Who says that a god family consists of one male and one or more females, and that spirits are procreated the same way we conceive babies? Adam was first made in the image of God: male AND female and told to multiply. How does that happen? If he (they) were in the image of God, then God is also both male AND female. If true, we can’t make any assumptions about “eternal procreation”.
This is difficult to talk about because our language can’t avoid gender-based references, but I’ll try. This is all according to the Bible, which fundamentalists love to interpret literally, but they love to interpret this part figuratively. I am going to use the same words as the Bible, but try to get you to see them in a different way. It is supposed to be all symbolic, but let’s interpret the symbols a bit more literally. The first human person on the earth, according to the Bible, was called “man”. The Hebrew word is “adam”, which means something like “red clay” or “formed from the dust of the earth”. It was also be a male proper noun, but forget the proper name “Adam” for the time being and just think “adam” as any generic human. God, (“elohim”, again not a proper name, but the Hebrew word for “god”, and a plural word and a combination of male AND female), formed “adam” in his/her/their own image, male AND female. Then “elohim” breathed (a symbolic word) into “adam”, the spirit of “adam”. If the body of “adam” was male AND female, and if the body is formed in the likeness of God, and in the likeness of its spirit, then would not the spirit of “adam”, likewise be male AND female?
So, we have two compound beings, each of them both male AND female, standing and facing one another. The creator and the created. The created being is sentient and able to receive, understand, and fulfill commands. The first command given is: “Multiply and replenish the earth.” Remember this was one compound being saying this to another compound being. I hate the word “queer”, but this would be one way to describe each of the two beings.
It is important to understand where this was said, who said it, and to whom it was said. This was not in the garden, and “adam” was not yet split into separate male and female beings. So, how could this “multiply and replenish” be accomplished? 1 Nephi 3:7 says that God will give no commandment save “he” provide a way to accomplish that commandment. A little “mind-bending” suggests that it was not to be done the same way as heterosexual human procreation. To “multiply” is to make more of yourself, and somehow this was possible even in a body which is both male AND female. And if this applies to “adam”, then it seems logical that it also applies to the male-female unit “elohim”. And what if it’s not really “procreation”? What if it’s simply scooping up or attracting other intelligences and somehow stimulating them to acquire the characteristics of what we might call “a spirit”, and this action being a step in becoming like the newly-organized “adam”, and his/her/its progenitor/creator “elohim”? This could be done without billions of years of pregnancy and gestation.
We don’t know how long before “adam” was placed in the garden, and is now “alone”. Was he/she/it truly “alone” or were there similar companions? This is a new world, and a new situation. Personally, I believe it was a step down. “adam” condescended or fell from a celestial world to a terrestial world, and sensed the aloneness, and in order to fulfill the “prime directive” and cure the “aloneness”, Adam was divided into two separate beings: one male (Adam) and the other one female (Eve).
I suppose just the companionship of “elohim” was not sufficient, so “elohim” split “adam” into separate male and female elements and took away their memory of ever having been together, in the bargain. But, even after losing his memory, Adam looked at Eve and recognized her as having come from him, and spoke about the two becoming “one flesh” again.
If you are going to interpret the symbolism literally, you have to be consistent, but this is where some of the symbolism falls away and we begin to pick up the story in a more relatable form: one man and one woman, yeah, we finally understand that, but in our ignorance, we suppose that this is the way that it always was.
All of creation is a series of divisions: light from dark, heavens from earth, day from night, dry land from seas, etc. So, why not also a division of woman from man? This is to me the first “fall”. The second was when the couple got kicked out of the garden, and began the heterosexual procreation process we are familiar with. But my point is we can’t compare procreation of human bodies on a telestial level with “procreation” of spirits on a celestial level. Brigham Young said it was the same, but how did he know? Sometimes he claimed to have revelation, and sometimes he admitted to not even being a prophet.
But, where, lacking revelation, did Brigham get the idea that God was nothing more than an exalted man? Maybe from King Follett. But, the Lectures on Faith say that the Father is a personage of spirit, and the Son is a personage of tabernacle. People justify this discrepancy by saying Joseph “evolved”. But maybe it is God who evolved and not Joseph. Joseph and Brigham both taught that there are generations of gods. The endowment even teaches it. But maybe there is some point at which one of these gods, at a certain higher level, of which we know nothing about, is able to evolve into something even higher than just a glorified man, and becomes some different kind of being that we would only understand as a spirit, but is really merged in his/her consciousness with many other gods, also at that same level. Deuteronomy teaches that the Lord God (Elohim Jehovah) is “one”. The Hebrew word used here and translated “one” is echad meaning “unity”, and Christ said they we are to be one with Him, even as He is one with the Father. So, maybe there is something more to all of this than we think or imagine.
Joseph Smith taught that if the Father could make himself visible, and if we could see him, we would see Him as a man, like us. This kind of begs the question. If He didn’t appear to us, in a form like us, would we even recognize Him? And another question: What does God look like when we don’t see him?
Let’s face it, God the Father, doesn’t show up too often on the earth, and when He does, He appears in a vision, a waking dream, which means He’s not physically present, but projecting an image. This is called a theophany. In other times, such as the baptism of Jesus, or on the Mount of Transfiguration, or speaking from the heavens when Christ made His triumphant ride back into Jerusalem, or in speaking to the Nephites before Christ descended, we just hear a disembodied voice speaking out of a cloud. When people see Christ, they see a flesh and blood being who touches stones, eats and drinks, and lets people touch Him. We never see the Father doing any of this.
John144 