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Did Mormon Doctrine of God Change? Lectures on Faith, D&C 130, and Joseph Smith’s Developing Theology

The 1835 Doctrine and Covenants included the Lectures on Faith as its 'doctrine' section. Lecture 5 described the Father as a 'personage of spirit,' while Joseph Smith’s 1843 teaching now canonized in Doctrine and Covenants 130 says the Father has a tangible body of flesh and bones. The LDS Church’s own historical treatment acknowledges that the statements appear to conflict and notes that this…

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Joseph Smith did not begin his ministry with the fully developed theology now associated with Nauvoo Mormonism. The historical record shows development across priesthood, temple theology, eternal marriage, exaltation, and—most importantly—the doctrine of God.

One unusually clear window into that development is the Lectures on Faith.

The Lectures were printed in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. Lecture 5 described the Father as a “personage of spirit.” Eight years later, Joseph Smith taught what is now Doctrine and Covenants 130:22: the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.

Those are not merely two different emphases. They raise the question of whether Joseph’s concept of God materially changed.

What were the Lectures on Faith?

The Lectures on Faith are seven theological lectures associated with the School of the Elders in Kirtland during the winter of 1834–1835. They are among the earliest systematic attempts to explain Latter-day Saint theology.

In the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, the volume was divided into two broad parts. The Lectures formed the section called “Doctrine,” while Joseph Smith’s revelations formed the “Covenants and Commandments.”

This gave the Lectures an unusually prominent place in early LDS teaching.

The modern LDS Church is careful about authorship. No manuscript survives identifying a single author. Historical scholarship has often assigned substantial responsibility to Sidney Rigdon, although Joseph Smith almost certainly approved their publication and use.

That distinction matters. A Christian critic should not say Joseph personally wrote every word. The evidence does not establish that.

But neither can the Lectures be dismissed as an irrelevant outsider’s opinion. They were published as part of the Church’s principal doctrinal volume while Joseph was its prophetic leader.

Lecture 5 and the “personage of spirit”

Lecture 5 presents a striking account of the Godhead. It describes the Father as a personage of spirit, glory, and power, while the Son is described in embodied language.

Whatever exact metaphysical meaning its authors intended, the formulation does not sound like current LDS doctrine, in which both the Father and resurrected Son possess tangible bodies of flesh and bone.

This becomes important when compared with Doctrine and Covenants 130.

Doctrine and Covenants 130:22

In 1843 Joseph Smith taught that the Father has a body of flesh and bones, the Son likewise, and the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit.

That formulation is now canonized.

Current LDS teaching therefore distinguishes the Father and Son from the Holy Ghost precisely in terms of embodiment.

The LDS Church acknowledges the tension

The official Church History Topics essay on the Lectures does not pretend the problem does not exist. It notes that early twentieth-century Church leaders were concerned that Lecture 5’s description of the Father as a “personage of spirit” seemed to contradict Joseph Smith’s later teaching that the Father possesses a body of flesh and bones.

That concern contributed to the Lectures being removed from the Doctrine and Covenants in 1921.

The Church also emphasizes that the Lectures had not been formally sustained as revelation in exactly the same sense as the revelations themselves. That qualification weakens a simplistic claim that “Mormon scripture contradicted Mormon scripture and leaders deleted the embarrassing verse.”

But it does not eliminate the historical development. The early Church publicly taught one theological model in its official doctrinal book. Joseph later taught a materially different model. The older theological lectures were eventually removed.

Did Joseph Smith’s own theology change?

The larger record strongly suggests development.

The Book of Mormon frequently uses language about God that sounds closer to traditional Christian monotheism than later Nauvoo theology. Joseph’s later sermons and revelations introduce ideas concerning divine embodiment, uncreated intelligence, eternal matter, humans becoming gods, and a plurality of divine beings.

The King Follett discourse represents the most dramatic late expression of this trajectory, although its surviving reports are incomplete and it is not canonized.

The Lectures/D&C 130 issue therefore fits a broader pattern.

The strongest LDS response: revelation unfolds

Latter-day Saints have an obvious answer: God reveals truth line upon line.

Biblical prophets did not possess every later Christian doctrine in fully developed technical form. Peter did not preach with the vocabulary of Nicaea. The early Church itself spent centuries developing language about the Trinity and Christ.

Why should Joseph Smith be required to possess a completed theological system in 1830?

That objection has force. Doctrinal development by itself does not prove falsehood. Christians cannot fairly argue that any growth in theological precision is evidence of fraud while defending the historical development of Nicene terminology.

The real issue is the kind of development.

Development or reversal?

Nicene development attempted to preserve a body of apostolic claims already present in Christian worship and Scripture: one God, the Son’s preexistence and divine status, Father/Son distinction, the Spirit’s divine agency, and creation’s dependence on God.

The terminology became more precise as disputes forced Christians to define what those claims meant.

The Lectures/D&C 130 change concerns a more basic proposition about what the Father is.

If “personage of spirit” excludes bodily embodiment, then the later teaching is not simply a technical clarification. It changes the ontology of God.

An LDS interpreter can argue that the early phrase did not exclude embodiment or that the Lectures were imperfect theological instruction rather than revelation. But that creates another question: how reliable was the restored doctrinal system if its official teaching manual could misdescribe the nature of the God whose true identity the Restoration was supposed to recover?

The restoration claim raises the stakes

Historic Christianity does not claim every fourth-century term was verbally dictated to restore truths lost from earth. Mormonism makes a different historical claim.

Joseph Smith was not merely one theologian among many. He claimed divine authority to restore the Church and truths lost through apostasy.

That means rapid revision in his doctrine of God carries special evidential weight. If apostasy corrupted Christianity’s understanding of God, the Restoration should clarify the truth—not require its own internal doctrinal correction within a decade.

Could Sidney Rigdon solve the problem?

Not fully.

If Rigdon wrote most of Lecture 5, that may reduce Joseph Smith’s direct authorship. It does not remove Joseph’s approval of the Lectures’ institutional use.

Joseph was the Church’s prophetic president. The Lectures were published in the Church’s major doctrinal book under his leadership. If the Father’s nature was misstated there, the issue becomes one of prophetic oversight rather than direct composition.

The Christian comparison

Historic Nicene Christianity teaches that God is uncreated Spirit. The Son truly became embodied through the incarnation without turning the divine nature itself into material flesh and bone.

The Father did not acquire a body. He is not one embodied divine being inside a larger universe of eternal matter and intelligence.

Joseph Smith’s later theology moves in a different direction. The important point is not merely that Mormonism differs from post-biblical creeds. It is that Mormonism’s own conception of God changed during the formative years of the Restoration.

Final Verdict

The historical evidence supports real development in Joseph Smith’s doctrine of God, and the Lectures on Faith versus Doctrine and Covenants 130 provide one of the clearest examples.

The exact authorship of the Lectures is uncertain, and they were not canonized revelation in precisely the same status as Joseph’s revelations. Those qualifications should be preserved.

But they were published as the “Doctrine” portion of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants under Joseph Smith’s leadership. Lecture 5 described the Father as a “personage of spirit.” Joseph’s later canonized teaching says the Father has a tangible body of flesh and bones. The LDS Church itself acknowledges the apparent contradiction and notes that it contributed to the Lectures’ 1921 removal.

For historic Christianity, the problem is not that theological language can develop. The problem is that a movement claiming to restore the true knowledge of God appears to have revised a foundational claim about what God is within the ministry of its founding prophet.

That looks less like recovery of an unchanged apostolic faith and more like the development of a new nineteenth-century theology.

Key Sources

Topic: Mormonism