Limiting God's Sovereignty
The Holy Spirit has told me the idol in Mormonism among other things is the word "intelligences" and the games Mormons play with it. The more you read about it, the more you realize Mormonism is just supernatural atheism with no need for God. If God always existed and created intelligences and intelligences are used to make humans that could be considered the "uncreated Creator" but almost no Mormons take this view (#1 below). You have to ask which of these 3 views below do you favor to know what it is you follow. If you follow #2 or #3 you debase God. If you believe #1 that is certainly better.
Historically there have been three general ways to understand JS’s teaching:
1. Intelligence is the material from which all persons but God the Father are made. The status of the Son and the Holy Ghost is unclear.
God remains absolute; sovereign
This may be the original position among Mormons, but as we saw it is not clear how early Mormons thought about the question or even whether they did.
This may be the view behind late objections to the contemporary view (Penrose and Lund)
2. Intelligence is the material from which all persons, including God are made.
God is finitistic and must have an origin. Some force must have brought God into existence—but what?
This is a variation on the oldest position. It accounts for many of the unusual beliefs ascribed to Mormons, though it seems to have been popular mostly during the second half of the 19 century.
E.g.: “As man is, God once was; as God is man may become”—Lorenzo Snow (1840)
This view puts the sovereignty of God in question—though few who subscribe to this position recognize that problem.
3. Each person, including God, exists eternally as an individual entity (the dominant view today).
Finitistic—the existence of other eternal entities puts limits on God that we would not find in classical theism.
It doesn’t require that some force have brought God into existence, though it is necessary that God is, in some sense, conditioned by beings other than himself. This view also limits God’s sovereignty, but not nearly so much as #2.
It is not uncommon for Mormons to collapse #2 and #3, understanding intelligence in terms of #3 but picking up aspects of #2 when talking about the destiny of human persons—and when inferring an origin for God.
In spite of that, the two are logically separable. The finitism of #3 does not imply the finitism of #2.
#3 is also more compatible with the description of intelligences that we saw in Abraham 3:19: “And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.”
Both #2 and #3 make it possible to understand human persons as possibly becoming like God, but #3 makes that notion of theosis more like Orthodox notions than like BY’s and John Taylor’s.
JFS’s view (something of the human individual is eternal, but we don’t know what) remains a viable option, but so does #3.
I don’t think anyone holds to #1 any more, and I’m skeptical that #2 can be made to work.
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