Combining Book of Abraham Chapter 3, The Lectures on Faith, Smith's 1844 Sermons and the Biblical Scholar Michael Heiser

 

In my post here I summarized the biblical scholarship of Michel Heiser and how it helps explain the early LDS Godhead (1830-1835). In this post I will show how Heiser's work also helps explain Joseph Smith's later teachings in the 1840s. 

Based on the collective witness model of LDS thinker Jacob Hansen, Joseph Smith and the first LDS Apostles who formed the first theology and doctrine when Joseph Smith was alive or soon after his death, as found in the original LDS Scriptures (canonized as doctrine by Joseph Smith himself); when all this data is understood in historical context, it becomes clear to me that original Mormonism held a belief in an original First God: the originating independent Power as an omnipresent Divine Mind (per Lecture 2 and 5), that accumulates glory ("splendor") and expanded power and dominion each time a less advanced spirit intelligence (conscious mind) expands in knowledge, dominion, and power (as explained in Lecture 7). In other words, as we read in D&C 132:63, wherein the "work of [God the Father continues as] he [is] glorified" every time one of the greater spirit intelligences (souls) of Abraham chapter 3 gains an earthly body and expands in knowledge and in kingdom power and dominion. As the "God above all other gods" (D&C 121:32) is enlarged and expanded in splendor and dominion through the expansion of the gods. In other words, the First God, the supreme Deity (as omnipresent fluid material "nooma" embodied in a personage of spirit-atoms), expands in glory and dominion through the deification of humans. This is the meaning of the LDS Book of Moses 1:39, "For behold, this is my [God's] work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality [resurrection] and eternal life [deification] of man" (words in brackets my own).  Thus, like the bright Sun would be expanded in splendor if a fiery ball was added to it, the original First God expands each time a lesser god gains knowledge and intelligence and kingdom power and dominion. 

Jesus is separate from the Father as one of the intelligences (souls) in the pre-existence in Abraham 3, who would dwell in a body as the exact genomic copy of Father Jehovah:

So that when Joseph Smith says Jesus did what he saw the Father Jehovah do, Smith could have meant he saw into God the Father's mind his own life and thus knew what to do.

We also have a continuity of thought with the 1844 re-publication of the Lectures, with again, Joseph earlier mentioning in 1839 that there was one supreme being over heading a Council of lesser gods in D&C 121:32: where he speaks of "the Council of the Eternal God of all other gods before this world was ..." Smith would later describe these lesser gods as Intelligences or spirits in The Book of Abraham, chapter 3. Note that the Divine Council concept is in line with the non-LDS biblical scholar Michael Heiser's scholarship on the biblical Godhead. Parley P. Pratt in turn dealt with "an infinite regress" and sustained the concept of a "supreme being" (First Cause) by interpreting the "Supreme Being" in Restoration (LDS) Scripture as being the the First God or the "Great God": meaning All Nooma (All Divine Spirit-Matter & Energy) as the ground of all Being, the ontological Source from which is formed the noomatic personages of the Father and Son as glorious bodies composed of fluid spirit-matter (nooma), which are the Deity (Supreme Being).

Father-Jehovah -- whom Joseph prays to in D&C 109 --- has a body of flesh and bone composed of refined spirit matter (see D&C 130: 22 and 131:7). In other words, the Father-Jehovah (as a personage composed of spirit-matter) is a part of the supreme governing Power's "Godhead," as Lecture 5: 1-2 puts it below (emphasis added, words in brackets my own):

[1] In our former lectures we treated of the being, character, perfections and attributes of God. What we mean by perfections, is, the perfections which belong to all the attributes of his nature. We shall, in this lecture speak of the Godhead: we mean the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. [2] There are two personages [Jehovah and Jesus] who constitute [i.e. who form or compose] the great, matchless, governing and supreme power [see Lecture 2:2] over all things ...

The Fifth Lecture goes on to explain that the Sacred Spirit (Nooma) or Mind of the Father, is basically divine glory/splendor as a diffuse omnipresent substance (the "Great God" as Pratt put it). As the Father is the form of (is constituted by) a noomatic material energy, i.e. the Father is a "personage of spirit, glory, and power" per Lecture 5; meaning He as a form or personage is composed of the supreme Deity's "glory and power": words which signify the Source Deity's omniscient Mind emanating as the omnipresent Holy Spirit (i.e. Sacred Nooma), which functions as an omnipresent fluid substance (or liquid spirit-matter) that pervades all space and time like the rays of light (compare D&C 88). In other words, the supreme Deity of Lecture 2.2, expands His omnipresent nature (nooma) into forming the personage of the Father-Jehovah; and thus they (Father and Son) are the same Mind according Lecture 5: because they are composed of the same noomatic substance (or spirit-atoms) emanating from the one Supreme Power (Deity). They are one Mind, and Christians receive the same Mind (cosmic Noomatic Intelligence) as well, because the Fluid Nooma as fluid spirit atoms is also light and intelligence or truth. The First God grows in Kingdom expanding dominion and is glorified (see D&C 132:63) each time a soul-mind expands in knowledge and is exalted becoming a god, as the glory/nooma of the First God is all intelligence, or light and truth, expanding our universe.