Doctrine & Theologyheavenly-motherheavenly-parentswisdomgenesis

Heavenly Mother

Is belief in a Mother in Heaven biblical, or is it pagan syncretism smuggled into Christianity?

Bible

The Bible answers

Bible · Genesis 1:27

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

NRSVUE
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Bible · Proverbs 8:22–23

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version
The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.

NRSVUE
The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

Book of Mormon

Also restored

The Family: A Proclamation to the World
All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.

Moses 6:9
In the image of his own body, male and female, created he them.
In the image of his own body, male and female, created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created and became living souls in the land, upon the footstool of God.

Ancient witnesses

Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.

Wisdom of Solomon 7:25–26

For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.

Israel’s own Wisdom tradition, not a borrowed Asherah cult, gives us a feminine figure present at creation, proceeding from God, and imaging His glory. Latter-day Saints do not identify Heavenly Mother with Lady Wisdom in a one-to-one equation, and they do not revive Canaanite pole-worship which the prophets condemned. They do insist that the Bible’s own divine-feminine language, Genesis 1:27, and Restoration teaching of heavenly parents belong in the same faithful conversation.

El Shaddai in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 17:1; 49:25)

Genesis 49:25 blesses Joseph “by the Almighty (El Shaddai), who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb.”

Some scholars connect Shaddai with nurture and fertility language already inside Israel’s scriptures. That is a cautious observation, not a proof-text for pagan goddess worship. The Church’s doctrine of a Mother in Heaven comes by Restoration, not by reconstructing Ugaritic religion. We reject syncretism. We also refuse the idea that the biblical God is a solitary male monad with no place for a divine feminine in the heavenly family.

Faithful answers

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Mother in Heaven

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Church’s official essay treats Heavenly Mother as cherished doctrine, not folklore. We have heavenly parents. We do not pray to her, because the revealed pattern is prayer to the Father in the name of the Son. Silence about her details is not denial of her reality.

The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is a cherished and distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints. All human beings, male and female, are beloved spirit children of heavenly parents, a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.

President Dallin H. Oaks: “Our theology begins with heavenly parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.”
Men and women cannot be exalted without each other. Godhood is a family reality, not a solitary male career.
For reasons the Lord has not fully revealed, we know little about our Mother. That is a call to reverence, not to inventive goddess liturgy.
Honoring womanhood on earth is bound up with acknowledging her eternal Prototype.

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