The image of Heavenly Father embracing His mortal son on the throne beautifully captures the LDS vision of exaltation: we’re literal spirit children of divine parents, sharing the same divine essence at different stages of progression—like a family reunion where Dad’s already fully glorified, and the guy’s still got dirt on his jeans from earth life, but the hug says, “Same kind, same potential, just keep growing.”
The Creator-Creature Distinction
A Comparative Theological Analysis:
“Are Mormons Christian?” Series
Introduction
Among the most consequential theological questions any religious system must answer are those about the nature of God, the essence of humanity, and the relationship between Creator and creature. These foundational inquiries form the discipline of theological anthropology, which addresses what it means to be human in relation to the divine. When examining the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alongside orthodox Christian doctrine, one encounters not merely subtle differences of emphasis or interpretation, but fundamentally divergent metaphysical frameworks that shape every subsequent theological affirmation.
The purpose of this article is to provide a careful, scholarly examination of Latter-day Saint theology regarding anthropology, the essence of God, and the creation of humanity. By comparing these teachings with the historic Christian faith as expressed through the New Testament, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the theological consensus that has developed over two millennia of Christian reflection, we shall demonstrate how these two theological systems stand in fundamental opposition on matters essential to the Christian gospel.
This examination proceeds from a commitment to scholarly fairness and theological precision. It is not the author’s intention to misrepresent Latter-day Saint beliefs or to employ unnecessarily polemical language. Rather, this analysis seeks to allow both traditions to speak in their own terms while subjecting both to the standard of biblical revelation rightly interpreted within the stream of historic Christian orthodoxy.
Introduction to Latter-day Saint Theology on Anthropology
The Doctrine of Pre-existence and Divine Parentage
Latter-day Saint anthropology begins with the premise that human beings existed as spirit children of divine parents before their mortal birth. The official LDS manual Gospel Principles declares: “All men and women are literally the sons and daughters of God. ‘Man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father, prior to coming upon the earth in a temporal [physical] body.'” This teaching establishes what LDS theologians regard as the most intimate possible relationship between humanity and deity: not merely that of Creator and creature, but that of literal parentage.
The implications of this doctrine are far-reaching. According to LDS teaching, every human being possesses within themselves the divine potential inherited from their heavenly parents. The Gospel Principles manual further states: “Because we are the spirit children of God, we have inherited the potential to develop His divine qualities. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can become like our Heavenly Father and receive a fulness of joy.” This concept fundamentally reshapes the understanding of human nature, destiny, and relationship to God.
Intelligence as Eternal and Uncreated
Beyond the doctrine of pre-mortal spirit existence, LDS theology teaches that the most fundamental element of human identity—called “intelligence”—has existed eternally and was never created, even by God. Doctrine and Covenants 93:29 states: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” This remarkable claim positions eternal, uncreated intelligence as co-eternal with God himself.
But this teaching immediately raises an obvious and unavoidable question: exactly where did intelligence come from?
If intelligence was “not created or made, neither indeed can be,” then it simply exists—eternally, inexplicably, without cause or origin. It has no author, no source, no explanation for its being. In LDS cosmology, intelligence isn’t the product of divine creative power; it’s raw metaphysical material that has always been there, floating in the eternal backdrop like cosmic lumber waiting to be assembled.
This creates a profound philosophical problem. Orthodox Christianity confesses that God alone is self-existent—that He is the uncaused cause, the necessary being upon whom all contingent things depend for their existence. Everything that exists, exists because God either is that existence (in His own nature) or granted that existence (through creation). There is no unexplained remainder, no eternal stuff sitting alongside God that He didn’t author.
But LDS theology posits a universe where God encounters pre-existing intelligences He did not create and cannot fully explain. He organizes them, clothes them in spirit bodies, and fathers them in some sense—but He is not their ultimate origin. They simply are, and always have been, just as He merely is and always has been.
The question “where did intelligence come from?” thus receives a startling answer in LDS thought: nowhere. It came from nowhere because it never came into being at all. It is eternal, uncreated, and co-existent with deity, making God not the sole ground of all reality, but merely the most advanced organizer of realities He did not originate.
The LDS Church’s Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual attempts to explain this teaching, but the explanation ultimately concedes explanatory defeat. President Joseph Fielding Smith taught: “Some of our writers have endeavored to explain what an intelligence is, but to do so is futile, for we have never been given any insight into this matter beyond what the Lord has fragmentarily revealed. We know, however, that there is something called intelligence which always existed. It is the real eternal part of man, which was not created or made.”
Notice what is happening here. When pressed on the fundamental nature of this eternal, uncreated intelligence—this bedrock element upon which the entire LDS understanding of human identity and divine-human continuity depends—official LDS teaching essentially circles the wagons and declares the question unanswerable. We cannot know what intelligence actually is. The revelation is admittedly “fragmentary.” Attempts at explanation are “futile.”
This represents a remarkable epistemic retreat. The LDS Church makes an extraordinarily bold metaphysical claim—that uncreated intelligences exist co-eternally with God, that they form the irreducible core of human personhood, and that God Himself did not originate them—yet when asked to provide any substantive account of what these intelligences actually are, how they function, or why they exist, the response amounts to a theological shrug. We don’t know. We can’t know. Don’t ask.
One might reasonably wonder: if LDS prophets and scriptures cannot explain the very foundation of their anthropology, on what basis should anyone accept it as revealed truth? The church claims to possess restored knowledge unavailable to historic Christianity, yet on this crucial point—arguably the linchpin of the entire “God and man are the same species” framework—it pleads ignorance and asks its members to simply trust that “there is something called intelligence which always existed.”
This is not a minor gap in theological detail. This is a load-bearing wall with no visible foundation.
This teaching has profound implications for the doctrine of divine sovereignty. If human intelligence is eternal and uncreated, existing independently of God’s creative will, then God’s sovereignty over human beings is fundamentally limited. God becomes not the absolute Creator of all that exists, but rather an organizer and developer of pre-existing eternal entities.
The Organizational God: Divine Limitations in LDS Cosmology
The implications of uncreated, co-eternal intelligence extend far beyond abstract metaphysics—they fundamentally reshape the nature of God Himself. If intelligences have always existed independent of divine creative activity, then God’s role shifts from Creator to Organizer, from the self-existent ground of all being to something more akin to a cosmic contractor working with materials He did not manufacture.
LDS scripture makes this organizational role explicit. Abraham 3:22 describes God’s pre-mortal activity: “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones.” Note the careful verb choice: intelligences were organized, not created. God surveyed what already existed, identified the noble and great among the pre-existing stock, and arranged them for His purposes.
This is not the God of Genesis 1, who speaks and ex nihilo—out of nothing—reality leaps into existence at His command. This is not the God whom the prophet Isaiah quotes as declaring, “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness.” (Isaiah 45:6-7). The biblical God does not discover pre-existing materials; He authors existence itself. Creation is not organization—it is origination.
But the God of LDS theology operates under a different set of constraints. He encounters a universe already populated with eternal intelligences, eternal matter, and eternal laws that He Himself did not establish. His work is impressive, certainly—clothing intelligences in spirit bodies, organizing worlds, establishing plans of salvation—but it is the work of an exceptionally powerful being operating within a system, not the work of an all-sovereign deity who is the system’s source.
The Sovereignty Problem
This organizational framework creates what might be called the sovereignty problem. If intelligences are self-existent and uncreated, then they possess a kind of metaphysical independence from God. He did not grant them being; He cannot, in any ultimate sense, be said to own them. Their existence is not contingent upon His will; they would exist whether He existed or not.
Consider the practical implications. In orthodox Christian theology, God’s sovereignty over creation is total precisely because creation is His—it exists only because He chose to call it into being and sustains it moment by moment. As Paul declared to the Athenians, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The creature’s absolute dependence upon the Creator forms the foundation of divine authority, divine ownership, and ultimately divine grace. God can save because He made. He can judge because all things exist at His pleasure.
But what authority does an organizer have over materials he did not create? If my intelligence has existed eternally—if it predates my Heavenly Father’s involvement with it—then in what sense am I truly His? He shaped me, perhaps. He provided an opportunity for my progression. But He did not author my fundamental existence. At my deepest core, I am not His creation; I am His project.
This is no small theological difference. It is the difference between a child and an artifact, between a creature wholly dependent on its Creator and an autonomous entity that entered into a beneficial arrangement with a more advanced being.
The Problem of Divine Necessity
A further difficulty emerges when we ask why God bothers with intelligences at all. In classical Christian theism, God creates freely—not out of need, but out of the overflow of His own perfect being and love. He was not lonely before creation; the eternal fellowship of the Trinity was infinitely complete. Creation adds nothing to God; it is pure gift, pure grace, the free decision of a self-sufficient deity to share existence with beings who contribute nothing He lacked.
But if intelligences are eternal and uncreated, and if God’s work consists of organizing them into spirit children and providing them pathways to exaltation, then a question naturally arises: what is God getting out of this arrangement?
LDS theology has an answer, and it is remarkably transactional. The Pearl of Great Price records God’s stated purpose: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). God’s glory, in this framework, is tied to human progression. His work is the exaltation of intelligence. Far from being self-sufficient, the LDS God appears to derive His purpose—indeed, His glory—from the successful advancement of beings He did not create.
This inverts the classical understanding entirely. Rather than creation existing for God’s glory, God exists (in some functional sense) for creation’s advancement. The intelligences do not need God for their existence—they have always existed. But God, it seems, needs the intelligences to fulfill His own work and achieve His own glory.
One might ask: who, then, is really dependent on whom?
The Goal of Exaltation: Becoming Gods
Perhaps the most distinctive element of LDS anthropology is the doctrine of exaltation, which teaches that faithful Latter-day Saints may progress to become gods themselves. Lorenzo Snow, the fifth president of the LDS Church, articulated this teaching in his famous couplet: “As man is now, God once was; as God is now man may be.” This statement encapsulates the LDS understanding of the continuity between divine and human nature.
The Gospel Principles manual describes this destiny: “We would receive the fulness of joy that our Heavenly Father has received. If we passed our tests, we would receive the fulness of joy that our Heavenly Father has received.” Doctrine and Covenants 132:19-20 promises that those who attain exaltation “shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers” and “then shall they be gods, because they have no end.”
Joseph Smith himself taught this doctrine explicitly in his King Follett Discourse of April 1844: “Here, then, is eternal life—to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves… by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace… until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.”
Orthodox Christian Doctrine on the Essence of God and Human Creation
The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity and Aseity
The historic Christian understanding of God’s nature stands in stark contrast to the LDS conception. Orthodox Christian theology affirms that God possesses what theologians call “divine simplicity” and “aseity.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines divine simplicity as the doctrine that “God is radically unlike creatures and cannot be adequately understood in ways appropriate to them. God is simple in that God transcends every form of complexity and composition familiar to the discursive intellect.”
The aseity of God refers to His self-existence and complete independence from all other beings. As CompellingTruth.org explains: “The aseity of God is His eternal, un-created, un-changing nature, His complete sovereignty, and His supreme self-sufficiency.” God’s existence originates from no other source and does not depend on anything else. He is self-sustaining, eternal, and unchanging.
These doctrines are grounded in the biblical revelation. When God reveals His name to Moses at the burning bush, He declares: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14, ESV). This self-designation communicates God’s absolute self-existence and independence from all created things. The prophet Isaiah records God’s declaration: “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior.” (Isaiah 43:10-11, ESV).
The Creator-Creature Distinction
Central to orthodox Christian theology is what theologians call the “Creator-creature distinction”—an absolute ontological divide between God and everything He has made. The Chalcedon Foundation’s analysis of Christian metaphysics emphasizes that this distinction is fundamental to biblical religion. God alone possesses necessary existence; all creatures exist contingently as the result of God’s free creative will.
The biblical witness is emphatic on this point. The Apostle Paul declares that God “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” and that “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:25, 28, ESV). The prophet Zechariah affirms that the LORD “formed the spirit of man within him” (Zechariah 12:1, ESV). Isaiah likewise records: “I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself” (Isaiah 44:24, ESV).
This Creator-creature distinction means that while humans are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), they do not share His essence or fundamental nature. The image of God (imago Dei) refers to humanity’s unique capacity to reflect God’s character in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and to exercise dominion over creation as God’s vice-regents. It does not imply ontological continuity between human and divine nature.
The creator-creature distinction is a core theological concept highlighting the absolute, qualitative difference between God (the infinite, eternal Creator) and everything He made (finite, temporal creatures), emphasizing God’s transcendence, independence, and unchangeable nature versus humanity’s dependence, limitations, and mutability, preventing creatures from thinking or acting as if they have divine attributes or autonomy. This distinction underpins biblical teachings on God’s lordship, human need for Him, and the proper understanding of worship and self-knowledge, with pride often arising from forgetting this fundamental relationship.
Key Aspects of the Distinction:
- God (Creator): Infinite, eternal, unchangeable, self-sufficient, sovereign, the source of all being, wisdom, and power.
- Humanity (Creature): Finite, temporal, dependent, made in God’s image, limited in knowledge and power, created to reflect God but not be God.
Implications of the Distinction:
- Dependence & Submission: Humans are not self-sufficient and must live in submission to God’s authority, recognizing Him as the ultimate reference point.
- Avoiding Anthropomorphism: Prevents projecting human qualities onto God or assuming God is like us; God is incomprehensible in His essence.
- Source of Wisdom: Correctly understanding this distinction leads to seeking God as the source of true wisdom and delight, rather than self-sufficiency.
- Theological Foundation: It’s essential for understanding scripture, God’s providence, and orthodox Christology (like the Hypostatic Union) without confusing divine and human natures
Creation Ex Nihilo
Orthodox Christianity has historically affirmed the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo—creation out of nothing. This doctrine maintains that God brought the universe into existence by His word alone, without the use of pre-existing material. The author of Hebrews affirms: “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” (Hebrews 11:3, ESV).
The significance of creatio ex nihilo cannot be overstated. If God created from pre-existing eternal matter, then something other than God would share His attribute of eternality. This would compromise His unique status as the only self-existent being and would limit His sovereignty over creation. The doctrine ensures that God is truly the ultimate source of all reality, upon whom everything else depends for its existence.
Orthodox Understanding of Theosis
It is important to acknowledge that historic Christianity, particularly in its Eastern Orthodox expression, has maintained a doctrine of “theosis” or “deification.” However, this doctrine differs fundamentally from LDS teaching on becoming gods. As GotQuestions.org explains: “The Eastern Orthodox Church is staunchly Trinitarian, and the term deification should not be misunderstood to imply that a human being can actually become God or a god… It is said that man cannot become one with God in His essence, but he can become one with His energies.”
The Church Father Athanasius famously wrote that Christ “became man that we might be made divine,” but this statement must be understood within its proper theological context. Athanasius was not teaching that humans could become gods of the same ontological status as the one true God. Rather, he was describing the transformative work of grace by which believers participate in God’s communicable attributes while never crossing the Creator-creature divide.
The Apostle Peter’s affirmation that believers may “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4, ESV) has been consistently interpreted by orthodox theologians as referring to participation in God’s moral attributes through sanctification, not to an ontological transformation into deity. The context of Peter’s statement concerns escaping “the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire”—clearly a moral rather than metaphysical transformation.
Comparative Analysis
The Nature of God: A Fundamental Divergence
The Gospel Coalition’s analysis of Mormon beliefs about God identifies several critical points of divergence from historic Christianity. First, Latter-day Saint theology teaches that God the Father was once a man who progressed to godhood. Joseph Smith declared in his King Follett Discourse: “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” This teaching directly contradicts the biblical affirmation of God’s eternal, unchanging nature (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17).
Second, LDS doctrine teaches that God possesses a physical body of flesh and bones. Doctrine and Covenants 130:22 states: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also.” This teaching stands in direct contradiction to Jesus’ declaration that “God is spirit” (John 4:24, ESV) and to the numerous biblical passages affirming God’s incorporeality and invisibility (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16; Colossians 1:15).
Third, the LDS conception of the Godhead as “three separate personages and three Gods” (Joseph Smith) differs fundamentally from the Trinitarian monotheism affirmed by historic Christianity. While orthodox Christians affirm one God eternally existing in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who share the same divine essence, LDS theology affirms three distinct gods united only in purpose.
The Origin and Nature of Humanity
The divergence in anthropology flows directly from the differing conceptions of God. If, as LDS theology teaches, God and humans are fundamentally the same species at different stages of development, then the gap between Creator and creature is bridged in principle. The FAIR Latter-day Saints apologetics organization acknowledges this distinctive teaching: “Latter-day Saints see all people as children of God in a full and complete sense; they consider every person divine in origin, nature, and potential.”
In contrast, orthodox Christianity maintains that while humans bear God’s image, they are categorically different from God in their being. Humans are created; God is uncreated. Humans are finite; God is infinite. Humans are contingent; God is necessary. Humans exist by God’s sustaining will; God exists by His own nature. These distinctions are not merely matters of degree but of fundamental ontological category.
The LDS teaching that human intelligence is eternal and uncreated represents perhaps the most radical departure from Christian orthodoxy. If something within humans exists eternally independent of God’s creative will, then God’s sovereignty is fundamentally limited. He becomes not the absolute source of all reality but merely a higher being among eternally existing intelligences. This view cannot be reconciled with biblical texts such as Isaiah 45:5-715 I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, 6 that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. 7 I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things., which affirm God’s exclusive existence and universal creative power.
The Destiny of Humanity: Exaltation versus Glorification
Both traditions affirm a glorious destiny for the redeemed, but they conceive of that destiny in fundamentally different terms. LDS theology teaches that faithful members may become gods, creating and ruling their own worlds. Orthodox Christianity teaches that believers will be glorified, transformed into the likeness of Christ, and will dwell in God’s presence forever—but will never become ontologically divine.
President Brigham Young stated:
The Lord created you and me for the purpose of becoming Gods like Himself … The Lord has organized mankind for the express purpose of increasing in that intelligence and truth, which is with God, until he is capable of creating worlds on worlds, and becoming Gods, even the sons of God. (Journal of Discourses 3:93).
The Apostle Paul describes the Christian hope: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29, ESV). This conformity to Christ’s image involves moral transformation and bodily resurrection, not apotheosis into deity. John likewise writes: “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2, ESV). Being “like” Christ in His glorified humanity is fundamentally different from becoming gods equal to or alongside the Father.
Implications for Faith and Practice
The Gospel and Salvation
The anthropological differences between LDS theology and orthodox Christianity have profound implications for understanding the gospel itself. In orthodox Christianity, salvation is entirely a work of divine grace. Humans are sinners by nature, totally unable to save themselves, and dependent entirely upon God’s initiative in Christ. The gospel is the announcement that God has accomplished in Christ what humans could never do for themselves.
If, however, humans are divine in origin and potential, the nature of salvation changes significantly. The problem is no longer the infinite gulf between holy God and sinful humanity, but rather the incomplete development of inherent divine potential. The solution shifts from receiving an alien righteousness through faith alone to progressing through ordinances and obedience toward an always-potential godhood.
Worship and the Object of Faith
The conception of God necessarily shapes the nature of worship. Orthodox Christian worship is directed to the one true God who alone is worthy of worship because He alone possesses the divine attributes in their fullness and perfection. The God of orthodox Christianity is not simply the greatest among gods, but the only God who exists.
Isaiah records God’s emphatic declaration: “I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God.” (Isaiah 45:5, ESV). This exclusive monotheism is the foundation of biblical worship. The gods of the nations are “worthless idols” (Jeremiah 10:152They are worthless, a work of delusion; at the time of their punishment they shall perish.) precisely because they do not share in God’s unique nature as the self-existent, eternal Creator.
The Authority of Scripture
These theological differences also involve questions of authority. LDS theology is founded upon additional scriptures (the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price) and continuing prophetic revelation. These sources introduce teachings that cannot be derived from the Bible and, in many cases, directly contradict biblical teaching.
Orthodox Christianity maintains that the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments constitute the complete and sufficient written revelation of God. While recognizing the legitimate role of theological interpretation within the church’s tradition, orthodoxy insists that all doctrine must be tested against the biblical standard. Teachings that contradict the clear teaching of Scripture—such as God having once been a man, or humans becoming gods—must be rejected regardless of the claimed authority of their source.
Conclusion
This examination of Latter-day Saint theology regarding anthropology, the essence of God, and the creation of humanity reveals fundamental divergences from historic Christian orthodoxy. These are not minor differences of emphasis or interpretation, but contradictions at the most basic level of theological affirmation. The two traditions operate from different metaphysical foundations and arrive at incompatible conclusions about the nature of God, the origin of humanity, and the destiny of the redeemed.
The LDS teaching that God was once a man contradicts the biblical revelation of God’s eternal, unchanging nature. The doctrine that human intelligence is eternal and uncreated compromises God’s unique aseity and sovereignty. The teaching that humans may become gods violates the absolute Creator-creature distinction that forms the foundation of biblical religion. The conception of the Godhead as three separate gods rather than one God in three persons represents a departure from Trinitarian monotheism.
While Latter-day Saints may seem to be sincerely seeking to follow Christ and live according to their understanding of His teachings, the theological framework within which they understand Christ and His work differs so substantially from historic Christianity that the two cannot be considered expressions of the same faith. The God proclaimed by orthodox Christianity is not the same as the god described in LDS theology. The gospel of grace that brings salvation through faith in Christ’s finished work is not the same as the LDS plan of progression toward personal godhood.
This analysis is offered not in a spirit of animus toward Latter-day Saint believers, but out of concern for theological clarity and biblical fidelity. The differences identified here matter supremely because they concern the nature of the God we worship, the means by which sinners are saved, and the destiny that awaits those who trust in Christ. These are questions upon which eternal realities depend, and they deserve the most careful and honest examination.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, representing the consensus of Reformed orthodoxy, declares: “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.” This God, and this God alone, is worthy of our worship, our trust, and our complete devotion. To Him be glory forever. Amen.
Sources Cited
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Chapter 36: Doctrine and Covenants 93.” Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-student-manual-2017/chapter-36-doctrine-and-covenants-93
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Chapter 2: Our Heavenly Family.” Gospel Principles. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-2-our-heavenly-family
CompellingTruth.org. “What is the aseity of God?” https://www.compellingtruth.org/aseity-of-God.html
Emadi, Matthew. “What Do Mormons Believe About God?” The Gospel Coalition, July 24, 2023. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/mormons-believe-god/
FAIR Latter-day Saints. “Mormonism and the nature of God/Deification of man.” https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Mormonism_and_the_nature_of_God/Deification_of_man
GotQuestions.org. “What is deification in the Eastern Orthodox Church?” https://www.gotquestions.org/deification.html
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Divine Simplicity.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-simplicity/
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Wheaton: Crossway, 2001.