By Aaron Shafovaloff
Created October 30, 2024
Updated October 31, 2024

Early Joseph Smith

• Conceptual, ideal pre-mortal creation
• Whether this idea was incipient to spirit birth is disputed

Late Joseph Smith

• Intelligence, mind, soul, spirit are all synonymous.

Contemporaries of the late Joseph Smith

• Eliza R. Snow

1. Individual spirits are begotten from impersonal intelligence-substance

Brigham Young held that genuinely new individuals were begotten from eternal impersonal spirit-element.

Terminology

• Intelligence: impersonal substance

Proponents

• Brigham Young
• Parley P. Pratt
  • Key to the Science of Theology, Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855
    • “This individual, spiritual body, was begotten by the heavenly Father, in His own likeness and image, and by the laws of procreation.”
    • “Would you, like your heavenly Father, prompted by eternal benevolence and charity, wish to fill countless millions of worlds, with your begotten sons and daughters, and to bring them through all the gradations of progressive being, to inherit immortal bodies, and eternal mansions in your several dominions?”
    • “The eternal union of the sexes, in and after the resurrection, is mainly for the purpose of renewing and continuing the work of procreation. In our present or rudimental state, our offspring are in our own image, and partake of our natures, in which are the seeds of death. In like manner, will the offspring of immortal and celestial beings, be in the likeness and partake of the nature of their divine parentage.”
• Charles Penrose
  • “The individual, the organized person may have had a beginning, but that spirit of which and by which they organized never had a beginning.” (1884, source)
• Anthon Lund
• Joseph Fielding Smith
• Bruce McConkie
  • “Our conscious identity began at spirit birth and we didn’t have a conscious identity before that as far as the revelations say. If we had a conscious identity before that (which I do not happen to believe), it is not revealed and we are in the realm of the ethereal blue. If you want to believe that, just put a great big red flag on it and in capital letters write, “THIS IS PURE UNADULTERATED SPECULATION” exclamation point. The fact is that there is so much we can’t understand that I don’t think we need to get off in that realm, but some people love to get off in that realm and they are welcome to it” (“Pre-existence,” unpublished lecture transcript, University of Utah Institute, October 9, 1967, n.p.).

2. Individual spirits are begotten from self-directed intelligence particles

Orson Pratt held a similar view to Brigham Young, but taught that each particle of spirit-element is self-directed and, in some sense, self-organizing.

Proponents

• Orson Pratt
• W. Cleon Skousen
• Orson Scott Card

3. Eternal intelligence-individuals are expanded with spirit-body

B. H. Roberts popularized the view that “intelligences” are eternal individuals; pre-mortal begetting or spirit-birth constitutes their expansion or clothing with a spirit-body.

Jonathan Stapley calls this tripartite existentialism. man goes from individual intelligence-self, to being expanded/clothed with spirit body at pre-mortal spirit-begetting. Don’t confuse this with the trichotomous view of humanity in Christian theology.

Proponents

• Nels Lars Nelson
• Lycurgus A. Wilson
• B. H. Roberts
• John Widtsoe
• James Talmage
  • “So far as we can peer into the past by the aid of revealed light we can see that there was always a gradation of intelligence, and consequently of ability, among spirits… . Individualism is an attribute of the soul, and as truly eternal as the soul itself.” (The Vitality of Mormonism, 321)
• Truman Madsen

4. Eternal individuals are adopted without pre-mortal spirit birth

Blake Ostler notes that spirit, soul, mind, and intelligence are synonymous in Smith’s public sermons; they were adopted in pre-mortality, not “literally” begotten.

This view attempts to retrieve a pre-Brigham “retro Mormonism.” The primary academic LDS arguments against pre-mortal spirit birth:

• Canonicity. Nothing in the Standard Works (in their view) unmistakably teaches “literal” spirit birth via Heavenly Mother(s).
• The Joseph Smith problem. It’s hard (in their view) to make a case from Joseph Smith’s public statements that he affirmed spirit birth via Heavenly Mother(s), and it’s arguable that his ideas demanded it.
• Contemporaries of Smith who inferred pre-mortal spirit birth via Heavenly Mother immediately took the doctrine in unreliable directions, especially Brigham Young’s Adam-God framework. Thus, “literal” spirit birth via Heavenly Mother is seen as an artifact of a larger Adam-God framework worth rejecting. Better to retrieve a retro Mormon theology that precedes the “disaster” (Ostler’s word) of Brigham Young’s theology.
• The lesser-progeny problem. Why do resurrected, exalted beings beget mere spirit children, and not more fully embodied beings?
• The logistical problem. Take the length of gestation (Orson Pratt suggested 9 months), multiply that by billions of cumulative population 51-110 billion, add in the 25.5-55 billion pre-mortal rebellious spirits, multiply all that by “worlds without number”, and you have Heavenly Mother(s) begetting billions of “literal” spirit children for potentially a long time. One could divide this up between polygamous wives, or posit multiple children per pregnancy, but this only slightly mitigates the logistical problem while creating another: Does God have hundreds or thousands of wives?

Proponents

• Blake Ostler
• Peter Carmack
• Samuel M. Brown, cf. Believing Adoption
• Roger Terry – “During my investigation of our premortal past (and perhaps heavily influenced by Brown’s essay), the more I learned about the idea of spirit birth and its theological history, the less persuasive I found it.” (source)

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Disputed texts

• Mosiah 4:7?
• Abraham 3:22–23
• D&C 76:24
• D&C 93:29, 36
• D&C 132:63

Further reading

• The Origin of the Human Spirit in Early Mormon Thought, by Van Hale (chapter 11 in Line Upon Line)
• The Idea of Pre-existence in the Development of Mormon Thought, by Blake Ostler (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (1982) 15 (1): 59–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/45225053)
  • Also see chapter 12 in Line Upon Line
• The Immortality of the Soul in Mormon Theology, by Brent L. Top (chapter from Let Us Reason Together Essays in Honor of the Life’s Work of Robert L. Millet)
• The History of Intelligence in Latter-day Saint Thought, by Kenneth W. Godfrey (chapter from The Pearl of Great Price: Revelations from God)
• Literal Spirit Birth, by Eric Nielson (2010 Paper presented at the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology symposium)
  • An early response to the SMPT conference paper on Spirit Birth, by Jonathan Stapley
• Tripartite existentialism, by Jonathan Stapley
• Plans of Salvation, by Jonathan Stapley
• Brigham on spirit, by Jonathan Stapley
• Orson Pratt, The Seer and spiritual atomism, by Jonathan Stapley
• “A Continuation of the Seeds”: Joseph Smith and Spirit Birth, by Brian C. Hales (Journal of Mormon History (2012) 38 (4): 105–130)
  • A Response to Hales on “Spirit Birth”, by Jonathan Stapley
• Tripartite existentialism, by Jonathan Stapley
• The Source of God’s Authority: One Argument for an Unambiguous Doctrine of Preexistence, by Roger Terry

See also

• Divine begetting in Mormonism
• D&C 76:24 isn’t about “literal” spirit children