In an error-laden article attempting to respond to yours truly, Blake Ostler, and others about Moroni 8:18 (cf. Psa 90:2) and the eternality of God being God, we read the following:
In Joseph Smith’s subsequent speech, known as the Sermon in the Grove, he taught that our God the Father had a Father before him who was his God. This idea obviously presupposes the notion already presented in the King Follett Discourse that our Father was not always God but became a God.
That the author has access to Blake Ostler's work on the King Follett Discourse and the Sermon in the Grove is proven by note no. 3:
This view is associated especially with Blake Ostler; see his treatment of the King Follett Discourse in Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, Volume 2: The Problems of Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 438–42. See also David L. Paulsen and Hal R. Boyd, “The Nature of God in Mormon Thought,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, ed. Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 246–59.
That this Evangelical apologist is being intellectually disingenuous again can be seen in the Father that the “Father of God the Father” argument was answered by Blake in next few pages of the book he references(!) The following is from Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, vol. 2: The Problems of Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 444-46, 451-52:
It may seem that Joseph is saying that the Father had a father and that there is another “Father above” the Father of Christ. Some have understood Joseph to teach that if the Father had a father, then that father also had a father and so on ad infinitum (28). If so, then his view that there is an “Eternal God of all other gods” seems to be in tension with the view that there was at one time a higher “god.” However, there are at least two ways to understand the statement that the Father of Christ had a father:
(X) When the Father condescended from a fulness of his divine state to become mortal, he was born into a world and had a father as a mortal.
(Y) Before he was a mortal, the Father was spiritually begotten by another Father above him.
It seem to me fairly clear that Joseph Smith had (X) in mind and not (Y). First, immediately after discussing the fact that generation of a son necessarily requires a father, he states: “I want you to pay particular attention to what I am saying, Jesus said that the Father wrought precisely in the same way as His Father had done before Him. As the Father had done before? He laid down His life, and took it up the same as His Father had done before” (29). Thus, Joseph returns to the same explanatory principle that he had in the King Follett discourse. The Son as a mortal does “precisely” what the Father did before him. Both the Father and the Son were fully divine before they emptied themselves of this fulness to become mortal. The Father, like the Son, exercised a power that only a divine being has to lay down his life and take up again after death. Yet in becoming mortal, the Son left his exalted state to become mortal and to be begotten on this earth by the Father. When he refers to a father of God the Father, Joseph Smith seems to be asserting that the Father also let his divine state to become begotten of a father at the time he became mortal. Joseph is supporting (X) by asserting that the Father must have had a father when he became a mortal son.
Joseph does not give any information as to who this father of the Father’s earthly body might be. However, if the Father’s generation was like the Son’s, then His earthly mother was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost in a similar way and his generation was also by divine means. That can certainly be true without positing that the father of God the Father’s earthly body was a god above the Father, for there is no such god (30).
It is of extreme importance to note that in the George Laub’s journal notes of the Sermon in the Grove, Joseph Smith stated that: “the holy ghost is yet a Spiritual body and waiting to take upon himself a body, as the Savior did or as god did” (31). Thus, Joseph Smith taught that already divine persons, including the Son and the Holy Ghost, take upon themselves bodies. Moreover, it is the same logic used in the King Follett discourse. The Holy Ghost will take upon himself a body just as the Son took upon himself as body, and the Son took upon himself a body just as the Father did—and it is clear that both the Son and Holy Ghost are divine before their mortal incarnation. We now see a familiar (or family) pattern: The Son was divine as the God of the Old Testament, yet left his exalted station and took upon himself a mortal body. The Holy Ghost is a divine person who shall leave his exalted station to take upon himself a mortal body. In the Sermon in the Grove, Joseph says that “God” (referring to the Father) also did the same thing. Thus, it seems to be explicitly taught that the Father was divine before he took upon himself a mortal body. We have overlooked Joseph Smith’s explicit statement that it is divine persons who condescend to become mortal, including the Father and eventually the Holy Ghost, because we have relied solely on the Thomas Bullock report of the Sermon in the Grove rather than incorporating George Laub’s journal entry on the sermon as well.
In addition, I believe that the reading of these statements which assumes the “Father of God the Father” refers to a more supreme deity, or one who spiritually begets the Father from intelligence to a spirit body, is likely anachronistic (32). Such a reading makes assumptions about spiritual birth and intelligences being begotten into spirit bodies that were absent from Joseph Smith’s views.
The fourth and final topic clinches the argument. The Prophet notes that Moses was made a “god” over Aaron and Israel. He then observes: “I believe those Gods that God reveals as Gods to be sons of God, and all can cry, ‘Abba Father!’ Sons of God who exalt themselves to be Gods, even from before the foundation of the world, and are the only Gods I have a reverence for” (33).
Now it becomes clear that the other gods that Joseph Smith refers to in the Sermon in the Grove are not gods “above” the Father, but sons of the Most High God. They are all sons of God the Father. They are all engaged in the same process of leaving behind an immortal state to become mortal, die, and then be resurrected, just as both the Father and the Son have done. Thus, the eternal God of all other gods is the Father. As a conclusion to the Sermon in the Grove, Joseph Smith shouts in praise: “He hath made us kings and priests unto God, and His Father; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Oh Thou God of gods and King of kings and Lord of lords” (34). Joseph gives praise to the God of all other gods, who is the Father of God (the Son). Thus, Joseph Smith adopts the Old Testament teaching of a Most High God who maintains sovereignty over a council of gods.
Notes for the Above:
(28) While Joseph Smith did not have such a view of an eternal chain of gods, it appears to me that Brigham Young did. However, it seems to me that his view of the chain of gods is tied up in his Adam-God theology and ought to be rejected as unsound doctrine by Latter-day Saints.
(29) Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 373.
(30) Who then is the “God” of the Father during the time that he is mortal? I venture (perhaps foolishly) to suggest that, during the time that the Son was incarnated as a mortal, the Father and the Holy Ghost constituted the one God, or the Godhead. While this suggestion seems plausible to me, there is neither scriptural support nor textual support from Joseph Smith’s statements to clarify the status of the Godhead during the Father’s mortality.
(31) If we had only the George Laub notes, we might suspect that Laub was interpreting what Joseph Smith said. However, Franklin D. Richards, “Scriptural Items,” August 27, 1843, records: “Joseph also said that the Holy Ghost is now in a state of Probation which if he should perform in righteousness he may pass through the same or similar course of things that the Son has.” In Ehat and Cook, Words of Joseph Smith, 382.
(32) The assumption that the father’s-Father must have begotten him spiritually rather than in his mortality seems dubious to me. There are no statements about “spirit birth” in Joseph Smith’s sermons. Indeed, Joseph Smith refers to the “intelligence of spirits” and does not distinguish between spirits and intelligences. Moreover, Joseph Smith never speaks openly about a Mother in Heaven or a birth of spirits, nor can I find any sources written during his lifetime that speak of either. Thus, I think it very unlikely that he has in mind the notion of God the Father passing from the status of an intelligence to a spirit through spirit birth. It seems to me that Joseph Smith may well be referring to the mortal father of God the Father when he was born into world. See Blake T. Ostler, “The Doctrine of Preexistence in the Development of Mormon Thought,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15, no. 1 (Spring 1982):59-79.
(33) Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 375. The Thomas Bullock report of the discourse states: “they found fault with J.C. bec. He sd. He was the Son of God & made himself equal to God—they say like the apstl. of old I must be put down—what Je. Say—it was written in your law I said Ye are Gods . . . every man who reigns is a God . . . They are exalted far above princ. thrones dom. & angels--& decld. to be heirs of God & jr. heirs with J.C. all have et[erna]l power . . . .God said [to Moses] thou shalt be a God unto the children of Israel—God said thou shalt be a God unto Aaron & he shall be thy spokes. I be. In these Gods that God reveals as Gods—to be Sons of God & all can cry Abba Father—Sons of God who exalt themselves to be Gods even before the foundation. of the world & and all the only God I have reverence for – “ Words of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 381.
(34) Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 375.
Another example of the many errors in this article include the following:
[T]here is no reason to think “from all eternity” means something different in Moroni 8:18 than it does in Joseph’s 1844 statement. Both statements concern the nature of God. One says that God “is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity”; the other says that people had “supposed that God was God from all eternity.” Both appear in texts that came from Joseph Smith. Unless there is some clear indication from the differing contexts of these statements that the expression “from all eternity” has two distinctly different meanings, we should acknowledge that the expression means the same thing in both places.
This might seem like a good argument, but when one examines any argument from this particular Protestant apologist (e.g., his nonsense about "Temple of Solomon" in the Book of Mormon) is easily refuted. Joseph Smith's sermons were in modern English; the Book of Mormon purports to be a translation of an ancient document. The semantic domain of modern English will differ from the semantic domain of words from translated ancient texts and from how ancients (e.g., Moroni) understood such. As D. Charles Pyle noted about ancient Egyptian understandings of eternity the following, which is instructive about how ancients (not moderns) understand such terms, including phrases the apologist finds "problematic" for the position I, Ostler, and others take:
[T]he Egyptian word for “eternity,” ḥḥ, was expressed bot by the word as well as by the ideographic symbol of the same meaning, both of which had the same range of meaning from “a great but indefinite number” to “millions” (as in the number of years, also seen in some writings) in their religious texts. A deity named Ḥḥ was in their pantheon, with the tacit understanding among the ancient Egyptians that this god thus himself also was “the god of hundreds of thousands of years.” Another way of writing the word was nḥḥ (meaning eternity). And in connection with this word’s form there also was a deity named Nḥḥ (described as “the god of eternity”).
The Egyptians, much as the Hebrews so did, sometimes also would string together words expressing long durations of time. Yet even those usages still represented long, measurable durations of time, thus demonstrating that even the Egyptians used various words (which frequently are translated as eternity, everlasting, and for ever and ever) similarly to how the Hebrews also did with respect to time. For instance, they might want to write a phrase like nḥḥ ḏt (or its fuller form nḥḥ ḥn’ḏt) to mean something like eternity with everlastingness. Thus, Egyptian also used similar approaches to meaning in which words were attached to other words, as also seen in the use of the phrase nḥḥ ḏt, or its fuller form nḥḥ ḥn’ḏt (meaning literally millions of years without limit, or, an eternity without end). The mere existence of such constructions show us that even Egyptian ḥḥ and nḥḥ did not mean eternity as we have tended to think of the concept. Nor did ḏt by itself mean everlasting as we might assume it did. Also weight is evidence we have seen that an Egyptian word for eternity in a phrase like ḥtr ṥn nḥḥ (meaning a tax fixed for ever or a perpetual tax) also reveals to us that said word did not have inherent within it a meaning we might want to attach to it with our Western way of looking at philosophical constructs . . . The occurrences of “everlasting to everlasting” or “all eternity to all eternity” phrases in the Book of Mormon are not as useful to the critics as they’ve imagined them to be. (D. Charles Pyle, I Have Said Ye are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament (Revised and Supplemented) [CreateSpace, 2018], 227-28)
