In contrast with the sovereign God of Christian orthodoxy and neoorthodoxy, the Mormon God is finite. This is indicated in the fact that God is not the only reality with necessary existence. That is, He is not the Creator of all that is.

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On the other hand, to the Mormon, God is involved within space and time. He is not the creator of these dimensions. In fact, the possession of a physical body places rather obvious spatial limitations upon God. . . . The conception of a changing God, a God in the process of “becoming” rather than “being,” which deeply permeates Mormon theology illustrates God’s temporality. . . . time imposes serious restrictions upon God. . . . God did not always exist as he now is.

In other words, God was not always God. He has changed. He has progressed. . . . Joseph Smith taught that “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret.” . . . Mormonism is not without some confusion on the changeability of God. The problem may partially stem from Joseph Smith’s earlier teaching when he took a position similar to orthodox Christianity.

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Thus, Orson F. Whitney, an early Mormon apostle, says that it is God’s “superior intelligence that makes Him God,” and that the gospel is merely a ladder “of light, of intelligence, of principle” by which men become Gods . . . it should be apparent that the Mormon God is a heretical departure from traditional Christianity, and the traditional Christian terminology of omnipotence and omniscience are not justifiably applied to the Mormon God.

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Mormonism’s traditional emphasis has been on God’s humanity rather than his transcendence. In other words, Mormon theology is much more concerned with the similarities between God and man than the differences between them.

This emphasis upon the closeness and similarity of God and man is clearly evident in the Mormon doctrine that God is a person with a physical body. For it is the notion that God has a physical body that leads to Mormon claims that man is literally, not figuratively, the offspring of God. Through its entire history, Mormonism has employed its extremely anthropomorphic conception of God to illustrate the similarities rather than the differences between God and man.