Early in pastoral ministry, I became a police chaplain for the department of Sandy, Utah. I didn’t last long.
The head chaplain was a Mormon, and he wanted all the chaplains to unite together regularly for prayer. When I explained to him that I couldn’t do so because we didn’t worship the same God, he was shocked I’d say such a thing. He didn’t understand that using the same terms—God the Father, Son of God, Jesus Christ, Holy Ghost—didn’t mean we meant the same thing.
This gave me an opportunity to explain why the God of the Bible isn’t the God of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and to make it clear that we weren’t praying to, worshiping, or trusting the same God at all.
What, then, do Mormons believe about God? Here are two pillars of their doctrine of God: (1) God the Father is an exalted man and (2) each person of the Godhead is a distinct and separate god.
‘As Man Is Now, God Once Was’
Mormons believe God the Father once existed as a man. In an 1844 sermon known as the King Follett discourse, Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism) said, “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” He went on to say that God “was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth.”
He didn’t understand that using the same terms didn’t mean we prayed to the same God.
Even now in God’s exalted state, Smith claimed, God has a body like ours: “If you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man.” Mormon scriptural canon confirms Smith’s teaching: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22).
If God the Father used to be a man, where did he come from? According to LDS authorities, he came from his father. Orson Pratt, one of the early Mormon apostles, wrote,
We were begotten by our Father in heaven; the person of our Father in heaven was begotten on a previous heavenly world by His Father; and again, He was begotten by a still more ancient Father; and so on, from generation to generation, from one heavenly world to another still more ancient.
Mormons believe there are many worlds with many gods. These gods have children who populate their worlds and can progress toward deification.
The path toward divine exaltation is the goal of every Mormon. Lorenzo Snow, the fifth president of the LDS church, summarized Mormonism’s doctrines of God and deification with one of the most recognizable quotes from a Mormon leader: “As man is now, God once was; as God is now man may be.”
Mormonism teaches that worthy Mormon men may follow the same path as Heavenly Father (“the law of eternal progression”) They can evolve from preexistence to mortal human existence to divine exaltation. Women too may achieve celestial exaltation, becoming like Heavenly Mother, the wife of God the Father, though the LDS church admits their knowledge of Heavenly Mother is limited.
In sum, the LDS God (Heavenly Father) is an exalted man who once lived on a planet like ours. He achieved celestial exaltation, exists with a physical body in the celestial realm, has Heavenly Mother as his eternal wife, and populates our planet with his children.
The Godhead: 3 Gods United in One Purpose
This is enough to establish Mormonism as a polytheistic religion. Still, most Mormons would reject that label; they claim that while they recognize the existence of other gods, they give their worship only to the God of our world. This God, according to Mormonism, is part of a Godhead consisting of three distinct and separate beings: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
The path toward divine exaltation is the goal of every Mormon.
Bruce R. McConkie, a Mormon apostle in the 1970s and early 1980s, explained, “Three separate personages—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—comprise the Godhead. As each of these persons is a God, it is evident, from this standpoint alone, that a plurality of Gods exists.” Joseph Smith similarly claimed Christian trinitarianism is a “popular but erroneous doctrine” and instead referred to the Godhead as “three distinct personages and three Gods.”
The official LDS website contains an article titled “Becoming Like God,” which states, “Latter-day Saints also believe strongly in the fundamental unity of the divine. They believe that God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost, though distinct beings, are unified in purpose and doctrine” (emphasis mine).
Mormonism claims to worship only one God, but they mean one in purpose—not in being.
‘I Am the Lord, and There Is No Other’
The LDS chaplain of the police department failed to recognize that the Bible’s doctrine of God and Mormonism’s doctrine of God are mutually exclusive—they cannot both be true. As the Creator God explicitly declares through the prophet Isaiah, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Isa. 43:10). And similarly in Isaiah 45:5, God says, “I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God.”
Mormonism claims to worship only one God, but they mean one in purpose—not in being.
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) summarizes the biblical teaching about God, providing a stark contrast to Mormon theology:
There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal most just and terrible in His judgments; hating all sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty. (WCF 2.1)
Christians have rightly confessed through the centuries that the only living and true God is triune—one God who exists as three coeternal, coequal persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each person of the Godhead is fully God. They’re identical in essence and equal in power and glory.
Only this triune God, revealed in the pages of his Word, is worthy of our worship. Only this God can save us from our sins. And only this God can hear our prayers.
The Gospel Coalition