Refrain

All teachings

Adam-God

In April 1852 Brigham Young told the conference that Adam "is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do". What the pulpit did with that teaching afterward.

What the episode demonstrates is that even prominent, even liturgically enacted, prophetic teaching does not automatically consolidate into permanent dogma.

Noah Airmet, Covenantal Non-Dogmatism, on this case. Refrain shows how often a teaching was preached and in what way. Whether it binds is the essay's question.

Adam is God the Father to this world: "our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do", the being we worship; or the father of our spirits, who came to Eden with a celestial body; or the father of the mortal body of Jesus Christ.

The claim as the coders were given it

Speaks to it

  • Teaching any part of it, or taking it for granted.
  • Calling it a mystery, declining to press it, or saying it does not matter.
  • Re-reading Brigham Young's words in another sense (Adam is "our father and our god" only as the patriarch at the head of the human family, under God).
  • Any one of the three parts of the claim is enough for a paragraph to speak to it.
  • Denying it, or warning against "the Adam-God theory" or the idea that Adam is the God we worship.
  • Separating Adam from God the Father where the speaker is plainly answering the idea, whether or not it is named.

Does not speak to it

  • Adam as Michael, the archangel, or the Ancient of Days, presiding as patriarch at Adam-ondi-Ahman.
  • Michael or Adam helping in the creation of the earth under Elohim and Jehovah.
  • Adam as "our father", "Father Adam", the first man and ancestor of the human family, with nothing about his being God or the father of our spirits.
  • "Our Father and our God" said of God the Father with no reference to Adam.
  • Adam will be, or is, an exalted being or a god among others. That is the teaching that people may become gods.
  • Jesus Christ was begotten by God the Father and not by the Holy Ghost, unless the Father who begot him is identified with Adam.
  • The Fall, Adam's transgression, and Adam's place in the plan of salvation.
  • Calling Adam a son of God, or a being God created, while speaking of something else (evolution, the creation account), with no sign that the speaker has this teaching in view.

Close calls

  • Re-reading Brigham Young's words so that Adam is "our father and our god" only as patriarch of the race, subject to God, gives them another meaning: sets aside, or rejects if the speaker also says the teaching as usually understood is false.
  • "A mystery", "I do not care how that is", "cease troubling yourselves about who Adam is" are sets aside.
  • Saying that Brigham Young never taught it, or was misreported, while denying the teaching itself, is rejects.
  • Bracketed readings in a shorthand transcript (for example "[our God?]") are uncertain; label what is on the page and lower the confidence.

 

  1. 1852 Brigham Young at conference Adam "is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do."
  2. 1854 Conference sermon, unpublished Young's fullest statement of the teaching, given outdoors at conference and not printed at the time.
  3. 1860 Pratt objects Orson Pratt challenges the teaching in a meeting of the Twelve.
  4. 1877 Lecture at the veil The teaching enters temple instruction at St. George.
  5. 1902 "Our Father Adam" Charles W. Penrose in the Improvement Era: the Church "has never formulated or adopted any theory" on the subject.
  6. 1916 The Father and the Son First Presidency and Twelve exposition naming Elohim as the Father and Jehovah as Jesus Christ. It does not mention Adam.
  7. 1976 "We denounce that theory" Spencer W. Kimball at General Conference.
  8. 1980 Seven Deadly Heresies Bruce R. McConkie at Brigham Young University names the teaching a heresy.

The figures

The six labels

Affirms
The paragraph states the claim as true.
Assumes
The paragraph takes it as given while saying something else.
Qualifies
The paragraph accepts it within stated limits.
Sets aside
The paragraph declines to affirm it, without calling it false.
Rejects
The paragraph says it is false.
Mentions
The paragraph refers to it without taking a position.

A label describes one paragraph. It says nothing of the speaker's views elsewhere, and nothing of whether the claim is true. A sermon is drawn amber if its paragraphs speak for the claim, blue if against, and both if it does both. How the labels were made, and how far to trust them.

Reading on this case

  1. Covenantal Non-Dogmatism: Adam-GodNoah Airmet, Telos 1, no. 1 (2026). The essay's treatment of this case.
  2. Our Own LiahonaSpencer W. Kimball, General Conference, October 1976. The President of the Church names the Adam-God theory and denounces it.
  3. The Adam-God DoctrineDavid John Buerger, Dialogue 15, no. 1 (1982). The standard history, from the 1852 sermon to the twentieth-century denials.
  4. The Orson Pratt–Brigham Young ControversiesGary James Bergera, Dialogue 13, no. 2 (1980). An apostle disputing the teaching while Brigham Young was alive.
  5. The Seven Deadly HeresiesBruce R. McConkie, Brigham Young University, 1980. An apostle lists the teaching among seven heresies, alongside the idea that God progresses in knowledge.

The full reading list, on what the word doctrine means.