The Adam-God Teaching: What Brigham Young Taught

On the evening of April 9, 1852, at a general conference in Salt Lake City, Brigham Young told the assembled Latter-day Saints that he would settle a question on which, he said, "the Elders of Israel have conflicting views": who was the Father of Jesus Christ? His answer was that Adam, the first man, had come to Eden with a celestial body, was "Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days," and was "our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do."¹

Many Latter-day Saints today know little of this teaching, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints formally rejects it. Yet the man they honor as the second prophet of the Restoration preached it, printed it and defended it for twenty-five years. That raises a question that reaches beyond Adam: if a prophet, seer and revelator can teach the wrong God, how are believers to know when he speaks for God at all?

In brief

In a sermon printed in the Journal of Discourses, Brigham Young taught that Adam came to Eden as an exalted being with Eve, "one of his wives," that he was "our Father and our God," and that Jesus "was not begotten by the Holy Ghost." He returned to the idea in roughly twenty sermons, called it revelation, and put it into the temple's "lecture at the veil" in 1877. Apostle Orson Pratt resisted. After Young's death his successors dropped it; in 1976 President Spencer W. Kimball denounced "the Adam-God theory," and in 1981 Apostle Bruce R. McConkie admitted privately that Young "did teach" it and that it was "not true." Latter-day Saint apologists now read it as a mistake, a misunderstood title, or an unexplained anomaly.

Thesis: Brigham Young plainly and repeatedly taught a false doctrine of God, and the way his Church has had to set it aside shows that the Latter-day Saint claim to living prophetic authority cannot guarantee the identity of the God it proclaims, while the apostolic faith confessed at Nicaea does.

What Brigham Young said in 1852

The sermon appears in the Journal of Discourses under the heading "Adam, Our Father and Our God," reported by George D. Watt. Young first said that God the Father "is a being of tabernacle," with a body "with parts the same as you and I have." He then turned to "Saint and sinner" with an announcement. When "our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days!" Adam, he continued, "is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non-professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later."²

He went on to the conception of Christ. "When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family." He added that "Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven," and warned his hearers that these doctrines "will prove their salvation or damnation." He also said that "were I to tell you the whole truth, blasphemy would be nothing to it, in the estimation of the superstitious and overrighteous of mankind."³

{{very-strong: Brigham Young publicly taught in April 1852 that Adam was "our Father and our God" and the father of Jesus in the flesh, and the sermon was printed in the Journal of Discourses.}}

The text was not obscure. The LDS Church's British periodical, the Millennial Star, printed an extract under the title "Adam, Our Father and God" in November 1853, before the bound volume appeared in 1854, and followed it with an editorial defending it.⁴

Not a single remark: the later sermons

The Latter-day Saint apologetic organization FAIR summarizes the record this way: Brigham Young gave more than 1,500 recorded sermons, and "in 20 of these sermons he brought up the subject of God the Father's relationship to Adam," with nine further accounts of him raising it in private.⁵ Historian David John Buerger's study in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (1982) traced the main ones.

• February 1854. Asking who begot Jesus, Young answered in a sermon preserved in the LDS Church archives: "His Father, and his father is our God, and the Father of our spirits . . . ." He then asked, "Who is he. He is Father Adam; Michael; the Ancient of days."⁶
• 1860. Young told the Twelve to keep the subject among themselves. That April, Apostle Orson Pratt objected in a council meeting: "In regard to Adam being our Father and God . . . I frankly say, I have no confidence in it, altho advanced by Brother Kimball in the stand, and afterwards approved by Brigham."⁷
• 1873. At a meeting of the School of the Prophets, Daniel H. Wells of the First Presidency bore testimony to the "doctrine pertaining to Adam being our Father & our God," and Joseph F. Smith, later president of the LDS Church, said "the enunciation of that doctrine gave him great joy." In a public sermon that June, reported in the Deseret News, Young spoke of "one particular doctrine which I revealed to them, and which God revealed to me," and named it: "that Adam is our father and God."⁸
• 1877. When the endowment was first written down for the St. George Temple, Young delivered a "lecture at the veil" that, according to a history FAIR quotes with approval, "contained references to Young's Adam-God doctrine." Wilford Woodruff noted in his journal that Young "deliverd a lecture at the veil some 30 Minuts."⁹

{{strong: Brigham Young returned to the Adam-God teaching over about twenty-five years, called it revealed doctrine, and placed it in the temple's lecture at the veil.}}

Young claimed at least three times that he had learned the doctrine from Joseph Smith, though Buerger found "no reliable primary source documentation from Smith's era to support this assertion."¹⁰ He also held a high view of his own preaching, telling the Saints in January 1870: "I have never yet preached a sermon and sent it out to the children of men, that they may not call Scripture. Let me have the privilege of correcting a sermon, and it is as good Scripture as they deserve."¹¹

From silence to denunciation

After Young's death the teaching faded from the pulpit. FAIR notes that "none of Brigham Young's successors in the presidency of the Church continued this teaching in public." In 1902, answering critics, Charles W. Penrose wrote in the Improvement Era that the LDS Church "has never formulated or adopted any theory concerning the subject treated upon by President Young as to Adam."¹² In 1912 the First Presidency stated: "Speculations as to the career of Adam before he came to the earth are of no real value."¹³

The teaching survived among some polygamous groups that broke from the LDS Church, which treat its absence from modern Latter-day Saint teaching as a sign of apostasy.¹⁴

Spencer W. Kimball, October 1976

In the priesthood session of the October 1976 general conference, President Kimball said: "We warn you against the dissemination of doctrines which are not according to the scriptures and which are alleged to have been taught by some of the General Authorities of past generations. Such, for instance, is the Adam-God theory. We denounce that theory and hope that everyone will be cautioned against this and other kinds of false doctrine."¹⁵ The published sermon, however, was more than "alleged."

Bruce R. McConkie, 1980 and 1981

In a Brigham Young University fireside on June 1, 1980, "The Seven Deadly Heresies," Elder McConkie listed as heresy six the belief "that Adam is our father and our god, that he is the father of our spirits and our bodies, and that he is the one we worship." He added: "We worship the Father, in the name of the Son, by the power of the Holy Ghost; and Adam is their foremost servant, by whom the peopling of our planet was commenced."¹⁶

The following February, in a private letter to the Brigham Young University professor Eugene England, McConkie was more candid. "Yes, President Young did teach that Adam was the father of our spirits, and all the related things that the cultists ascribe to him. This, however, is not true." He went on: "Prophets are men and they make mistakes. Sometimes they err in doctrine." His conclusion was that "Brigham Young, contradicted Brigham Young, and the issue becomes one of which Brigham Young we will believe," and that "we will believe the expressions that accord with the teachings in the Standard Works."¹⁷

How Latter-day Saint writers explain it today

FAIR lists five Latter-day Saint explanations.¹⁸

1. Adam as patriarch. Penrose, followed by John A. Widtsoe and Joseph Fielding Smith, argued that Young meant Adam is "God" only as presiding patriarch of the human race. Doctrine and Covenants 27:11 does call Adam "the father of all, the prince of all, the ancient of days," and D&C 107 calls him "Michael, the prince, the archangel."¹⁹ FAIR concedes that this explanation "suffers because it ignores many of Brigham's statements on Adam-God where he was quite clear in his intent."
2. Scribal error. FAIR notes that most feel this "cannot fully account for all the statements."
3. Two Adams. The researcher Elden Watson proposes that Young used "Adam" as a title for both God the Father and the first man. FAIR reports that the theory "has not been widely accepted," partly because Young "never directly explained his Adam-God teachings in the way Watson interprets them."
4. Brigham was wrong. This is McConkie's position and that of the researcher Van Hale: Young believed and taught it, and he erred.
5. We do not know. Brigham Young University professor Stephen E. Robinson called it an "anomaly": "we simply don't know what 'it' is," and since it "was never presented to the Church for a sustaining vote," it "was not then and is not now a doctrine of the Church."

{{debated: Whether Brigham Young's statements can be read as anything other than the identification of Adam with God the Father.}} Latter-day Saint writers do debate it, but McConkie and FAIR's own discussion accept that he taught what the 1852 sermon says.

Why it matters: the problem of prophetic authority

The LDS Church's standard answer is that not every word of a leader is doctrine. Its newsroom stated in 2007: "Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. A single statement made by a single leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, but is not meant to be officially binding for the whole Church."²⁰ Elder D. Todd Christofferson repeated the point in 2012, citing Joseph Smith's saying that "a prophet [is] a prophet only when he [is] acting as such."²¹

The principle is reasonable; Orthodox Christians also distinguish dogma from private opinion. But Adam-God was not a single statement on a single occasion. It was preached for a quarter of a century by the president of the LDS Church, announced to "Jew and Gentile, Saint and sinner," described as revealed by God, printed in LDS Church periodicals, introduced into the temple, and endorsed in private by other leaders even while an apostle resisted it. If teaching of that kind can be false, then the office of living prophet gives no assurance about the most basic question a religion can answer: who God is.

The Scriptures make that question the test. Moses warned that even a prophet whose sign "comes to pass" is not to be followed if he says, "Let us go after other gods . . . you shall not listen to the words of that prophet" (Deuteronomy 13:1-3). St Paul wrote: "even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8).²² McConkie's answer, to follow whichever Brigham Young agrees with the Standard Works, concedes that the measure of true teaching is not the living prophet but a received body of revelation. The Orthodox Church holds that it is "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3), kept whole in the Church and confessed in the Creed, not a canon that remains open to revision.

The Orthodox verdict

God is not a man who became God

The Creed of Nicaea and Constantinople confesses "one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible."²³ The Father is without beginning and without body; He is the one source of the Son, who is "begotten of the Father before all ages . . . begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father," and of the Holy Spirit, "Who proceeds from the Father." Nothing in this faith allows God to be a former mortal, an exalted man, or one god among many. Isaiah's words exclude it: "Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me" (Isaiah 43:10).

Adam is a creature

Scripture calls Adam "the son of God" only in the sense that he was created by God without a human father (Luke 3:38). St Paul writes that "the first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:47). Even Latter-day Saint scripture says the same: "I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground" (Moses 3:7).²⁴ In Daniel's vision, the Ancient of Days is the enthroned God before whom "One like the Son of Man" is brought (Daniel 7:9, 13), not a patriarch. The Orthodox Church honors Adam as the forefather of the human race, fallen and then raised by Christ, the New Adam, who descended into Hades to free him; to worship him would be to worship a creature.

Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Ever-Virgin

Young's insistence that "Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost" contradicts the Gospel. The angel told Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). Joseph was told that "that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:20). The Creed confesses that the Son "was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary." The Orthodox Church confesses Mary as Theotokos and ever-virgin, before, during and after the birth of Christ; any account that makes the conception of Christ an act of physical begetting by an embodied father denies both her virginity and the Incarnation itself. St Irenaeus drew the true parallel in the second century: as Adam was formed from "untilled and as yet virgin soil," so the Word, "recapitulating Adam in Himself, rightly receive[d] a birth . . . from Mary, who was as yet a virgin."²⁵

Modern Latter-day Saints have rejected Adam-God, and this site does not attribute it to them. But the 1852 sermon rests on premises the LDS Church still teaches: that "the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's" (D&C 130:22), and that of those exalted through eternal marriage, "Then shall they be gods" (D&C 132:20).²⁶ Those premises are the deeper error; Adam-God is one place where they led. The site's articles on the LDS Godhead, how the Latter-day Saint doctrine of God changed and theosis and exaltation treat them at length.

Objections and replies

"Critics quote one sermon out of context."

The context, given at length above, makes the meaning clearer, which is why McConkie conceded it.

"The Church never canonized it, so it was never doctrine."

Adam-God has never been part of the Latter-day Saint canon. But the Latter-day Saint claim is precisely that a living prophet supplies what the canon lacks. A prophet who teaches a false God from the pulpit, in print and in the temple, uncorrected in his lifetime, is evidence against that claim.

"Orthodox Fathers made mistakes too."

Individual writers have erred, and the Orthodox Church says so; their errors were judged by the faith the Church had already received, and her councils exist to guard the doctrine of God against innovation. The Orthodox measure of truth is the apostolic faith confessed by the whole Church, not the voice of one living leader.

What we can say confidently

• Brigham Young taught in April 1852 that Adam was "our Father and our God," that Adam came to Eden with "one of his wives," and that Jesus "was not begotten by the Holy Ghost." The sermon was printed by the LDS Church.
• He returned to the subject in about twenty sermons and in private, called it revealed, and included it in the 1877 lecture at the veil.
• Apostle Orson Pratt rejected it in his lifetime, and Young's successors did not teach it.
• President Spencer W. Kimball denounced "the Adam-God theory" in 1976, and Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote in 1981 that Young taught it and that it was "not true."
• The teaching contradicts Scripture and the Nicene faith on God, on Adam, and on the virginal conception of Christ by the Holy Spirit.

What remains disputed

• Exactly what Brigham Young believed about the relationship between Adam, Elohim and the Father; his statements are not fully consistent, and Latter-day Saint writers read them differently.
• Whether Joseph Smith taught anything like it. Young said he did; Buerger found no reliable contemporary evidence.
• How long the 1877 lecture at the veil was used in the temples. Some fundamentalist writers claim it continued into the early 1900s; Buerger judged those claims poorly documented.

Conclusion

Brigham Young told his hearers that the doctrine of Adam as God would "prove their salvation or damnation." His own Church now calls it false. Latter-day Saints deserve the plain history, and a plain question with it: if the second prophet could be wrong about who God is, what keeps the next revelation from being wrong as well?

The Orthodox Church answers by pointing to the faith it did not invent: one God, the Father Almighty, His eternal Son who became man of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father. That faith has never needed to be denounced by later leaders, because it was delivered once and kept. In it Adam is what Scripture says he is, the first man, fallen and then raised by Christ. In Christ the true God offers every human being, Adam's children included, a share in His life by grace. That invitation stands open to Latter-day Saints, and the Orthodox Church extends it with respect and with hope.

Notes

1. Brigham Young, sermon of April 9, 1852, "Self-Government, Mysteries, Recreation and Amusements, Not in Themselves Sinful, Tithing, Adam, Our Father and Our God," reported by G. D. Watt, Journal of Discourses 1:46-53, at 50, Brigham Young University edition, https://scriptures.byu.edu/jod/pdf/JoD01/JoD01_0050.pdf.
2. Journal of Discourses 1:50 (see note 1).
3. Journal of Discourses 1:50-51, https://scriptures.byu.edu/jod/pdf/JoD01/JoD01_0051.pdf.
4. David John Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 14-58, at 17, https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V15N01_16.pdf.
5. FAIR, "Brigham Young and Adam-God theory," https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Question:_What_is_the_history_of_Brigham_Young%27s_Adam-God_Theory_and_why_was_it_rejected_by_the_Church%3F.
6. Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," 18 (discourse of February 19, 1854, Brigham Young Collection, Church History Library, as cited by Buerger).
7. Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," 24, 28 (Pratt's statement of April 5, 1860, as cited by Buerger from the Brigham Young Collection).
8. Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," 31-32 (School of the Prophets minutes for 1873, and the discourse of June 8, 1873, reported in the Deseret News, June 18, 1873, as cited by Buerger).
9. FAIR, "Brigham Young and Adam-God theory" (see note 5), section on the "Lecture at the Veil," quoting Wilford Woodruff's journal for February 1, 1877; Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," 32-33.
10. Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," 25-28.
11. Brigham Young, discourse of January 2, 1870, Journal of Discourses 13:95, https://scriptures.byu.edu/jod/pdf/JoD13/JoD13_0095.pdf.
12. FAIR (see note 5), quoting Charles W. Penrose, "Our Father Adam," Improvement Era (September 1902): 873; Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," 39-40.
13. First Presidency statement, Improvement Era (March 1912), as quoted by Buerger, "The Adam-God Doctrine," 38, 41.
14. FAIR (see note 5).
15. Spencer W. Kimball, "Our Own Liahona," general conference, October 1976, priesthood session; Ensign, November 1976, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1976/10/our-own-liahona?lang=eng.
16. Bruce R. McConkie, "The Seven Deadly Heresies," Brigham Young University fireside, June 1, 1980, https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie/seven-deadly-heresies/.
17. Bruce R. McConkie to Eugene England, February 19, 1981, page 6, scanned copy published by the Eugene England Foundation, http://www.eugeneengland.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/BRM-to-EE-Feb-80-Combined.pdf (read from the page images).
18. FAIR (see note 5), "Attempts at Reconciling Brigham Young's Adam-God Teachings with Mainstream Latter-day Saint Thought." Stephen E. Robinson is quoted there from his own writing on the subject.
19. Doctrine and Covenants 27:11; 107:54, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/27?lang=eng and /dc/107?lang=eng.
20. "Approaching Mormon Doctrine," Newsroom of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, May 4, 2007, https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/approaching-mormon-doctrine.
21. D. Todd Christofferson, "The Doctrine of Christ," general conference, April 2012, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2012/04/the-doctrine-of-christ?lang=eng.
22. Scripture is quoted from the New King James Version.
23. The Symbol of Faith (Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed), Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/prayers/symbol-of-faith.
24. Moses 3:7, Pearl of Great Price, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/moses/3?lang=eng.
25. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.21.10, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103321.htm.
26. Doctrine and Covenants 130:22; 132:20, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/130?lang=eng and /dc/132?lang=eng.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Young, Brigham. Sermon of April 9, 1852. Journal of Discourses 1:46-53. Liverpool, 1854. Brigham Young University online edition.
• Young, Brigham. Discourse of January 2, 1870. Journal of Discourses 13:95.
• Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. Trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. "The Symbol of Faith."

Other scholarship

• Buerger, David John. "The Adam-God Doctrine." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 14-58.

Latter-day Saint sources

• Doctrine and Covenants 27; 107. Pearl of Great Price, Moses 3. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• Kimball, Spencer W. "Our Own Liahona." Ensign, November 1976.
• McConkie, Bruce R. "The Seven Deadly Heresies." Brigham Young University, June 1, 1980.
• McConkie, Bruce R. Letter to Eugene England, February 19, 1981. Eugene England Foundation.
• Newsroom of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Approaching Mormon Doctrine." May 4, 2007.
• Christofferson, D. Todd. "The Doctrine of Christ." General conference, April 2012.
• FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research). "Brigham Young and Adam-God theory."