# Celestial

Explore how Restoration theology frames celestial glory, and how Mormon Transhumanists read it as a physical, lawful, covenant-bound goal for human progression.

[Image: Latter-day Saint tradition broadly associates the sun, moon, and stars with the theological concept of the three degrees of eternal glory.]

In Latter-day Saint theology, the celestial glory is the highest of the three degrees of glory that follow the resurrection. Paul distinguished "celestial bodies" from "bodies terrestrial" and compared their glories to the sun, moon, and stars (1 Corinthians 15:40–41). Joseph Smith's 1832 vision describes the inhabitants of the celestial kingdom as those "whose bodies are celestial, whose glory is that of the sun, even the glory of God, the highest of all" (D&C 76:70). A later revelation adds that "in the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees," and that the highest requires the new and everlasting covenant of marriage (D&C 131:1–2).

## **A GLORY GOVERNED BY LAW**

Restoration scripture describes celestial glory in visionary terms. The vision of the three glories speaks of mysteries that "surpass all understanding" and can be "seen and understood" only "by the power of the Holy Spirit" (D&C 76:114–116). The same body of revelation also treats glory as lawful. "He who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory" (D&C 88:22). Every blessing rests on "a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven" (D&C 130:20). Joseph Smith also taught that "all spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure" (D&C 131:7).

[Image: Like the gears of an orrery, the heavens in Section 88 move by fixed law in their times and seasons, and whoever has seen them “hath seen God moving in his majesty and power.”]

Mormon Transhumanists read these passages together. If spirit is matter and glory follows law, then the celestial state is a physical condition that beings reach by living celestial law. Section 88 identifies the light of Christ with the power by which the sun was made and with "the law by which all things are governed" (D&C 88:7–13). On this reading, divine law and natural law are one law seen from two sides. This is one of many interpretations. Many Latter-day Saints keep a sharper distinction between the two.

Knowledge of divine law is part of godliness: "The glory of God is intelligence" (D&C 93:36). Scripture also ties divine power to a moral code: the powers of heaven "cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness" (D&C 121:36). Celestial attainment therefore requires moral transformation as well as comprehension, and Latter-day Saints hold that this transformation comes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

## **THE ATONEMENT AND THE PROBLEM OF DEATH**

The Book of Mormon states the problem plainly. Without the Atonement, "this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more" (2 Nephi 9:7). Latter-day Saint teaching describes two deaths that the Atonement overcomes: physical death, through the resurrection, and spiritual death, through reconciliation with God. Christ is "the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). His resurrection is the pattern for all who follow him.

The Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation holds that "scientific knowledge and technological power are among the means ordained of God to enable such exaltation." Human ingenuity is therefore one of the ways God's work proceeds, and the Atonement is the grace that makes that work possible. The Bible Dictionary calls grace "an enabling power," and Mormon Transhumanists take the phrase literally: grace enlarges what human effort can accomplish.

## **COVENANTS AND ORDINANCES**

[Image: The facing mirrors of a temple sealing room show a reflection that repeats without end, an image Latter-day Saints often connect with the sealing power, which acts as a “welding link” joining families across generations.]

Exaltation in Latter-day Saint theology is communal. The saving ordinances include baptism, confirmation, ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood for men, the temple endowment, and sealing. Through these ordinances, individuals enter covenants that bind them to God and to one another. The sealing power, described as a "welding link" between generations (D&C 128:18), joins families across time. Sealings are conditional. A covenant has force in eternity only when it is "sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise" (D&C 132:7), which requires continued faithfulness.

Lincoln Cannon has argued that any civilization which gains great power without destroying itself must develop compassion in proportion to that power. Mormon Transhumanists read the temple covenants as the Restoration's framework for that development: obligations that tie growth in capability to growth in fidelity and care. The idea of Zion as a society of expanding capability extends scriptural themes beyond what the texts themselves state.

## **GRACE, WORKS, AND CO-CREATION**

Nephi wrote that "it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do" (2 Nephi 25:23). Latter-day Saints have read the verse in more than one way: as grace completing what effort cannot, or as grace present throughout effort. The second reading fits the Mormon Transhumanist account of human agency. The Lord tells the Saints to be "anxiously engaged in a good cause" and to "bring to pass much righteousness," because "the power is in them" (D&C 58:27–28).

The *Lectures on Faith* define faith as "the principle of action" and "of power also, in all intelligent beings" (Lecture 1). Mormon Transhumanists read this as a theology of engineering: faith is intelligence acting on the world to change it. Scientific discovery, ethical technology, and moral growth become forms of faithful work, each dependent on grace for its completion.

## **THE CELESTIAL BODY AND RESURRECTION**

Scripture describes the resurrected body as tangible. The Father "has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's" (D&C 130:22), and the resurrected Christ invited his disciples to handle him (Luke 24:39). The body is "restored to its proper and perfect frame" (Alma 40:23; see Alma 11:43), and the glory it receives corresponds to the law its owner abides (D&C 88:28–29).

These texts limit how far Mormon Transhumanists can take the language of enhancement. The celestial body is a perfected physical body, and scripture presents it as restoration and glorification. Its form is set by law, not by preference. Whether celestial glorification includes powers beyond restoration is a question the texts leave open, and one which Mormon Transhumanists don't shy away from.

Latter-day Saint tradition does support human participation in resurrection. Brigham Young taught that the keys of the resurrection are not held in mortality but will be given to resurrected beings, who will then raise others (*Journal of Discourses* 15:137). Mormon Transhumanists, drawing also on Nikolai Fedorov's "Common Task," propose that a Zion society with enough knowledge and compassion might take part in that work. On this view, resurrection remains Christ's gift, delivered in part through the hands of those he has raised.

## Zion and the Sanctified Earth

[Image: D&C 130 describes the sanctified earth as a crystal Urim and Thummim that reveals the kingdoms of a lower order, and it promises each person who enters the celestial kingdom a white stone through which higher things are made known.]

Enoch's city was called Zion "because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them" (Moses 7:18). After Christ's visit to the Nephites, "they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor" (4 Nephi 1:3). These passages describe a community without poverty, sustained by consecration and shared purpose.

Section 130 describes the earth's final state. The earth "will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest" (D&C 130:9). The earth itself becomes an instrument of revelation, giving its inhabitants knowledge of all lower orders of creation.

Mormon Transhumanists read these texts as a description of where human progression can lead: a society without poverty, joined by covenant, whose knowledge extends across creation. The *New God Argument* supports that hope from a different angle. It argues that if humanity can reach such a state, benevolent beings who have already reached it probably exist and probably created our world. The celestial kingdom, on this account, is both God's present condition and humanity's possible future, reached through Christ's grace and covenantal relationships.

*See also*: [Angels](/topical-guide/angels), [Degrees of Glory](/topical-guide/degrees-of-glory), [Eternal/Eternity](/topical-guide/eternaleternity), [Exaltation](/topical-guide/exaltation), [Glory](/topical-guide/glory), [Heaven](/topical-guide/heaven), [Holiness](/topical-guide/holiness), [Kingdom](/topical-guide/kingdom), [Light](/topical-guide/light), [Paradise](/topical-guide/paradise), [Resurrection](/topical-guide/resurrection), [Temple](/topical-guide/temple), [Theosis](/topical-guide/theosis)