In
the Eighty-first Psalm are found these words, addressed by God to men: ‘You are
gods, and all of you, the sons of the Most High’” (v. 5). This divine assurance
was quoted again by Christ. Turning to the Pharisees, He apostrophized them,
saying, “Is it not written in your Law: I said you are gods? . . . he
called them gods to whom the word of God was spoken, and the Scripture cannot
be broken.” (John 10:34-35).
We
have, therefore, a double testimony that God considers and calls certain men gods.
But is this not, perhaps, invitation to pride? And what else was it that the
Serpent said to the First Parents, if not something very similar: “You will be
as gods.” He was promising, then, what God Himself is ready to sustain. Yet precisely
because of that desire to be like God, Adam was degraded, cast out and condemned.
And
when Christ teaches the chosen to imitate God—“You therefore are to be perfect,
even as your heavenly Father is perfect” )Matthew, 5:48)—is He not asserting
that man, simple creature, can achieve one of the essential attributes of God,
that is perfection? To become perfect, as perfect as God, is that not perhaps
like becoming gods?
St.
Paul, finally, doubles the dose: “Do you not know that we shall judge angels?”
(1 Corinthians 6:3). Therefore, according to St. Paul, men are superior to the
angels themselves, who are most perfect beings, because only the superior can
judge the inferior.
In
all these passages man—or let us say, the Christian—is magnified and exalted to
the point of being placed on the same level with God. The Christian doctrine of “deification”
is, in my opinion, profoundly sublime and true . . . (Gionvanni Papini, The Devil
[New York: E. P. Dutton, 1954], 45, in Van Hale, Mormon Miscellaneous
Note Cards, 3 vols. [Sandy, Utah: Mormon Miscellaneous, 1985], 1:50)