by Robert W. McDonald

Created on: January 31, 2010

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or “Mormons”) has often been the target of attack by the more fundamentally-oriented denominations of “mainstream” Christianity. Since most such attacks are based on differences of opinion in doctrinal matters, I feel that an impartial statement of the key points in LDS / Mormon theology is long overdue.

The LDS / Mormon division of the Christian faith, like Judaism and Islam, is a revealed religion. This means that the core tenets of the faith were not arrived at by man but were instead revealed by God either directly or via an intermediary such as a prophet. And, as is the case in other denominations of Christianity and Islam, to criticize the revealed Sacred Scriptures is blasphemy and can be grounds for being declared apostate and / or for excommunication.

The foundations of Mormon theology begins with belief in a “Godhead” composed of three separate, distinct entities: Father (God or “Elohim”), Son (Jesus or “Jehovah”), and Holy Spirit. Of these three, Elohim and Jesus / Jehovah have distinct, unique physical bodies while the Holy Spirit exists only in a disembodied form. The triune members of Godhead are believed to act in unison to fulfill the Father’s plan for the earth.

In Mormon theology Elohim is but one of an innumerable number of other Gods, each of whom has his own physical “territory” or “realm” which he created and over which he rules the Supreme Being. Elohim himself was once a mortal man and a “Mormon” but, because he lived “good” life in accordance with the same doctrines that govern all other Mormons, he was elevated to the status of a God over his own part of the cosmos.

As mentioned in the preceding paragraph Elohim is believed to have a number of “spirit wives” with whom, like the Olympian God Zeus, he has repeated sexual relations resulting in the birth of an infinite number of “spirit children.” However, unlike the Greek gods, Elohim rules from a planet known as Kolob, where all spirit children receive education from Elohim and other, older, spirit children before eventually being sent to earth and given physical bodies.

Mormon doctrine states that the first two children of Elohim were Jesus and Lucifer, both of whom found favor with him until after Elohim created the earth in order that all his spirit children could be born into mortal bodies as

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