"The LDS Concept of Salvation and the Orthodox Doctrine of Deification.

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C. S. Lewis - from The Weight of Glory

It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

Argument with Mormon Doctrine of Salvation

Offends the traditional Christian view that God is totally other from man
Man is Gods creation There can only be one God

Biblical Warrant for Idea of Theosis

Johannine Tradition Petrine Tradition Pauline Tradition Christs instructions at the Sermon on the Mount

Johannine Tradition
John 10:34-36 John 17:11, 19-24

1 John 3:2-3

Petrine Tradition
2 Peter 1:3-4 2 Peter 1:16-18

Pauline Tradition
Romans 8:15-17

Irenaeus: (Gaul c. 177-202)

Against the Heresies IV.33.4

He will judge also the Ebionites; [for] how can they be saved unless it was God who wrought out their salvation upon earth? Or how shall man pass into God, unless God has [first] passed into man? And how shall he (man) escape from the generation subject to death, if not by means of a new generation, given in a wonderful and unexpected manner (but as a sign of salvation) by God [I mean] that regeneration which flows from the virgin through faith?

Against the Heresies IV 38.4

For we cast blame upon Him, because we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods; although God has adopted this course out of His pure benevolence, that no one may impute to Him invidiousness or grudgingness. He declares, "I have said, Ye are gods; and ye are all sons of the Highest." But since we could not sustain the power of divinity, He adds, "But ye shall die like men," setting forth both truths the kindness of His free gift, and our weakness, and also that we were possessed of power over ourselves. For after His great kindness He graciously conferred good [upon us], and made men like to Himself, [that is] in their own power; while at the same time by His prescience He knew the infirmity of human beings, and the consequences which would flow from it; but through [His] love and [His] power, He shall overcome the substance of created nature. For it was necessary, at first, that nature should be exhibited; then, after that, that what was mortal should be conquered and swallowed up by immortality, and the corruptible by incorruptibility, and that man should be made after the image and likeness of God, having received the knowledge of good and evil.

Against the Heresies V Preface

It will be incumbent upon thee, however, and all who may happen to read this writing, to peruse with great attention what I have already said, that thou mayest obtain a knowledge of the subjects against which I am contending. For it is thus that thou wilt both controvert them in a legitimate manner, and wilt be prepared to receive the proofs brought forward against them, casting away their doctrines as filth by means of the celestial faith; but following the only true and stedfast Teacher, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.

Clement of Alexandria (c. 190-215)

Exhortation to the Greeks Chapter I

But if you do not believe the prophets, but supposest both the men and the fire a myth, the Lord Himself shall speak to you, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled Himself, He, the merciful God, exerting Himself to save man. And now the Word Himself clearly speaks to you, shaming your unbelief; yea, I say, the Word of God became man, that you may learn from man how man may become God. Is it not then monstrous, my friends, that while God is ceaselessly exhorting us to virtue, we should spurn His kindness and reject salvation?

Stromata VI.14
But such a good conscience preserves sanctity towards God and justice towards men; keeping the soul pure with grave thoughts, and pure words, and just deeds. By thus receiving the Lord's power, the soul studies to be God; regarding nothing bad but ignorance, and action contrary to fight reason.

Origen(c. 215-254)

On the Gospel of John 11.3,19

Many become gods by participation in God; we should flee with all our power from being men and make haste to become gods.

Against Celsus III.28

But both Jesus Himself and His disciples desired that His followers should believe not merely in His Godhead and miracles, as if He had not also been a partaker of human nature, and had assumed the human flesh which "lusteth against the Spirit;" but they saw also that the power which had descended into human nature, and into the midst of human miseries, and which had assumed a human soul and body, contributed through faith, along with its divine elements, to the salvation of believers, when they see that from Him there began the union of the divine with the human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the divine, might rise to be divine, not in Jesus alone, but in all those who not only believe, but enter upon the life which Jesus taught, and which elevates to friendship with God and communion with Him every one who lives according to the precepts of Jesus.

Athanasius (c. 296-373)

On the Incarnation of the Word 54.3

For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality. For while He Himself was in no way injured, being impossible and incorruptible and very Word and God, men who were suffering, and for whose sakes He endured all this, He maintained and preserved in His own impassibility.

Oration Against the Arians I.11.39

Therefore He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us.

Oration Against the Arians 22.21.70

For therefore did He assume the body originate and human, that having renewed it as its Framer, He might deify it in Himself, and thus might introduce us all into the kingdom of heaven after His likeness. For man had not been deified if joined to a creature, or unless the Son were very God; nor had man been brought into the Father's presence, unless He had been His natural and true Word who had put on the body. And as we had not been delivered from sin and the curse, unless it had been by nature human flesh, which the Word put on (for we should have had nothing common with what was foreign), so also the man had not been deified, unless the Word who became flesh had been by nature from the Father and true and proper to Him. For therefore the union was of this kind, that He might unite what is man by nature to Him who is in the nature of the Godhead, and his salvation and deification might be sure.

Orthodox Doctrine of Deification

Western views on salvation focus on justification and tend to treat salvation as a very legalistic concept Eastern views on salvation tend to focus more on Christs triumph over sin as a cosmic force. Eastern views do not emphasize justification before God, but rather becoming unified with Christ.

Plan of Salvation

The Incarnation: because of sin, humanity is subject to death and cut off from communion with God. In the incarnation, God unites human nature to himself. Christ recapitulated human history as the last Adam by his perfect obedience the last Adam displaced the first Adams disobedience and leads the creation (human beings) toward Gods original intended purpose. Christs death is not so much a satisfaction of the price of sin, but rather a satisfaction of the truth of God. The divine warning the death would result from disobedience in the Garden of Eden had come to pass, but since Christ never sinned he did not have to die. As the last Adam, the new head of a restored humanity, Christ took on himself the death, which should befall all of those in him. In so doing, he satisfied Gods truth. Orthodoxy sees humanitys problem as its bondage to sin, death and the devil. Salvation is not completed until life is restored to Christ and those in him. Christs resurrection is a necessity to break the bonds of death. Eternal communion with God and victory over our enemies is only achieved fully and completely when Christ rises from the grave.

Mormon Doctrine of Salvation

Where did god come from What do gods do throughout the eternities

Man and God are the same species

Other points.