Am I missing something? Did Paul write John 17, according to the LDS? (Or anyone?)
What does this have to do with anything Mormon, let alone the specific heresy that we become gods, as you guys teach it?
As always, let's see what the fathers had to make of this, since they are our window on to what the early Church itself actually believed and taught/thought about scripture and its meaning. (NB: I am purposely choosing 'pre-conciliar' or 'ante-Nicene' fathers, so that no one may pretend to answer with dismissal by complaints about 'institutional' or 'mainline' Christianity, since that really wasn't a thing on an empire-wide level until the beginning of the Conciliar era in 325 AD; before that there were still councils, but they were all local/regional in nature.)
In the West, the great saint Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) wrote the following in
his treatise on the Lord's prayer:
But the Lord prayed and besought not for Himself — for why should He who was guiltless pray on His own behalf?— but for our sins, as He Himself declared, when He said to Peter, "Behold, Satan has desired that he might sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not." And subsequently He beseeches the Father for all, saying, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe in me through their word; that they all may be one; as You, Father, art in me, and I in You, that they also may be one in us." The Lord's loving-kindness, no less than His mercy, is great in respect of our salvation, in that, not content to redeem us with His blood, He in addition also prayed for us. Behold now what was the desire of His petition, that like as the Father and Son are one, so also we should abide in absolute unity; so that from this it may be understood how greatly he sins who divides unity and peace, since for this same thing even the Lord besought, desirous doubtless that His people should thus be saved and live in peace, since He knew that discord cannot come into the kingdom of God.
And in the East, the great theologian and teacher saint Clement of Alexandria (d. circa 215 AD) wrote in his work
The Instructor the following (emphasis mine):
But that God is good, all willingly admit; and that the same God is just, I require not many more words to prove, after adducing the evangelical utterance of the Lord; He speaks of Him as one, "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world also may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given them; that they may be one, as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one." God is one, and beyond the one and above the Monad itself. Wherefore also the particle "Thou," having a demonstrative emphasis, points out God, who alone truly is, "who was, and is, and is to come," in which three divisions of time the one name (o wn); "who is," has its place. And that He who alone is God is also alone and truly righteous, our Lord in the Gospel itself shall testify, saying "Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: For Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee: but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent Me. And I have declared to them Thy name, and will declare it." This is He "that visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, to them that hate Him, and shows mercy to those that love Him." For He who placed some "on the right hand, and others on the left," conceived as Father, being good, is called that which alone He is--" good;" but as He is the Son in the Father, being his Word, from their mutual relation, the name of power being measured by equality of love, He is called righteous. "He will judge," He says, "a man according to his works," --a good balance, even God having made known to us the face of righteousness in the person of Jesus, by whom also, as by even scales, we know God. Of this also the book of Wisdom plainly says, "For mercy and wrath are with Him, for He alone is Lord of both," Lord of propitiations, and pouring forth wrath according to the abundance of His mercy. "So also is His reproof." For the aim of mercy and of reproof is the salvation of those who are reproved.
+++
I think the understanding shown in St. Cyprian is rather obvious: that it be a prayer for unity against any dissent among the disciples themselves, or, in their line, within the Church itself. This unity is therefore
not a unity of
essence (because how could it be, as the Mormons themselves have objected to this language precisely because conceiving it as so would make all of humanity into, as Peter1000 once put it, "one very large,
homoousion object"...blehhhhhh
), as though He were praying that all of the apostles would become
essentially the same, but rather that they be in perfect submission to the will of the Divine and Everlasting Father, by Whom Christ was sent.
This makes sense if you look at the environment immediately preceding the quoted portion:
1 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
6 "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7 Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. 8 For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me. 9 I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. 10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.
11 Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. 12 While I was with them in the world, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
"They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world", He says. And so in a similar vein, He continues to pray about other ways that He wants them to be like He is: in unity with the Father -- because this is what will "keep them from the evil one", without being taken out of the world. (And this is what will keep us from the evil one in the same circumstance today.)
The quote from St. Clement of Alexandria is especially interesting to me in the context of Mormon claims of what it means to become "like God". It is very, very clear since early times that the Church did not understand this at all as Mormons do, as St. Clement specifically addresses how it is that God is One as "He is the Son in the Father, being His Word". Are
we His Word, or will we become His Word, according to Mormonism? I don't know, but I do know with people like St. Clement as a witness that Christians have never believed such a thing. Hence the polytheism of Mormonism whereby becoming like God means becoming our own gods is completely shut out, as the means by which we can talk about man becoming God is unique to the relationship of God the Father to His Word, the Only-Begotten, by Whom we know God at all.
Don't you think that if Christianity understood scriptures such as these to mean what Mormonism says they do, its teachers would've said so at some point so early on in the Church? After all, St. Clement (who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria, the first such school in history) died in around 215 AD, writing from about 182 to about 202 -- only about a decade away from when our Mormon friends have placed the 'great apostasy' as happening (recall, if you were here during those discussions some time ago, how they've had to push it further back into time from "around 200 AD" to "the 170s", after being presented with evidence of early Christian councils which decided against the heresies Mormonism would later 'restore'). Since he was born in 150 AD and didn't start writing until he well into adulthood, you'd think he would remember such an important teaching as men becoming almighty gods, if there ever was such a thing in Christianity.
But there never was. That's simply not a feature of Christian theology, or how Christians East or West have ever understood the scriptures.
So, no; neither St. Paul nor anyone would've ever understood the higher calling of Christ Jesus to be becoming his own god. That's Mormon projection into the past, as usual.