Mormon Doctrine

Mother in Heaven

One of the few entries where the book was ahead of the church's own published teaching — and it did not change a word between editions.

Mother in Heaven is a short entry, and an unusual one for this book: it is not defending a boundary. It states a doctrine most Latter-day Saints hold and few could point to a source for, argues it from first principles, and rests it on a First Presidency statement and a hymn. The entry is materially unchanged between the 1958 and 1966 editions — one of the ones the review left alone.

The argument

It runs from the fatherhood of God rather than from any revelation naming her, and the entry is candid that this is what it is doing.

Implicit in the Christian verity that all men are the spirit children of an Eternal Father is the usually unspoken truth that they are also the offspring of an Eternal Mother.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Mother in Heaven”, 1966 second edition, p. 366

An exalted and glorified Man of Holiness could not be a Father unless a Woman of like glory, perfection, and holiness was associated with him as a Mother.

Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, “Mother in Heaven”, 1966 second edition, p. 366

For authority the entry goes to the First Presidency of Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder and Anthon H. Lund, and their 1909 statement that “all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity”. For everything else it goes to Eliza R. Snow, whose 1843 poem O My Father — written in Joseph Smith's lifetime, and quoted here at length — is where most members of the church have actually encountered the doctrine.

The entry ends where the book's logic always ends, on exaltation: those who overcome all things “will live eternally in the family unit and have spirit children, thus becoming Eternal Fathers and Eternal Mothers.”

Where it stands

In 2015 the church published a Gospel Topics essay, Mother in Heaven, which affirms the doctrine, cites the same 1909 statement and the same hymn, and then draws two lines the entry does not.

Latter-day Saints direct their worship to Heavenly Father, in the name of Christ, and do not pray to Heavenly Mother.

“Mother in Heaven”, Gospel Topics essay, 2015

The second line is about how much is known: “our present knowledge about a Mother in Heaven is limited.” That is a more careful sentence than the entry's, and it is doing different work. McConkie was arguing that the doctrine follows necessarily from what is already believed. The essay is saying that the doctrine is held and that very little else about her is.