The Gods of Eternity
Leonard Reil defends Joseph Smith's bold doctrine of the plurality of gods, articulated in the prophet's final sermon just weeks before his death at Carthage. Using the Godhead as his framework, Reil argues that the three types of divine beings—premortal spirits (like the Holy Ghost and premortal Christ), mortals engaged in God's work (like Moses and Aaron), and post-mortal exalted beings (like Abraham)—reveal that "the gods" refers not to deities of other worlds but to the community of exalted beings who organized our spirits and our world. He envisions our future heaven as a continuation of our present sociality, suggesting that just as this earth will become our celestial home, so too the Father's heaven is the shared domain of all those who attained godhood on a previous world.
Leonard Reil is a Canadian diplomat and scholar whose professional and intellectual pursuits sit at the crossroads of international relations and transhumanist philosophy. With a career spanning several continents and cultures, Reil’s work explores the intersection of global conflict, diplomacy, and the potential for technological and spiritual evolution. ¶ Reil obtained a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Brigham Young University before moving to the United Kingdom to earn a Master of Arts in International Conflict Analysis from the University of Kent at Canterbury. This academic foundation prepared him for a distinguished career with Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada). ¶ Beyond his diplomatic service, Reil is an active voice within the Mormon Transhumanist Association, where he applies his background in conflict analysis and global systems to theological and futurologist inquiries. At the 2012 MTA Conference, he delivered a compelling presentation titled The Gods of Eternity, in which he explored the concept of "Theosis" through the lens of modern science and the "Gods of the Gaps" theory. In this work, Reil posits that as human knowledge expands, the "gaps" traditionally filled by the divine are not merely shrinking but are being replaced by a more sophisticated understanding of our own potential for eternal progression. ¶ Reil’s contributions to the transhumanist community are characterized by a unique synthesis of Latter-day Saint theology and technological optimism. He often reflects on the nature of post-humanity and the ethical implications of advanced technologies, suggesting that the path toward becoming "as God is" involves a mastery of the physical and social laws that govern the universe. ¶ Through his writing and speaking, Leonard Reil continues to advocate for a future where technology is utilized to fulfill the highest aspirations of the human spirit. He remains a key figure in the MTA, embodying the association’s mission to explore the synergistic relationship between religion and science in the pursuit of human transcendence.
Transcript
Speaker 1
Our next speaker will be Leonard Riel, and Leonard will be speaking on the subject of the gods of eternity. Leonard is a career diplomat with Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, raised in Canada He received a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Brigham Young University and a Master of Arts in International Conflict Analysis from the University of Kent at Canterbury. He has lived on three continents and speaks English, French and Mandarin Chinese. He and his wife, Jennifer, have five children and currently reside in Ottawa, Canada. Please welcome Leonard Real.
Leonard Reil
Then as you can see with my causing problem with technology, I’m somewhat of a Luddite myself. I do not even own a cell phone. So there’s Luddites amongst us, transhumanists. So I’m going to speak about the gods of eternity. My talk is on paper to fully ensconce my Luddite self.
Leonard Reil
On June 7, 1844, the first and only edition of the Nabu Expositor accused Joseph Smith of being a fallen prophet and having introduced false and damnable doctrines into the church, such as a plurality of gods. Nine days later, and two weeks before he was killed in Carthage jail, Joseph Smith preached the final sermon of his life. And in response to the accusation in the expositor, Joseph chose to speak on the plurality of gods. And he did not back down.
Leonard Reil
Rather, he built on his final general conference address, the aforementioned King Follett Discourse, and began his sermon by highlighting Mormonism’s interpretation of the Godhead: that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Are three separate persons, and thus, in Joseph’s words, three gods. Even more bold was this claim that the term Elohim Used thousands of times in the Bible and translated normally in the singular as God, should be read in the plural as the gods. A usage that was already reflected in the book of Abraham, which he had had published in 1842, in which the creation is presented as being accomplished not by God, but by the gods. His sermon touched on other aspects of the planetary gods and ended with this forceful statement that he did not believe in being scared to death of this idea, for the Bible is full of it.
Leonard Reil
Who then are the gods? This is of course a complex question, and as with all complex questions, there are a variety of appropriate answers. But for the answer I will present today, I want, like Joseph, to start with the Godhead. These three beings who God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost represent God to us. And our types or models of the types of beings that could or should be included under at least certain circumstances within this rubric of the gods.
Leonard Reil
So God the Holy Ghost. Premortal mankind. Premortal spirits. The Doctrine and Covenants teaches that the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit. And Joseph taught that the Holy Ghost would experience a probationary state, a mortality, and eventually become an exalted person of flesh and bones. Thus, one member of the Godhead is a person who just spirit. But are there other premortal spirits who would appropriately fall under this category of the gods?
Leonard Reil
Well, of course, we know that in Commonly accepted Mormon belief is that the God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, was, of course, Jesus Christ, who as a premortal spirit was the God of Israel. As was previously quoted today. And of course, the book of Aether contains the account of the brother of Jared’s dramatic encounter with the premortal Jesus, in which he sees first his finger and then his entire body. His spirit body. In addition to Christ, there is Adam, the first man, who in his premortal state as Michael is portrayed in the temple ceremony as one of a trinity of gods, along with Elohim and Jehovah. Who created the earth, a trinity which Brigham Young said is represented in the deity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Many church leaders, such as Joseph Fielding Smith, have also thought that other dispensation heads, other prophets such as Joseph Smith, he says, were likely involved in the creation as well. Perhaps all of us as premortal spirits within this idea, this Mormon mythology of the creation, were involved in the creation as well, and thus were also the gods. At least insofar as we were involved in the work of God.
Leonard Reil
God the Son, mortal mankind. Jesus Christ is typical of mortal mankind. The Son of God is typical of mortal mankind. Jesus Christ the Son of God was a mort An But the Book of Mormon portrays him as, of course, the Lord God Almighty, who condescended to become flesh to manifest the love of God to us. At his baptism, the Holy Ghost descended upon him, and the voice of the Father declared him to be the Son of God. Further, the Book of Mormon teaches that the Son is called the Son of God because of the flesh, because of mortality. So are there other mortals who are also among the gods?
Leonard Reil
The Scriptures proclaim that we are all to take upon ourselves the name of Christ, the anointed, and to become the sons and daughters of God. We are called to speak in God’s name. To bear the authority of God, and to do the works of God here upon the earth. The Scriptures teach that whether God speaks by his own voice or by the voice of his servants, it is the same. We know that we are called to be Saviors upon Mount Zion. While Jesus is described as God’s only begotten Son, he is not the only person described as the Son of God, nor even as God. In Joseph’s final sermon, he cites the biblical passages that describe other of God’s prophets as gods, for example, Moses and Aaron, who were called to be God to Pharaoh. So far as we are engaged in the work of God, we mortals may be included among the gods, as our exampler Jesus Christ was. Recall Jesus’ quoting of Psalms 82 to his countrymen: Is it not written in your law? I said, Ye are gods.
Leonard Reil
God the Father, postmortal, exalted mankind. So God the Father is typical of postmortal, exalted mankind. The Doctrine and Covenants teaches, of course, that the Father has a body of flesh and bones. Joseph taught further that God is an exalted man, that he was once a mortal in another world, and is now a glorified being. Are there other postmortal beings among the gods?
Leonard Reil
Of course, the scriptures teach that Jesus, following his death and resurrection, is also obviously a post-mortal, exalted man. They further teach that all who enter into a covenant relationship with God and are faithful to that covenant can be redeemed through the power of Christ and become gods as well, citing specific examples such as Abraham, who it says is already entered into his exaltation as a God. Brigham Young, in talking about the resurrection, said, They, us, will become personages of tabernacle, like the Father, yea, gods in eternity. Spencer W. Kimball put it a hundred years later, exaltation means godhood, creatorship. As man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may be. This is in the future.
Leonard Reil
Now regarding the future of exalted beings, of us, the scriptures teach that this earth will become our heaven. That we will enjoy the same sociality that we now enjoy, only coupled with eternal glory. I believe this is a key. That, as I read the scriptures, I do not see a future in which each of us, as is sometimes said by critics, will become a God of our own world, in our own heavens. as single gods, or perhaps a god couple with, of course, my wife beside me. Because this is not the sociality that we now enjoy. Our sociality is our family, our friends, the community that we live in in our daily lives here.
Leonard Reil
So if this earth is our future heaven, and if our future is to be together in an exalted society, does it not stand to reason that our Father’s heaven Is the same way? Could it be that it is not simply our father’s heaven, but the heaven of our fathers and of our mothers, the heaven of all those exalted beings who, on a previous mortal world obtain their godhood, and together organize our spirits and this world for us to inhabit. I can’t get this to work. Et voila.
Leonard Reil
Does this vision not make sense of Joseph Smith’s final sermon, where he states that the God of the Bible, our God, the God whose relationship with mankind the Scriptures recount, Is not a single deity, but is in fact a plurality of gods, and should be, as Joseph said, read the whole way through as the gods. I do not believe that Joseph was talking about the gods of other worlds, but rather, as the Book of Abraham recounts, the gods of this world are priority of exalted god-beings.
Leonard Reil
And speaking of our future, Brigham Young again said, Then will they become gods. Then will they become eternal fathers, eternal mothers, eternal sons, and eternal daughters. Being eternal in the organization, they go from glory to glory, from power to power. They will never cease to increase and to multiply, worlds without end. If that is our future, is it not reasonable to believe that that is God’s present? We are not simply trying to return to live with God, as we often respond to the question, what are we doing here on earth? Rather, we are trying to become like the gods. and, as our prophets have said, to live with the gods of eternity and eternal worlds.
Leonard Reil
So are Mormons polytheists? As critics sometimes maintain, if by polytheist one means believers in more than one divine being, yeah, of course we are. We should own it, as someone said earlier. But of course, if by polytheist one means a believer in more than one variety of gods, in gods who have different values and different attributes and different goals Then, of course, we’re not, because we believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost possess a single set of values and attributes and goals, or as the Book of Mormon plainly puts it, they are one God.
Leonard Reil
Indeed, you will notice that there is one person that I referenced under each member of the Godhead. That person, of course, is Jesus, who had all the attributes of godliness in their fullness. As the cover page of the Book of Mormon declares, Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations. He was God before he was born, here on earth, and now resurrected in heaven. He is our prototype. Joseph further taught that Jesus did what he saw his Father do. And by walking the path he learned from his father, he showed us the path we too could follow from premortality, mortality, and then on to post-mortality as gods.
Leonard Reil
It is not This idea of a Philippe of God’s is not evidence that Joseph was a fallen prophet, as the expositor claimed, nor is it an interesting piece of trivia that Joseph revealed one day. Nor is it just a deep doctrine that we shouldn’t discuss, because of course a doctrine that’s not discussed is not much of a belief. Who are the gods? We are. And through the grace of Christ, we should become so more fully.
Leonard Reil
I will end with a quote from John Taylor, who said, It is for the exaltation of man to this state of superior intelligence and Godhead. That the mediation and atonement of Jesus Christ is instituted, and that that noble being, man, is made in the image of God. He is rendered capable not only of being a son of man, but also a son of God, redeemed capable to become rendered capable to become a God. possessing the position, power, majesty, exaltation of a God.
Leonard Reil
I’m grateful for the Mormontimes Humans Association and the work of its members in promoting a vision of how we can take this spiritual idea and actively and with faith try to bring it about, that we might become gods the same way that other gods have done before us.
Leonard Reil
We’re time for one question, so let’s make it a good one. Unless there’s none. Oh, Chris. Chris gets it, I guess. Oh, no. Okay.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I just wondered how much hostility do you get from traditional Mormons uh against this kind of polytheistic God idea?
Leonard Reil
I sometimes get a quizzical look as in the what on earth are you talking about? And certainly some have expressed strong discomfort and much, as I believe Chris put it, more so on the Internet than elsewhere, in which there are those I’ve interacted with who essentially believe That Joseph was out to lunch and that this is silly, and that we need to simply stick with really that only the Father is really God, and some seem uncomfortable with even the idea that Jesus is God. Again, despite what the scriptures say. Thank you.