture teaches that we are "adopted" sons of God.
  • Let's define the word "God." First of all, "The attempt to define God on any other basis than a careful exegesis of Scripture has always been the mother of heresy."²⁴ Having said that, however, let’s look at the simple meaning of the use.
    • When capitalized, the word God (as defined by the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary) is “the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the universe." "The Being", by common usage of the English language, implies one, not many.
    • When not capitalized, Merriam-Webster says god is "a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers..."
      • Angels often fall into this category when humans have been so overwhelmed by their (relative to man’s) greatness that the human fell down to worship them.²⁵
      • Likewise, Satan would fall into this category of relative greatness to humans. Scripture even refers to him as "the god of this world."²⁶
      • False gods. Psalm 4:4; 40:4, Jeremiah 13:25; 16:19 and Amos 2:4 give reference to these types of gods. Many times the context is of “idols.” This gives rise to the rhetorical question, "Is a false god a God?"
      • Mythological gods. By virtue of the fact that they are "mythological," do we really need to discuss this category further?

• Psalm 8:4-5: “…what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”

• Paul’s reasoning in Acts 17:22-29: Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. 24"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' 29Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill.”
• Deuteronomy 10:17: “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.”
• Psalm 136:2: “Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.”
• Daniel 11:36: “The king will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place.”
• The BYU author says that theosis was commonly taught by the Church Fathers. Who? I can find no reference to either Irenaeus, Clement, Ignatius, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Origen or Augustine endorsing this heretical teaching. Did I miss something? Who else might it be? “Naturally, the crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of theosis - it is not possible for any created being to become, ontologically, God, or even part of God.”²⁷ By virtue of the fact that the author mentioned none of the Church Fathers names (for verification), nor quoted any references, this is certainly an unsubstantiated claim.
• The BYU author quotes the Eastern Orthodox Church as an authority, rather than quoting scripture! “Eastern Orthodoxy is a false and apostate church in the same way as Roman Catholicism.”²⁸ One major difference between Protestant Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy is that the goal of man is not simply to know God and Christ, but to become God and Christ.²⁹ One can almost always find another erroneous source to appeal to in defense of a poor or incorrect argument – which is what BYU is doing by appealing to the theology of Eastern Orthodoxy!
  • The BYU author states that theosis is mentioned briefly in the current Catechism used in the Roman Catholic Church. While it is certainly beyond the scope of this brief article to analyze Roman Catholic theology, it is generally accepted that Roman Catholicism and Protestantism have a deep divide in their theologies. (There have been voluminous books written on that subject.) I once knew a person who I asked, “Are you a Christian?” to which they answered, “No, I am a Roman Catholic.” (In other words, many Roman Catholics don’t even consider themselves to be “Christian,” but rather, in a class by themselves). Suffice it to say in this article that (modern day) Roman Catholicism bases its teachings on the authority of the Pope, whereas Protestantism bases its teachings on Scripture alone. (Sola scriptura. Latin ablative, "by scripture alone")
• Regarding the BYU author’s mention of a purported teaching of John Calvin regarding theosis, there has already been a refutation of that written by Jonathan Slater, (Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada), where he said: In a recent article, Carl Mosser argues that deification is present in the theology of John Calvin. While his thesis may have ecumenical promise, there is little evidence to support it. Rather than understanding salvation as a communication of properties from Christ's divine nature to his human nature so that through Christ's human nature we may come to share in the divine nature, Calvin's position is that believers share in what is Christ's according to his human nature. The righteousness of Christ with which we are clothed is the righteousness of his human obedience as Mediator. Far from emphasizing a communication of properties from Christ's divinity to his humanity, Calvin's concern is to guard the full integrity of both natures.³⁰
  "But such a delirium as this [that Calvin taught we would be gods] never entered the minds of the holy Apostles; they only intended to say that when divested of all the vices of the flesh, we shall be partakers of divine and blessed immortality and glory, so as to be as it were one with God as far as our capacities will allow.”³¹
  

• "I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God."
  Isaiah 45:5,
• "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." 1 Timothy 2:5, and
• "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and a shutter." James 2:19,