Do Latter-day Saints Worship God?

     Do Latter-day Saints worship God? This question has an obvious “yes” answer. But this obvious answer obscures a theological nuance that makes the justification for worship in the Mormon tradition unique as compared to other Christian denominations. In particular, I will argue that Latter-day Saints do not unconditionally worship God; their worship is conditional upon God possessing certain attributes.

     To see this, we must recognize that Mormon theology envisions a contingent God. This means that God has not always existed as God. He has instead become God through a process. Joseph Smith made this point explicit in his King Follett Sermon: 

I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. . . . It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and to know . . . that he was once a man like us.

Many prophets and apostles after Joseph expressed similar views. Brigham Young, for example, claimed that God is “the Father of our spirits, and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are, and is now an exalted being.” (Journal of Discourses, 7:333). Similarly, Elder Melvin J. Ballard taught that “[i]t is a ‘Mormon’ truism that is current among us and we all accept it, that as man is God once was and as God is man may become.” (General Conference, April 1921).

     This process of transformation could, furthermore, run in the opposite direction. For as the book of Alma reminds us, if God attempted to rob justice, he would “cease to be God.” (Alma 42:13). Succinctly stated, God was once a man. He developed into deity. And He could, by His own volition, cease to be God. He is, therefore, contingently God, for His divine status is contingent upon His having developed into and remaining as a certain type of being.

     Why does this fact about God hold relevance to the question posed above? Because if He is contingently God, then our worship is focused on what He is, not who He is. Our worship, to phrase the matter differently, is conditional, depending on God having realized the attributes of moral perfection, almighty power, and all knowledge. If tomorrow, God ceased to be God, losing those attributes, it would be improper to worship Him. Worship is, after all, properly reserved for the deity.

     Apostle Orson Pratt—one of the original Apostles ordained by Joseph Smith—came to a similar conclusion, though based on different reasoning. Specifically, he claimed that “[w]hen we worship the Father, we do not merely worship His person, but we worship the truth which dwells in His person.” This truth, for Orson, is the Holy Spirit, the highest member of the Godhead,[1] and “[p]ersons are only tabernacles or temples, and TRUTH is the God, that dwells in them.” This move permitted Orson to defend monotheism and the omnipresence of God. For “if the fulness of truth, dwells in numberless millions of persons, then the same one indivisible God dwells in them all.” And “[a]s truth can dwell in all worlds at the same instant, therefore, God who is truth can be in all worlds at the same instant.” Orson Pratt, therefore, held that we do not merely worship our Eternal Father; we worship the Truth that dwells within him. If Truth ceased to dwell in God, we would, it seems be obligated to refrain from worshiping Him.[2]

     Contrast Mormonism’s view of God with the classical Christian view. As I use the term, classical Christian theism is the Christianity of the creeds. Classical theists believe that God exists necessarily as God. He resides outside space and time. As such, he is unchanging. He always has been and will never cease to be all powerful, all knowing, and morally perfect. Further, classical theists hold to the doctrine of divine simplicity. This doctrine, in part, teaches that the “attributes” of power, knowledge, and goodness, are not mere add-ons or properties that attach to God. They are an essential part of who He is. He is identical with these properties. Thus, classical Christians worship a being who is essentially and necessarily good, powerful, and wise. As a result, worship of God in classical theism does not depend on God coming to possess certain properties. Unconditional worship is proper as He has been and will always be the type of being who is worthy of worship.

     This contrast between Mormonism and classical Christianity reveals the distinctive theological foundations underlying worship within Mormonism. Several objections could be made to my position. Let me respond to a few. First, some may argue that my depiction of God within the Mormon tradition is inaccurate. Latter-day Saints, the objector may continue, also believe in a God that exists necessarily as God. In response, I note that some respectable scholars take this approach. But it requires a nuanced interpretation of the King Follett Sermon and other texts. For reasons I cannot defend here, I find this objection hard to defend. Joseph really did believe God has not always existed as God. And he really did teach that we too could become as God. To the extent, however, that my view of God in the Mormon tradition is incorrect, my argument above fails. 

     Second, a person could object that my argument leads one to worship not God, but His attributes. This, I believe, is mistaken. To see this, an analogy is needed.[3] When a violinist becomes a virtuoso, we do not focus our respect and honor on the attributes that person has actualized—the property of virtuosity. No. We focus our respect and honor on the violinist. For she is the person who has realized that property.

     Something similar occurs in relation to God. Our worship of God is conditional, depending vitally on his realizing certain character traits. But this does not mean that we worship His attributes. We worship Him. He is, after all, the one who realized these attributes. We laud, praise, adore, honor, respect, and love Him because He became divine. To be sure, if he ceased to be divine, our worship would no longer be proper. But insofar as it is proper, we worship Him, not His attributes. 

     Third, and finally, a person may object that the God of Mormon theism is not worthy of worship at all. This is a criticism made by classical Christians, and I do not have the ability to venture a complete response to it here. I do note, however, that notions of worship worthiness vary between peoples. I find the idea of a God who prepared the way for me to become His peer inspiring. A Christian, in response, may attempt to transform the question of what type of being is worthy of worship into a normative one, arguing that while people differ in what they personally find worship worthy, there is one standard of worship worthiness. This response will, in my judgement, beg the question as it will rest on theological notions of perfection and goodness that I, as a Latter-day Saint, do not share. 

     In the end, Latter-day Saints do worship God. But that worship rests on a different theological foundation than it does for other Christians. Some may find this foundation disturbing. But for the Latter-day Saint, it is nothing more than the proper view of deity—a contingent God who is worthy of our worship because of what he has become.

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     [1] Terryl Givens, in his recent volume Wrestling the Angel, provides a fuller discussion on how Orson Pratt placed the Holy Spirit as the Highest Member of the Godhead. See Terryl Givens, Wrestling the Angel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). p. 126 (noting that for Orson, "the original divine entity was not God the Father; rather, "the Great First Cause itself" consisted of "conscious, intelligent, self-moving particles, called the Holy Spirit."

     [2] Orson Pratt Makes these observations in "The Pre-Existence of Man," published in The Seer, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1853, paragraph 22.

     [3] I borrow this analogy from a wise friend, Benjamin Leto.

Ascending Mt. Moriah: Divine Command Theory, Human Free Will, and Ecclesiastical Authority

This past week, I posted about how morality without God rests on a form of self-deception. This post, to my surprise, gave rise to a discussion among my friends about Divine Command Theory, which I abbreviate as DCT in what follows. That discussion has caused me to think more deeply about DCT. In this post, I have explored new thoughts—at least new to me—on how DCT influences our understanding of ecclesiastical authority. I have also discussed other aspects of DCT. What follows is not carefully and analytically argued. Much of it may prove objectionable. It is not intended as an airtight argument, but as my general impressions of DCT’s problems. To discuss those problems, though, I must first briefly identify what DCT is.

Divine Command Theory*

Divine Command Theory (DCT) is a metaphysical theory about what makes an action right or wrong. Advocates of the theory hold that when God commands something, it is obligatory to do that thing. So if God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, then it is morally obligatory (and morally praiseworthy) for Abraham to plunge the dagger into his son.

This view stands in conflict with Moral Realism. Moral Realism, for our purposes, comes in two types: Platonism and Divine Goodness Theories (DGT). Platonism posits universal, eternal moral realities that exist independently of God. These realities fix what is right and wrong, good and evil. When human agents grasp that murder is wrong, they grasp a universal, eternal law that exists independently of what any agent believes. Christian theologians have been reluctant to accept Platonism, as it invokes realities that God did not create and to which he is subject.

DGT, in comparison, import these “Platonic” moral realities into God’s nature. Stated differently, under DGT, God’s nature is essentially good. Thus, when human agents grasp that murder is wrong, they grasp God’s nature, achieving a type of intellectual union with it. This theory, importantly, is different than DCT. For theorists of DGT (keep up with the acronyms) say that God’s nature is fixed and essentially good. God cannot change his nature tomorrow to make murder consistent with it. But DCT roots God’s goodness in his will, which is not fixed. God can command murder one day and revoke that command the next.

One problem a proponent of DGT must face is a lack of divine omnipotence. DGT, after all, maintains that God’s nature is fixed and that God must act consistent with it. God cannot alter his nature. He is what he essentially is. Nor can he act contrary to that nature, for he is essentially good.

Most proponents of DGT address the problem of omnipotence by claiming that acts inconsistent with goodness are not acts of power. Thus, murder is not an act of power. Acts of power, under this understanding, express goodness. And murder does not express goodness.

Advocates of DCT reject this solution. They instead claim that God is not constrained by his nature. He can command anything. At one time he may say, “thou shalt not murder,” and at another, “thou shalt utterly destroy.” If he is not constrained by a fixed nature, he can be omnipotent in the strongest sense of the term. William of Ockham, a well known advocate of DCT, made this move to preserve divine omnipotence. But in resolving the problem of divine omnipotence, DCT creates new ones.

Problems with DCT

The problems created by DCT are manifold. Many may prove soluble. For my purposes, I will focus on two-types of problems. The first type of problem concerns how DCT distorts the divine nature. The second type concerns how DCT distorts our understanding of free will and ecclesiastical power. 

Problems with the Divine Nature

Regarding the first type, DCT safeguards divine power by making goodness purely subjective: goodness is what God decrees. So if God commands the murder of children, it would be morally obligatory and morally good to carry out that command. Under this theory, we should praise those who comply with God’s command.[1]

But we intuitively view the murder of children as deeply wrong, no matter who commands it. By the light of our own reason, we would adjudicate a god who commanded such a thing, as a god engaged in immoral acts. This, to my mind, reveals that DCT fundamentally misunderstands the foundations of moral goodness and moral obligations.

But an advocate of DCT will contend that we simply err in our moral judgments when we adjudicate the divinely commanded murder of children to be wrong. In making this move, the advocate owes us an error theory. In philosophical parlance, an error theory explains why we err in our judgments. Take the analogous case of free will. Some philosophers deny that we have free will. In so doing, they must confront the fact that we experience ourselves as endowed with the capacity for free choice.

Similarly, in this case, the divine command advocate must explain why we err in seeing God’s commands as immoral. If God commanded the murder of a son, why do we experience this event as unethical? Is it merely due to societal convention that we view such an act as wrong?

Each of these answers is plausible enough. They reveal, however, another problem for DCT. For the theory imagines a world where our moral judgments may be radically wrong. When you and I intuit the murder of a child as wrong, we could be mistaken; God may have commanded it. And if we could be wrong about that judgment, we could be wrong about a whole host of pedestrian judgments. Furthermore, we could be right about one judgment today (murder of children is wrong), and wrong about it tomorrow when God decrees the opposite. 

More deeply, then, the God of DCT may have created us in such a way that we cannot recognize good and evil. This, in turn, has some drastic implications for human culpability for sin--an issue I do not grapple with here. Instead, I am more interested in the effects of DCT in more practical affairs. And it is to that issue that I now turn.

DCT’s Effect on Free Will and Ecclesiastical Authority

In addition to the problems listed above, I believe DCT gives rise to several more practical problems. First, it distorts our view of human free will. For our understanding of human free will follows our understanding of divine free will. This is not a necessary truth, but a historically verified contingent truth.

Before DCT gained widespread acceptance among theological circles, Moral Realism of the DGT variety held sway. DGT, as discussed above, modeled divine free will as constrained by the divine nature. God cannot murder a child as it is inconsistent with his nature. Those who held this view, also held an analogous view of human free will. The proper use of freedom, for these theologians, was the conduct in conformity with human nature. But human agents, unlike God, are fallible and weak willed. We often commit acts that are inconsistent with our God-given natures; whereas God, who is infallible, perfectly realizes his nature.

When DCT gained traction, a new model of human freedom arose. Now, human freedom was not the power to actualize a human nature, but the freedom to express one’s will. This, strangely, has caused us to view the proper exercise of human freedom as unconstrained by any moral laws. True freedom, is not freedom to actualize moral laws grounded in essential human nature. No. True freedom is freedom from any constraints on the human will.[2]

DCT has also, in my judgment, had an impact on the notion of ecclesiastical authority and legitimacy. Those who embrace DCT see God’s authority as flowing from his power, not from his goodness. This may be a controversial point. But if God does not have a fixed, essentially good nature, then his authority is grounded in the exercise of his will. Whatever he wills is good because he wills it. Stated differently, we give ascent to God’s commands because those commands flow from the exercise of God’s power, not because they flow from an essentially good, divine nature. And where we give ascent to God because of his power, we worship God because he is powerful.

This, it seems to me, holds some negative implications for ecclesiastical authority. For parishioners who come to see a particular person as uniquely connected God, will come to treat that person's authority in a way analogous to the way they treat God's authority. They will come to believe that this person's authority is legitimate because it is an exercise of authority.

I believe this is exactly the wrong orientation. I believe ecclesiastical authority is legitimate only where it is legitimate. Put differently, legitimacy flows, at least in part, from morality, not solely from authority. A man’s pronouncements are not authoritative merely because he thunders them from atop a figurative ecclesiastical Mt. Moriah. To be sure, we must give latitude to God’s divinely appointed leaders. But that latitude has limits—limits I do not fully explore in this already lengthy post.

Conclusion

In the end, many who suppose themselves advocates of DCT are actually driven by a sense of epistemic humility. Namely, the trust God’s judgments more than their own, including when those judgments are given through earthly authority. This is admirable, and I too strive for that humility. But we should not equate epistemic humility with divine command theory. The former actually assumes, I believe, an objective moral order that God is better able to perceive; the latter assumes no such order and no such perceiving. It instead denies a moral order and holds that God’s commands generate the moral order.

As I hope to discuss in my next post, this view, in its starkest form, is inconsistent with Mormonism’s view of God. I also reemphasize that what I have said above may be objectionable in many particulars. Some of my readers may wish to defend DCT, and there are good defenses of my comments above. But I will ultimately argue that DCT is a flawed metaphysical theory inconsistent with Mormon theism.

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* A great deal of nuisance among divine command theories. I cannot explore all of those nuisances here, and some may rightly accuse me of creating a straw-man version of DCT. But the version I present is the most basic articulation of the theory.

[1] The theory also, I note, distorts divine goodness, leading to the conclusion that God lacks moral virtue because a moral virtue would have to be defined as a habit to do an action that God commands.

[2] For those interested in this point, I commend David Bentley Hart’s book, Atheist Delusions, where this idea is explored in greater detail.

The Atheist's Noble Lie

     Morality rests on a lie. We labor, after all, to develop virtuous characters capable of compassion, honesty, selflessness, and trustworthiness. In all of this, we aim at ideals that we can never perfectly actualized. When we strive for moral improvement, the ideals recede from us, always just out of reach. We never achieve perfect compassion or become wholly selfless. And we know we never will in this life. Regardless, we hide this knowledge from ourselves, recognizing that if we too carefully observe our own moral limits, we may slacken our push for moral growth. This seems paradoxical. Morality, which (by most estimations) abhors lying, is founded on self-deception, a form of lying.

     Or at least it does for one who does not believe in God. For the theist can recognize his or her own powerlessness in the face of morality's demands, and yet strive for perfect virtue, secure in the knowledge that God will, in the end, bring about perfect conformity with ethical ideals. And this "in the end" is key. The theist knows life continues beyond this moonlit sphere into a brighter and holier one. Given this knowledge, he or she may strive in God with all vigor, undeterred by the inability to perfectly actualize moral ideals here and now. When morality rests on God it is not founded on a lie.

The Nominal Fallacy and the Loss of Personal Relationships

            A fallacy is a form of faulty reasoning. These forms litter our thinking, and one who seeks truth must exercise great caution to avoid them. Take the democratic fallacy (argumentum ad populum) as an example. This form of reasoning holds that a proposition is true because most people believe it to be true. This model of reasoning can lead us to err: if 9 out of 10 people believe the northern star resides in the southern hemisphere, those people are still wrong. The truth of a proposition is not up to a vote.

Perhaps a more pernicious fallacy is the nominal fallacy (from the Latin nomen, meaning name). This fallacy posits that when you apply a name (or label) to something, you have explained it. Put differently, a name transmits explanatory content. So framed, this is a descriptive form of the fallacy: a name describes (i.e. explains) that to which it applies. But I believe the fallacy also occurs in a prescriptive or normative form—a point of relevance to what follows. In the prescriptive form, a name both describes (explains) and evaluates.

The nominal fallacy—in its descriptive and prescriptive forms—permeates all intellectual endeavors. To elaborate, imagine a person attaches the label “democracy” to a particular society. Has he thereby descriptively explained that society or its form of social organization? No. Has he even prescriptively fixed its value or worth as a form of social life? No. The name itself carries no explanatory or normative information. Understanding and evaluating a society requires careful assessment of its institutions, cultures, and mores.

But as intellectually lazy creatures (and we all are), employing a label as a shortcut to knowledge is satisfying. Labels free us of the labor necessary for authentic understanding. In freeing us, however, they deceive us, leading us into an encounter not with the reality we try to understand, but with a pale conceptual counterpart that bears a cartoonish resemblance. The nominal fallacy, therefore, confers the gift of cheap, pseudo knowledge.

Aside from the epistemic error flowing from this form of reasoning, it also carries with it a deeper, existential problem. Specifically, when we use labels or names to explain a person, we no longer enter into a personal relationship with him or her. We instead strap a cartoonish, abstract concept onto that person, which shields us from a direct encounter. So shielded, we do not see a flesh and blood person, a unique individual, but a mere representative of some pernicious or virtuous class or group.

Who hasn’t heard a political opponent charging his interlocutor (if that term even properly applies) as a “racist” or a “liberal snowflake.” In taking up this debate tactic, the political opponent believes he has explained his interlocutor while revealing something about his interlocutor’s worth. But the nominal fallacy, as already noted, bears the cheap gift of pseudo knowledge. It gives rise to an illusion in the mind of the political opponent—an illusion that makes him feel virtuous.

He is far from it, though. Not because he errs, but because he has severed himself from a direct encounter with the person he maligns. His interlocutor is not a person with a family and career, with hopes, desires, and fears. No. For the political opponent, his interlocutor is a racist or a liberal snowflake—a manifestation of an abstract class or group. And the interlocutor knows he has not been treated as a person, but as a proxy for something worthy of derision.

The nominal fallacy—while easy and satisfying—is, I believe, a form of intellectual cowardice. One who employs it is never forced to look another person—a real individual—in the eyes. He instead dehumanizes the other and then looks at a mere object of his outrage. This form of cowardice, therefore, makes political conversations easier and more difficult. Easier because it frees participants from any meaningful intellectual work. More difficult because it raises the cost of engaging in any type of dialogue whatsoever. As responsible citizens, we must avoid this form of thinking like a cancer. Our republic—which depends on our having difficult conversations in a respectful way—cannot long survive its presence.