Exaltation

Exaltation, in the vocabulary of the Restoration, is the lifting of men and women into the life God lives, a lifting the Gospel of John first depicts as a man raised upon a cross. The Latin exaltare means “to raise on high,” and the Hebrew rum and Greek hypsoō likewise describe elevation, whether of a voice, a banner, or a king. Most Christians reserve the term for the glory conferred upon the risen Christ, and the suggestion that mortals might share it has often sounded like the presumption of Babel. Latter-day Saints teach that exaltation is the fulness of salvation, and their scriptures answer the charge of presumption by prescribing the road along which the lifting comes.

Lifted Up from the Earth

“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me,” the Savior declared, and the evangelist adds, “This he said, signifying what death he should die” (John 12:32-33). Commentators on the Fourth Gospel have repeatedly observed a deliberate double meaning in hypsoō, which denotes at once a body raised upon the cross and the Son raised to glory. The Aramaic verb that probably underlies the saying carried the same ambiguity, which its first hearers could scarcely have missed. In John’s telling the hour of humiliation and the hour of enthronement coincide, and the lifting has a stated purpose, for the One raised draws all others after Him.

The Apostle Paul preserves an early hymn of the same descent and ascent. The One who was in the form of God “took upon him the form of a servant,” and “being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him” (Philippians 2:7-9). Paul’s verb, hyperypsoō, “to lift beyond,” occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, as though ordinary vocabulary could not register the height. The connective “wherefore” carries the theology of the passage, since the exaltation follows from the descent and is conferred by the Father. Paul’s preface, “Let this mind be in you,” makes the pattern one the disciples share.

Joint-Heirs and the Throne

Paul extends the promise to the children of God, who are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (Romans 8:17). The risen Lord makes a parallel promise to the church at Laodicea: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Revelation 3:21). Both texts join the inheritance to the Son’s own path and seat the faithful where the Son is seated. Historians of Christian thought have traced the resulting doctrine of deification, or theosis, from Irenaeus and Athanasius into Eastern Orthodoxy.

Within the framework of the Restoration, deification acquires a literal and embodied character that the patristic tradition never claimed. Orthodox theology, following Gregory Palamas, permits the saints to participate in the divine energies while holding the divine essence forever beyond them. Joseph Smith taught that God and humanity are of one kind, that the Father possesses a glorified body of flesh and bone, and that the exalted continue in creative work. A revelation of 1832 promises that the saints “shall be filled with his glory, and receive their inheritance and be made equal with him” (D&C 88:107). Such equality arrives through the condition Paul attached to it, which a far older narrative illustrates.

The Pit, the Prison, and the Chief Seat

Cast into a pit by his brothers, sold into Egypt, and confined in Pharaoh’s prison on a false charge, Joseph descended by stages before Pharaoh declared, “See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt.” He employed that authority to feed the brothers who had sold him, and when they feared his vengeance after their father’s death, he replied, “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Genesis 50:20). The story thus anticipates the Christological pattern with remarkable fidelity, for as in John’s Gospel the one exalted uses the height to draw others up out of want.

The Savior made the same reversal a rule of conduct in a parable told at a Pharisee’s table. A guest who seizes the chief seat at a wedding is moved down in shame, while the one who takes the lowest place hears the host say, “Friend, go up higher,” and Jesus states the principle: “whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11). The passive voice of the final clause is telling, since the humble guest is raised by his host. Joseph and the presumptuous guest approach a high seat by contrary roads, the one set there by another after long descent, the other claiming it for himself and losing it.

Exaltation and Enhancement

The Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation seeks “the spiritual and physical exaltation of individuals and their anatomies, as well as communities and their environments,” and looks to science and technology to help realize prophetic visions of transfiguration, immortality, and resurrection. In this light, therapies that slow aging and artificial intelligence that extends the reach of a mind appear as early approaches to capacities scripture ascribes to the exalted. Lincoln Cannon has gone further, arguing that humanity’s own prospect of attaining godlike power makes it more probable that godlike beings already exist. The doctrine of exaltation thus gives the transhumanist project its fullest horizon, an end in which embodied persons grow in knowledge and power without a fixed ceiling.

The same capacities can be pursued along the presumptuous guest’s road. Michael Sandel has warned that a drive to master human nature through enhancement would erode humility, responsibility, and solidarity, which rest on the recognition that one’s powers are in part a gift. Enhancements priced for a wealthy few would raise their bearers above their neighbors, an elevation each bearer seizes for himself. An MTA primer answers that becoming as God “depends on consent at every step,” so that each person’s elevation requires protecting the agency of every other. The scriptural pattern is communal throughout, for the joint-heirs of Romans are glorified “together,” and Joseph’s power fed the household that had wronged him.

Exaltation is the lifting of men and women into the life God lives, and the scriptures specify both the direction and the company of that ascent. The Son was lifted up on the cross before He was set down with the Father in His throne, and He was lifted up in order to draw all men unto Him. Mormon transhumanists who hope that medicine and machine intelligence may carry humanity some distance toward that life inherit the same order of descent before ascent. Capacities won through science belong to exaltation when their holders stoop to serve and raise others with them, as Joseph raised his brothers out of the famine.