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Many modern Mormons are unaware of
the teaching of their own Church regarding the physical parentage
of Jesus Christ. As startling and offensive as it sounds, Mormon
leaders have consistently taught that Jesus Christ was
physically begotten by God the Father, who they teach possesses a
physical body. When Christians point out this blasphemous
teaching, many LDS are quick to deny that their Church has ever
taught such a thing.
Other LDS, including scholars at
Brigham Young University, dismiss this teaching as
"nineteenth century speculation," and do all they can
to distance themselves from the many plain statements given
below. Yet, orthodox, mainline Mormons embrace this doctrine and
find it perfectly in harmony with LDS teaching as a whole. Note
that many of the sources provided below are official
sources: that is, they were printed under the direction of the
Church itself. We invite the reader to look at each of the
following citations and decide if the facts are not completely
clear:
He [God] created man, as we create our
children; for there is no other process of creation in
heaven, on the earth, in the earth, or under the earth, or in
all the eternities, that is, that were, or that ever will be.
(BY, JD 11:122).
The birth of the Saviour was as natural as
are the births of our children; it was the result of natural
action. He partook of flesh and blood--was begotten of his
Father, as we were of our fathers (BY, JD 8:115).
In relation to the way in which I look upon
the works of God and his creatures, I will say that I was
naturally begotten; so was my father, and also my Saviour
Jesus Christ. According to the Scriptures, he is the first
begotten of his father in the flesh, and there was nothing
unnatural about it (HK, JD 8:211).
When the Virgin Mary conceived the child
Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He
was not begotten by the Holy Ghost....
...Now, remember from this time forth, and
for ever, that Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy
Ghost. I will repeat a little anecdote. I was in conversation
with a certain learned professor upon this subject, when I
replied, to this idea"if the Son was begotten by the
Holy Ghost, it would be very dangerous to baptize and confirm
females, and give the Holy Ghost to them, lest he should
beget children, and be palmed upon the Elders by the people,
bringing the Elders into great difficulties" (BY, JD
1:50-51)
When the time came that His first-born, the
Saviour, should come into the world and take a tabernacle,
the Father came Himself and favoured that spirit with a
tabernacle instead of letting any other man do it. The
Saviour was begotten by the Father of His spirit, by the same
Being who is the Father of our spirits, and that is all the
organic difference between Jesus Christ and you and me (BY,
JD 4:218)
...the Father came down from heaven, as the
Apostles said he did, and begat the Saviour of the world, for
he is the only-begotten of the Father, which could not be if
the Father did not actually beget him in person (BY, JD
1:238).
This matter was a little changed in the
case of the Savior of the world, the Son of the living God.
The man Joseph, the husband of Mary, did not, that we know
of, have more than one wife, but Mary the wife of Joseph had
another husband. On this account infidels have called the
Savior a bastard. This is merely a human opinion upon one of
the inscrutable doings of the Almighty. That very babe that
was cradled in the manger, was begotten, not by Joseph, the
husband of Mary, but by another Being. Do you inquire by
whom? He was begotten by God our heavenly father (BY, JD
11:268)
...but it was the personage of the Father
who begat the body of Jesus; and for this reason Jesus is
called the Only Begotten of the Father; that is, the only one
in this world whose fleshly body was begotten by the Father.
There were millions of sons and daughters whom He begat
before the foundation of the world, but they were spirits,
and not bodies of flesh and bones; whereas, both the spirit
and body of Jesus were begotten by the Father the spirit
having been begotten in heaven many ages before the
tabernacle was begotten upon the earth. The fleshly body of
Jesus required a Mother as well as a Father. Therefore, the
Father and Mother of Jesus, according to the flesh, must have
been associated together in the capacity of Husband and Wife;
hence the Virgin Mary must have been, for the time being, the
lawful wife of God the Father: we use the term lawful Wife,
because it would be blasphemous in the highest degree to say
that He overshadowed her or begat the Saviour unlawfully. It
would have been unlawful for any man to have interfered with
Mary, who was already espoused to Joseph; for such a heinous
crime would have subjected both the guilty parties to death,
according to the law of Moses. But God having created all men
and women, had the most perfect right to do with His own
creation, according to His holy will and pleasure; He had a
lawful right to overshadow the Virgin Mary in the capacity of
a husband, and beget a Son, although she was espoused to
another; for the law which He gave to govern men and women
was not intended to govern Himself, or to prescribe rules for
his own conduct. It was also lawful in Him, after having thus
dealt with Mary, to give Mary to Joseph her espoused husband.
Whether God the Father gave Mary to Joseph for time only, or
for time and eternity, we are not informed. Inasmuch as God
was the first husband to her, it may be that He only gave her
to be the wife of Joseph while in this mortal state, and that
He intended after the resurrection to again take her as one
of his own wives to raise up immortal spirits in eternity
(OP, The Seer, p. 158).
Henry D. Taylor, Conference Report,
October 1967, Pg.142
Having been begotten of an immortal sire,
Jesus possessed as a heritage the power to withstand death
indefinitely. He literally and really gave up his life. It
was not taken from him.
CHRIST NOT BEGOTTEN OF HOLY GHOST. I
believe firmly that Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of
God in the flesh. He taught this doctrine to his disciples.
He did not teach them that He was the Son of the Holy Ghost,
but the Son of the Father....Christ was begotten of God. He
was not born without the aid of Man, and that Man was God! (JFS, DoS 1:18).
Under the topic "Only Begotten Son"
in Mormon Doctrine, Bruce R. McConkie wrote,
These name-titles all signify that our Lord
is the only Son of the Father in the flesh. Each of the words
is to be understood literally. Only means only; Begotten
means begotten; and Son means son. Christ was begotten by an
Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten
by mortal fathers (pp. 546-547).
God the Father is a perfected, glorified,
holy Man, an immortal Personage. And Christ was born into the
world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in
the same personal, real, and literal sense that any mortal
son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative
about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in
the normal and natural course of events, for he is the Son of
God, and that designation means what it says. (1 Ne. 11)
(Ibid. p. 742).
McConkie also taught this in a later book
entitled The Promised Messiah:
This then is the condescension of God--that
a God should beget a man; that an Immortal Parent should
father a mortal Son; that the Creator of all things from the
beginning should step down from his high state of exaltation
and be, for a moment, like one of the creatures of his
creating...We have spoken plainly of our Lord's conception in
the womb of Mary; in reality the plain assertions are found
in the revealed word, and we have but certified that the
words mean what they say and cannot be spiritualized away.
And as it is with reference to our Lord's mother, so it is as
pertaining to his Father. The scriptures say that Jesus
Christ is the Only Begotten Son. The problem is that the
intellectually led ministry and laity of the day assume, as
Satan leads them to do, that a name-title of this sort is
simply figurative and does not have the same literal meaning
as when the words are spoken in ordinary conversation.
Perhaps again the best service we can render, on the issue
here involved, is somehow to get the message across that
words mean what they say, and that if Christ is the Only
Begotten of the Father, it means just that. Some words
scarcely need definition. They are on every tongue and are
spoken by every voice. The very existence of intelligent
beings presupposes and requires their constant use. Two such
words are father and son. Their meaning is known to all, and
to define them is but to repeat them. Thus: A son is a son is
a son, and a father is a father is a father. I am the son of
my father and the father of my sons. They are my sons because
they were begotten by me, were conceived by their mother, and
came forth from her womb to breathe the breath of mortal
life, to dwell for a time and a season among other mortal
men. And so it is with the Eternal Father and the mortal
birth of the Eternal Son. The Father is a Father is a Father;
he is not a spirit essence or nothingness to which the name
Father is figuratively applied. And the Son is a Son is a
Son; he is not some transient emanation from a divine
essence, but a literal, living offspring of an actual Father.
God is the Father; Christ is the Son. The one begat the
other. Mary provided the womb from which the Spirit Jehovah
came forth, tabernacles in clay, as all men are, to dwell
among his fellow spirits whose births were brought to pass in
like manner. There is no need to spiritualize away the plain
meaning of the scriptures. There is nothing figurative or
hidden or beyond comprehension in our Lord's coming into
mortality. He is the Son of God in the same sense and way
that we are the sons of mortal fathers. It is just that
simple. Christ was born of Mary. He is the Son of God--the
Only begotten of the Father (pp. 468-469).
And a little later he added,
And so, in the final analysis, it is the
faithful saints, those who have testimonies of the truth and
divinity of this great latter-day work, who declare our
Lord's generation to the world. Their testimony is that
Mary's son is God's son; that he was conceived and begotten
in the normal way...This is their testimony as to his
generation (Ibid. p. 473).
Earlier in the same work McConkie had written:
That there never was a son without a
father, nor a father without a son, is self-evident and in
the very nature of things both sire and son partake of the
same nature and are members of the same house and lineage (p.
9).
Robert A. Rees served as bishop of the Los
Angeles First Ward. He gave a sacrament meeting talk on April
29th, 1990, and provided an article to Dialogue that is found in
the Winter, 1991 issue. It is entitled, "Bearing Our Crosses
Gracefully: Sex and the Single Mormon." In it we find the
following:
Mormons differ from other Christians
in our literal belief that we are begotten of God spiritually
and that Christ was begotten of him physically. Paul says in
Acts that we are God's offspring (17:28-29). We believe that
our spiritual conception was sexual just as we believe that
Christ's mortal conception was. Elucidating the latter, James
E. Talmage says, "That child to be born of Mary was
begotten of Elohim the Eternal Father, not in violation of
natural law, but in accordance with a higher manifestation
thereof" (1986, 81).
As President of the Quorum of the Twelve,
President Ezra Taft Benson made the following statement:
"The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints proclaims that Jesus Christ is the Son of
God in the most literal sense. The body in which He performed
His mission in the flesh was sired by that same Holy Being we
worship as God, our Eternal Father. Jesus was not the son of
Joseph nor was He begotten by the Holy Ghost. He is the son
of the Eternal Father!" [cited in J. F. McConkie, Here
We Stand p. 167]
From the Family Home Evenings booklet,
copyright 1972 by the Corporation of the President of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, pp. 125-126:
We must come down to the simple fact that
God Almighty was the Father of His Son Jesus Christ. Mary,
the virgin girl, who had never known mortal man, was his
mother. God by her begot his Son Jesus Christ, and he was
born into the world with power and intelligence like that of
His Father. . . . Now, my little friends, I will repeat again
in words as simple as I can, and you talk to your parents
about it, that God, the Eternal Father, is literally the
father of Jesus Christ. (Joseph F. Smith, Box Elder Stake
Conference Dec. 20, 1914 as quoted in Brigham City Box Elder
News, 28 Jan. 1915, pp. 1-2).
Then we have an almost stick-figure male
identified as "Daddy," and another figure, female,
identified as "Mommy." There is a plus between them,
with lines leading down to a child figure, marked
"You." Right below this we have the following diagram
that has "Our Heavenly Father" where "Daddy"
was, "Mary" where "Mommy" was, and
"Jesus" where "You" was. We here provide
scans of these drawings:
Then, immediately below, we have this:
The work, Messages for Exaltation: Eternal
Insights from the Book of Mormon (Published by the Deseret
Sunday School Union, "For the Sunday Schools of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"), 1967, p. 119, said:
Christ has power over death. Since
the Fall of Adam, every person born on earth has had within
him the seeds of death. Christ was no exception. He inherited
the ability to die from mortal mother, Mary. But he also
inherited the ability to live forever from his immortal
Father. This power over death was entirely dependent upon
Christ's being the literal Son of God. From his immortal,
glorified Father he inherited power over death. Thus with a
mortal mother and an immortal Father, the sinless Christ
could decide for himself whether to live or die. The choice
was his. Milton R. Hunter expressed this power in these
words: He, Jesus Christ, being literally the Only Begotten
Son of God, was endowed with a double portion of divine
attributes. He received a comparable proportion of divinity
in the spirit world that we received through being spirit
children of God, and He was also the offspring of the Eternal
Father in mortality---thus He possessed a double portion of
God's power.
This is exactly in line with the current Doctrines
of the Gospel Student Manual, Religion 231 and 232 (Published
by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), 1986, p. 22,
which states:
C. Only Jesus Christ possessed the
qualifications and attributes necessary to perform an
infinite atonement. 1. As the Only Begotten Son of God, the
Savior inherited the capacity to suffer for the sins of all
the children of God.
The above referenced Messages for Exaltation
also said, on pp. 378-379:
He was willing to make payment
because of his great love for mankind, and he was able
to make payment because he lived a sinless life and because
he was actually, literally, biologically the Son of God in
the flesh. Thus he had the power to atone for the spiritual
and physical deaths introduced by the Fall of Adam and Eve.
See also p. 29 of Relief Society Courses of
Study 1985 for yet another reference supporting what has been
provided above. It is beyond question that this doctrine has been
officially taught by the leaders of the LDS Church from the days
of Brigham Young to the present.
Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah,
Vol.1, p.319
Again the answer is perfect. There is a
power beyond man's. When God is involved, he uses his
minister, the Holy Ghost, to overshadow the future mother and
to carry her away in the Spirit. She shall conceive by the
power of the Holy Ghost, and God himself shall be the sire.
It is his Son of whom Gabriel is speaking. A son is begotten
by a father: whether on earth or in heaven it is the same.
James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ,
Ch.3, p.22
What other man has lived with power to
withstand death, over whom death could not prevail except
through his own submission? Yet Jesus Christ could not be
slain until His "hour had come," and that, the hour
in which He voluntarily surrendered His life, and permitted
His own decease through an act of will. Born of a mortal
mother He inherited the capacity to die; begotten by an
immortal Sire He possessed as a heritage the power to
withstand death indefinitely. He literally gave up His life;
to this effect is His own affirmation: "Therefore doth
my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might
take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of
myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take
it again." And further: "For as the Father hath
life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in
himself." Only such a One could conquer death; in none
but Jesus the Christ was realized this requisite condition of
a Redeemer of the world.
James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ,
Ch.25, p.418 - p.419
With effective repetition Jesus continued:
"I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known
of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father:
and I lay down my life for the sheep." For this cause
was Jesus the Father's Beloved Son -- that He was ready to
lay down His life for the sake of the sheep. That the
sacrifice He was soon to render was in fact voluntary, and
not a forfeiture under compulsion, is solemnly affirmed in
the Savior's words: "Therefore doth my Father love me,
because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No
man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have
power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This
commandment have I received of my Father." The certainty
of His death and of His subsequent resurrection are here
reiterated. A natural effect of His immortal origin, as the
earth-born Son of an immortal Sire, was that He Was immune to
death except as He surrendered thereto. The life of Jesus the
Christ could not be taken save as He willed and allowed. The
power to lay down His life was inherent in Himself, as was
the power to take up His slain body in an immortalized state.
These teachings caused further division among the Jews. Some
pretended to dispose of the matter by voicing anew the
foolish assumption that Jesus was but an insane demoniac, and
that therefore His words were not worthy of attention. Others
with consistency said "These are not the words of him
that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the
blind?" So it was that a few believed, many doubted
though partly convinced, and some condemned.
Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament
Commentary, Vol.3, p.138
The express image of his person] What more
need be said? God the Eternal Father is the Father; the Son
of God is the Son. A father is a father, and a son is a son.
The Father begets; the Son is begotten; they are Parent and
Child; Sire and Son look alike, so much so that they are the
express image of each other's persons. The substance
composing the body of one is identical in appearance to that
composing the body of the other. What could be plainer?
Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament
Commentary, Vol.3, p.141
Begotten] Begotten means begotten; it means
Christ's mortal body was procreated by an Eternal Sire; it
means God is the Father of Christ, "after the manner of
the flesh." (1 Ne. 11:18.)
The Pearl of Great Price: Revelations From
God, p.94
However, scripture describes Jesus as the
Firstborn of the Father, not only in terms of the human
family, but in [p.95] terms of every world and every form of
life organized under the Father's direction. Paul wrote:
"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven,
and that are in earth, visible and invisible [seen and
unseen].…And he is before all things, and by him all
things consist" (Coloss. 1:16-17; emphasis added; cf.
Rev. 3:14).9 In other words, our God's first creative act as
a Father was to sire his Firstborn and Only Begotten Son.
James E. Talmage, Conference Report,
April 1915, p.121
We belong to the Church of Jesus Christ,
and much has been said concerning His proprietorship, His
mastership, in the Church, the Church that bears His name. I
take it to be a plain and simple principle that we cannot
worship intelligently, and therefore acceptably unto the
Lord, unless we know something of the attributes and of the
will of Him whom we profess to worship. The relationship of
the Christ to the Eternal Father has been set forth in such
plainness that I do not think any wayfaring man amongst us
can fail to understand. We recognize in Jesus Christ the Son
of the Eternal Father, both in spirit and in body. There is
no other meaning to attach to that expression, as used by the
Eternal Father Himself--"Mine Only Begotten Son."
Christ combined within His own person and nature the
attributes of His mortal mother, and just as truly the
attributes of His immortal Sire. By that fixed and inexorable
law of nature, that every living organism shall follow after
his kind, Jesus the Christ had the power to die, for He was
the offspring of a mortal woman; and He had the power to
withstand death indefinitely, for He was the son of an
immortal Father. This simplicity of doctrine has shocked
many, but the truth is frequently shocking just because of
its simplicity and consequent grandeur. We must know
something of the attributes of the Eternal Father, that we
may the more fully comprehend His relationship to His Only
Begotten Son.
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