Some critics, including Isaiah
Bennett, have argued that early LDS leaders believed God the Father engaged in
sexual intercourse with Mary to conceive Jesus, due, in part, to LDS leaders'
use of terms such as God being the Father to Jesus "in the flesh." Barry
Bickmore wrote an excellent refutation of Isaiah Bennett on this point (see here).
Interestingly, in his decree against the Unitarians, Pope Paul IV in the
constitution Cum Quorumdam Hominum
(1855) used similar language vis-รก-vis the conception of Jesus (albeit,
speaking of the Holy Spirit, not God the Father); using the "logic"
of some critics, this would mean the Paul IV taught the Holy Spirit had sexual
intercourse with Mary to conceive Jesus(!):
Since the
depravity and iniquity of certain men have reached such a point in our time
that, of those who wander and deviate from the Catholic faith, very many indeed
not only presume to profess different heresies but also to deny the foundations
of the faith itself, and by their example lead many away to the destruction of
their souls, we, in accord with our pastoral office and charity, desiring, in
so far as we are able with God, to call such men away from so grave and
destructive an error, and with paternal severity to warn the rest, lest they
fall into such impiety, all and each who have hitherto asserted, claimed or
believed that Almighty God was not three in persons and of an entirely
uncomposed and undivided unity of substance and one single simple essence of
divinity; or that our Lord is not true God of the same substance in every way
with the Father and the Holy Spirit, or that
He was not conceived of the Holy Spirit according
to the flesh in the womb of the most blessed and ever Virgin Mary, but
from the seed of Joseph just as the rest of men; or that the same Lord and our
God, Jesus Christ, did not submit to the most cruel death of the Cross to
redeem us from sins and from eternal death, and to reunite us with the Father
unto eternal life; or that the same most blessed Virgin Mary was not the true
mother of God, and did not always persist in the integrity of virginity,
namely, before bringing forth, at bringing forth, and always after bringing
forth, on the part of the omnipotent God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, with apostolic authority we demand and advise, etc. (DS
1880)
