The LDS Category Error That Destroys Biblical Monotheism

One of the most persistent objections raised by Latter-day Saint apologists against historic Christianity is the claim that affirming Jesus as eternally God creates a contradiction once we deny the pre-existence of human spirits. The argument is usually framed as follows:

“If Jesus was always God, then He must have existed before birth; but if no spirit exists before birth, then Jesus must have ‘become God”

LDs apologist, therefore, assert that Trinitarian theology is incoherent, while LDS theology preserves logical consistency by affirming universal spirit pre-existence. At first glance, this reasoning appears compelling. In reality, it is built entirely upon a category error—one that Biblical Scripture explicitly prohibits.

The LDS Redefinition of God as a Created Being Who Progressed to Godhood Constitutes Blasphemy

The error resides in collapsing divine self-existence into created spirit existence, and then treating those two radically different realities as if they were the same. Biblical monotheism never permits this idea. From Genesis to Isaiah to John, the biblical text insists upon a sharp and never-broken distinction between the eternal God who exists in Himself and all created beings who exist because He wills them to exist.

Genesis: God Alone Exists Before Creation

Moses, in the opening verse of Genesis, establishes the metaphysical boundary that governs all subsequent biblical theology: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The text does not describe God organizing eternal materials, nor does it suggest the presence of pre-existent personal beings alongside Him. Instead, it presents God as already existing when “the beginning” begins. Time itself is a created reality. Everything that is not God comes into being because God brings it into being.

This foundational claim is reinforced throughout Genesis. Human beings are not described as eternal spirits awaiting embodiment; they are described as creatures formed in time. Adam does not descend from heaven; he is formed from the dust, and his life begins when God breathes life into him. Nothing in the text suggests that Adam’s personal existence predates this creative act. The same is true for every subsequent human being in the Genesis narrative. Persons begin to exist because God creates them.

To read pre-existence into Genesis requires importing a metaphysical framework foreign to the text. Genesis knows nothing of eternal intelligences, spirit siblings, or divine progression. It knows only the eternal Creator and the created order.

Isaiah: God Denies All Other Eternal Beings

What Genesis establishes narratively, Isaiah declares polemically. Isaiah’s monotheism is not merely numerical; it is ontological. God does not simply say that He is the greatest among many gods. He explicitly denies the existence of any other godlike beings—past, present, or future.

“Before Me no god was formed, nor shall there be one after Me. …I am the first, and I am the last; besides Me there is no god…I know not any.”

These statements do not allow for eternal regressions of deity, exalted beings who achieved godhood, or hierarchies of divine persons progressing through stages of existence. Isaiah’s God does not become God. He does not emerge from a prior order. He simply is God.

Crucially, Isaiah grounds God’s uniqueness not merely in power or authority, but in eternity. God alone exists “from everlasting to everlasting.” Everything else—nations, rulers, angels, and human beings—comes and goes. This is why Isaiah repeatedly contrasts God’s eternal nature with the transience of creation. The distinction is absolute, not developmental.

Any theology that introduces other eternally existing personal beings alongside God—whether called spirits, intelligences, or proto-persons—stands in direct contradiction to Isaiah’s monotheism. The problem is not merely Christian disagreement with Mormon theology; it is Mormon theology’s incompatibility with Isaiah and the entire Bible.

John: The Eternal Word Enters Creation

The Gospel of John resolves the question of Jesus’ identity precisely by preserving the Genesis–Isaiah distinction rather than dissolving it. John opens his Gospel not with Bethlehem, but with eternity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word does not come into existence in the beginning; He already is when the beginning begins. He is not part of the created order; He is the agent through whom the created order comes into being: “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

This single sentence decisively answers the LDS objection. Jesus’ pre-existence is not the pre-existence of a created spirit awaiting embodiment. It is the eternal existence of God Himself. John does not say that the Word was foreknown, chosen, or planned. He says that the Word (Jesus) was—and that He was God.

The incarnation, therefore, is not God’s progression into deity, nor is it the elevation of a spirit into godhood. It is the eternal God entering His own creation. “The Word became flesh.” He does not become a spirit; He becomes human. His divine nature does not begin, change, or improve. His human nature begins in time, assumed by the eternal Son for the purpose of redemption.

This is why the New Testament can affirm simultaneously that Jesus is eternally God and that His human life has a real beginning. These are not competing claims; they are claims about different natures united in one person. The objection only arises when one refuses to allow Scripture to maintain this distinction.

Foreknowledge Is Not Pre-Existence

Appeals to scriptures such as Jeremiah 1, Psalm 139, Ephesians 1, and Romans 8 do nothing to rescue the LDS argument. These texts speak of God’s foreknowledge, not of human pre-existence. God knows persons before they are born because God exists outside of time, not because those persons already exist. Scripture consistently treats God’s knowledge of future realities as grounded in His sovereignty, not in the eternal existence of those realities.

If foreknowledge implied pre-existence, then all human beings would be eternal, creation would be unnecessary, and Isaiah’s monotheism would collapse. The Bible never draws such conclusions. Instead, it repeatedly affirms that God knows what He will create before He creates it.

Jesus alone stands outside this pattern, not because He is a superior creature, but because He is not a creature at all.

The Real Problem

The dispute, therefore, is not over whether God can have a mortal experience. The Gospels plainly testify that He did. The dispute is over what kind of being God is and what kind of beings humans are. LDS theology must flatten the Creator–creature distinction in order to preserve its system of eternal progression. Biblical theology refuses to do so.

Biblical Christianity teaches incarnation without exaltation. Mormonism requires exaltation without incarnation. These two systems cannot be harmonized because one preserves the biblical definition of God and the other dissolves this truth.

1. Genesis establishes God as the sole eternal Creator.
2. Isaiah defends that truth against all rivals.
3. John reveals that this one eternal God has made Himself known in Jesus Christ.

Any theology that cannot affirm all three simultaneously is not biblical monotheism—no matter how familiar its language may sound.

See: “200 or 2,000: Why Do We Need a 200-Year-Old Mormon Religion Instead of 2,000-Year-Old New Testament Christianity?”

Primary Biblical Texts (Monotheism, Creation, Eternality)

Old Testament

• Genesis 1:1; 2:7
  Creation ex nihilo; God existing prior to time and matter.
• Psalm 90:2
  “From everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”
• Isaiah 43:10–11; 44:6–8; 45:5–7; 46:9–10
  Explicit denial of other gods before or after Yahweh; ontological monotheism.
• Jeremiah 1:5
  Divine foreknowledge is distinguished from personal pre-existence.

New Testament

• John 1:1–3, 14
  Eternal pre-existence of the Word; Creator–creature distinction preserved.
• John 8:58
  Jesus’ self-identification using the divine “I AM.”
• Colossians 1:15–17; 2:9
  Christ as Creator of all things; fullness of deity dwelling bodily.
• Philippians 2:6–7
  Incarnation without exaltation; μορφῇ θεοῦ → μορφὴν δούλου.
• Romans 8:29
  Foreknowledge, not pre-existence.
• Ephesians 1:4–5
  Election “before the foundation of the world,” not eternal human existence.

Jewish Monotheism and Second Temple Context

• Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), esp. pp. 30–41.
  Distinguishes Yahweh’s unique eternal identity from all created beings.
• Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 203–207.
  Isaiah’s monotheism as ontological, not merely functional.
• John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018), pp. 286–292.
  No doctrine of human spirit pre-existence in the Hebrew Scripture.
• James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 281–285.
  Foreknowledge vs creation in Pauline theology.

Patristic & Early Christian Witness (Against Eternal Regression)

• Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.1.1; 2.28.4
  God did not progress into deity; creation is absolute.
• Athanasius, On the Incarnation §§3–4
  Eternal Son assumes humanity; deity unchanged.
• Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 61
  Logos theology is grounded in Jewish monotheism.
• Tertullian, Against Praxeas 5–7
  Distinction of persons without division of essence.

Classical and Modern Christological Scholarship

• Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), pp. 1–59, 183–232.
  Jesus is included within the unique divine identity of Yahweh.
• Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 95–138.
  Early high Christology is incompatible with exaltation models.
• N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 247–253.
  Incarnation presupposes eternal divine identity.
• Simon J. Gathercole, The Pre-existent Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), esp. pp. 1–23.
  Pre-existence in the Gospels is ontological, not conceptual.

LDS Primary Sources 

• Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), p. 345 (King Follett Discourse).
• Lorenzo Snow, Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, comp. Clyde J. Williams (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1984), p. 1.
• Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 3:93.
• Gordon B. Hinckley, interview, Time Magazine, Aug. 4, 1997.

These sources establish that eternal progression and spirit pre-existence are LDS doctrines, not biblical ones.

Philosophical & Theological Clarifications

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.44.1; I.45.1
  Creation ex nihilo; God alone is ipsum esse subsistens.
• William Lane Craig, God Over All (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 64–71.
  Foreknowledge does not imply temporal existence.

Together, these sources demonstrate that:

1. Genesis establishes God as the only eternal being
2. Isaiah explicitly denies eternal divine peers
3. John identifies Jesus within that unique divine identity
4. Foreknowledge passages do not teach human pre-existence
5. LDS theology represents a different metaphysical system entirely