God: Supreme Ruler or Nurturing Father?
Posted on Jun 20, 2012 by Trevor in Religion
Maybe the two categorizations I present in this blog post’s title aren’t mutually exclusive, but I can definitely say which of the two comes closest to characterizing the God I like to envision. And one of the unique aspects of Mormonism that I happen to like the most has to do with Joseph Smith’s development of this concept. I really like the way LDS historian Richard Bushman explains this one, so I’ll let his words do some talking.
First, he references a verse in the Pearl of Great Price:
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.
Then he writes:
The passage evoked the classic image of the great chain of being with God at the pinnacle and other intelligences, perhaps including animals and plants, extending below him. Earthly race and class did not enter into this configuration, only intelligence.
[Joseph] Smith pictured a moment when God came down among these intelligences and offered to instruct them. As he said in the 1844 King Follett discourse, God finding “himself in the midst of spirit and glory because he was greater saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself.” God did not present himself as sovereign but as teacher and father, offering to help the intelligences grow. The goal of their growth was to become like him—gods themselves in some sense. “God has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences that they may be exhaulted with himself” into a godly order*. He did not dominate them but nurtured them as a father. As he explained to Moses: This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).
This story of the beginning envisions a profoundly voluntaristic universe. Human beings are not the creatures of God, because he did not create their inner essence. They are radically free intelligences, as eternal as God himself. Nor did he impose his will on these lesser intelligences through an exercise of power. He offered them laws by which they could advance with the option of accepting or not. …
In this cosmology, God does not dominate existence as the conventional Christian God does. He does not make the world out of nothing; he does not make human intelligence; he does not impose his law on his subjects. He invites them to join him in seeking the fullness of existence which he himself enjoys.
– Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction, pg. 72-74
The verse in Moses—and the supporting doctrine around it—is key to my understanding of Mormonism and God’s hopes for his children, and I’ve found it useful for finding satisfactory answers to a wide variety of theological and practical questions. The Mormon emphasis on God’s nurturing side, rather than his sovereign side, is appealing to me. Terryl Givens calls this a “collapse of sacred distance”, i.e. rather that maintaining that God is a separate “species” from man, Joseph Smith taught that we all share in part of that divinity and are able to become like him. Of course, this doctrinal point probably draws more criticism from traditional Christians than any other, but as for me, I’ll take a nurturing father God over a supreme ruler God any day.
For a more academically informed write-up on this topic, check out a nice blog post on “Romanticism in Mormonism“.
Footnote
*Joseph Smith Jr. The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph, ed. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1980), 360, 346. (To read the King Follett discourse, see this compilation or the two–part series published in the Ensign.)
