Can you explain the Adam-God doctrine?
Question
Gramps,
Can you explain the Adam-God doctrine?
Don
Answer
Don,
I can certainly explain that it is not official LDS Doctrine. There is no clear scriptural precedent for the typical understanding of Brigham Young’s comments. Did he mean something else, or did he mean exactly what he said? We just don’t know.
The reason it is not official LDS Doctrine is because the idea does not meet the criteria for modern revelation to the world. The criteria are as follows:
1. The information must be given from God by direct revelation to the church population at large. Brigham Young never declared the Adam-God theory to be revelation of any kind.
2. The information must be submitted for acceptance as true revelation from God, in order, to the First Presidency, The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, The Quorums of the Seventy, to the High Priests of the LDS Church, the Elders of the Church, the Aaronic Priesthood holders of the Church, and ultimately to each and every member individually. The Adam-God theory has never been submitted to this process because of the first condition; it was never claimed as revelation.
This is why the theory is in the Journal of Discourses rather than the Standard Works of the LDS Church. The Journal of Discourses is a valuable record of talks and articles by past church leaders, but none of them have any doctrinal authority on the LDS Church in any way.
Gramps
Also note that things said at general conference are not considered doctrine either (unless they are quoting doctrine). See Gramps points above on what it takes to make something doctrine.
“Whose son did Jesus say he was? He said he was the Son of God (Matt. 27:43; Luke 22:70; John 5:25; 9:35 – 37; 10:36; 11:43), did he not? Yet even more often he referred to himself as the ‘Son of Man’. The Cambridge Bible Dictionary states the following:
“The Son of Man is a title of our Lord, found in the Gospels about 80 times, used by Him in speaking of Himself, but never used by anyone else in speaking of him (Cambridge Bible Dictionary, “Son of Man”).”
What could be the meaning of this? In the Hebrew, the word for “Adam” is “man”. There are not two words for “Adam” and “man” in the Hebrew, but they are the same word, “man”. The Bible Dictionary states the Following:
“ADAM, man, the name given to the first man in the early narrative of Genesis. By comparing the A. V., R. V. and R. V. marg., it will be seen there is some difficulty in deciding how far it is used as a proper name, e. g. in Gen. 2:19, 20, 21; 3:8; but it is certainly a proper name in 5:1– 5.”
So then when Jesus refers to himself as “The Son of Man” some 80 places in the New Testament, he is declaring in words as plainly as his language could speak it, that he was in fact the Son of Adam.
But Jesus was not the only person who taught this doctrine. Paul also taught it. On one occasion Paul taught that Christ was the “brightness of his (God the Father’s) glory, and the express image of his person” (Heb. 1:3).
On another occasion, Paul referred to Adam as “The figure of him (Christ) who was to come” (Rom 5:14). Again in Ephesians Paul says, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, OF WHOM [or after whom] the whole family in heaven and Earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14 –15).
What did Paul mean by this? What is the human race called? We are referred to as “Man” or “Mankind”, which in the Hebrew is to say, “Adam-kind”. So all the human race is named after Adam, and Paul says that the “Whole family (of man) in heaven and earth is named after the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” — which is to say “Man”, or “Mankind” or “Adam-kind”, or as it states in Genesis 5, just “Adam”:
This is the book of the generations of Adam, in the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; MALE and FEMALE created he them; and blessed them, and CALLED THEIR NAME ADAM, in the day when they were created. (Gen 5:1– 2)
Without a doubt in the passage in Ephesians 3, Paul is teaching just as Christ did, that Jesus was the Son of Adam.”
“What man or woman on earth, what spirit in the spirit-world can say
truthfully that I ever gave a wrong word of counsel, or a word of advice
that could not be sanctioned by the heavens? The success which has
attended me in my presidency is owing to the blessings and mercy of the
Almighty . . . ” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 12, p. 127).
“I say now, when they [his discourses] are copied and approved by me
they are as good Scripture as is couched in this Bible . . . ” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, p. 264; see also p. 95).
Brigham certianly felt he was right about everything