What does it mean to be human? What kind of beings are we, and how do we relate to God and everything God made? While Latter-day Saints use many words and phrases familiar to traditional Christianity, the underlying world view of Mormonism is very different from historic, biblical Christian faith. This is seen most dramatically when comparing what the two groups believe about the nature of God and the nature of human beings.
Latter-day Saints believe that all human beings are eternal spirits. We existed before this earthly life as God’s spirit children. In fact, they believe that human beings are uncreated and co-eternal with God. As the LDS scripture Doctrine and Covenants says, “Man was also in the beginning with God'' (93:29). In this view, human beings are not dependent on God for their ultimate existence. As premortal spirits, humans are seen as literal sons and daughters of heavenly parents. In the Pearl of Great Price (Abraham 3:22) we read, “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones.” Apparently God provided these primordial “intelligences” with spirit bodies in the premortal life.
The Bible teaches, however, that human life and existence begins in this world. Genesis 2:7 states, “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” When God made Adam, he did not place an already existing personal spirit into a physical body. Instead, he animated that body with the breath of life. The man’s personal existence as a living being began at that moment.
When Mormons say that human spirits were created by God, they mean that we actually became God’s spirit children in the spirit world, before our birth. The LDS instruction manual Gospel Principles says:
All men and women are literally the sons and daughters of God. ‘Man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father, prior to coming upon the earth…’”
To Latter-day Saints, we are related to God in a similar way that children are related to their earthly parents. Hence we were not simply created by God, but “begotten and born” by our heavenly parents (God the Father and his spouse) - although LDS scriptures and prophets have not made explicit exactly how this works.
By contrast, the Bible teaches that being a child of God is not a genetic relationship, but a spiritual one. Human beings become children of God by faith. John 1:12-13 says, “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.” In other words, only those who trust in Jesus alone as Savior can join God’s eternal family and become children of God. Romans 8:14-16 puts it like this:
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.
Anyone can become a child of God by adoption, when we receive His Spirit at the point of spiritual conversion. That happens in this life, not in some premortal existence.
If people are literal children of God, it follows that we are of the same species as God. The LDS Church website, in an article called “Becoming Like God,” states:
Latter-day Saints see all people as children of God in a full and complete sense; they consider every person divine in origin, nature, and potential. Each has an eternal core and is ‘a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.’
In Mormon thought, human beings are just as “divine in origin, nature, and potential” as God himself is.
The biblical view of humanity is vastly different. The Bible teaches that humans are finite creatures, not potential deities. Psalm 8:4-5 says, “What are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.” It’s true that human beings are amazing creatures. Made in the image of God, we bear tremendous glory. We reflect God in important ways. But we are creatures - “mere mortals” who are, in fact, “lower than God.”
God is not an exalted man, and we do not have a divine nature or divine potential. God and humans are two completely different kinds of beings. God is infinite and self-existent. We are finite and dependent on God for our existence.
As this entire article has implied, Mormons believe that humans can become powerful beings that create, populate, and rule worlds just as God did. Gospel Fundamentals, a manual for LDS high school students, describes it like this:
To live in the highest part of the celestial kingdom is called exaltation or eternal life. To be able to live in this part of the celestial kingdom, people must have been married in the temple and must have kept the sacred promises they made in the temple. They will receive everything our Father in Heaven has and will become like Him. They will even be able to have spirit children and make new worlds for them to live on, and do all the things our Father in Heaven has done.”
Sometimes LDS rhetoric softens the implications of this belief by saying that we can become “like” God. They clearly mean, however, that humans (if worthy) are capable of doing “all the things our Father in Heaven has done.” As Joseph Smith declared in the King Follett Discourse: “You have got to learn how to be a god yourself.”
Yet in the Bible’s view, human beings - although made in God’s image - are fallen and spiritually lost. Not only are we finite creatures, but we are sinners in desperate need of God’s mercy to save us. Romans 3:10-11 declares, “As the Scriptures say, ‘No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God.’” Verse 23 adds, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” This more realistic view of human nature is hard to reconcile with the Latter-day Saint idea of divine potential.