In 1888, the Deseret News Weekly published a talk by Joseph E. Taylor apparently given in the Logan Temple. I found interesting how Taylor connects the dots between Adam-God and multiple probations using statements from Brigham Young and Joseph Smith. The full article can be found here beginning on page 19.

First, Taylor poses the question of Adam’s death.

But it is often asked, “Did Adam lie in the grave until he was redeemed therefrom through the death and resurrection of the Only Begotten?…It might be well at this point to enquire who was the Savior of the world, and what relation did he bear to our father Adam?

Taylor proceeds to quote Brigham Young’s famous discourse on Adam-God from the first volume of the Journal of Discourses that “Adam is our father and our God”. He makes the point here and in other places that the forbidden fruit changed their physical makeup to enable them to have mortal posterity. Having established, then, that Adam is the father of Jesus Christ, Taylor then quotes Joseph Smith’s King Follett discourse,

Jesus said, ‘As the Father hath power in himself, so hath the son power.’ To do what? Why what the Father did. what are you going to do? The answer is obvious in a manner, to lay down His body and take it up again…What did Jesus do? Why I do the things I saw My Father do…My Father worked out His Kingdom with fear and trembling; and I must do the same.

Taylor concludes, then, that

All that Father Adam did upon this earth, from the time that he took up his abode in the Garden of Eden, was done for His posterity’s sake and the success of His former mission as the Savior of a world, and afterwards, or now, as the Father of a world only added to the glory which he already possessed. If, as the Savior of a world, he had the power to lay down his life and take it up again, therefore as the Father of a world which is altogether an advanced condition, we necessarily conclude that the grave was powerless to hold him after that mission was completed.

I’ve been interested recently in how pieces of discourses and doctrinal points can be brought together to form a complex (or in some cases, not so complex) theology. I grew up in a framework of doctrine and theology that was heavily influenced by the writings of Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie as perhaps most of us have been. That’s a construct that still exists in large measure. It’s interesting that some elements of Joseph E. Taylor’s construct continue to this day while others do not. Those that do continue may be linked in different ways. On God the Father having been a Savior, Truman G. Madsen said,

Again, the relationship is exact. If Christ himself was uniquely begotten and was the firstborn in the spirit, and if he was the Christ not only of this earth but also, as the Prophet taught later, of the galaxy, so before him the Father himself was a Redeemer, having worked out the salvation of souls of whom he was a brother, not a father. This is deep water. The conclusion is drawn by Joseph Smith in his King Follett discourse. [1]

On the forming of children, the Priesthood/Relief Society Manual on Brigham Young quotes Pres. Young that,

Then he [the Father] commenced the work of creating earthly tabernacles, precisely as he had been created in this flesh himself, by partaking of the coarse material that was organized and composed this earth,…consequently the tabernacles of his children were organized from the coarse materials of this earth (DBY, 50). [2]

According to an orthodox construct (as I construct it orthodoxly :), one might read the above quote in the following manner: The Father, with his perfect body, partook of the “coarse” material and begat the bodies of Adam and Eve. These materials, presumably, were from an unfallen earth, and so, the physical bodies of Adam and Eve were in a like, unfallen, eternal state.  Later, Adam and Eve would go on to partake of the forbidden fruit and have mortal posterity.

Joseph E. Taylor, reading this quote with his construct, may have understood it differently, that The Father (Adam) partook of the forbidden fruit (material from this earth) and fell.  Thus his mortal offspring were created from the “coarse materials”.

Though elements of Taylor’s view persist, others (Adam-God) do not. Those that do may be connected in a different way than how Taylor connected them.

Whose writings, or what circumstances have influenced your constructions of doctrine?