From a big-picture, philosophical point of view, Mormon (Latter-day Saint) theology faces some serious challenges when it comes to explaining where everything comes from and what grounds reality itself. These problems show up especially in its ideas about God and eternal progression.
The Infinite Chain of Gods
Mormon teachings, based on Joseph Smith’s sermons (like the King Follett Discourse), say that God the Father was once a man who became a god. Before Him, there was another God who did the same thing — and before that God, another one, and so on, forever backward in time.
This creates an infinite regress — an endless chain of gods, each one depending on a previous god to exist and become divine.
The big question is: How did the very first God in this chain get started? If every god needs a prior god (plus eternal matter, intelligences, and laws) to progress and become exalted, then there is no true beginning. The explanation just keeps pushing the question further back without ever answering it.
Philosophers point out that an actual infinite series of dependent beings doesn’t explain why anything exists at all. It just delays the answer forever. This is similar to problems raised in arguments like the Kalam Cosmological Argument: you can’t cross an infinite past to reach today, and you still need to explain how the whole process ever got going.
The Problem of Space, Time, and the Rules of Reality
Another issue is even more basic: What provided the “stage” for all of this to happen?
- Who created the space for these gods to live in?
- Who set up time so that progression from mortal life to godhood could occur?
- Where did the natural laws and the ability to organize matter come from?
In Mormon cosmology, matter and intelligences are said to be eternal — God organizes them but doesn’t create them from nothing. This means the basic framework of reality (space, time, laws) has always existed as a kind of unexplained backdrop. But then those things themselves need explaining.
It’s like trying to explain life by saying it evolved from simpler forms — that still assumes a universe with space, time, matter, and laws already in place. The Mormon view moves the mystery back one step but doesn’t solve the foundation problem.
How Traditional Christianity Answers This
Classical Christianity offers a much simpler and cleaner foundation. It teaches that God created everything out of nothing (creation ex nihilo).
The Bible puts it this way in John 1:1, 3:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
In this view:
- God (the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is eternal and self-existent. He didn’t “become” God — He has always been God.
- He is not part of a chain. He is the ultimate starting point.
- Space, time, matter, and the laws of nature are not eternal. God created them all.
- There is no infinite regress because God is the uncaused cause — a necessary Being whose existence doesn’t depend on anything else.
This idea is called aseity — God exists “from Himself.”
Why the Christian View Has a Logical Edge
Mormonism’s picture is inspiring in its emphasis on human potential and eternal families. However, it leaves the most important questions unanswered or circular:
- Why does this chain of gods and laws exist instead of nothing?
- What holds the whole system together?
An infinite chain of contingent (dependent) gods never reaches a final explanation.
Christianity, by contrast, stops the chain of “why” questions at a single, self-sufficient God who freely creates everything else. It is simpler, more complete, and avoids the philosophical problems of an infinite regress.
In Summary
While both faiths deal with deep mysteries, traditional Christianity provides a stronger philosophical foundation for reality. It starts with a God who is the ultimate source of everything — self-existent, creative, and needing no predecessor. Mormon cosmology, with its eternal progression of gods, risks leaving the ultimate origin of existence unexplained.
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