In some texts, the title "Father" is used of Jesus in the Book
of Mormon, and some errant critics of the Church assume the Book of Mormon
identifies Jesus with the person of God the Father as a result. Such texts
include the following:
And he shall be
called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the
Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary.
(Mosiah 3:8)
Behold, I am he
who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people. Behold,
I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son. In me shall all mankind have
life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they
shall become my sons and my daughters. (Ether 3:14)
However, as with Isa 9:6, the
term "Father" is a title, not simply a reference to God the Father,
and denotes, as it does in Mosiah 3:8, how Jesus is the "Father" in
the sense that he was the creator of heaven and earth. Indeed, in the Book of
Mormon, we see this multivalency for "Father":
And after they
have been scattered, and the Lord God hath scourged them by other nations for
the space of many generations, yea, even down from generation to generation
until they shall be persuaded to believe in Christ, the Son of God, and the
atonement, which is infinite for all mankind-- and when that day shall come
that they shall believe in Christ, and worship the Father in his name, with
pure hearts and clean hands, and look not forward any more for another Messiah,
then, at that time, the day will come that it must needs be expedient that they
should believe these things. (2 Nephi 25:16)
In this text, there is a distinction between God (the Father) and Jesus,
notwithstanding "Father" being used for both persons--obviously, the
term can and is used in different senses for different persons and in different
contexts. In 2 Nephi 25:19, we see a further numerical distinction between the
persons of the Father and the Son:
For according to
the words of the prophets, the Messiah cometh in six hundred years from the
time that my father left Jerusalem; and according to the words of the prophets,
and also the word of the angel of God, his name shall be Jesus Christ, the Son
of God.
For more on the (naïve and, frankly, bogus and eisegetical) claim early
Latter-day Saint theology was that of Modalism, see:
Blake T. Ostler, Re-vision-ing the Mormon
Concept of Deity