Exploring Mormon Thought: Volume 3, Of God and Gods

In his long-anticipated third volume, Of God and Gods, Blake Ostler steps through the common complaint that Mormons aren’t Christians because they believe in three separate individuals in the Godhead as well as the deification of human beings. He demonstrates the clear biblical understanding, both in the precursors of the Old Testament and the New, that Jesus and God the Father were not one in some incomprehensible “substance” while separate in person, but were actually distinct individuals. What made them one was their indwelling love. It is that loving unity into which they invite human beings.

In language and thought accessible to the lay reader but simultaneously rigorous and scholarly, Ostler analyzes and responds to the arguments of contemporary international theologians, reconstructs and interprets Joseph Smith’s important King Follett Discourse and Sermon in the Grove just before the Mormon prophet’s death, and argues persuasively for the Mormon doctrine of “robust deification.”

Praise for the Exploring Mormon Thought series:

“These books are the most important works on Mormon theology ever written. There is nothing currently available that is even close to the rigor and sophistication of these volumes. B. H. Roberts and John A. Widtsoe may have had interesting insights in the early part of the twentieth century, but they had neither the temperament nor the training to give a rigorous defense of their views in dialogue with a wider stream of Christian theology. Sterling McMurrin and Truman Madsen had the capacity to engage Mormon theology at this level, but neither one did.”
-Farms Review
Neal A. Maxwell Institute
Brigham Young University