Joseph Smith's God: An Evolving Theology

The LDS Church teaches that Joseph Smith received consistent, coherent revelation from God from his First Vision in 1820 until his death in 1844. But a careful reading of his own writings and discourses — in chronological order — reveals something striking: his doctrine of God underwent distinct, mutually contradictory phases. The God of the 1830 Book of Mormon is not the God of the 1843 D&C. The God of the 1835 Lectures on Faith is not the God of the 1844 King Follett Discourse. And remarkably, Smith's own "inspired" Bible translation (1830–33) reinforces the early modalist view with even stronger language — language he would later abandon entirely. These are not refinements of the same idea. They are categorical theological reversals — each delivered as divine revelation.

1830

One God, spiritual, triune — language nearly identical to orthodox Christianity

1830–33

JST Bible doubles down: "the Son is the Father" and the Mediator "is one God"

1835

Two personages — Father as a "personage of spirit," Son embodied

1843

Father gains a physical body of flesh and bones

1844

God was once a mortal man who progressed to godhood

1830 Book of Mormon

Book of Mormon — Published March 26, 1830

On the Unity of God

"And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen."

— 2 Nephi 31:21

On God's Eternal, Unchanging Nature

"For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity."

— Moroni 8:18

On Christ as Father and Son

"And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son — The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son."

— Mosiah 15:2–3

The 1830 Book of Mormon uses language that any Trinitarian Christian would recognize. God is "one God, without end," "unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity." Christ is simultaneously Father and Son — the classic language of Monarchianism or modalism. There is no hint of three separate beings, no embodied Father, no pre-mortal progression.

1830–33 JST Bible

Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible — Produced June 1830 to July 1833

On the Father and the Son Being One Person

"All things are delivered to me of my Father; and no man knoweth that the Son is the Father, and the Father is the Son, but him to whom the Son will reveal it."

— JST Luke 10:22 (cf. similar changes in JST Matthew 11:27)

On the Mediator Who "Is One God"

"Who is willing to have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth which is in Christ Jesus, who is the Only Begotten Son of God, and ordained to be a Mediator between God and man; who is one God, and hath power over all men."

— JST 1 Timothy 2:4

Smith's own "inspired" revision of the Bible — produced during the same period as the Book of Mormon — goes even further than the Book of Mormon in affirming divine oneness. In the KJV, Luke 10:22 speaks of mutual knowledge between Father and Son: "no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son." Smith deliberately changed this into a statement of identity: the Son is the Father, and the Father is the Son. He made a similar change to the parallel passage in Matthew 11:27. In 1 Timothy, Smith expanded Paul's text to declare that Christ the Mediator "is one God." These are not inherited King James passages — they are Smith's own "corrections," produced under claimed prophetic inspiration. They confirm that as late as 1833, Smith's theology was functionally modalist. The God he would later split into separate, embodied beings was still — in his own translation work — one God.

1835 Lectures on Faith

Lectures on Faith — Canonized in D&C 1835–1921

On the Nature of the Father

"There are two personages who constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things... The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power: possessing all perfection and fullness; the Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle."

— Lectures on Faith, Lecture 5:2 (1835)

By 1835, God is now explicitly two separate personages — Father and Son — not "one God." But critically, the Father is still a "personage of spirit," not embodied. The Holy Spirit is not listed as a personage at all, but as "the mind of the Father and Son." These Lectures were voted into the LDS canon at the 1835 General Assembly and remained scripture for 86 years, until they were quietly removed from the D&C in 1921 — almost certainly because they contradicted the later, embodied view of God that had become standard LDS teaching.

1843 D&C 130

D&C 130 — April 2, 1843

On the Embodied God

"The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us."

— D&C 130:22, April 2, 1843

Now the Father has a body of flesh and bones — a direct, categorical contradiction of the 1835 Lectures on Faith, which declared Him "a personage of spirit." This verse remains in the current LDS D&C. The 1835 Lectures do not. The two cannot both be true, and both were presented as revelation. The Holy Ghost, formerly not even a separate personage, is now a personage of spirit — but without a body, for a reason Smith gives that raises more questions than it answers.

1844 King Follett

King Follett Discourse — General Conference, April 7, 1844

On What God Once Was

"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible — I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form — like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man."

— Joseph Smith, King Follett Discourse, April 7, 1844

On Human Potential for Godhood

"Here, then, is eternal life — to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you."

— Joseph Smith, King Follett Discourse, April 7, 1844

Three months before his death, Smith delivered his most radical theological statement. The eternal, unchangeable God of Moroni 8:18 — "unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity" — has now become a formerly mortal being who achieved godhood through progression. The God who is "one God, without end" is now one of many gods, each of whom was once a man. These doctrines are not compatible with the Book of Mormon, the Lectures on Faith, or each other. Yet all were delivered as revelation.

Catholic Development of Doctrine

The Catholic doctrine of the Trinity — articulated more precisely at Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451) — did not change what was believed, but clarified how to express what Scripture and Tradition had always taught. Nicaea did not invent the Trinity; it defined the vocabulary to guard against a specific heresy (Arianism). The substance was identical to what Ignatius, Justin, and Irenaeus had taught two centuries earlier.

Smith's "Revelatory" Reversals

Smith's shifts are not refinements — they are categorical reversals. An "unchangeable" God who gains a body. A "personage of spirit" who acquires flesh and bones. A singular, eternal God who was once a mortal. The 1830 Book of Mormon and the 1844 King Follett Discourse cannot both be true. Yet both are presented as the word of God. This is not development; it is contradiction.

✦ The Unavoidable Conclusion ✦

If the God of the 1830 Book of Mormon is the true God, then the King Follett Discourse is false revelation. If the King Follett Discourse reveals the true God, then the Book of Mormon's declaration that God is "unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity" is wrong. And if the Lectures on Faith were true in 1835, then both are wrong in different ways. The Joseph Smith Translation makes the problem even more acute: as late as 1833, Smith was still actively writing — under claimed prophetic inspiration — that "the Son is the Father, and the Father is the Son" and that the Mediator "is one God." These are not inherited texts. They are his own "corrections." An authentic prophetic channel does not produce irreconcilable contradictions about the fundamental nature of the being it claims to represent.

The Catholic Church has never changed what it teaches about who God is. The same God confessed by Peter and Paul, articulated by Justin and Irenaeus, defined at Nicaea, is the God worshipped at every Mass today. That consistency across twenty centuries is itself a theological argument.