What Mormons Believe about Jesus
Douglas J. Davies writes:
“There is nothing surprising or novel in religious groups developing theological ideas in new directions. Early Christians, for example, took Jewish religious traditions of God, creation, sin, the fall, redemption, a saviour figure, resurrection, and a people of God, and reconfigured them all in relation to Jesus of Nazareth identified as saviour and lord. Christianity also brought a very open boundary to that previously, largely controlled community of Jews and talked not only about a spirit power that qualified people for inclusion but also asserted the belief that the resurrection had already begun in the person of Jesus. It was not long before a variety of other ideas, especially Greek ideas, helped ongoing generations of Christians to express their growing sense that Jesus was also divine and needed to be included in a new view of God as a Holy Trinity. The early Christian idea that Christ would soon return to transform the world was itself transformed into an ongoing commitment to develop and expand the Christian community itself.”[10]
What the Mormons teach about Jesus
The Mormon Scriptures do reference Jesus Christ as the Son of God (Helaman 5:12; 3 Nephi 14:24-6; Mosiah 3:8), and their Articles of Faith open with the idea that Jesus Christ is the Son of God the Eternal Father, but they mean something different by it. Davies explains:
“The Articles open with the assertion: ‘We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.’ This simple affirmation echoes the doctrine of the Trinity, which gradually became the mark of orthodoxy during the first four hundred years of Christianity and sets the mark for all subsequent debates about the nature of God. Whilst reflecting early Christian creeds the affirmation does not express the rationale of LDS thought, especially its later development, for it does not operate on the same philosophical principles. Though some LDS writers have tried to describe LDS accounts of God in relation to the official creeds of Christendom, the venture is seldom fruitful, because the worlds of thought and of ritual action associated with them are markedly different (Hale 1989: 7–14). In fact the LDS approach to God is not always easy for members of other Christian denominations to grasp, because of the distinctive value given to the relative status of ‘God’, ‘Father’ and ‘Son’. Jesus Christ, for example, is identified with the Old Testament figure of Jehovah and was the God of Israel. This immediately draws a distinction between LDS and most other Christian traditions, which would identify the God of the Hebrews as ‘the Father’, and Jesus as the Father’s Son.”[11]
What do Mormon’s mean by ‘Father’?
“At the outset the very word ‘Father’ demands close attention. Many ordinary Christians would, in popular terms and in practical spirituality, identify God the Father with the God of the Old Testament, often referred to as Jehovah. For them the link between Father and Jehovah is assumed and they would not anticipate the counter-intuitive LDS view that equates Jesus with Jehovah. For ordinary Christians it is important to stress this fact: in Mormon terms Jesus is Jehovah and Jehovah is not the Father. In Mormon terminology the source responsible for all spirits, including that of Jesus, is Elohim. This Hebrew plural noun of majesty or intensity is usually used with a verb in the singular and, biblically, describes the single identity of God the Father. In the opinion of Latter-day Saints and in their traditional ritual, however, Elohim becomes particularly important in relation to creation stories, in which it is given a full plural designation–the Gods (Abraham 4: 1). This marks a clear distinction from historical Christian doctrine.”[12]
What do Mormons mean when they say that Jesus is the ‘Son of God’?
“More traditionally, perhaps, Jesus is taken to be the ‘Son of God’, and this in the most direct sense of God the Father engaging with Mary to engender his Son. This allows Latter-day Saints to speak of the divine and the human nature in Jesus without becoming involved in the technical debates of the early period of Christian history. The Articles of Faith, for example, do not refer to the human and divine natures of Jesus, nor yet to his mother being a virgin, nor to a virgin birth. Brigham Young was clear on the subject, ‘the Being whom we call Father was the Father of the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was also his Father pertaining to the flesh. Infidels and Christians, make all you can of this statement’: Mary was impregnated by God the Father to produce Jesus in the same way as Brigham’s father had sired him (Young 1992:127,137)” (emphasis mine).[13]
For Mormons, Jesus is in the most literal sense God the Father’s son who was born as a result of intimate, physical relations between the Father God and a young woman named Mary, who is somehow still considered by Mormons to be a virgin.
“In more formal terms, God the Father, or ‘God the Eternal Father’ as he is often addressed in worship, is particularly important because, along with a heavenly mother figure, he is the source of all spirit children. Jesus, too, was produced as a spirit child in this way in the pre-existent world prior to his taking a human body through Mary, in a human birth that was the outcome of a form of union between Mary and the Eternal Father. As the Prophet Ezra Taft Benson explained it: ‘Jesus was not the son of Joseph, nor was he begotten by the Holy Ghost. He is the Son of the Eternal Father’ (1983: 4, cited by Millet 1992: 725)” (emphasis mine).[14]
Because of this, Mormons prefer to talk of the Godhead as opposed to the Trinity.
“As far as the LDS doctrine of the godhead is concerned–and ‘Godhead’ is a term much preferred over ‘Trinity’–much is driven by Joseph Smith’s first vision, when he was fourteen years of age. Joseph described a great pillar of light in which two divine beings came to him: the one was assumed to be God the Father because he called the other his Son. It is precisely because these two ‘personages’, as they are usually called, were perceived by Joseph to be distinct entities that Mormonism set itself on the path to a notion of godhead which some stress as being twofold but others as threefold, albeit with the qualification that two of the three possessed actual bodies. This visionary presence of Jesus is at least as important as the doctrine of the Incarnation as the foundation for belief in the divine engagement with human bodies.”[15]
Interestingly, in Mormon theology, Jesus was also a polygamist.
“One minor aspect of early LDS thought, or perhaps it might better be called speculation, and one that is rarely formally discussed today, is the idea that Jesus did, in fact, marry, and that he married both Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead (see Buerger 1994: 67; Kraut 1969). This idea would probably be viewed as impious by many ordinary Christian traditions, not simply because the Bible says nothing about it, but because marriage, sex and sin often seem to combine in a negative way in everyday Christian mentality, despite theological protestations to the contrary, and Christians do not associate Jesus with sin of any sort. In LDS spirituality, however, sexuality is largely positive and in early Mormonism marriage, especially plural marriage, became the route to exaltation rather than to hell.”
Put simply:
“Mormons, as we have seen, identify Christ with Jehovah. Jehovah existed prior to his incarnation as the ‘first-born’ of the myriads of pre-existent spirits. The following statements from James Talmadge, in his Articles of Faith, make this clear: ‘Among the spirit-children of Elohim the firstborn was and is Jehovah or Jesus Christ to whom all others are juniors’ (p. 471). ‘Jesus Christ is not the Father of the spirits who have taken or yet shall take bodies upon this earth, for He is one of them. He is The Son as they are sons or daughters of Elohim’ (pp. 472-73). Not also the following statements from Doctrine and Covenants: ‘And now, verily I say unto you, I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the First-born; And all those who are begotten through me are partakers of the glory of the same, and are the church of the First-born. Yet were also in the beginning with the Father…(93:21-23).’ From these statements it is evident that, for Mormons, the only difference between Christ and us is that Christ was the first-born of Elohim’s children, whereas we, in our pre-existence, were ‘born’ later. The distinction between Christ and us is therefore one of degree, not one of kind.”[16]
The consequences of this belief?
“If the devil and the demons were also spirit-children of Elohim, it must follow that they, too, are Jesus’ brothers. This is exactly what one Mormon writer says: ‘As for the Devil and his fellow spirits, they are brothers to man and also to Jesus and sons and daughters of God in the same sense that we are.’ One could therefore even say that, for Mormons, the difference between Christ and the devil is not one of kind, but of degree!”[17]
Further:
“From the foregoing it has already become evident that in Mormon theology Jesus Christ is basically not any more divine than any one of us. We have previously noted that Mormons deny the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so they teach, are not one God but three gods. It remains further to note that Christ is not considered equal to the Father: ‘Jesus is greater than the Holy Spirit, which is subject unto him, but his Father is greater than he.’ Though it is said that Christ’ created this earth under the Father’s direction, it is also said that certain pre-existence spirits, like Adam and Joseph Smith, helped him. Further confirming Mormonism’s denial of the essential deity of Christ is the following statement by Mormon elder B. H. Roberts: ‘The divinity of Jesus is the truth which now requires to be reperceived…the divinity of Jesus and [the divinity] of all other noble and saintly souls, insofar as they, too, have been inflamed by a spark of Deity—insofar as they, too, can be recognized as manifestations of the Divine.’ When we recall the goal of Mormon eschatology is for man to attain godhood, we conclude that the Christ of Mormonism is a far cry from the Christ of the Scriptures. Neither his divinity nor his incarnation are unique. His divinity is not unique, for it is the same as that to which man may attain. His incarnation is not unique, for it is no different from that of other gods before him, who were incarnated on other earths; nor is it different from that of man, who also was a pre-existent spirit before he was incarnated on this earth.”[18]
The point? It's clear from Mormonism’s own teachings and doctrines that they do not follow the Jesus of the Bible.