The story of humanity in the Bible begins with God saying, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). What does it mean that God made us? Or that we’re made in his image?
Christianity maintains that God created us from nothing (ex nihilo) like all other things, but in a special way—formed from dust and animated by God’s breath (Gen. 2:7). We aren’t made literally in God’s image because he has no physical form. “God is spirit” (John 4:24), and even if he weren’t, “no one has ever seen God” (1 John 4:12). How could we verify we resemble someone we can’t see—the Lord Almighty dwelling in “light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see” (1 Tim. 6:16, KJV)? Christians rest their conviction on the testimony of the Bible.
According to Mormonism, one man saw God and noted his physical form in a vision.
According to Mormonism, though, one man saw God and noted his physical form in a vision. That man is Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and his vision led him to suggest humans are more like God than Christians previously thought.
Different Origin Story
Smith taught that humans existed long before the formation of the world. “The spirit of man is not a created being,” Smith explained, “it existed from eternity and will exist to eternity.” We share a state of intelligence that is “coequal with God himself,” he said. We’re also made of the same thing as God, an uncreated matter that has existed “in an elementary state from Eternity.” Our spirits took their first step toward mortality after being born to Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. Thus, all persons are spirit children of God and siblings to one another. The firstborn child of God, Jesus, isn’t merely like a brother to those he saves (Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:11). He is our brother, and we lived with him in a heavenly family, growing in knowledge and holiness and endlessly worshiping the Father until receiving earthly bodies in mortality.
And that step into mortality was vital. It’s how we continue to grow as God’s children. Just as God progressed to his exalted state, we can too. We grow “from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one”—becoming, according to LDS leaders, “as great as you will want to be—as great as God Himself” (Lorenzo Snow, “The Grand Destiny of Man,” Deseret Evening News, July 20, 1901). We can never exceed God’s greatness, of course, so he’ll always be owed our worship. But we can attain his exalted state and share many of his experiences. It’s speculated within Mormonism that some people won’t merely be received into the celestial kingdom of God; they’ll receive a celestial kingdom as gods. This doctrine of eternal progression is commonly summarized this way: “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.”
For Christians, this collapse of the Creator-creation distinction is absent from the Bible. As God now is, God has always been; as God always is, man will never be. This is a good thing—it preserves God’s glory beyond our comprehension. “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (Ps. 145:3).
Purpose, Not Physique
Mormonism teaches that human beings are modeled after God’s physical form, having been made “in the image of his own body,” according to LDS scripture. “If you were to see [God] today,” Smith clarified, “you would see him in all the person, image, and very form as a man.” Mormonism interprets words like “image” and “likeness” (Gen. 1:26) in concrete terms, breaking from the biblical doctrine that God is an invisible spirit (e.g., Ex. 33:20; Deut. 4:15; Luke 24:39; John 1:18; 4:24; Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17).
This collapse of the Creator-creation distinction is absent from the Bible.
For Christianity, though, the doctrine of imago Dei speaks to our purpose, not our physique. We exist, in part, to remind the world of its Creator through our love, rationality, and activity, created as God’s image to the world, representing the One who is spiritually present though physically absent. Sin, of course, has blunted our mission, marring God’s image in us, which is why by faith in Christ we are “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Col. 3:10, KJV).
And in the end, we will be partakers in—not members of—God’s divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4).
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