Friday, November 24, 2023

Van Hale's Helpful Overview of the Adam-God Theory

  

ADAM-GOD THEORY overview

 

Simply stated, the Adam-God theory is that God the Father, the Father of our spirits and the Father of Jesus (of both his body and his spirit), came to this earth, took upon himself mortality, and was known as Adam, the progenitor of the human family. That is, God the Father became Adam. The best evidence is that this idea in Mormonism originated with Brigham Young. While several have recalled that Joseph Smith taught that Adam is our God, the idea that God became Adam has not been found among his teachings, in fact, it seems contrary to his known teachings. Brigham Young’s first public statement of the idea, April 9, 1852, has been the center of most discussion of the subject since.

 

There have always been two interpretations of Young’s statement that “Adam is our Father and our God.” At the time of his first sermon on the subject was published in England in the Millennial Star, several articles also appeared which interpreted the sermon as teaching that Adam, as our great progenitor, will preside over the human family as Father and God. That this was Young’s intent has been, and is still, frequently advocated. However, a substantial number of other statements, published and unpublished, support, as Young’s belief, that God the Father came to this earth where he was known as Adam.

 

Most Church authorities contemporary with Young had little or nothing to say on the subject. The two exceptions were Young’s counselor, Heber C. Kimball, who also believed and discoursed on the subject several times, and Apostle Orson Pratt, who voiced his rejection of the concept. Since Young’s death, with the exception of several obscure statements, no Church authority has advocated the theory.

 

During the last decade of the 19th century interest in the subject elicited response from such authorities as Wilford Woodruff, George Q. Cannon, and Joseph F. Smith. Their response placed the theory among the mysteries which should be of no concern to the saints until God gives further light on the subject. In the first quarter of the 20th century such authorities as B. H. Roberts, Charles W. Penrose, and Joseph F. Smith argued that Young’s discourse was either inaccurately reported, or misinterpreted. This has been the primary response by Church authorities to inquiries from that time to the present. In recent years the additional emphasis on such authorities as Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr. (1972), Spencer W. Kimball (1976), Mark E. Peterson (1976 & 1981), and Bruce R. McConkie (1980 & 1981), has been that the concept is false. One recent letter of McConkie’s acknowledges that Young taught the idea but that he was in error.

 

Because of the small number of statements by Brigham Young and the obscurity of most of them, the theory would be all but forgotten except for the interest in the subject generated by anti-Mormon evangelists and fundamentalist Mormons who, for different reasons, find the Adam-God theory a major point of difference with current Mormonism. (Van Hale, Mormon Miscellaneous Note Cards, 3 vols. [Sandy, Utah: Mormon Miscellaneous, 1985], 1:92)