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Toward an Anthropology of Apotheosis in Mozart's Magic Flute

A Demonstration of th e Artistic Universality and Vitality of Certain "Peculiar" Latter-day Saint Doctrines

Alan F. Keele

I t seems there are certain notions held by Latter-day Saints, deviating almost diametrically from those promulgated by orthodox Christianity, that have the power to evoke from certain conservative Christian quarters the most vituperative fulminations. One thinks immediately of the idea expounded by Joseph Smith at King Follett's funeral ¡ that humans have the potential to become gods through a process of perfection experienced by the gods themselves. The orthodox response to this notion in the form of the Godmakers " films and other manifestations of righteous indignation has been extraordinary. The paradox, however, is this: Scratch the orthodox surface of Christianity, explore at any depth occidental thought, especially the aesthetic search for ontological meaning in the arts, and you willfind this and other related "Mormon" ideas in surprising abundance and unsurpassed persuasive power.

This paradox was brought into focus for me some years ago through a conference paper given by the late Ernst Benz, Professor of Church History at the University of Marburg. In his essay, "Der Mensch als imago dei" (Man as the Image of God), Benz traces the notion of the identity of humans and gods from the earliest times to the present day, observing that the concept of apotheosis-man becoming god-was once a widely held idea in the ancient world until it was forced unDerground by the doctrines of Augustine, that former, gnostic follower of the Persian dualistic prophet Mani, both of whom seemed nearly obsessed with the evil nature of all mortals, beginning with our conception in sin.

After Augustine, however, our now-heterodox and heretical idea that humans and gods are ontologically identical did not perish from the minds of humans but continued to manifest itself from time to time: for example, in the German medieval mystics such as Meister Eckehart, Tauler, and Suso, whose unio mystica with God proved to them man's and God's essential ontological identity; in Jacob Böhme; in the Baroque poets such as Angelius Silesius; in the Four Books on True Christianity by Johann Arndt; and in the German Romantic nature-philosophy of Hegel and Schelling.

Professor Benz writes:

The mystical comprehension of the idea of Imago Dei , of the self-portrayal of God in man through the procreation and birth of the Son in man, leads directly, in the last analysis, to the concept of the apotheosis of man. This concept disappeared from church doctrine in thefifth and sixth centuries . . . but it always remained alive in the tradition of Christian mysticism by virtue of the continuity of the mystical experience. Yet European believers who dared to speak about apotheosis in the Christian sense of the renewal of God's image in man are not to be discussed here but rather the representatives of an American Church, which-based on the experiences and doctrines of its visionary founder-has made the idea of deification the very foundation of its anthropology, its concept of the community, even its social structure: the Mormon Church. £