¹ The first of the LDS Church's thirteen ‘Articles of Faith’ (originally published in Times and Seasons 1 March 1842, later canonized, and currently found in The Pearl of Great Price) states, ‘We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost’. In spite of a superficial appearance of traditional Christian monotheistic trinitarianism, this first article of faith is understood by both Christian apologists and Mormons themselves to be expressing an unambiguous commitment to tri-theism.

² See, for example, Martin's, Walter R. The Maze of Mormonism (Santa Ana, CA: Vision House, 1978)Google Scholar, especially, Chapter 3: ‘The gods of Mormonism: Polytheism returns’; Also see Beckwith, F. J. and Parrish's, S. E. ‘The Mormon God, omniscience, and eternal progression: A philosophical analysis,’ Trinity Journal, XII (N.S.) (1991), 127–38Google Scholar, and their The Mormon Concept of God: A Philosophical Analysis (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1991).Google Scholar

³ The remaining three LDS standard works are The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and The Bible (King James Version). All quotations from The Pearl of Great Price (hereafter, PGP) are taken from the 1982 edition published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

⁴ Smith's, Joseph History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. An Introduction and Notes by B. H. Roberts 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co. 1959) 6:474.Google Scholar

⁵ The Journal of Discourses by Brigham Young, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, His Two Counsellors, the Twelve Apostles, and Others, 26Google Scholar volumes, reported by G. D. Watt (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1854–1886), v. 7, p. 333, hereafter referred to as Journal of Discourses.

⁶ The contemporary Mormon Church is unambiguous in its denial of the traditional Christian understanding of Christ's Virgin Birth. According to Mormon Church teaching (in contradiction to Matthew 1: 20), the incarnate Christ was conceived not by the Holy Ghost, but by Elohim himself. ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the most literal sense. The body in which He performed His mission in the flesh was sired by that same Holy Being we worship as God, our Eternal Father. Jesus was not the son of Joseph, nor was He Begotten by the Holy Ghost. He is the Son of the Eternal Father.’ Benson, Ezra Taft, The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson (Bookcraft: Salt Lake City, 1988), p. 7.Google Scholar

⁷ According to one prominent current in orthodox Mormon anthropology (derived, in part, from the PGP's Book of Abraham 3: 18), human spirits pre-exist as eternal, necessarily existent ‘intelligences’ (although their alleged necessary existence is not entailed by the aforementioned PGP passage). Hence, the traditional Mormon understanding of ‘creation’ is very unlike the traditional Christian understanding of creation ex nihilo. Mormon deities do not create; rather, they simply organize previously unorganized eternally existent matter. The complex development of Mormon conceptions of ‘organization’, ‘intelligence’, ‘matter’, and ‘spirits’ is carefully chronicled in Ostler's, Blake T. ‘The idea of preexistence in Mormon thought’, in Line Upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine (ed. Bergera, G. J.) (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1989)Google Scholar, ch. 12.

⁸ Journal of Discourses, v. 5, p. 19.

⁹ An illuminating discussion of this ‘shadowy and elusive idea…floating around the edges of Mormon consciousness’ (p. 103) can be found in Wilcox's, Linda P. ‘The Mormon concept of a Mother in heaven’, in Bergera (1989)Google Scholar, ch. 10.

¹⁰ Bruce McConkie, R., Mormon Doctrine, 2nd edn. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft Inc., 1966) p. 516.Google Scholar

¹¹ McConkie (1966) 577.

¹² This characterization of henotheism can be traced to the writings of the 19th century German scholar, Max Mueller. Mueller argued that the religion of ancient Israel was not monotheistic, but rather henotheistic.

¹³ A discussion of the resources available to certain strands of Mormon neo-orthodoxy for eluding the sorts of metaphysical problems raised in this essay is beyond the scope of this paper. For a clear and provocative introduction to these non-traditional ‘neo-orthodox’ conceptual possibilities, see White's, O. Kendall Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy: A Crisis Theology (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Journal of Discourses, v. 7, p. 333.

¹⁵ One must not be misled into thinking that an ‘infinite being’ understood along Anselmian lines, like an infinite (Cantorian) set, is a being such that there could always be a greater. On the contrary, divine Anselmian properties are great-making in virtue of their maximizability or perfectibility.

¹⁶ Whatever Young himself in fact understood by these terms, a commitment to a ‘finite god’ is explicit in contemporary Mormon theology. See, for example, Blake T. Ostler's ‘The concept of a finite God as an adequate object of worship’, in Bergera (1989), ch. 7.

¹⁷ Journal of Discourses, v. 1, p. 93. In contemporary Mormon orthodoxy, it does not appear that there can be a ‘greatest intelligence in existence’, for the lineage of gods extends infinitely backwards in time.

¹⁸ Journal of Discourses, v. 6, p. 120. This understanding of eternal progression is contradicted by Bruce R. McConkie: ‘There is no truth he does not know, no wisdom hidden from his view, no laws or powers or facts for him to discover in some distant eternity. His wisdom and knowledge are absolute and have neither bounds nor limitations. He knows all things now; he is not progressing in knowledge; he is not discovering new truths’, A New Witness for the Articles of Faith. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Books, 1985, p. 52.Google Scholar

¹⁹ For a dissenting voice from these more recent currents in the Mormon understanding of eternal progression, see Andrus', Hyrum L. Doctrinal Commentary on the Pearl of Great Price (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1967).Google Scholar

²⁰ Hale, Van, ‘The origin of the human spirit in early Mormon thought’, in Bergera (1989), pp. 115–26.Google Scholar

²¹ On this view, human spirits do not exist eternally (much less necessarily). Rather, they are formed from pre-existent material that does exist eternally (and, according to some Mormon thinkers, necessarily).

²² This rejection of all current theistic systems of religion is predicated on Joseph Smith's rejection of all extant systems of religion in the early 19th century as recorded in the PGP. See, for example, ‘Joseph Smith – History’ 1: 18–19: ‘My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all are wrong) – and which I should join.

I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt[.]'

²³ Leftow, Brian, ‘Anselmian polytheism’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, XXIII (1988), 77–104, at p. 87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Leftow (1988), 91.

²⁵ Leftow (1988), 91.

²⁶ Leftow (1988), 90.

²⁷ For a defence of the Mormon Gods' worship-worthiness, see Blake T. Ostler, in Bergera (1989).

²⁸ Leftow (1988), 87.

²⁹ Leftow (1988), 88.

³⁰ See, for example, Morris', Thomas V. Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987).Google Scholar

³¹ Yarn, David, The Gospel: God, Man, and Truth. (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1979), p. 152.Google Scholar

³² The notion of infidelity with respect to x does not entail that the infidel's commitment to x has been intentionally redirected to a mistress or to an idol. It is sufficient that the infidel simply forsake his commitment to x.

³³ Leftow (1988), 86. Leftow adds that ‘To count as God, to a Western theist, something must be the source of all things other than itself’ (p. 78). Of course, no Mormon God would, on this count alone, be considered to be a genuine God by Western theists' standards.

³⁴ Leftow (1988), 86.

³⁵ I am grateful to Brian Leftow for helpful critical comments on a previous version of this essay.