This article is part of a series on Contradictions between the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Click on the link to access a brief overview of the series.  

The Book of Mormon identifies Jesus in three places as both “the Father and the Son” (emphases added):

And now Abinadi saith unto them, I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people; 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: and they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of Heaven and of Earth; and thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people. (Mosiah 15:1–5)

And because of the fall of man, came Jesus Christ, even the Father and the Son; and because of Jesus Christ, came the redemption of man. (Mormon 9:12)

Behold, I am he which was prepared from the foundation of the world, to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son. In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they which shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and my daughters. (Ether 3:14)

In various other ways, the Book of Mormon asserts that Jesus Christ is the Father (emphases added):

And he said unto me, Behold, the virgin which thou seest, is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh. . . . And the angel said unto me, behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father! (1 Nephi 11:18, 21)

. . . the Lamb of God is the Eternal Father and the Saviour of the world. (1 Nephi 13:40)

And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and of Earth, the creator of all things, from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary. (Mosiah 3:8)

And because he saith unto them, That Christ was the God, the Father of all things, and saith that he should take upon him the image of man, and it should be the image after which man was created in the beginning; or in other words, he said that man was created after the image of God, and that God should come down among the children of men, and take upon him flesh and blood, and go forth upon the face of the earth; 7:28 and now, because he said this, they did put him to death; and many more things did they do, which brought down the wrath of God upon them. (Mosiah 7:27)

Now Zeezrom saith again unto him: Is the Son of God the very Eternal Father? And Amulek saith unto him, Yea, he is the very Eternal Father of Heaven and Earth, and all things which in them is; he is the beginning and the end, the first and the last. (Alma 11:38–39)

. . . that ye might know of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and of earth, the Creator of all things, from the beginning. (Helaman 14:12)

Behold, I come unto my own, to fulfil all things which I have made known unto the children of men, from the foundation of the world, and to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son—of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh. (3 Nephi 1:14)

I am the same that leadeth men to all good: he that will not believe my words, will not believe me, that I am; and he that will not believe me, will not believe the Father which sent me. For behold, I am the Father, I am the light, and the life, and the truth of the world. (Ether 4:12)

The Bible clearly and consistently teaches that Jesus Christ is “the Son of the Father” (2 John 3) and never refers to Jesus as “the Father.” The New Testament articulates the divine unity of the Father and the Son in various ways, most famously in two sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John: “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30); “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Yet these texts do not call Jesus the Father and in context clearly and consistently distinguish him from the Father. So, in John 10 Jesus says of his sheep, “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all” (10:29). In John 14, Jesus follows the statement quoted above by saying, “the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 14:10). Elsewhere, Jesus sharply distinguishes himself from the Father: “I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me” (John 5:30). “I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me” (John 8:16; see also 16:32).

Thus, the New Testament never refers to Jesus as “the Father” or uses the word Father in any title or name for Jesus, even though the divine title Father occurs about 260 times in the New Testament. Instead, it constantly and consistently differentiates Jesus the Son from God the Father.¹ By comparison, the divine title Father occurs a little over 270 times in the Book of Mormon, and at least seventeen of those are applied to Jesus Christ.

The problem isn’t merely that the Book of Mormon refers to Jesus as “the Father.” There are also a number of places in which it calls Jesus “God” in a way that most naturally suggests he is simply God without qualification. The Title Page states that the purpose of the Book of Mormon is to convince people “that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting Himself unto all nations.” Nothing is said anywhere in the Title Page to distinguish Jesus from God the Father. The infamous passage in Mosiah quoted above explaining Jesus to be both the Father and the Son begins with the flat assertion that “God himself shall come down among the children of men” (Mosiah 15:1). Elsewhere, the Book of Mormon states that “Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God” (2 Nephi 26:12), and that Jesus “was the very Christ, and the very God” (Mormon 3:21). As quoted earlier, the Book of Mormon originally stated that Mary “is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh” (1 Nephi 11:18). This so obviously connoted the idea that Jesus was God the Father that for the 1837 edition Joseph changed the statement to say that Mary “is the mother of the Son of God.” Similarly, Joseph changed references in the same passage to Jesus as “the Eternal Father” and “the everlasting God” to call him “the Son of the Eternal Father” and “the Son of the everlasting God” (1 Nephi 11:21, 32).

By contrast, the New Testament calls Jesus “God” some eight times, but it does so in ways that do not identify him simply as “God” without qualification, and in context these texts regularly distinguish him from the Father. John 1:1 says that “the Word [Greek, Logos] was with God [ho theos, literally, “the God”], and the Word was God [theos, “God”]. John’s wording carefully avoids identifying the Logos (the preexistent, eternal Son) as the person he was “with.” In John 20:28, Thomas calls Jesus “my Lord and my God,” a statement that attributes full deity to Jesus while in context again distinguishing him from the Father (see John 20:17, 30–31). Peter calls Jesus “our God and Savior” and then immediately refers to “the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Peter 1:1–2 ESV; cf. Titus 2:10, 13). Again, not a single New Testament text calls Jesus the Father.

The first printing of the Book of Mormon in 1830 had hardly dried when Joseph Smith began shifting his doctrine about Christ away from the equation of the Father and the Son. In a revelation given in 1833, Joseph quotes Jesus as making the following statement:

And that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one— The Father because he gave me of his fulness, and the Son because I was in the world and made flesh my tabernacle, and dwelt among the sons of men. (Doctrine and Covenants 93:3–4).

This statement appears to be a revision of the explanation given in Mosiah 15:1–4 of the relation between the Father and the Son. In Mosiah, Jesus asserts that he is “the Father and the Son,” explaining that he is the Father because he was conceived by God’s power and that he is the Son because he came in the flesh, “thus becoming the Father and the Son.” In D&C 93:3–4, Christ is quoted as saying that he and the Father are “one” because the Father gave Jesus his fulness and that he is the Son because he came in the flesh. The later statement “cleans up” the theological confusion evident in Mosiah 15 without actually explaining what the Book of Mormon text meant.

The standard Mormon approach to the Book of Mormon texts is to read back into them later LDS theologizing that was done precisely to harmonize the Book of Mormon with the later teachings of Joseph Smith and other LDS prophets. The key work in this regard was an official statement issued in 1916 by the LDS Church leadership entitled “The Father and the Son.”² According to this statement, Elohim “is the literal Parent” of Jesus and all human spirits in a preexistent realm, while Jesus is his “Son” both as one of those preexistent spirits and as the one for whom Elohim was the literal Father of his mortal body of flesh. Elohim is also the Creator, and Jesus, also known as Jehovah, is “the executive of the Father, Elohim, in the work of creation,” and as such Jesus can also be called the Father. The 1916 statement goes on to say that Jesus is the “Father” of those who accept the gospel and are thereby “born anew.” Finally, it asserts that Jesus is also called “Father” on the basis of “divine investiture of authority,” meaning that Jesus “represents Elohim His Father in power and authority.”

This careful yet complex harmonization succeeds in providing a filter through which the statements in the Book of Mormon may seem to be reconciled with the later LDS doctrine that Jesus and the Father are two separate divine beings (even with separate physical bodies). It does so, however, by reading the Book of Mormon without regard to its place in the history of Joseph Smith’s writings. The clear difference between Mosiah 15 and Doctrine & Covenants 93, for example, is flattened to make it seem that both texts are teaching the same doctrine. The reality is that Joseph Smith’s theology developed and changed over time.

In any case, the discrepancy or difference between the Book of Mormon and the Bible remains. The Book of Mormon repeatedly calls Jesus “the Father,” while the New Testament never does so but instead it consistently distinguishes Jesus from the Father.