Jesus’s Conception: From “Natural Action” to “We Do Not Know”
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latter-day Saint leaders did more than identify God as the Father of Jesus Christ. They described His mortal begetting as natural and comparable to ordinary human procreation. Current Church curriculum still teaches Mary’s virginity and God’s literal paternity, but says scripture does not reveal how the conception occurred and warns teachers not to explain beyond the scriptural record.
The short answer
Did Church leaders compare Jesus’s conception to ordinary human begetting?
Yes. Brigham Young’s published sermons used that analogy, and Bruce R. McConkie repeated it in his 1966 book. McConkie was then a member of the First Council of the Seventy, not yet an apostle.
The defining contrast
“Natural action” beside an unrevealed method
Brigham Young’s 1860 statement describes a process and supplies an ordinary procreative analogy. The current seminary manual affirms Jesus’s divine sonship but says the scriptural accounts do not disclose how the miracle happened.
“The birth of the Saviour was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood—was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers.”Journal of Discourses 8:115
“Other scriptures that refer to the conception of Jesus Christ likewise emphasize that He is the Son of God but do not reveal how this miracle took place.”Luke 1:1–38, “What do we know about Mary’s miraculous pregnancy?”
The narrow issueThe contrast concerns the claimed knowledge of the physical process: earlier leaders compared it to ordinary begetting; current curriculum says the method is unrevealed.
The scriptural record
Virgin conception, divine action, no biological account
The biblical and Book of Mormon texts identify Mary as a virgin, the Holy Spirit’s action, and Jesus as God’s Son. They do not describe intercourse or another biological mechanism.
“Before they came together”
Mary “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”
Matthew says Mary became pregnant before she and Joseph came together and that Joseph did not know her sexually before Jesus’s birth. The angel calls the conception “from the Holy Spirit.” The text establishes a virginal, miraculous conception without explaining a physical process involving the Father.
“The power of the Most High will overshadow you”
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”
Mary asks how she can bear a child because she is a virgin. Gabriel answers with divine action and says the child will be holy and called the Son of God. “Overshadow” should not be converted into a sexual description that Luke does not supply.
Conceived “by the power of the Holy Ghost”
Mary would “be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
LDS leaders distinguish the Holy Ghost’s power or agency from the Father’s paternity. That division allows current curriculum to quote both Alma and Ezra Taft Benson’s statement that Jesus was not “begotten by the Holy Ghost.” Scripture states the first role but does not spell out the division.
Matthew: “That which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”Matthew 1:20, ESV · Ensign, December 2001 (2023 seminary manual)
Benson: “He was not the son of Joseph, nor was He begotten by the Holy Ghost.”
Historic Christianity confesses that Jesus was “conceived by the Holy Spirit” of the virgin Mary and that the Father is spirit (John 4:24), not an exalted man with a physical body. Latter-day Saint teaching reverses both points: the Father has “a body of flesh and bones” (D&C 130:22) and is the literal father of Jesus’s body, and the Holy Ghost is excluded as begetter. “Virgin conception” is not the Immaculate Conception, the Roman Catholic doctrine concerning Mary’s own conception. Biblical quotations in this section are from the English Standard Version.
Brigham Young’s repeated explanation
Four public discourses supplied more than literal paternity
Young was President of the Church when each address was given. The surviving texts are reported sermons in the privately published Journal of Discourses, not canon or formal First Presidency declarations. Their repetition, specificity, and Young’s own language about their importance remain part of the historical record.
The Church’s current topic page says the journal was sometimes transcribed inaccurately, is not an official Church publication, and is not by itself an authoritative source of doctrine. It also records that Brigham Young supported the publication plan. The quotations below were checked against BYU’s page scans; no ellipsis removes a qualification within the quoted sentences.
The claim was joined to Adam–God
“Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven.”
Young identified the begetter through the Adam–God teaching documented in Case 002. He then warned hearers not to make light of “these doctrines,” because “they will prove their salvation or damnation.” The Adam–God identity was later rejected; the discourse still shows Young presenting the conception teaching as consequential, not as a tentative aside.
“The Father came Himself”
“The Father came Himself and favoured that spirit with a tabernacle instead of letting any other man do it.”
Young continued: “The Saviour was begotten by the Father of His spirit, by the same Being who is the Father of our spirits,” and called that “all the organic difference” between Jesus and other people. The surrounding sermon compares the Father’s own embodied existence with earthly tabernacles.
“The result of natural action”
“He partook of flesh and blood—was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers.”
This is the clearest concise procreative analogy: “natural action,” “as natural as are the births of our children,” and begotten “as we were of our fathers.”
Mary “had another husband”
“Mary the wife of Joseph had another husband. … That very babe that was cradled in the manger, was begotten, not by Joseph, the husband of Mary, but by another Being.”
Young answered his own question—“He was begotten by God our heavenly Father”—and said no further inquiry was needed. The sermon’s subject was plural marriage, so the unusual marital claim was part of his argument, not merely a synonym for divine sonship.
Later institutional record
Literal paternity continued; some leaders retained the analogy
The source types matter. A joint First Presidency–Twelve exposition establishes literal bodily parentage without explaining the process. McConkie’s authored doctrinal reference work went further and repeated the ordinary-begetting analogy.
“Spiritual and bodily offspring”
“Jesus Christ is the Son of Elohim both as spiritual and bodily offspring.”
“The Father and the Son,” published in the August 1916 Improvement Era, says Elohim is literally the Father of Jesus’s spirit and body. This is the strongest institutional source in the record, but it does not say how the mortal body was conceived. Literal bodily paternity is not identical to a disclosed biological method.
“In the same way”
“Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers.”
In another entry, McConkie wrote that Christ “was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events.” Mormon Doctrine, second edition, was an influential book written while McConkie served in the First Council of the Seventy; he became an apostle in 1972. It was not canon or a joint First Presidency declaration. The accessible Internet Archive edition confirms the wording, though its reflowed pagination does not preserve the commonly cited original pages 547 and 742.
“Sired” by the Eternal Father
“The body in which He performed His mission in the flesh was sired by that same Holy Being we worship as God, our Eternal Father. He was not the son of Joseph, nor was He begotten by the Holy Ghost.”
Benson was President of the Quorum of the Twelve when he gave the University of Utah fireside. The Church later republished the address as a “Gospel Classics” article, and the 2023 seminary lesson still quotes this passage. It insists on literal paternity and excludes the Holy Ghost as begetter, but it does not give the same explicit “natural action” analogy as Young and McConkie.
Continuity without a mechanical explanation
“Thus, God the Father became the literal Father of Jesus Christ.”
The manual calls Jesus the only person born of “a mortal mother and an immortal Father.” It directly continues literal divine paternity and virgin conception. It does not repeat the earlier comparison to ordinary physical procreation.
Current curriculum
Retained paternity, paired with a warning not to explain
Current material puts two propositions on the same lesson page: God is the Father of Jesus’s mortal body, and teachers should leave the method with Luke’s account until more is revealed.
Virginity and literal divine parentage
- Mary was a virgin and had not known a man.
- Jesus is the divine Son of God the Father and of Mary.
- God was the Father of Jesus’s fleshly tabernacle.
- Jesus was not begotten by Joseph or by the Holy Ghost.
The physical method
“If teachers were wise in speaking of [the conception of Jesus Christ] about which the Lord has said but very little, they would rest their discussion … with merely the words … in Luke 1:34–35. … Let the Lord rest His case with this declaration and wait until He sees fit to tell us more.”
The 2023 student and teacher manuals quote this caution from Harold B. Lee’s collected teachings. The same materials quote Benson’s denial that the Holy Ghost was the begetter.
Scripture describes conception by the power of the Holy Ghost; LDS leaders identify the Holy Ghost as divine agent or power, not as Jesus’s father. God the Father remains the literal parent. The exact means is treated as unrevealed. That framing preserves literal paternity while declining to repeat the older explanation of how such paternity operated.
What demonstrably changed
The shift is from procreative analogy to institutional caution
The sources document a retreat from a stated explanation of conception to instructions that teachers leave the method unexplained.
From explanation to declared lack of detail
Young and McConkie spoke as if the analogy were plain and understandable. Current curriculum says scripture does not reveal how the miracle took place.
From ordinary analogy to no biological description
“Natural action,” “as we were of our fathers,” and “the normal and natural course” carry ordinary procreative implications. Current materials stop at miraculous conception and paternity.
Agency remains distinct from paternity
Scripture says conception was from or by the power of the Holy Spirit. Current curriculum retains the LDS distinction that the Spirit was not the begetter.
The record is not one level of authority
It includes reported sermons, a General Authority’s authored book, a formal First Presidency–Twelve exposition, official magazine republication, and current curriculum.
Virgin conception and literal paternity remain
The Church has not abandoned Mary’s virginity, divine sonship, or God’s fatherhood of Jesus’s mortal body.
No identified disavowal of “natural action”
No official source located in this audit says which earlier mechanical descriptions, if any, should now be rejected or explains their fit with the current caution.
Finding
The retained doctrine does not erase the changed explanation
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Church presidents and apostles did more than affirm that Jesus was the Son of God. Some described His mortal conception as natural, normal, and comparable to the way mortal fathers beget children. The statements appeared in reported sermons and a General Authority’s doctrinal book; related literal-paternity teaching also appeared in formal and curricular sources.
Current Church curriculum still identifies God as the Father of Jesus’s mortal body, affirms Mary’s virginity, and rejects the Holy Ghost as begetter. It also says scripture does not reveal how the conception occurred and cautions teachers to wait for more. The Church has not formally disavowed the earlier natural- procreation descriptions or explained how their confidence fits the present claim that the method is unknown.
Sources and limitations
Read the record
The defining quotations were checked against BYU page scans, official Church pages and manuals, an accessible edition of McConkie’s book, and the biblical text. The supplied compilation was used only to identify research leads. The unverified leads noted below were not quoted as evidence.
Joseph F. Smith’s 1914 address, republished in the 1971–72 Family Home Evening manual, was located in the Internet Archive catalog but its page scan is access-restricted; it is not quoted above. Joseph Fielding Smith’s Doctrines of Salvationpassage and additional formulations in McConkie’s Promised Messiah, Mortal Messiah, and Doctrinal New Testament Commentary were also omitted because the cited original pages were not accessible for a full context check. Orson Pratt’s The Seer passage was not needed to establish the central contrast.