Joseph also speaks not merely of the “Head God,” but also of the Head Gods. He said, “The heads of the Gods appointed one God for us.” He seems to be referring the choice of Christ as our Savior as illustrated in the Book of Abraham: “Now the Lord God had shown to me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among these there were many of the noble and great ones. . . . And there stood one among them that was like unto God . . . and the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me” (Abr. 3:22-27). In other words, the Lord who is “the most intelligent of them all” called a council of noble and great ones who appointed Christ to be our Savior. The noble and great ones among the intelligences are thus seen as gods by Joseph Smith. . . . 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 no scriptural support nor textual support from Joseph Smith’s statements to clarify the status of the Godhead during the Father’s mortality.
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of
Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 451 n.
26, 30