A brief bullet point summary of my view of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and the spirit birth doctrine in Mormonism:
- The Deity = The Noomatic Genome (the spirit-mattered "personage of spirit" of the Father)
- Jesus = The Monogene
- The Gods of Abraham 4 as our Heavenly Parents, the Logos, and Angels like Michael: The term "Deity" also means according to our LDS Proclamation on the Family, our Heavenly Parents, as a basically a divine dyad representing the "supreme governing power" of Lecture 2 surrounded by a concourse of angels.
- Heavenly Mother in Scripture: Just as Jehovah appeared as the Angel of Lord as the Father God, as a personage of spirit in the Old Testament. God's wife, Heavenly Mother, is represented through Tree imagery and as Sophia, the Wise Lady metaphor in Proverbs 8:22-31, Sirach 24, and the Wisdom of Solomon 7: 22-27, and Luke 7:35 (which verses are discussed in the article here); which I think are poetic personifications of Heavenly Mother. One could also interpret the Eros-like Song of Solomon, celebrating the passionate coupling of the sexes as a personification of the original romantic and/or passionate love between our Divine Parents
- Heavenly Parents and "spirit birth": In his article A Continuation of the Seeds: Joseph Smith and Spirit Birth, Brian Hales has convinced me that it's most likely that Joseph Smith taught the doctrines spirit birth through Heavenly Parents. Thus the term "Father of lights" in Lecture 2 would be a metaphorical meaning of the term "father": meaning the progenitor(s) of the "lights" with lights meaning the shining star-like intelligences of Abraham 3: wherein "intelligence" in that chapter likely means our eternal spirit-mattered consciousness (per D&C 131:7-8; also see D&C 93:29, 38; Moses 6:51) which was coeternal with God (per the King Follet Discourse), but as yet lacking our personage of spirit, which we obtained through our spiritual birth in the image of the personages of the Gods (our Heavenly Parents). The LDS Topic Essay Mother in Heaven states that in "1909, the First Presidency taught that 'all men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.”
- Heavenly Parents produced the Noomatic Genome of the Father's "personage of spirit" which was duplicated as the Monogene & Mary is the Image of her Divine Mother: The "supreme governing power" of Lecture 2 was thus the divine diad, wherein our Divine Parents foresaw the birth of the Earthly Jesus, and modeled their personages of spirit on the forms of Jesus and Mary. So that Jesus is the Monogene (the only exact copy of the Father's genomic spirit personage) and Mary is the prototype image of the spirit personage of Heavenly Mother (see 1 Nephi 11:15, Lecture #7 and D&C 132).
- On the difference between our uncreated spirit (or our mind) and the personage of our preexistent-soul being birthed by Heavenly Parents: The first divine dyadic genome (the personages of our Heavenly Parents) was described in Genesis metaphorically as Jehovah breathing into Adam's nostrils "the breath of life," meaning that Adam's mind (consciousness) and spiritual personage (birthed by Divine Parents) together with his flesh body became an organic breathing life form. As Moses 3:7 explains with emphasis added: "the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also; nevertheless, all things were before created; but spiritually were they created and made according to my word." I think this means that a protoype preexistent-soul was spiritually birthed from our Heavenly Parents first before our human souls were formed. In other words, Adam's "soul" (or his personage of spirit) was created/birthed by our Heavenly Parents before he became an organic breathing "living soul." In his King Follet Discourse, Joseph Smith appears to clarify that he is talking about "... the mind of man —the immortal spirit ..." and it is "The mind or the intelligence which man possesses [that] is co-equal [co-eternal] with God himself." In other words, I see Joseph Smith teaching that it is our mind (or consciousness) which is eternal and uncreated, but that Joseph also likely taught that a spiritual prototype of our human self was spiritually formed first in the preexistence (per Moses 3:7) as personages of spirit through being literally birthed by our Heavenly Parents. Another LDS scripture supports this interpretation, wherein Joseph revealed in D&C 88:15 that “the spirit and the body are the soul of man.” So it's clear to me that what Joseph Smith meant as the eternal uncreated part of mankind in the King Follett sermon, was not the "soul" (which is a spirit and a human-body) but that he meant the spiritual-mind (or consciousness) of mankind is uncreated and co-eternal with God the Father. We can then see in Abraham 3:18 that it is not the soul that is uncreated and eternal but the spirit (or our intelligence) that is said to be eternal or uncreated. Thus, I see a clear distinction between our eternal minds/intelligence which is composed of omnipresent eternal spirit-matter (i.e. our eternal consciousness) and our presexistent-"soul" as our personage of spirit that was birthed from our Heavenly Parents. So while our mortal flesh or human genome was birthed from our mortal human parents, our "divine spark" (the "breath of life") was born of our Divine Parents. In other words, our divine uncreated minds were given a pre-earth spiritual-body prototype birthed from our Heavenly Parents was then basically infused supernaturally into our mortal human bodies at conception.
- On D&C 132 and the Theosis of Future Divine Parents: In D&C 132 "They" (male and female) "shall be gods" because they (as basically future Supercouples or Divine Parents) continue spreading the Divine Genome of the Divine Diad (the first Mother and Father God). So that just like our Heavenly Parents reproduced us so that we could become like them. Future Divine Parents will also choose from the premortal intelligences the more intelligent minds and the noble and great ones, and spiritually birth them into personages of spirit (souls) and then give them the opportunity to advance as mortals. So that they too will be given the option of becoming like the expanding Kingdom building gods; in that they too can become divinized with the divine donation of the immortalizing divine genome first passed on by the Monogene Jesus; thus bringing to pass the eternal lives (the continuation of the divine genus) through future beings that are also divinized as holy ones (gods); and can then join the Divine Council of gods and expand the original Kingdom of the first Divine Triad (the original Head God over all other gods, Jehovah and His Queen) who are the Supreme Power (see Orson Hyde's Kingdom of God diagram to picture this).
