By Aaron Shafovaloff
October 26, 2024

The following chart addresses two LDS theological issues:

– Were our pre-mortal spirit bodies begotten by heavenly parents?
– Did heavenly parents beget an initial set of mortal bodies in Eden?

In Van Hale’s 1989 chapter of “Line Upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine”, he argues that Joseph Smith neither taught nor conceptually permitted the notion of pre-mortal spirit begetting.

But there are proximate ideas of Smith from which some divine begetting are extrapolated:

1. D&C 132:19-20 speaks of gods that procreate. Hale says that Smith does “not specify that their offspring are spirits” (p. 122).
2. The Sermon in the Grove teaches “that everything comes through a progenitor” (Hale’s summary, p. 124).
3. Contemporaries of Smith—John Taylor, Orson Pratt, William W. Phelps, and Eliza Snow—“publicly taught the spirit birth doctrine” (p. 121).

Van Hale’s rejects pre-mortal spirit birth, but posits that God “came here with his wife and, by begetting the first physical children himself, began the process which now provides physical bodies for the spirits he formerly organized” (p. 124).

Hale admits that “there is no explicit statement in support of this view from Joseph Smith”, and, “I have found no Mormon who has ever advocated it” (p. 124).

If “everything comes through a progenitor”, and Adam is the “son of God” in a “literal” sense, then one can see the allure of Brigham Young’s Adam-God framework.

But most modern Latter-day Saints seem to forgo this principle of Joseph Smith; they don’t appeal to a form of “literal” begetting to account for Adam’s physical body.

Sources

• Hale, Van. “The Doctrinal Impact of the King Follett Discourse.” In Line Upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine, edited by Gary James Bergera, 115–26. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1989. Archived online copy. Google Books link. Kindle link.

See also

• D&C 76:24 isn’t about “literal” spirit children, by Aaron Shafovaloff