ES affirms the Church's belief in a divine feminine.

Date
Mar 3, 1878
Type
Speech / Court Transcript
Source
Erastus Snow
LDS
Hearsay
Scribed Verbatim
Reference

Erastus Snow, "There is a God—Communion With Him An Inherent Craving of the Human Heart—Man in His Image—Male and Female Created He Them—Spirit and Flesh—Mortal and Immortal," Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: William Budge, 1878), 19:269

Scribe/Publisher
Josiah Rogerson
People
Erastus Snow
Audience
Latter-day Saints
Transcription

"What," says one, "do you mean we should understand that Deity consists of man and woman?" Most, certainly I do. If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself, and anything pertaining to the creation and organization of man upon the earth, I must believe that Deity consists of man and woman. Now this is simplifying it down to our understanding, and the great Christian world will be ready to open their mouths and cry, "Blasphemy! Sacriledge!" Open wide their eyes and wide their mouths in the utmost astonishment. What! God a man and woman? The Shakers say he was, and Ann Lee says, "Christ came in the form of a man in the first place, and now comes in the form of a woman," and she was that form.

Then these Christians—they say he has no form, neither body, parts nor passions. One party says he is a man, and the other says he is a woman. I say he is both. How do you know? I only repeat what he says of himself; that he created man in the image of God, male and female created he them, and he called their name Adam, which signifies in Hebrew, the first man. So that the beings we call Adam and Eve were the first man placed here on this earth, and their name was Adam, and they were the express image of God. Now, if anybody is disposed to say that the woman is in the likeness of God and that the man was not, and if vice versa, I say you are both wrong, or else God has not told us the truth. . . . In other words, there can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, nor ever will be, a God in any other way.

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