Mormonism and the nature of God/King Follett Discourse

This article is a draft. FairMormon editors are currently editing it. We welcome your suggestions on improving the content.

Criticism

Critics claim that, in an effort to appear more 'mainline' Christian, the Church is downplaying the importance of some doctrines taught late in Joseph Smith's lifetime. Prominent among these is the doctrine of human deification.

Source(s) of the Criticism

  • Luke P. Wilson, Mormons in Transition web site.

Response

Critics usually provide a quotation from President Gordon B. Hinckley to bolster this argument:

On whether his church still holds that God the Father was once a man, he sounded uncertain, "I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it ... I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don't know a lot about it, and I don't think others know a lot about it.
— David van Biema, "Kingdom Come," TIME Magazine (4 August 1997): 56, elipsis in original.

Critics have claimed that this means that President Hinckley has admitted to altering LDS doctrine, or discarding a teaching from the past.

Unfortunately, TIME's report did not include the entire citation.

In Context

It is important to note which question was being asked. Lorenzo Snow's famous "couplet" on deification reads as follows: "As man is now, God once was; as God is now man may be." — Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, compiled by Clyde J. Williams (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1984), 2.

There are two parts of the couplet:

  • As man is now, God once was
  • As God is now, man may be.

President Hinckley was asked about the first part of the couplet, as the citation above demonstrates. (The second part of the couplet is typically the focus of LDS doctrine and practice, since it is something over which we have some influence!)

The exact question asked was:

Q: Just another related question that comes up is the statements in the King Follet discourse by the Prophet.
A: Yeah.
Q: ...about that, God the Father was once a man as we were. This is something that Christian writers are always addressing. Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?

The Complete Response

President Hinckley's complete response is as follows:

A: I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don't know a lot about it and I don't know that others know a lot about it. [the portion in italics was omitted from TIME's reporting]

There is no denial or renouncing of the doctrine. Quite simply, Presidnet Hinckley asserts that:

  • we don't emphasize it.
  • we don't tend to teach it much in public discourse.
  • we don't know much about this topic, though we understand the philosophical underpinnings.
  • no one else in the Church has much information on it either.

Ambiguity

The question is also somewhat ambiguous. TIME says they asked "whether his church still holds that God the Father was once a man." But, the actual question was "Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?"

"Teaching" can be understood in at least two senses:

  • 'doctrine'/'belief,' in the sense of 'does the church "still hold" this belief?'
  • 'something that is taught or preached,' 'actively taught'

The reporter understands the question in the first sense; President Hinckley seems to have responded in the second sense—the first part of his answer was "I don't know that we teach it" (emphasis added). That is, it is not taught as an official belief. This is a good example of the logical fallacy of amphibology at work.

Furthermore, President Hinckley seems to have understood the question in this way because of the prelude to the question. The interviewer noted that "[t]his is something that Christian writers are always addressing." I suspect that he meant that "This is a point of LDS doctrine which always troubles non-LDS Christian authors, and they write a lot about it."

President Hinckley's reply that "I don't know that we emphasize it" seems a clear response to this idea—other writers or other denominations may spend a lot of time on the issue, but we don't. Again, this shows that he understood "teaching" in the second sense, and not the first.

Why Didn't He Say More?

Finally, it should be remembered that this doctrine requires a great deal of 'background' to understand even the little that the Church does know. Providing that background in an interview for the general public is virtually impossible. Anti-Mormon authors are always quick to pounce on 'strange' things they can use to alienate other Christians from LDS theology; one might suspect that President Hinckley did not want to confuse matters by attempting what probably would have been an unsatisfactory explanation of the doctrine.

Conclusion

A combination of an ambiguous question, a complicated and little-understood doctrine, and TIME's incomplete representation of both the question and the answer contributed to the confusion.

It is amusing, though, to see anti-Mormons scramble to find fault: as if President Hinckley would announce a change of doctrine in a magazine interview!

Further reading

FAIR web site

External links

Retrieved from "http://104.237.154.152/answers/index.php?title=Mormonism_and_the_nature_of_God/King_Follett_Discourse&oldid=1307"