Brigham Young's Adam-God doctrine

The second Church president taught for 25 years, and put into the temple ceremony, a doctrine about God's identity that a later president denounced as false.

What the Church claims

Church presidents are prophets, seers and revelators whose teachings on the nature of God can be relied upon; the Lord will not let them lead the Church astray.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Weak. Primary sources on both ends are unambiguous; the only escape is a definition of 'astray' so narrow that the guarantee means little.

The record

  • On 1852-04-09 Brigham Young taught in General Conference that Adam 'is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do', and that Jesus 'was not begotten by the Holy Ghost' (JD 1:50-51).
  • David John Buerger's 1982 Dialogue study documents Young teaching the doctrine from 1852 until his death in 1877, most emphatically in the 1850s, against apostle Orson Pratt's sustained objection.
  • In February 1877 Young dictated a 'lecture at the veil' for the St. George Temple endowment; his secretary L. John Nuttall recorded it as teaching that Adam came here an immortal being who had begotten the spirits destined for this earth.
  • After Young's death leaders retreated: Charles W. Penrose recast it as Young's personal belief and Joseph F. Smith discouraged discussion of it.
  • In October 1976 General Conference Spencer W. Kimball named 'the Adam-God theory' as an example of false doctrine: 'We denounce that theory'.

The moving target

  • 1852-04-09: Adam is 'our Father and our God'.
  • 1877-02: Adam-God taught as part of the endowment instruction.
  • c. 1900-1916: Young's personal view / an unrevealed mystery; not Church doctrine.
  • 1976-10: 'We denounce that theory' as false doctrine.

The exchange

Older FAIR material; Elden Watson; Joseph Fielding Smith

Young was misreported or misunderstood: the Journal of Discourses is an unreliable stenographic record and he may have meant only that Adam is the patriarchal head of the human family ('God' in a limited sense).

The answer: The misreport theory cannot account for twenty-five years of repetition, Pratt's long dispute with Young over precisely this teaching, or Nuttall's first-hand record of the 1877 temple lecture. FAIR's own 'Prophets are not infallible' framing, and the FAIR page opened here, now concede that Young 'actually taught' it and classify it as a repudiated concept. Kimball would not have needed to denounce a transcription error.

What they get right: Some individual sermon reports are genuinely ambiguous, and the doctrine was never canonized or sustained by a Church vote.

FAIR ('Prophets are not infallible'); D. Todd Christofferson 2012 standard

It was never official doctrine: a prophet's speculation is not binding unless canonized and sustained; the system corrected itself.

The answer: By that standard very little taught over any pulpit is doctrine, which drains 'follow the prophet' of content. Young taught it as revealed truth in General Conference and installed it in the temple, the most authoritative teaching venue the Church has. If members could not rely on that, the practical value of a living prophet on the nature of God is unclear.

What they get right: The Christofferson standard (2012) is now the Church's stated rule, and on that rule Adam-God was never binding.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

This is the cleanest test of 'never lead astray' because both ends are on the Church's own record: a Church president teaching a doctrine of God in General Conference and in the temple, and a later Church president calling the same doctrine false. One of the two prophets was wrong about who God is. Apologists have largely abandoned the misquotation defense; what remains is the argument that a prophet can teach false doctrine about God for decades from the pulpit and in the temple without 'leading the Church astray', because most members did not adopt it and it was never canonized.

The apologetic case

Young speculated beyond what was revealed, the apostles pushed back, the membership never sustained the idea, and it died with him. Later prophets formally rejected it. That is a church whose checks (canon, quorum unanimity, common consent) worked as designed; prophets are not claimed to be infallible theologians.

What would change this

Manuscript evidence that the 1852 and 1877 texts substantially misstate what Young said, which the shorthand and diary record currently does not support.

Sources

An independent project. Not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with any organization cited here. Summaries are written here; short quotations are attributed and linked. Every page names its sources so that it can be corrected, and every page can be challenged.