“It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.” (Teachings, pp. 345–46)
This is a factual assertion. It is a declaration. It is unambiguous. It denotes a possible revelation he had received—although he has not shared with us a written text for such a revelation. Now consider the following:
“If Abraham reasoned thus—If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that He had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? And where was there ever a father without first being a son? Whenever did a tree or anything spring into existence without a progenitor? And everything comes in this way. Paul says that which is earthly is in the likeness of that which is heavenly, Hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that He had a Father also?” (Teachings, p. 373)
This is not a factual statement. It is a conjecture. It is an assumption. It means that this aspect of the doctrine (at least) was not revealed to him. He is making an intelligent guess.
The fact that Joseph Smith never gave a proper revelatory statement to the Church on this subject, but instead chose to declare it in an impromptu sermon, and mixed it with some guesswork of his own has resulted in a lot more conjecture and speculation added to it subsequently by others, such as the doctrine of the infinite regression of the Gods, a Heavenly Mother, sexual procreation of spirits in heaven, and lots more, none of which is confirmed by revelation; and it is always unsafe to base one’s theology on those kinds of statements. The doctrine needs to be affirmed and clarified by revelation and canonized.
This peculiar doctrine presents other theological and philosophical problems which need to be addressed. One of them pertains to the ancient philosophical question of the origin of God. The question of the origin of God is an ancient one to which different answers exist in various philosophical and religious traditions. Latter-day Saints have their own unique doctrine of the origin of God which is not without its theological difficulties. If God the Father had a FATHER, and so forth further back, who was the first God who started the whole process, and where did He come from? How did the process begin? Some early Church leaders, notably Brigham Young, taught that the process did not have a beginning. It has been continuing from the infinite past, and will continue infinitely into the future:
“How many Gods there are, I do not know. But there never was a time when there were not Gods and worlds, and when men were not passing through the same ordeals that we are now passing through. That course has been from all eternity, and it is and will be to all eternity. You cannot comprehend this; but when you can, it will be to you a matter of great consolation.”2
This hypothesis, however, has a logical difficulty. It gives rise to the chicken and egg problem: which came first, the chicken or the egg, the parents or the kids, the husband or the wife, man or God? The process, whatever it was, must have had a beginning.3 I think that President Brigham Young was mistaken in that view. If so, then the issue needs to be clarified by revelation. It is not good enough to make guesses about this kind of thing, and present the guesses to us as though it were some kind of revealed truth. If God is indeed willing to go so far as to reveal to us at this time such a great mystery, that God the Father was once a man who progressed to become God; he should be willing to provide some kind of clarification for the obvious philosophical and theological issues that arise from it. The fact that a proper revelatory statement for such an important doctrine does not exist and has never been sought is troubling.
In the theology of Latter-day Saints deification does not mean that we become supreme beings independent of God the Father or of Jesus Christ. We remain subject to and subordinate to them, and will continue to worship them for the rest of eternity as our God.4 If God the Father had a FATHER and therefore a GOD, then He remains subordinate to HIM, and so on all the way back to the beginning. Therefore whoever started the process becomes the supreme Divinity of the universe whom we should worship; and all subsequent generations of “Gods” become demigods by comparison. Well, according to modern revelation there is such a being: he is God the Father! The Book of Moses teaches that the Being whom we worship as the Father is the supreme Deity of the universe, greater than Whom there is no other God:
“And God spake unto Moses saying, Behold, I am the Lord God Almighty, and Endless is my name; for I am without beginning of days or end of years; and is not this endless?
• • •
“And I have a work for thee, Moses my son; and thou art in the similitude of mine Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth; but there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all.” (Moses 1:3, 6)
So the King Follett theology of the origin of God seems to present a problem. Not only is it not canonized, and for which a proper revelatory statement does not exist; it even seems to come into conflict with canonized scripture. That points to a problem in the theology of Latter-day Saints that needs to be resolved by revelation.
Several years ago the late President Gordon B. Hinckley gave two separate interviews to San Francisco Chronicle and Time magazine in which he appeared to question the doctrine that God (the Father) was once a man who progressed to become God. Here are the relevant parts of the two interviews (emphasis added):
Q. My understanding of the Mormon Church is that you see your church as a restoration of the original church.
A. Right. Not a reformist church but a restored church.
Q. There are some significant differences in your beliefs. For instance, don’t Mormons believe that God was once a man?
A. I wouldn’t say that. There was a little couplet coined, “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” Now that’s more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don’t know very much about.
Q. So you’re saying the church is still struggling to understand this?
A. Well, as God is, man may become. We believe in eternal progression. Very strongly. We believe that the glory of God is intelligence and whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the Resurrection. Knowledge, learning, is an eternal thing. And for that reason, we stress education. We’re trying to do all we can to make of our people the ablest, best, brightest people that we can.5
• • •
Q. Just another related question that comes up is the statements in the King Follett discourse by the Prophet.
A. Yeah.
Q. … about that, God the Father was once a man as we were. This is something that Christian writers are always addressing. Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?
A. I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it. [I haven’t heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don’t know. I don’t know all the circumstances under which that statement was made.] I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don’t know a lot about it and I don’t know that others know a lot about it.6
The Church itself has been sounding a little undecided over the issue since then, and has refrained from making a definitive official declaration to either repudiate or to canonize the King Follett doctrine of the origin of God. Even President Hinckley seemed to sound cautious, and tried to downplay what he had said in those interviews. In the October 1997 General Conference of the Church he made the following remarks:
“I personally have been much quoted, and in a few instances misquoted and misunderstood. I think that’s to be expected. None of you need worry because you read something that was incompletely reported. You need not worry that I do not understand some matters of doctrine. I think I understand them thoroughly, and it is unfortunate that the reporting may not make this clear. I hope you will never look to the public press as the authority on the doctrines of the Church.”7
But President Hinckley seems to have been more concerned about being misunderstood with regard to the second half of the Snow couplet—that men may become gods; rather than the first half—that God was once a man. In a subsequent interview that Elder Dallin H. Oaks gave to Helen Whitney for her much acclaimed PBS documentary about the Church: The Mormons, the following exchanges took place:
HW. A big idea! Any other idea that was startling and got people’s attention?
DHO. Before the close of his ministry, in Illinois, Joseph Smith put together the significance of what he had taught about the nature of God and the nature and destiny of man. He preached a great sermon not long before he was murdered that God was a glorified Man, glorified beyond our comprehension (still incomprehensible in many ways), but a glorified, resurrected, physical Being, and it is the destiny of His children upon this earth, upon the conditions He has proscribed [sic], to grow into that status themselves. That was a big idea, a challenging idea. It followed from the First Vision, and it was taught by Joseph Smith, and it is the explanation of many things that Mormons do—the whole theology of Mormonism.
HW. Is it the core of it?
DHO. That is the purpose of the life of men and women on this earth: to pursue their eternal destiny. Eternal means Godlike and to become like God. One of the succeeding prophets said: “As man is, God once was. And as God is, man may become.” That is an extremely challenging idea. We don’t understand, we’re not able to understand, all [about] how it comes to pass or what is at its origin, but it explains the purpose of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is to put people’s feet on the pathway to a glorified existence in the life to come that is incomprehensible, but far closer to God than the Christian world generally perceives.8
Here Elder Oaks appears to be endorsing both halves of the couplet, not just the second half; although his emphasis still appears to be on the second half.
An important corollary to the Church’s doctrine of the origin of God as taught in the King Follett sermon is the belief in a “Heavenly Mother”. If God is an exalted man, then in his mortal experience he would have been married, and in the theology of Latter-day Saints exaltation means the “continuation of the seeds forever” (in a married state).9 Recently the Church published an essay on its website titled “Mother in Heaven,”10 in which the following comment was made:
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that all human beings, male and female, are beloved spirit children of heavenly parents, a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. This understanding is rooted in scriptural and prophetic teachings about the nature of God, our relationship to Deity, and the godly potential of men and women. The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is a cherished and distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints.
“While there is no record of a formal revelation to Joseph Smith on this doctrine, some early Latter-day Saint women recalled that he personally taught them about a Mother in Heaven.…”
Yet neither doctrine is found in scripture or canonized. If the Church now feels that the subject is of sufficient importance that they need to publish affirmative statements about it on their website, then the whole thing needs to be properly dealt with and clarified by a revelatory statement and canonized.
Canonization of the doctrine, however, would raise or highlight other complex theological issues associated with the doctrine of the origin of God in the theology of Latter-day Saints which would then need to be addressed. One of them is the teaching found in modern revelation that our spirits in the preexistence were in fact created by Jesus Christ:
“For it is I that taketh upon me the sins of the world; for it is I [Jesus] that hath created them; and it is I that granteth unto him that believeth unto the end a place at my right hand.” (Mosiah 26:23)
“And never have I [Jesus] showed myself unto man whom I have created, for never has man believed in me as thou hast. Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image.” (Ether 3:15)
“Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me [Jesus] are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man, nor the children of men; neither Adam, your father, whom I created.” (D&C 29:34)
“Hearken, O ye people of my church, to whom the kingdom has been given; hearken ye and give ear to him who laid the foundation of the earth … by whom all things were made which live, and move, and have a being.” (D&C 45:1)
“Who am I [Jesus] that made man, saith the Lord, that will hold him guiltless that obeys not my commandments?” (D&C 58:30)
“That through him [Jesus] all might be saved whom the Father had put into his power and made by him;
“Who glorifies the Father, and saves all the works of his hands, except those sons of perdition who deny the Son after the Father has revealed him.” (D&C 76:42–43)
“The worlds were made by him; men were made by him; all things were made by him, and through him, and of him.” (D&C 93:10)
That means that procreation in heaven is not sexual (as some have supposed). It is “creative”. Whoever does the “creating” becomes the Father of our spirits—even if it is done indirectly through Jesus Christ. That raises the question of who then becomes our Heavenly Mother? If the Father has more than one wife (which he is likely to, if he is an exalted man according to the teachings of Joseph Smith), which one of them becomes our “Heavenly Mother,” and what determines that? Or do we have more than one Heavenly Mother?11
The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother raises other theological issues for the Church that would then need to be addressed. Isaiah says the following of Jesus Christ:
“He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
“And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
“He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.” (Isaiah 53:8–11)
The word “generation” in verse 8 means posterity, descendants; as does “seed” in verse 10. We don’t have a clear explanation in the Bible for what is meant by these verses in Isaiah; but we do have one in the Book of Mormon:
“Having ascended into heaven; having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions; having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice.
“And now I say unto you, who shall declare his generation? Behold I say unto you that when his soul has been made an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. And now what say ye? And who shall be his seed?
“Behold I say unto you that whosoever has heard the words of the prophets, yea all the holy prophets who have prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord—I say unto you that all those who have hearkened unto their words, and believed that the Lord would redeem his people, and have looked forward to that day for a remission of their sins, I say unto you that these are his seed, or they are the heirs of the kingdom of God.
“For these are they whose sins he has borne; these are they for whom he has died, to redeem them from their transgressions. And now, are they not his seed?
“Yea, and are not the prophets, every one that has opened his mouth to prophesy, that has not fallen into transgression, I mean all the holy prophets ever since the world began? I say unto you that they are his seed.
“And these are they who have published peace, who have brought good tidings of good, who have published salvation; and said unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!” (Mosiah 15:9–14)
In other words, according to this commentary, his “seed” (descendants, posterity) are all those whom he has redeemed by virtue of his atoning sacrifice. That is his reward for the great Atonement he has made. Jesus gets a reward for performing the Atonement; and that reward is that he receives all those whom he has redeemed to become his seed, meaning his posterity or descendants. In the theology of Latter-day Saints, both God and man are “glorified” in the hereafter by the “continuation of the seeds,” meaning an endless posterity:
“… and they shall pass by the angels and the gods which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.
• • •
“Abraham received promises concerning his seed, and of the fruit of his loins … which were to continue so long as they were in the world; and as touching Abraham and his seed, out of the world they should continue; both in the world and out of the world should they continue as innumerable as the stars; or if ye were to count the sand upon the seashore, ye could not number them.
“This promise is yours also, because ye are of Abraham, and the promise was made unto Abraham; and by this law is the continuation of the works of my Father wherein he glorifieth himself.” (D&C 132:19, 30–31)
“For behold this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39)
This raises the question: Jesus is, was, and has ever been greater than any of us is or ever will be. He is “the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity”12 He obtained his “seed” (by which he is “glorified” –John 17:10) not through natural procreation (in this life or the next), but by some other means. He acquired or inherited them by virtue of his atoning sacrifice, by which he redeemed them. There are many references to it in scripture. Here are some:
“I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
• • •
“While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.
• • •
“Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:6, 12, 24)
“And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” (John 6:39)
“And now because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons and his daughters; for behold this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore ye are born of him, and have become his sons and his daughters.” (Mosiah 5:7)
Note that this refers to an event that took place before Jesus was born.
“Hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God, while I speak unto you Emma Smith my daughter; for verily I say unto you, all those who receive my gospel are sons and daughters in my kingdom.” (D&C 25:1)
That is how Jesus obtained his “seed” by which he is glorified. He spiritually begets those whom he has redeemed (Mosiah 5:7; also Ether 3:14; Moses 6:68). There is no “wife” involved in any of this. As far as we know Jesus was never married in this life. Some early Church leaders speculated that he had been; but that was just speculation. There is no scriptural support for it in the Bible or in modern revelation (and there is some evidence to the contrary –Matthew 19:10–12).
Even assuming that Jesus now is, has been, or will be married in heaven at some point in the hereafter, that still doesn’t alter the fact that he performed the Atonement (by which he obtained his “seed”) before he ever was or could have been married, in heaven or on earth. In fact Jesus’ Atonement was retroactive. It works backward in time as well as forward in time. He was the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8; Moses 7:47). The Atonement of Jesus Christ was foreseen in the foreknowledge of God in eternity as an act already accomplished, and it brought salvation and redemption to mankind before it took place, just as well as it did afterwards. As we have seen, the event described in Mosiah 5:7 took place before Jesus was born,13 when he was still a spirit, and thus before he ever could have been married. Latter-day Saints have no doctrine of preexistent spirits being married. So how does the “Heavenly Mother” system work in that scenario? How did Jesus obtain all that “seed” before he was or ever could have been married, or was even born into mortality?
And as previously mentioned, Jesus in the preexistence was the actual physical creator of our spirits anyway (under the direction of the Father, like everything else that had been created), so the whole thing then becomes subject to a rethink.
Another interesting question that Joseph Smith’s teachings on the origin of God raises is that, if it is true that God the Father was once a man who progressed to become God, he couldn’t have been the only one. Potentially there could have been many others. If so, does that mean that there are parallel universes, similar to our own? That would seem to be the logical conclusion to Joseph Smith’s teaching on the subject.
─────────Notes
1 The occasion being the death of a close friend of Joseph Smith by the name of Elder King Follett, who had died as a result of injuries sustained in an accident. The funeral sermon was preached at a General Conference of the Church in April 7, 1844, before a congregation of some 20,000 Latter-day Saints, and recorded in longhand by Willard Richards, Wilford Woodruff, Thomas Bullock, and William Clayton.
2 Journal of Discourses, 7:333.
3 The idea of an infinitely regressing chain of causal events, referred to in the literature as “infinite regress,” is known to philosophy, and is considered to be logically impossible. It is circular reasoning. Each event in the chain can be explained by the previous event, but there is no explanation for how the series came to be in the first place. A beginningless series of events is logically impossible.
“Infinity,” as it is generally understood, is an abstract mathematical concept which does not have an equivalent in the physical world. Nothing in the universe is or can be “infinite” in that sense of the term. There is not an “infinite” number of anything in the universe. All objects in the universe are countable, and will always remain so. Their numbers may be mind-numbingly large, but they will always be finite and countable. If the doctrine of the infinite regression of the Gods were true, that would mean that there would have to be an “infinite” number of Gods in the universe, which is a logical as well as a physical impossibility.
4 D&C 76:59; 1 Cor. 3:23. “Deification” in the theology of Latter-day Saints is equivalent to salvation, exaltation, or gaining eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. To be “saved,” or gain eternal life, is to be deified. This also agrees with the doctrine of theosis taught by the Early Church Fathers, which is derived from biblical passages such as John 17:11, 20–24; 1 John 3:2–3 and 2 Peter 1:4. According to John 17, the glorified Saints are to become “one” with the Father and the Son in the same way that the Father and the Son are “one” with each other; and even that they should inherit the same glory that the Father and the Son have. Deification or theosis is the only possible, credible, theological explanation for these biblical passages, as the Early Church Fathers well understood. The glorified saints then become “partakers of the divine nature,” as Peter has expressed it, which is another way of saying the same thing.
5 San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1997.
6 Time magazine, Aug 4, 1997. The words in square brackets were omitted from the original published report.
7 In Conference Reports, Sunday morning session, October 1997.
8 From “Elder Oaks Interview Transcript from PBS Documentary,” published in “Newsroom” on the Church’s website.
9 D&C 132:19.
11 There is a difference between saying that God the Father has a female consort, and saying that we have a “Heavenly Mother”. A “mother” by definition is someone who gives birth. A mother who doesn’t give birth is no longer technically a “mother”. If our spirits in the preexistence were literally created by Jesus Christ, as it says in the Book of Mormon, then we no longer have a “Mother” in that sense of the term; and if God the Father has more than one wife, which he is likely to if he is an exalted man, that compounds the problem even further. What determines which one of them becomes our “Heavenly Mother”?
12 Mosiah 3:5, 17-18, 21; 5:2, 15; Rev. 19:6. See also 2 Nephi 11:7; 26:12; Mosiah 3:8; 15:1–2; 17:7–8; Ether 3:17–18.
13 See also the experience of Enos, whose sins were forgiven because of his “faith in Jesus Christ, whom [he had] never before heard nor seen, and many years pass away before he [should] manifest himself in the flesh” (Enos 1:8). And likewise also the experience of Alma the younger in Alma 36:17–20, who obtained a remission of his sins through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, long before Jesus had been born in the flesh.
