Cults and the Church Fathers Deify Man
Cults and the Church Fathers Deify Man

What the Cults and the Church Fathers Have In Common

There is a subtle tension in traditional Christian theology extending from the fact that both Jesus and the everyday Christian are called “sons of God” in scripture. Because Jesus’ deity is seen as flowing from his sonship, the very natural conclusion is often reached that Christians must also be divine, because we are also described as sons of God. In response to this dynamic, modern theologians now try to separate Jesus’ sonship from the Christian’s sonship toward the Father. However, older traditions took a more consistent course that looks much more like the modern cults than modern trinitarianism. Simply put, both the cults and the church fathers tend to deify man, espousing a belief in the idea that we become gods in our own right.

Jim Jones and Irenaeus

Consider for example Jim Jones, the infamous cult leader who used his divine authority to induce the mass suicide of over 900 people. Jones believed in a version of divine sonship known as the manifest sons of God doctrine, which developed within the Latter Rain branch of Pentecostalism under the influence of William Branham. According to this doctrine, Christ so identified with the Church that in the latter days, he would begin doing a divine work through the Church that flowed out of an increasingly divine nature, manifest especially in particular sons of God with a prophetic ministry.

Come close to this, which I have found in God, and live it and look at it and breathe it, and if you look, you will live. And then you will reproduce this spirit… That’s my desire. I did not come this far by faith, to just end this race as being one manifested son. I am in a school of prophets. This thing is, as I said, as reincarnatable as the breath you breathe. It’s just as reincarnatable as the smile of a child, and we want to learn God’s ways. Live him and personify him. Say, why haven’t you sent people out with the gifts before now? You’ve got to have the fruits of the spirit.

— Jim Jones, 1972, Annotated Transcript Q1054-4

Hallelujah hallelujah. Hallelujah hallelujah. [Jesus] Said the time’s gonna come when you no longer pray to me, you’ll speak to the Father directly. [He] Said you’ll no longer ask me to go to the Father, but you’ll speak to the Father directly. We’re not in a praying house here, we’re in a speaking house. The Spoken Word is here. The Word is made flesh… The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own…authority or understanding. The Father dwells in me, he’s doing the speaking. But when you see your Father, you see me, you’ve seen the Father, and vice versa. If you just believe in me, I can give you the keynote to salvation. I’ve got it. I’ve got it. You just believe in me.

— Jim Jones, 1972, Annotated Transcript 353

Jim Jones drew much of his religious power over others from the claim that he was God manifest in the flesh, a son of God who was like Jesus in his divine nature. Through Jones’ mass suicide and other abuses, we can easily see the totalitarian fruit of such a doctrine. However, if we criticize the cults for twisting Christianity into something new and deformed, we should also criticize the church fathers for twisting Christianity into something new and deformed. Whatever their motives may have been for distorting biblical teaching in this area, the deification of man stands at the root of historic trinitarian orthodoxy as much as it does cult theology. While the early church would have certainly opposed the extent to which Jones and other cultists took divine sonship, many of the cults and the church fathers nevertheless share this same core belief — that redeemed man becomes a little god either in this life, or in the next.

I most often cite Athanasius on this point, due to his role in securing the trinity as unquestionable orthodoxy in the post-nicene church. He provides us with the succinct statement, “For [Jesus] was made man that we might be made God,” an idea which he supported and elaborated throughout his work, On the Incarnation of the Word. But since there’s already a full article developing Athanasius’ theology of human deification, we’ll look instead at Irenaeus’ description of the doctrine in Against Heresies.

For we cast blame upon Him [God], because we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods; although God has adopted this course out of His pure benevolence, that no one may impute to Him invidiousness or grudgingness. He declares, “I have said, Ye are gods; and ye are all sons of the Highest.” But since we could not sustain the power of divinity, He adds, “But ye shall die like men,” setting forth both truths—the kindness of His free gift, and our weakness, and also that we were possessed of power over ourselves.

— Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 4

Irenaeus here cites a favorite psalm of cultists, Psalm 82, which establishes some group of created beings as gods alongside the true and the living God, Yahweh. Typical modern interpretations generally conclude that these are either angels or earthly civil rulers. But it was common in earlier days of the Church to view these as human beings who received a portion of the divine nature of God, similar in some way to Christ.

Remarkably, there is much in scripture to support such an idea, when we read the text through the lens of trinitarian presuppositions. In addition to the sonship parallel between Christ and the Christian, we know that Christians also become temples of God in parallel to the way in which Jesus is a temple of God (e.g. 1Pe 2:4-7). If we agree with traditional theology that Jesus’ deity is reflected in his role as the temple of God on earth (citing e.g. Col 1:19, 2:9), then glorifying redeemed man unto incarnated deity would be an understandable byproduct of that view, with consistent application of the doctrine leading to cultists like Jones. Modern (non-cultic) trinitarianism therefore has to struggle against the parallels in scripture in order to keep Christ and the Christian separate in their respective temple statuses, as it does with their statuses as sons. It seems that in both the question of divine sonship, and the status of divinity afforded to one who is a temple of God, the historic/cultic view is more consistent in that it draws Christ and the Christian together as God in the flesh, whereas modern theology superimposes an artificial separation onto scripture to deal with the harmful implications of deifying everyday Christians.

More From the Cults and the Church Fathers

There are many in the cults and the church fathers who have deified man as an outworking of their deification of Christ. An alternative approach is to keep man a mere creature by making Jesus into a mere creature, as we see in Arianism, Latter Day Saints, and Jehovah’s Witness theology. Either way, because Christians assume that Jesus’ deity flows out of his sonship and his union with God as a living temple, what happens to Christ tends to happen to the Christian for those who are consistent in their theology, because of the biblical parallels that are drawn between the two.

A few more quotes to this effect are collected below as further evidence of this dynamic.

For man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not; but by reason of his likeness to Him that is (and if he still preserved this likeness by keeping Him in his knowledge) he would stay his natural corruption, and remain incorrupt; as Wisdom [ Wisdom 6:18 ] says: ” The taking heed to His laws is the assurance of immortality; ” but being incorrupt, he would live henceforth as God, to which I suppose the divine Scripture refers, when it says: ” I have said you are gods, and you are all sons of the most Highest; but you die like men, and fall as one of the princes.”

— Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word

[Let man] marvel that by so ordinary a means things divine have been manifested to us, and that by death immortality has reached to all, and that by the Word becoming man, the universal Providence has been known, and its Giver and Artificer the very Word of God. For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.

— Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word

The older writers seem to have associated man’s immortality in the resurrection as flowing out of a divine nature he receives from God. It is often unclear what aspects of God’s nature are communicated to man, and what aspects (if any) remain God’s own, outside of his supremacy and infinitude.

[It follows] that they are not uncreated; but by their continuing in being throughout a long course of ages, they shall receive a faculty of the Uncreated, through the gratuitous bestowal of eternal existence upon them by God. And thus in all things God has the pre-eminence, who alone is uncreated, the first of all things, and the primary cause of the existence of all, while all other things remain under God’s subjection. But being in subjection to God is continuance in immortality, and immortality is the glory of the uncreated One. By this arrangement, therefore, and these harmonies, and a sequence of this nature, man, a created and organized being, is rendered after the image and likeness of the uncreated God…man making progress day by day, and ascending towards the perfect, that is, approximating to the uncreated One…

For we cast blame upon Him, because we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods; although God has adopted this course out of His pure benevolence, that no one may impute to Him invidiousness or grudgingness. He declares, “I have said, Ye are gods; and ye are all sons of the Highest.” But since we could not sustain the power of divinity, He adds, “But ye shall die like men,” setting forth both truths—the kindness of His free gift, and our weakness, and also that we were possessed of power over ourselves. For after His great kindness He graciously conferred good [upon us], and made men like to Himself, [that is] in their own power; while at the same time by His prescience He knew the infirmity of human beings, and the consequences which would flow from it; but through [His] love and [His] power, He shall overcome the substance of created nature. For it was necessary, at first, that nature should be exhibited; then, after that, that what was mortal should be conquered and swallowed up by immortality, and the corruptible by incorruptibility, and that man should be made after the image and likeness of God, having received the knowledge of good and evil.

— Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 4

This offers the fuller context of the earlier quote, establishing that God’s immortality is the primary aspect of his divinity that Irenaeus has in mind. Nevertheless, he sees a change in man’s nature such that man is deified into godhood, in keeping with cultic theology.

Well, then, you say, we ourselves at that rate possess nothing of God. But indeed we do, and shall continue to do—only it is from Him that we receive it, and not from ourselves. For we shall be even gods, if we, shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, “I have said, Ye are gods,” and, “God standeth in the congregation of the gods.” But this comes of His own grace, not from any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods.

— Tertullian, Against Hermogenes

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible—I say, 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; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.

In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.

These ideas are incomprehensible to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible…

A question may be asked—“Will mothers have their children in eternity?” Yes! Yes! Mothers, you shall have your children; for they shall have eternal life, for their debt is paid. There is no damnation awaiting them for they are in the spirit. But as the child dies, so shall it rise from the dead, and be for ever living in the learning of God. It will never grow [in the grave]; it will still be the child, in the same precise form [when it rises] as it appeared before it died out of its mother’s arms, but possessing all the intelligence of a God.

— Joseph Smith, The King Follet Sermon

Aside from image-bearing (a third parallel used by the church fathers to deify man), the above sermon doesn’t particularly tap into the theological/biblical concepts developed by the church fathers. However, LDS resources often reference this sermon when giving commentary on the relevant passages about sonship.

Unlike the church fathers, Joseph Smith denies the uniqueness and transcendence of God, making him an exalted man. But like the church fathers, he still deified man in the resurrection, on account of this parallel between Christ and the Christian.

From a worldview standpoint, this deification of man only really makes him a more powerful creature, since the parallel between man and Christ (etc.) as divine sons of God is a based on a reduction of God and Christ to mere creaturehood. So LDS theology is more like arianism and Jehovah’s Witness theology than manifest sons of God and trinitarianism. Yet all draw a parallel between the deity of Christ and the deity of the Christian, simply changing what is meant by the concept of deity.

Now, Jesus came in three names. Son of man, which is a prophet; Son of God, which went through the Church age; then Son of David. But in between the Son of God and Son of David, according to His Own Word, and according to Malachi 4 and many Scriptures, He’s to return back into His Church, in physical form, in the people, in a…in human beings, in the way of being a prophet.

— William Branham, Does God Change His Mind?

And Elijah was not…That wasn’t Elijah; That was the Spirit of God on Elijah; Elijah was just a man. Now, we’ve had Elijahs, and Elijahs’ coats, and Elijahs’ mantles, and Elijahs’ everything. But the Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is to come according to Matthew the seventeen-…Luke 17:30, is, the Son of man is to reveal Himself among His people. Not a man, God! But it’ll come through a prophet.

— William Branham, Trying To Do God A Service Without It Being God’s Will

Could you think, church, that you’re looking with your own eyes…The living Word of God made manifest, the promise of the hour, in the last days, looking with your own eyes at the living Word being interpreted in natural form, God among us! “I see Him with my own eyes, the One…I heard that He would do it.” All the old sages looked for this day, now we see It manifested with our own eye.

— William Branham, I Have Heard But Now I See

William Branham is a key, forgotten figure in Pentecostal history who shaped the modern landscape of the movement, and whose influence led to the creation of the New Apostolic Reformation. His manifest sons of God theology is expressed in the above quotes, implying that he himself was God among man. Other apostolic leaders like Jim Jones would make similar claims, or otherwise build authoritarian ministries off of this teaching.

We believe there is a special significance in the fact that there were “two” goats used on the Day of Atonement. As we have discovered in a previous chapter, “two” would speak of the Head and the Body, Christ in the fullness of His people. For Christ is one, but a many-membered Body.

This is a great mystery, as Paul tells us, that the Church should be bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh. Christ the Head, therefore, is not complete without Christ the Body. In the “two” goats, therefore, we have (in type) Christ in the fullness of His Body. That the saints are to become thoroughly identified with Christ in His sufferings and in His Cross, is clearly taught in the Scriptures; but the mystery of it is almost too much for us to comprehend, even in the slightest degree. It is only as we can begin to see the truth of the Body, that we can in any measure comprehend the fact that when He died, we died; and that when He rose again, then we rose again with Him.

To many, of course, this truth of our identification with Christ the Head is nothing less than blasphemy. But this is to be expected. When Jesus called Himself the Son of God they said “Thou blasphemest.” And yet now we hail Him King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Man of very Man, and God of very God. And the ages to come are going to reveal, what is now revealed by the Spirit to those whose understandings have been quickened, that Christ is the Body, — the whole Body, and not just the Head. The Church is said to grow up “into Christ” (Eph 4:15). Just as a “man” signifies a body with many members, and not just a head; so the name “Christ” also signifies a Body with many members. Paul therefore says, “For as the body is one, and hath many members, …so also is Christ” (1Co 12:12).

Using another illustration, Christ is the Vine, the whole Vine. “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (Jhn 15:5). He is the Vine, the root, the stalk, the branches, the leaves, the fruit — the whole vine; and we are part of that Vine. The Lord does not intimate here that He is one thing, and we another. But He is the Vine, and we are part of Him. The Son of Man in Heaven is not complete without the fullness of the Son of Man on earth, even the Body, “The fullness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph 1:23).

— George Warnock, The Feast of Tabernacles

George Warnock developed the biblical/ideological framework that would formalize William Branham’s manifest sons of God doctrine. While his language is more vague than other expressions of it, the core concept is clear — the Church is joined with Christ in her divine nature, creating an expectation of regular supernatural manifestations.

Recovering From the Cults and the Church Fathers

Both the historic/cultic and the modern/orthodox understandings of the Christian’s relationship with deity have their problems. The cults and the church fathers deify man in contradiction to scriptures which render Jesus as uniquely God among men (John 20:27-29, Rev 22:8-9). Modern orthodoxy on the other hand so separates Jesus from his brethren that our familial relationship as sons of God is broken, and not a single living stone is left standing upon the cornerstone of God’s temple.

For my part, I currently suspect that the best resolution will come when we distinguish between Jesus’ divine personhood and his divine nature. By this I mean that the Word not only dwells within Jesus, but it also unites with and drives his human personality. When we speak with Jesus, we are speaking with the person of the Word, not merely a human temple within which the Word dwells. This divine personhood allows Jesus to wield the divine power dwelling within him in a way that normal Christians cannot. For the Christian, despite our high and shared status as sons and temples of God, the Holy Spirit simply dwells within us; we do not speak and act as if we were the Holy Spirit himself.

In any case, I believe the point is made that the cults and the church fathers have more in common regarding the deification of man than modern orthodoxy would find comfortable. This should lead us to view the historic accomplishments of the Church with a more humble and critical eye, and make us willing to reform even the most cherished doctrines when scripture demands it. The answer to the cults is not a return to historic church doctrine, with patches to cover and fix only the most embarrassing parts. The answer is a return to scripture — to elevate God’s word as the authority for everything we think and do as Christians, whether it critiques our past, present, or future beliefs.

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History Articles: Athanasius

Athanasius proffered a view of Jesus that seems to have diminished his true humanity. Whereas modern theologians recognize that Jesus had a truly human body and soul, Athanasius treated the Word as if it replaced the human soul of Jesus, merely occupying a human body. Such a view compromises the ability of Jesus to be tempted as a man, or to have incomplete knowledge about a subject (like the timing of his return), attributes of his humanity that are represented in the gospel testimonies about him.

Gnosticism is one of the oldest rivals of Christianity, which often tried to assimilate Christian ideas into an anti-material worldview. While Athanasius opposed the gnostics, his counterarguments agree with them in their devaluing of the material world, with anti-materialism serving a foundational role in his system of theology.

The impact of anti-materialism on Christian thought is one of the most enduring and destructive trends in the history of ideas, being seen to this day in the Christian’s focus on heavenly and spiritual pursuits, at the expense of earthly matters like politics, economics, human rights, and culture, etc.

Athanasius viewed the relationship of God to man in a way that deified mankind, making us “little gods” of a sort. For Athenasius, mankind is corrupt on account of his physicality, meaning that because we were formed out of nothing, we return back to nothing when we fail to contemplate the divine Word of God. This contemplation of God maintains the image of God in man, which in turn serves as our portion of God’s divinity.

Athanasius’s understanding of man is that we are created with a natural tendency toward corruption, i.e. nonexistence. Our contemplation of the Word is what stays this corruption, therefore fallen man degrades back into nothingness, given his focus on the material world. The resulting end of fallen man is thus to become nonexistent rather than suffer eternally in the fires of Hell, a doctrine known as annihilationism.

Pattern Christology

Jesus has two natures — an uncreated divine nature, and a created human nature.

Jesus is truly God, meaning that his divine nature predates the existence of the universe, and has all of the attributes of monotheistic, biblical divinity (omniscience, omnipotence etc.). He is not a lesser, created god, but rather exists eternally before and outside of time as the one true God.

Jesus is truly man, meaning that his human nature is truly descended from Adam. From the moment of conception onward, he has (and forever will have) a human body comprised of matter and energy, and a human soul with its own distinct intellect and will. He is not a mirage or apparition; he truly lived a real, human life among us, while simultaneously possessing and displaying his divinity through miraculous works and words of life.

Like the title “son of man,” the title “son of God” describes Jesus’ created, human nature. Adam, Jesus, and the Christian are all described as sons of God because we are in the form/image/likeness of God. Both divine and human activities are ascribed to Jesus through both titles, because of their contextual meaning (Jesus is a particular son of man who is divine; Jesus is a particular son of God who is divine). But the title “son of God” fundamentally describes his human nature and human relationship to God.

At least one scripture exists that describes Jesus as having a father/son relationship with God prior to his incarnation as a man. If Jesus’ sonship is through his humanity, then this presents a challenge to pattern christology, because his human relationship with God predates his existence as a man.

Trinitarians turn to Jesus’ divinity to explain this preincarnate sonship. Patternists, on the other hand, maintain that he was the son of God through a “preincarnate hypostatic union” (union of God and creature) known as the angel of the Lord. Prior to the incarnation, Jesus was truly God, and truly angelic (or at least a true creature). This allows the person of the son to exist from the moment that God first created light, without compromising his true divinity.

Like trinitarians, patternists believe that Jesus has two natures that together form a single person. Unlike trinitarians, we also affirm that each nature is distinctly personal, and that Jesus can behave as a single unified person, or as two distinct persons (often identified as the Father and the Son). Scripture shows us that Jesus has a human mind and human will that are distinct from his divine mind and divine will. This implies that Jesus’ human and divine natures are distinctly personal.

Pattern christology therefore agrees with both orthodox christology (belief in a single person), and nestorianism (belief in two distinct persons). This is not a contradiction, because scripture supports the idea of two (or more) persons becoming and behaving as one person.

God dwells in Jesus as a human temple, similar to how he dwells in a Christian, but with a few differences. First, Jesus is described as God incarnate, and we are not. Second, God dwells in Christ through the divine person of the Word, whereas he dwells in the Christian through the divine person of the Holy Spirit.

These two temples correspond to the two persons in the godhead. God is a composite union of two persons who are one, the Word and the Spirit. The term “Father” is used to denote the godhead as a whole, the composite union of Word and Spirit. Thus it is accurate to say that the Father (God) dwells in Christ through the Word, and the Father (God) dwells in the Christian through the Spirit.