Adam-God, Blood Atonement, and the Priesthood Ban

Brigham Young said things Jeremy calls binding doctrine. But the Restoration always drew a line between a prophet’s canonized revelation and his personal reasoning from the pulpit — and that line was drawn in the revealed teaching of Joseph Smith before Brigham ever spoke.

The CES Letter Claims

The CES Letter’s Argument

The CES Letter argues that Brigham Young taught the Adam-God doctrine — that Adam was God the Father — which the Church later rejected; that he preached blood atonement as a theological necessity; and that the priesthood restriction lasted well over a century before the Church, in its 2013 Gospel Topics essay, set aside the earlier explanations that had been given for it. From this it concludes that what one prophet teaches as truth can become a later generation’s rejected error, and asks how members can trust a system that appears to reverse itself.

The Fork Jeremy Chose

Every argument in this section of the CES Letter depends on a single hidden premise: that anything a prophet says is, by definition, the doctrine of the Church. Grant that premise, and every later clarification looks like a reversal, and every reversal looks like fraud. It is a clean, powerful argument — and it only works if the premise is true.

Here is the fork. At the moment Jeremy built his case, two readings of Latter-day Saint teaching were available to him:

  • The simplistic reading — a prophet is an oracle whose every sermon is revelation, so the Church is bound to whatever any leader ever said. Under this reading, a 19th-century speculation and a canonized revelation carry identical weight.
  • The reading the Church itself has always taught — that scripture is a defined, ratified thing (the Standard Works, sustained by common consent), and that a prophet also speaks, teaches, and reasons as a man. Only some of what he says rises to revelation, and the canon is the measuring rod.

Jeremy chose the first reading — he had to, because the argument collapses without it. But the second reading is not a modern escape hatch invented to dodge the CES Letter. It is written into the Doctrine and Covenants, it was published and preached long before 2013, and, as we will see, the doctrinal boundary that answers Adam-God was already present in the revealed teaching of Joseph Smith before Brigham Young preached a word about Adam. Jeremy took the version of the faith that was easiest to refute instead of the version Latter-day Saints actually hold. That is the weaker path, and the rest of this page shows why.

Response

1. Adam-God: The Revelation Answered It Before It Was Spoken

Take the strongest form of the objection, not a weak one. Brigham Young was not a fringe figure — he was the President of the Church, and he taught his Adam-God ideas repeatedly and forcefully, including in general settings. If anyone’s pulpit words should count as doctrine, surely his should. That is the objection at full strength.

And it still fails — because the boundary line had already been drawn in revelation given through Joseph Smith. The Journal of Discourses, where these sermons were transcribed, has never been scripture. It is a valuable historical record of what was said, not a ratified statement of what the Church holds. The measuring rod is the Standard Works, sustained by the common consent of the membership — and the teaching that became Doctrine and Covenants 130:22 was recorded from Joseph Smith’s teaching on April 2, 1843, years before Brigham Young ever preached Adam-God. It reads:

D&C 130:22

“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.”

This canonized verse identifies the Father and the Son as distinct, separately embodied personages. It cannot be reconciled with the claim that Adam simply is God the Father. Here the strongest form of Jeremy’s objection deserves a straight answer: the formal setting-aside was not instant. Adam-God was taught from the pulpit and repeated for roughly a quarter century after 1852, and the Saints who heard it were given no memo telling them it would one day be laid aside. A member in 1860 could reasonably have supposed he was hearing settled doctrine. That is a real pastoral burden, and waving it away would be dishonest. But it is precisely why the Restoration anchors the standard in revealed doctrine rather than in any sermon, however often repeated. The doctrinal boundary itself — the separate, embodied Father and Son — had been revealed through Joseph Smith and taught openly (recorded April 2, 1843, and echoed the next year in the King Follett discourse) before Brigham Young preached a word about Adam. That revelation was not formally added to the Doctrine and Covenants until the 1876 edition; but the teaching plainly predated the sermon, and when the two were finally weighed against each other, it was the sermon that gave way and never the doctrine now canonized as D&C 130:22. The lag shows a church slow to formally set a non-canonical speculation aside; it does not show the revealed standard failed — because in the end it is exactly what prevailed. Adam-God was never sustained by the membership as binding doctrine, and it never entered the Standard Works.

The record bears this out. President Spencer W. Kimball, in the October 1976 general conference, spoke plainly: “We warn you against the dissemination of doctrines which are not according to the scriptures and which are alleged to have been taught by some of the General Authorities of past generations. Such, for instance, is the Adam-God theory.” That is not the Church reversing a doctrine it had adopted; it is the Church restating the standard it always held — scripture governs speculation. Under Jeremy’s premise, Adam-God is a doctrine God taught and then unsaid; under the reading the Church actually holds, it was a prophet reasoning out loud on a hard question inside a system whose own scriptures had already set the limit. One of those readings requires you to ignore D&C 130:22 — and it is not the faithful one. For a fuller treatment of what Brigham actually said, and the more defensible readings of it, see The Adam-God Theory — What Brigham Young Actually Said.

2. Blood Atonement: Fiery Rhetoric, Never Canon, Never Church Practice

Again, the strong form: Brigham Young really did preach, in vivid language during the intense Utah Reformation of the 1850s, that some sins were so grave a person’s own blood, willingly shed, would do more for him than anything else could. That language is real, it is hard to read, and pretending otherwise convinces no one.

But rhetoric is not policy, and a sermon is not canon. Blood atonement was never written into the Standard Works, never enacted as a Church procedure, and never carried out as a Church-sanctioned act. It was hortatory preaching — a deliberate pastoral tool used to shock a frontier community into repentance — not a codified teaching binding on the Saints. The Doctrine and Covenants gives the very test that separates the two:

D&C 68:4

“And whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord …”

The conditional matters: when moved upon by the Holy Ghost. The scripture itself concedes that not every word from a leader meets that mark, and it hands the membership the responsibility to discern which words do. The Latter-day Saints never received blood atonement into the canon, and the Church has for well over a century taught that the Savior’s Atonement is complete and sufficient. The idea that a person could add to it by shedding his own blood runs against the plain teaching of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. On the CES Letter’s own logic, calling something “doctrine” requires that it entered the binding record — and this never did. For the full history, see Blood Atonement and Blood Atonement — Doctrine or Aberration?

3. The Priesthood Restriction: Honest Uncertainty Is Strength, Not Fraud

This is the hardest of the three, and it deserves the honest, strong form. From the 1850s until 1978 — well over a century — men of Black African descent were not ordained to the priesthood, and Black members were restricted from certain temple ordinances. Various leaders across those decades offered explanations for the restriction, and some of those explanations reflected the racial assumptions of their era. Nobody who takes this seriously should pretend it was easy or that it caused no pain. It did.

Here is where the fork reappears — and where Jeremy’s dating quietly does his argument’s work for him. He frames the 2013 Gospel Topics essay as a late, reluctant admission, as if the Church had buried the problem until scholarship forced its hand. But the crucial distinction — between the restriction itself and the folk explanations people attached to it — was in the published record long before 2013 (and before the CES Letter itself appeared in 2013). Within months of the 1978 revelation, apostles including Bruce R. McConkie taught openly that the earlier explanations should be set aside. His words: “Forget everything that I have said, or what … others have said … that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding.” The 2013 essay did not break this news. It gathered a position the Church had already stated in the open.

And notice precisely what the essay sets aside: it distances the Church from the theories — the racial folklore — that men had advanced to explain the restriction. It does not confess that God taught a false doctrine. It does the opposite of what Jeremy needs: it confirms that those explanations were never canonized doctrine in the first place — exactly the distinction this whole page rests on. It is fair to note that Jeremy’s real target is larger than the folklore: leaders including Brigham Young spoke of the restriction itself as the will of God, not merely of the reasons behind it. That must be met squarely, and the honest answer is the same threshold answer. No revelation establishing a divine rationale for the restriction was ever placed before the membership for common consent or written into the Standard Works — which is precisely why the Church today says it does not know why the restriction began and does not defend the reasons once given for it. A leader’s conviction that a policy came from God, however sincerely held, is not the same as a canonized revelation saying so, and the Church saying as much is the canon-threshold argument in action, not against it. The deeper history — including the fact that a Black man, Elijah Abel, was ordained to the priesthood under Joseph Smith — is covered in The Priesthood Ban — What It Was and Why It Ended and Priesthood: Black Restrictions.

Official Declaration 2 (1978) is not the record of a system breaking. It is the record of a living church seeking and receiving revelation and acting on it at once. And how many denominations that once defended slavery or segregation have gathered their historians and published a candid, official account of it? A church willing to say, in writing, that the reasons men once gave were their own and are set aside is a church confident in its revelation and unafraid of its history — the opposite of a cover-up.

One honest note, because a faithful answer should never overclaim: the Church has never said it knows the full reason the restriction began, and it does not claim to. That question remains genuinely open. But “we do not know exactly why the Lord permitted this for a season” is a modest gap — a very different thing from Jeremy’s claim that the whole system stands exposed as fraudulent.

4. Prophetic Fallibility Is the Biblical Pattern, Not the LDS Exception

The CES Letter presents fallible prophets as a uniquely Latter-day Saint embarrassment. But the Bible — the book Jeremy’s Christian readers already trust — is built on prophets and apostles who erred and were still God’s chosen men:

  • Peter, the chief apostle, withdrew from table fellowship with the Gentiles and was rebuked to his face by Paul (Galatians 2:11–14). The New Testament preserves the rebuke — and the keys stayed with Peter.
  • Nathan told David to go ahead and build the temple, then returned that same night when the Lord overruled the counsel (2 Samuel 7:3–5). A prophet spoke ahead of revelation; the Lord set it right.
  • Jonah fled his prophetic call outright, and the Lord accomplished His work through him regardless.
  • Moses struck the rock in anger instead of speaking to it as commanded, and it cost him the promised land (Numbers 20:11–12) — yet he remained the Lord’s prophet.

If human fallibility in a prophet disqualified a church, it would disqualify the Bible first. It does not, because Scripture never promised infallible men — it promised that God would lead His people through them anyway. This is not a Latter-day Saint loophole; it is the pattern of prophecy across every dispensation. We trace it directly in The Pattern of Prophecy — When Prophets Err, and the test the scriptures actually give for a prophet — the fruit of the work, not the flawlessness of the man — is laid out in The Test of a Prophet and Prophets Don’t Have to Be Perfect.

Joseph Smith drew the line himself: “I never told you I was perfect; but there is no error in the revelations which I have taught.” The man may reach and reason and even overreach; the canonized revelation is what the Church stands on. That is precisely the distinction the CES Letter must erase to make its case — and precisely the distinction the Church has taught all along.

Further Study

Verdict

What is resolved. The CES Letter’s case here stands or falls on one premise — that a prophet’s every word is the doctrine of the Church. That premise is false by the Church’s own always-stated standard, and Jeremy chose it anyway because his argument needs it. Adam-God was contradicted by the revealed teaching of Joseph Smith — recorded in 1843 and now canonized as D&C 130:22 — years before Brigham Young preached it. Blood atonement was Reformation-era rhetoric that never entered the canon and never became Church practice. The priesthood restriction ended by revelation in 1978, and the distinction between an administrative restriction and the folk explanations attached to it was in the open record before 2013 — the 2013 essay gathered that distinction, it did not confess it. In every case, the guardrail Jeremy says the Church lacks is exactly the guardrail that did the work: canon governs speculation.

What remains genuinely, and only mildly, open. One honest question survives: we do not know the complete reason the Lord permitted the priesthood restriction for a season, and the Church does not claim to. That is a real gap — but it is the modest gap of a church that would rather say “we do not fully know” than invent a tidy answer. It is not the collapse the CES Letter advertises. A dead institution freezes its every past word into permanent law. A living church, led by revelation through imperfect men, keeps its canon as the measuring rod and lets the rest be what it always was — the honest reaching of good men toward hard truths. That is not the system failing. That is the system doing exactly what the Restoration built it to do.