CWK: Becoming a god: deification in Mormonism and Orthodox theosis

[Dr. Shades]

You may find it "interesting" to reduce everything connected to deification and polygamy to the motive of "getting into the pants of these women," but, I'm telling you, he was pretty darn successful at that without all that religious noise.

He was? When and with whom?

[Markk]

Gad wrote...Saying that Joseph Smith started Mormonism only for sex

LOL....Where did I say that????

My position is that Joseph Smith promised deification to prospective "trophies," for sex. Are you denying that?

If you want my opinion of why he started Mormonism, please ask, and I'll give it, I have, right or wrong, a well thought out theory.

What cracks me up here, is that Kish did a piss poor job in his podcast in identifying the roots of LDS deification, in fact he totally whiffed on it, he did not even mention Joseph Smith and his teachings on it, he did not mention 132 or the KFS etc....and yet you are trying to some how align with his poor presentation? Good Luck!

I never ever said Joseph Smith started Mormonism for sex, that is just a mis truth.

[I Have Questions]

My position is that Joseph Smith promised deification to prospective "trophies," for sex. Are you denying that?

If I remember correctly, he also promised his targets’ parents and extended families eternal exaltation if they would agree to him adding their daughter to his ever growing list of wives/concubines.

Personally I think Joseph didn’t fancy the work involved in living the life of a frontier farmer. Too much like hard work. So he was always scanning around for ways to make quick and easy money. Treasure digging was an early attempt, then he saw the opportunity that religion would give him. As he gained power he did what men like that do, found ways to justify having more sex than with just his wife.

He’s just a 17th century Jeffrey Epstein.

[Markk]

My position is that Joseph Smith promised deification to prospective "trophies," for sex. Are you denying that?

If I remember correctly, he also promised his targets’ parents and extended families eternal exaltation if they would agree to him adding their daughter to his ever growing list of wives/concubines.

Personally I think Joseph didn’t fancy the work involved in living the life of a frontier farmer. Too much like hard work. So he was always scanning around for ways to make quick and easy money. Treasure digging was an early attempt, then he saw the opportunity that religion would give him. As he gained power he did what men like that do, found ways to justify having more sex than with just his wife.

He’s just a 17th century Jeffrey Epstein.

For sure, the Kimballs comes to mind first.

I agree with you 100%, my personal view is that Joseph was a very street smart person that took full advantage of of any opportunity that popped up. He used deification and the promise of for his personal needs including sexual satisfaction.

He found his nitch in religion, with "revelations" being the conduit to grow and expand his con. If wanting something, bingo a revelation. If he needed to get out of trouble, bingo, a revelation. Fawn Brodies book is a good example, it shows how he used revelations as a personal steering wheel for what he either wanted or needed. years ago I read as many of his unpublished revelations along with those that are published and it is really telling.

I also have a theory, and admit it can't be proved, and I could be way off, but I believe Joseph suffered from ADHD. His behavior/s fit this theory well. He was quick witted and could think fast without seeing the end ramifications. He used scribes, folks with ADHD struggle with writing for long periods and it is often scrambled in thought when written. He head in a hat to focus and concentrate. He often started things and then they fizzled out. I believe when taking a step back and looking at this it makes perfect sense. I would love to hear Brett Metcalf opine on this knowing he struggled/s from ADHD.

[Physics Guy]

I'm afraid I haven't yet watched the podcast, but I'd like to find time for it. I'm interested in what Mormons after Joseph Smith made of this concept of exaltation and eternal progression.

I'm not actually too interested at all in what Smith himself thought. I'm afraid I also find it too likely that Smith's own real reason for any curious aspect of his doctrine was just that it popped into his head at some point as a trick to get him power, comfort, or sex. To look any further than that, to explain why Smith might have said or thought whatever it was, just seems to me like a waste of effort at best.

The faithful Mormons who came after Smith, however, are a different matter for me. They already had polygamy anyway, up to a point, and then after that point they did not have it anyway. If there were any other features of Mormon practice that might originally have been based upon deification, I reckon those features were already locked in as well, for those later Mormons. So I don't see that there can have been too many ulterior motives for the later Mormons when they came to think about deification. And unlike the founding prophet whom they so revered, I think the later Mormons were mostly honest, God-fearing people who were pioneering a modern American religion as sincere believers.

Their main motive, it seems to me, must just have been to make sense of whatever doctrine they had inherited from Joseph Smith. I myself wouldn't have wanted the job of having to make sense out of supposed revelations that I can't take seriously because of their source, but those Mormons were stuck with the job, and did the best they could with it. I wouldn't mind hearing what they made of it.

[huckelberry]

I'm afraid I haven't yet watched the podcast, but I'd like to find time for it. I'm interested in what Mormons after Joseph Smith made of this concept of exaltation and eternal progression.

I'm not actually too interested at all in what Smith himself thought. I'm afraid I also find it too likely that Smith's own real reason for any curious aspect of his doctrine was just that it popped into his head at some point as a trick to get him power, comfort, or sex. To look any further than that, to explain why Smith might have said or thought whatever it was, just seems to me like a waste of effort at best.

The faithful Mormons who came after Smith, however, are a different matter for me. They already had polygamy anyway, up to a point, and then after that point they did not have it anyway. If there were any other features of Mormon practice that might originally have been based upon deification, I reckon those features were already locked in as well, for those later Mormons. So I don't see that there can have been too many ulterior motives for the later Mormons when they came to think about deification. And unlike the founding prophet whom they so revered, I think the later Mormons were mostly honest, God-fearing people who were pioneering a modern American religion as sincere believers.

Their main motive, it seems to me, must just have been to make sense of whatever doctrine they had inherited from Joseph Smith. I myself wouldn't have wanted the job of having to make sense out of supposed revelations that I can't take seriously because of their source, but those Mormons were stuck with the job, and did the best they could with it. I wouldn't mind hearing what they made of it.

Physics Guy, I have a bit of uncertainty about where your question is looking. I will try a simple response. LDS theosis is understood to work by priesthood authority, following the laws and ordinances of the gospel. It is a covenant path based upon promises of obedience made in the temple. The metaphysical structure for this was carefully worked out though taught by Joseph Smith who did have some interest in presenting a coherent revealed understanding of life. It goes like this, we are all eternal intelligences, a sort of minimal life existence which is uncreated. God and his wife procreated spirit children which are spirit embodiments of intelligences. Because we are children of God we may become what God is not just sort of like God. (God was once a mortal like we are now) The step of gaining a physical body and dealing with the difficulties of life is the crucial developmental step .

One oddity in this is how are our physical bodies are like Gods physical body. It would seem to be necessary for them to be linked to complete the transformation. Brigham Young' being straightforward in his thought, declared that Adam was in fact God so that the human race as bodies derived from God keeping the process linked together. Brigham was not a Biblical literalist so was not bothered by fitting this idea with the Biblical statements. Most all Mormons have been literal about the Bible so the Adam God thing was rejected and largely buried. How our bodies are related to divine possibility is left as a hiccup.

[huckelberry]

Speaking of hiccups I think there is one with the question of where does the power and order come from? Some LDS are happy to say comes from God. I suppose an eternal regression might cover that. I suspect some sort of divine power center is implied , perhaps as in magic world view. (or the traditional trinity functions invisible or unthought by LDS speakers)

[Jesse Pinkman]

I'd read it years ago and was impressed by the similarities to those crazy Lex de Azevedo songs I grew up listening to. But i didn't see how any of it could have reached the Smith's in the 1800s. I'd known that Voltaire had written a lot on the shastra, so was really surprised to read that Joseph Sr. was familiar with Voltaire's writings

The wild thing about the shastra is that its not a gentoo/hindu text, as Voltaire believed. Its about as Indian as the Book of Mormon is Indian. JZ Holwell was from London. He admired and referenced Ramsay's Travels of Cyrus and the lectures of a guy named Jacob Ilive, who "translated" the (pseudo) Book of Jasher. Holwell's shastra is really an 18th-century pseudo-Biblical text, with names like Birmah and Mozasor swapped in for Jesus and Satan.

The gentoo texts translated by Holwell are only one part of the story. The other prong is the gentoo texts translated by another British orientalist named Halhed who wrote "A Code of Gentoo Laws". Halhed was the most public disciples of Richard Brothers, behind the British Isrealism movement that, according to both Brooke and Quinn, influenced the New Israelite movement of Vermont. Halhed, who overlapped with Holwell in India and had studied his translations, published his testimony of British Israelism in Richard Brothers' "Revealed Knowledge of Prophecies" which was available in Hanover while the Smiths were there.

THE1800’s “NEW ISRAELITES”
Richard Brothers, the Woods, the Cowderys, and M. M. Noah

Apologies this is all off-topic. I'll try and get to opening a new thread

Have you read this?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/re ... CA9A583069

This is all really fascinating

[Jesse Pinkman]

One other thought I have had, and this may be more appropriate for an offshoot thread, but I’ll throw it out here.

Within the whole scheme of becoming Gods and Goddesses and creating our own worlds, my thought was always that Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice and provided atonement for all of the worlds created, and all of those yet to be created. Therefore, we were not required to sacrifice a son for atonement for our worlds. This had already been “once and done” by Christ.

I have read opinions of folks that discount this, but I always thought this was our official view which is why we can all equally worship the same Christ because He is the Christ.

Just interested in thoughts.

[Markk]

I'm afraid I haven't yet watched the podcast, but I'd like to find time for it. I'm interested in what Mormons after Joseph Smith made of this concept of exaltation and eternal progression.

I'm not actually too interested at all in what Smith himself thought. I'm afraid I also find it too likely that Smith's own real reason for any curious aspect of his doctrine was just that it popped into his head at some point as a trick to get him power, comfort, or sex. To look any further than that, to explain why Smith might have said or thought whatever it was, just seems to me like a waste of effort at best.

The faithful Mormons who came after Smith, however, are a different matter for me. They already had polygamy anyway, up to a point, and then after that point they did not have it anyway. If there were any other features of Mormon practice that might originally have been based upon deification, I reckon those features were already locked in as well, for those later Mormons. So I don't see that there can have been too many ulterior motives for the later Mormons when they came to think about deification. And unlike the founding prophet whom they so revered, I think the later Mormons were mostly honest, God-fearing people who were pioneering a modern American religion as sincere believers.

Their main motive, it seems to me, must just have been to make sense of whatever doctrine they had inherited from Joseph Smith. I myself wouldn't have wanted the job of having to make sense out of supposed revelations that I can't take seriously because of their source, but those Mormons were stuck with the job, and did the best they could with it. I wouldn't mind hearing what they made of it.

Hey PG,

I'm not sure how one can separate "what Joseph taught" from what Is thought about it afterwards. Like most LDS doctrines it has and is evolving. If doing so, I believe one would have to also look at the changing nature of God. But that to would be difficult without looking at what Joseph taught and maybe even believed.

I agree with you that the folks had to try to make sense of all the different teachings by Smith, and even those of BY, Taylor, and Woodruff. Looking back I believe it was Joseph F. Smith who was stuck with trying to organize and basically "canonize the thought" of things like deification and the nature of God. Th e1916 first presidency statement (Talmage as author) is an example of his trying to real in who God was. Divine Investiture is an attempt to try to make sense of the mess that Joseph, BY, Taylor, and Woodruff....taught or maintained.


Smith, with the ELC basically taught that deification was like a ladder....you earn step by step by obedience and knowledge, yet it was always under the ideal that plural marriage was a must do to gain eternal life. And in my opinion sex being the driving factor by him.

Where as later it was reeled into a temple marriage and by strict obedience to eternal laws, which Smith eludes to in the AoF. But again I am not sure how you eliminate Joseph from the modern view/s in that most of it goes back to his teachings one way or the other, even is watered down, edited, or skewed.

Where I disagree with you is that I am not sure we can say "they had polygamy" after Joseph's death. I believe some did, but hardly all of them. The saints differed on that and even fought it out in court as to whether it was even a teaching in Nauvoo. I may be wrong here, and please correct me the reorganized church with William and arguably Emma taking the lead, denied Joseph even practiced it. But I get you point if talking about those that followed BY.

It would be a interesting search study to see how many of the off shoots of the early church that, one, believed in plural marriage and that Joseph practiced it, and two, what their views on deification might have been or are today if the sect is still around. I am pretty sure Community of Christ (William Smiths offshoot) did not canonize 132, so I assume they do not believe they can become God's.


https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... n?lang=eng