Irenaeus
Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . became what we are, so that He might bring us to be even what He Himself is.
John A. WidtsoeOne of the leading doctrines of the Church resembles the spirit of the law of universal growth so nearly that one is forced to believe that the great truth embodied by this doctrine [eternal progression] is the truth shadowed forth by the law of evolution. … Joseph Smith taught [with regard to humans] a doctrine of evolution which in grandeur and in extent surpasses the wildest speculations of scientific evolutionists.
Charles Sanders PeirceThe purpose of creation as it must appear to us in our highest approaches to an understanding of it . . . is God’s movement toward self-reproduction.
Clement of AlexandriaIf one knows himself, he will know God, and knowing God will become like God…. His is beauty, true beauty, for it is God, and that man becomes a god, since God wills it. So Heraclitus was right when he said, “Men are gods, and gods are men.”
If the Word became a man, it was so men may become gods.
Do we cast blame on him [God] because we were not made gods from the beginning, but were at first created merely as men, and then later as gods? Although God has adopted this course out of his pure benevolence, that no one may charge him with discrimination or stinginess, he declares, “I have said, ye are gods; and all of you are sons of the Most High.” . . .
How, then, shall he become a God, who has not as yet been made a man? Or how can he be perfect who was but lately created? How, again, can he be immortal, who in his mortal nature did not obey his maker? For it must be that thou, at the outset, shouldest hold the rank of a man, and then afterwards partake of the glory of God.
[T]he Word became flesh and the Son of God became the Son of Man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.