No Weapon Shall Prosper : New Light on Sensitive Issues
Provo, UT
Religious Studies Center, BYU, in cooperation with Deseret Book Company
2011
345-378
Joseph Smith claimed to have received a vision of God and Christ in upstate New York in the spring of 1820. Joseph and his followers also declared that the knowledge of the kind of being we worship and his nature began to come line upon line following the First Vision. Such concepts as the corporeal (physical) nature of God the Father and the belief that men and women could eventually become as God have been regular targets by critics of the Church. The latter doctrine, known in Eastern Christianity as theosis or deification, is a logical extension of Restoration teachings concerning the eternality of God and man. This chapter seeks to respond to some of the most frequently asked questions on this central subject.