According to the Bullock notes, Joseph
Smith also stated: “If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered
that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a father, you may suppose that He had a
Father also.” The text that Joseph Smith refers to as the basis of his sermon
is Revelation 1:[6], which states that Jesus Christ “washed us from our sins in
His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to
him be glory and dominion forever and ever.” What interests Joseph Smith is the
reference to “God and his Father.” Does Joseph quote it to mean “God [= the
Father] and his Father [= God the Father’s Father[;” or does it mean: “God p=
the Son] and his Father [= God the Father]”? At the commencement of the Sermon
in the Grove, Joseph interpreted this text to refer to a plurality of gods
because it speaks of two distinct gods, God and God’s Father: “I will peach of
the plurality of Gods. I have selected this text for that express purpose. I
wish to declare that I have always and in all congregations when I have
preached on the subject of the Deity, it has been the plurality of gods. It has
been preached by the Elders for fifteen years. I have always declared God to be
a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God
the Father, and the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these
three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.” (Joseph Fielding
Smith, comp. and ed., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 373. The
unedited notes for the Sermon in the Grove are found in Ehat and Cook, The
Words of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 378-83) In the first context, it appears
fairly clear that Joseph Smith quotes Revelation 1:[6] to mean “priests and
kings to God [= Jesus Christ as a distinct being] and His Father [= the Father
as a distinct being]. So initially Joseph Smith referred to Revelation 1:[6] to
show that the Father and the Son are distinct personages and thus they must be
Gods, plural. However, he continues with this crucial passage:
Our text says, “and hath made us kings
and priests unto God and His Father.” The Apostles have discovered that there
were Gods above, for John says God was the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. My
object was to preach the scriptures, and preach the doctrine they contain,
there being a God above, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . John was
one of the men, and apostles declare they were kings and priests unto God, the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It reads just so in Revelation. Hence, the
doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other
doctrine. (Ibid., 40)
The meaning of this particular passage
hinges on a comma. Bullock’s notes have no comma after “a God above” but the
printed version does. Does it mean “there being a God above the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ,” or does it mean “there being a God above, [who is] the
father of our Lord Jesus Christ”? the first states that there is a God above
the Father, the second that the father is the God above. I don’t believe that
the Bullock notes are adequately clear to tell us in this instance.
However, there are two rather clear
statements that “if Jesus had a father, cannot we believe that he had a father
also?” I have quoted these statements here in the context of the sermon to show
that Joseph Smith appears to have had a particular context in mind when he
spoke about the father of Jesus Christ having a Father. The statement regarding
the Father having a Father is placed in the context of the Father’s becoming
mortal and laying down his life to take it up again: “the Father wrought in
precisely in the same way as His Father had done before Him.” However,
it is clear from the King Follett Discourse that this is a misstatement—it is
not the Father who does as his Father before him, but the Son who
does as his Father before him. In the King Follett Discourse, Joseph Smith
quoted John 5:19 which states: “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he
seeth the Father do; for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son
likewise.” Joseph Smith was referring to the Son doing what the Father had done
before him because “He laid down His life, and took up the same as His Father
had done before.” So it appears that the reference in the Bullock notes to the
Father doing what his Father did is Bullock’s mistake because the underlying
text of John 5:19 requires that the Son does what his Father did; not
that the Father did what his Father did. (Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon
Thought, 4 vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2008], 3:22-24)
