Wade Englund, “Who Physically Begat the Son?”

Two earlier posts (here and here) discussed the often-repeated anti-Mormon claim that LDS theology holds that God the Father had sexual intercourse with Mary to conceive Jesus. This is part-and-parcel of much of many (often Evangelical Protestant) critics’ arsenal against “Mormonism,” such as the Tanners, James R. White, Ed Decker, the late Walter Martin, and many others.

It is true that Latter-day Saint Christology states that the Father is equally the “source” of the humanity of Jesus as Mary was, for Jesus was truly human. However, as Barry Bickmore and others have shown, there is no exegetical warrant to such an argument based on yellow journalism (subjective as it is, I have never personally encountered any Latter-day Saint who holds to this view). Furthermore, if mortal men can impregnante someone through non-sexual means (e.g., IVF), I am sure God the Father has the ability to conceive Jesus miraculously, without the aid of sexual intercourse.

A number of years ago, Wade Englund responded to an online paper by James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and author of Letters to a Mormon Elder and Is the Mormon My Brother? on this issue. The paper is entitled, “Who Physically Begat the Son?” As it is no longer available online, I have put it here on dropbox. It does show the deficient Christology many opponents of Mormon theology have, as the true humanity of Jesus is significantly downplayed and even distorted. I will let the unbiased and honest reader decide for themselves on this particular issue.

For those wishing to see a careful analysis of the relationship between the humanity and divinity of Jesus from a Latter-day Saint perspective, I would recommend the final two chapters of Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, volume 1: The Attributes of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2001).