Part X: The Substance of God—Truth as the Totality of Divine Being

The model presented in the preceding parts has established that truth, intelligence, spirit, element, law, and comprehension are interlocking facets of a single eternal reality. We have seen that God comprehends all things and is therefore in and through all things (D&C 88:41), that the glory of God is intelligence, or light and truth (D&C 93:36), and that truth is uncreatable and eternal (D&C 93:29). These principles, when pressed to their logical conclusion, raise a question of extraordinary consequence: What is God made of? What is the fundamental substance of the divine being and how does he exist? The scriptures of the Restoration provide an answer that is as profound as it is consistent with everything the model has thus far revealed.

The Fulness of Truth as the Power and Glory of God

Doctrine and Covenants 93 provides the clearest scriptural window into the substance of God. The record of John describes the progression of Christ toward a fulness of the Father’s glory:

“And I, John, bear record that I beheld his glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, even the Spirit of truth, which came and dwelt in the flesh, and dwelt among us.” (D&C 93:11)

“And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness.” (D&C 93:12–13)

“And I, John, bear record that he received a fulness of the glory of the Father; And he received all power, both in heaven and on earth, and the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him.” (D&C 93:16–17)

The sequence is revelatory. Christ received grace for grace until He received a fulness of the glory of the Father—and upon receiving that fulness, He received “all power, both in heaven and on earth.” The fulness of glory is what produces all power. But what is this glory? The same section has already answered: “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth” (D&C 93:36). And what is this fulness? The revelation is equally explicit:

“The Spirit of truth is of God. I am the Spirit of truth, and John bore record of me, saying: He received a fulness of truth, yea, even of all truth.” (D&C 93:26)

A fulness of the glory of the Father is a fulness of truth. A fulness of truth produces all power. The glory of God is intelligence—light and truth. These are not metaphors. The substance of God’s power, the very medium of His glory, is truth itself. And not merely some truth, but all truth—the complete totality of knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come (D&C 93:24). God possesses a fulness of this knowledge, and that fulness is His glory and His power.

The Lord further promises that this fulness is available to all who follow Christ’s pattern: “For if you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace” (D&C 93:20). And: “He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things” (D&C 93:28). The endpoint of progression is to know all things—to possess a fulness of truth as God possesses it.

God Is Truth—The Literal Meaning of a “God of Truth”

If God’s glory and power consist of a fulness of truth, and all intelligence, creation and reality come from truth, then truth is not merely something God has; it is something God is. The scriptures confirm this in language that, when taken literally rather than metaphorically, becomes a precise ontological statement. The description of God as a “God of truth” appears throughout the standard works with striking consistency:

“And he answered: Yea, Lord, I know that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not lie.” (Ether 3:12)

“He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.” (Deuteronomy 32:4)

“That he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth.” (Isaiah 65:16)

“Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.” (Psalm 31:5)

These passages are traditionally read as descriptions of God’s character—He is truthful, reliable, honest. And he is certainly that. But within the model being presented, they carry an additional and more literal meaning: God is a God of truth in the same sense that a body of water is a body of water—the substance itself is the thing described. God is constituted of truth. The title “God of truth” is an ontological description, not merely a moral one.

The New Testament confirms this in remarkably direct language. The Apostle John writes: “This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth” (1 John 5:6). The Spirit is truth—not merely conveys truth, or testifies of truth, but is truth. Doctrine and Covenants 93:23 declares the same reality in its account of our premortal nature: “Ye were also in the beginning with the Father; that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth.” Our spirits are truth. God’s Spirit is truth. And God, who possesses a fulness of truth, is the conscious manifestation of the totality of truth itself.

This should not be surprising. If the consciousness of man is of the same species as God—as scripture and prophetic teaching affirm—then whatever we are in our fundamental essence, God is that same thing in fulness. The Apostle Paul declared to the Athenians: “Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:29). Joseph Smith taught in the King Follett sermon: “The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal [co-eternal] with God himself” (Ensign, April 1971, 13). If we are spirits of truth in the literal sense—truth uncreated and eternal, comprehended, becoming the light of truth, as conscious spirits, as all intelligence also—then as the same species as God, this is precisely what God is: Truth, uncreated and eternal, but the totality of truth, forever possessing a fulness.

The Self-Existence of God—Why Nothing Needs Comprehend God into Being

The model has established that existence requires truth to be placed within a sphere and given law in order to act for itself (D&C 93:30), and that God comprehends intelligences into existence by instituting laws for them (King Follett sermon). But if existence requires comprehension, who comprehended God? The answer lies in the unique nature of God’s fulness.

Because God is the totality of truth, nothing needs to comprehend Him into existence, for He is all existence and all possibility. A being who is the fulness of truth—the complete knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come—is self-contained, self-sustaining, and self-existent. Abraham confirms the absolute preeminence of God’s intelligence:

“And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.” (Abraham 3:19)

God is more intelligent than all other intelligences. There is no higher intelligence that comprehended Him, because He is the apex—the totality. And this totality is uncreated: “Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (D&C 93:29). God’s self-existence is not a paradox; it follows necessarily from the nature of truth itself. Truth cannot be created. It exists upon a self-existent principle (King Follett sermon). And God, being the fulness of truth, exists upon that same self-existent principle—eternally, inherently, and without need of any external cause.

It is not that the consciousness of God received the fullness of truth. It is that the fullness of truth in its total and complete form must be by a direct necessary implication be the greatest intelligence possible in existing, and if lesser intelligence can be conscious and self-aware, the greatest of all intelligence, the totality of everything must, by direct logical implication, Be self-aware and sentient, but not in our terrestrial way of comprehending it.

The Lord’s council is described as operating from this eternal vantage: “According to that which was ordained in the midst of the Council of the Eternal God of all other gods before this world was, that should be reserved unto the finishing and the end thereof, when every man shall enter into his eternal presence and into his immortal rest” (D&C 121:32). The designation “The Eternal God of all other gods” is significant. It does not describe a being who became God through progression but one who presides eternally over all other divine beings—a self-existent reality upon which all other realities depend. Abraham further declares: “There is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it” (Abraham 3:17). An intelligence who is the totality of truth possesses, by definition, the capacity to accomplish anything truth permits—which is to say, anything at all.

Every possible action in every possible time in every possible reality of every possible existence, exists within God.

Doctrine and Covenants 88:41

He comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him, and all things are round about him; and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him, even God, forever and ever.

All things literally means all things, including all possibilities in all times - past, present and future – in all possible realities.

God and Time—The Ever-Present Whole

If God is the totality of truth—the complete knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come (D&C 93:24)—then past, present, and future are not successive stages God experiences one at a time. They are dimensions of the truth He is. The scriptures confirm this with unmistakable clarity:

“But they reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord.” (D&C 130:7)

“The same which knoweth all things, for all things are present before mine eyes.” (D&C 38:2)

“And there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all.” (Moses 1:6)

All things—past, present, and future—are continually before the Lord. Not sequentially, but continually—at every moment, without cessation. This language describes a being for whom all temporal states exist simultaneously as an ever-present whole. The Book of Mormon confirms this explicitly: “All is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto men” (Alma 40:8). Time is a measurement model that applies to us, not to God inherently. God experiences all points of temporal reality as one unified reality because all temporal reality is a dimension of the truth He is and comprehends.

The Lord Himself acknowledged this distinction between how we perceive His works and how He perceives them: “Speaking unto you that you may naturally understand; but unto myself my works have no end, neither beginning; but it is given unto you that ye may understand, because ye have asked it of me and are agreed” (D&C 29:33). The Lord’s works, from His perspective, have no end neither beginning. He uses the language of sequence—first, last, beginning, end—so that we can naturally understand. But from His vantage, there is no such sequence. His works exist as an eternal, boundless whole.

This does not mean God is detached from temporal reality. He interacts with us within time. He speaks, acts, responds, and progresses within our frame of reference—because we can only perceive and interact with Him within time. When we see God, we necessarily perceive Him as moving forward in time with us, because we are unable to interact with Him in any other way. Our perception is linear, causal, sequential. But this is our limitation, not His. God’s interactions within any linear timeline constitute a real part of His existence—but outside of that timeline, He exists as every part of that existence in one. His true state encompasses every state He has ever manifested within any temporal frame.

The Immutability of God—“The Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever”

This understanding illuminates one of the most frequently quoted but least understood doctrines of scripture—the unchangeableness of God:

“For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?” (Mormon 9:9)

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

If God exists outside of time and all moments of His existence are ever-present before Him as one whole, then His true state cannot change, because He exists as all His states in one. Things God has done or achieved at the end of His interactions within any timeline already existed as part of His whole outside of that timeframe. Whatever God is at the “beginning” of a timeline and whatever He is at the “end” of that timeline—both states are part of His eternal totality, which exists as one. This is how God appears to have a progressionary path from our point of view within our timeline, while remaining “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” His true state cannot change because He exists as all His states in one, but His states manifest differently according to what He is doing in any given moment within the timeline we perceive Him within.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles affirmed the completeness of God’s knowledge in terms consistent with this model: “Some have wrongly assumed God’s progress is related to His acquisition of additional knowledge” (in Book of Mormon Student Manual [2009], chapter 49). God does not acquire truth; He possesses its fulness eternally. His progression, as it appears from within time, is the unfolding manifestation of what He already is from outside of time. The Lectures on Faith describe this quality with precision: “He changes not, neither is there variableness with him; but that he is the same from everlasting to everlasting, being the same yesterday, today, and for ever; and that his course is one eternal round, without variation” (Lectures on Faith [1985], 41).

Does God Have a Beginning?

The question of whether God has a beginning is resolved by distinguishing between God’s absolute state and His state as perceived within our timeframe. In His absolute state—the self-existent totality of truth existing outside of time—God has no beginning and no end. He was uncreated and God from all eternity. As the Lord declared: “Unto myself my works have no end, neither beginning” (D&C 29:33). The Prophet Joseph Smith taught: “The first principles of man are self-existent with God” (King Follett sermon, Ensign, April 1971, 13).

However, within our universe—within the linear timeframe we inhabit—God has a beginning state: the point at which the first intelligence in our frame of reference perceived and interacted with God. From that point, God’s interactions within our timeline create a linear progression—a causal chain of events from beginning to end. But this linear progression already exists in its entirety within God’s timeless whole. Whatever God does or achieves within any timeline, He already is and was, outside of that timeline where He exists as every part of His existence in one.

The Lord’s own language in scripture acknowledges this duality. He speaks of beginnings and endings for our benefit: “Speaking unto you that you may naturally understand” (D&C 29:33). He describes Himself as “the first and the last” (Revelation 1:17; D&C 110:4), but this is language adapted to our temporal frame, not a description of His ultimate nature. From outside of time, there is no first and last—there is only the eternal, ever-present fullness of all truth. Nephi records: “For he is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; and the way is prepared for all men from the foundation of the world, if it so be that they repent and come unto him” (1 Nephi 10:18). The way has been prepared from the foundation—not because God planned it at some starting point, but because from God’s perspective the plan, the foundation, and the fulfillment exist as one.

Dimension, Form, and the Image of God

The doctrine of the Restoration is emphatic that God possesses a physical form: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit” (D&C 130:22). Adam was created “in the image of his own body, male and female, created he them” (Moses 6:9). This physical form is not incidental to God’s nature; it is an eternal part of it.

However, within the present model, physical form requires dimension—specifically, the three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension that define our universe. Whether God ultimately exists in higher dimensions or none at all does not matter for without any dimensions, physical form as we know it cannot be manifest. God created our universe (Abraham 4:1), and it is our universe that provides the dimensional framework within which form and appearance can exist. If God exists outside of time—and therefore outside of dimension, since time itself is a dimension—then the three spatial dimensions of our universe are also not binding upon God in His absolute state, except as He chooses to operate within them.

This means that God’s image is eternal and uncreated—as inseparable from His nature as truth itself—but it can only be perceived or manifest when there are spatial dimensions within which to be perceived or manifested. Outside of dimensions and space and time, where God’s complete totality resides as an ever-present fulness of truth, God’s image exists as self-existent potential. It manifests when God is perceived within a universe framed by the dimensions that facilitate such a perception and he likely has a higher even more exultant form or image in universes defined by even more dimensions than our own, if they exist.

But God is physically present in our universe, and therefore he appears in a definable form. The Prophet Joseph Smith beheld this form in the First Vision: “I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (Joseph Smith—History 1:17). Stephen beheld the same form: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). The form is real, tangible, and glorified—constituted of flesh and bone in a state of celestial refinement. Genesis confirms its eternity: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). We bear the image of God because that image is an eternal aspect of the truth from which both God and we are constituted.

What God Gains from Our Universe—Infinite Increase from Finite Truth

If God possesses a fulness of truth in His absolute state, what does He gain by creating and interacting within a universe? The model suggests an answer rooted in the nature of truth itself. Truth is finite—one can possess a fulness, a totality, an endpoint of all that is, was, and will be. But truth can be combined in literally infinite possibilities and potentials. There is no limit to the number one can count using a finite set of digits. The totality of truth is finite; the creative applications of that totality are infinite. You can look at these natures as Order and Chaos or Totality and Potential. This also hints at a deeper mystery that indicates something truly profound. If truth has these two distinct natures, might they manifest as two distinct minds and be the origin of eternal gender? We will explore this possibility in part XIV.

A linear timeline enables the ever-onward flowing of infinite combinations of God’s fulness of truth. Through the comprehension of intelligences, worlds, and universes—through the unfolding drama of agency, law, progression, and redemption—God manifests infinite increase from the finite totality of truth. Each soul that gains light and truth, each world that is organized, each new expression of love and creation, represents a unique combination of eternal truth that did not previously experience reality as an actualized experience. This is infinite progression from a fulness—not the acquisition of new truth, but the endless creative expression of truth already possessed.

Moses 1:39 encapsulates this purpose: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” God’s glory—His intelligence, His light and truth—is increased by the immortality and eternal life of His children, not because He lacked something, but because each child who receives light and truth represents a new and eternal expression of the glory He already possesses. This is why Abraham 3:22–24 describes the intelligences God organized as the very context of His creative work—they are the medium through which God’s infinite creative potential is realized.

God gains two specific things from interacting within our universe as identified in scripture. First, an endless increase of glory through bringing to pass the eternal life of man—“a continuation of the seeds forever and ever” (D&C 132:19). Second, physicality, which brings a fulness of joy: “Spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy” (D&C 93:33). If God’s beginning state within our universe was without a physical body—as the model of spiritual creation before temporal creation suggests (D&C 29:31–32)—then the acquisition of a glorified physical body within a dimensional universe represents the realization of joy that was, from outside of time, always part of God’s eternal totality, but which, from within time, constitutes a genuine progression.

The Personable God—Comprehension and Relationship

There is a danger in this analysis: the danger of reducing God to an abstraction, of losing the personal Father amid the metaphysical totality. The scriptures guard against this danger with remarkable care. The totality of truth that exists in all things and in all times may be beyond our full comprehension, but it is our interaction and experience with God that matters—and within our time and reality, God is personable, comprehensible, and loving:

“And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.” (D&C 130:2)

The same sociality—friendship, family, love, personal relationship—continues into eternity. God is not a distant force or an impersonal field of truth. He is our Heavenly Father, and the scriptures consistently portray Him as such. Christ taught: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life is not merely knowing about God; it is knowing God—a personal, relational knowledge that implies intimacy, trust, and love.

The Prophet Joseph Smith declared: “If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 40). This is not merely a theological assertion; it is an existential one. To understand ourselves—our nature, our potential, our purpose—we must understand the God whose offspring we are. And the God we are called to understand is not an abstraction but a person: a glorified, exalted, embodied being of flesh and bone who dwells in everlasting burnings (Joseph Smith, King Follet Sermon), who weeps over His children (Moses 7:28–29), who speaks face to face as a man speaks with his friend (Exodus 33:11; D&C 93:1), and who invites every soul to come unto Him and receive of His fulness.

The ultimate goal of this model is not to comprehend God as a cosmic principle, but to comprehend God as He comprehends us—personally, lovingly, and with full knowledge. The doctrine of deification—of becoming like God—is not an invitation to become an abstract totality of truth. It is an invitation to become like what God is within our universe: a glorified, embodied, perfected being who experiences a fulness of joy, dwells in eternal sociality, and participates in the infinite creative expression of eternal truth. As the Lord promised: “Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue” (D&C 132:20). The continuation is the key—eternal increase, eternal creation, eternal joy, from a fulness of truth that cannot be created or diminished.

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Synthesis—The Substance of God and the Nature of Reality

The doctrine presented in this part may be summarized as follows:

God is truth. Not merely a possessor of truth but the conscious manifestation of the totality of truth. The description “God of truth” is literal. God’s glory is intelligence—light and truth (D&C 93:36)—and He possesses a fulness of all truth (D&C 93:26).

God is self-existent. Because truth cannot be created (D&C 93:29) and God is the totality of truth, God requires no external cause. He is more intelligent than all other intelligences (Abraham 3:19) and exists upon a self-existent principle.

God transcends time. Past, present, and future are continually before Him (D&C 130:7). He exists as all His temporal states in one ever-present whole. Time is measured unto men, not unto God (Alma 40:8). His works have “no end, neither beginning” from His own perspective (D&C 29:33).

God is unchangeable. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Mormon 9:9; Hebrews 13:8). His true state cannot change because He exists as all states in one. His apparent progression within our timeline is the temporal manifestation of what He already is from outside of time.

God is personal. Despite His transcendence, God is our Father, a being of flesh and bone (D&C 130:22), who loves, speaks, weeps, and relates to His children personally. The same sociality we experience now will continue eternally (D&C 130:2).

God gains through creation. His fulness of truth, though finite in totality, is infinite in creative potential. Through bringing to pass the eternal life of man (Moses 1:39), God manifests infinite increase. Physicality brings Him a fulness of joy (D&C 93:33).

 

Reality, as described in this model, is not a physical construct that happens to contain spiritual beings. It is a spiritual construct—truth comprehended and organized by God—within which physical experience is made possible by law. Our universe is real, valid, and meaningful precisely because it is comprehended in the mind of God, sustained by His light, governed by His law, and filled with His presence. To call it a “simulation” would imply it is fake; it is anything but. The experience is genuine, the agency is real, the consequences are eternal, and the God who comprehends it all into being is as personal and present as the light that fills the immensity of space.

As Doctrine and Covenants 88:67 promises: “And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things.” The destination of the model is not abstraction but comprehension—the same comprehension by which God is in all things and through all things, available to every soul willing to receive light and truth, grace for grace, until the fulness is obtained.

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Part XI: How God Gives Life to Eternal Intelligences

If spirits are eternal and uncreated—if “there never was a time when there were not spirits” (King Follett sermon)—then what does it mean for God to “beget” spirit children? This model offers a coherent answer:
First, it requires both Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother which will be explained in Part XIV: The Compound Nature of Truth and the Principle of Union, but here we will define the process.
God gives life to eternal intelligences by comprehending them into existence and moving them forward through time. God is able to do this precisely because He is the totality of truth. The intelligence all truth—the complete knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come—possesses, by definition, the capacity to comprehend any individual intelligence into existence. Nothing lies outside God's comprehensive knowledge, and therefore nothing lies outside His creative power. This is the self-existent foundation upon which all other existence depends.

Eternal intelligence without law exists but does not know that it exists. It has no progression, no awareness, no experience of life. The institution of law—the placement of intelligence within a sphere to act for itself—is what transforms mere eternal existence into life. As Joseph Smith expressed it: “God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself” (Ensign, April 1971, 13). Abraham 3:21 presents the same truth: “I dwell in the midst of them all; I now, therefore, have come down unto thee to declare unto thee the works which my hands have made, wherein my wisdom excelleth them all, for I rule in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, in all wisdom and prudence, over all the intelligences thine eyes have seen from the beginning; I came down in the beginning in the midst of all the intelligences thou hast seen.”

The phrase Joseph smith coined and Brigham Young used—“chaotic matter”—has sometimes been misunderstood as primordial physical substance from which spirits were formed. In context, however, Brigham Young was describing the state of intelligence without law and progression—the native, uncreated, eternal condition of a spirit that has not yet been organized, not yet been given a sphere in which to act. In his discourse “Life and Death, or Organisation and Disorganisation,” Brigham Young taught that a spirit could be “reduced back” to this state—not destroyed, but stripped of its progression, knowledge, glory, and power. “Chaotic matter,” properly understood, refers not to unformed physical substance but to spirit and intelligence in its native state without law before God comprehended them into reality.

This means that God’s creative act—His spiritual “begetting” of spirit children—consists in comprehending eternal intelligences, instituting laws for their governance, placing them within spheres to act for themselves, and moving them forward through time so that they may experience life, gain knowledge, exercise agency, and ultimately advance toward the fullness that God possesses. Moses 1:39 encapsulates the purpose: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

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Part XII: Law, Opposition, and the Conditions of Existence

Lehi’s argument in 2 Nephi 2 represents one of the most rigorous philosophical statements in all scripture:

“And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.” (2 Nephi 2:13)

Lehi constructs a chain of dependency: without law, there is no opposition. Without opposition, there is no agency. Without agency, there is no existence. “All things must have vanished away.” Doctrine and Covenants 93:30 states the same truth from the other direction: truth and intelligence must be able to “act for itself… otherwise there is no existence.”

Lehi further teaches: “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one” (2 Nephi 2:11). The phrase “a compound in one” is significant: all existing things are composites, containing within them the capacity for opposing states. This principle applies to all things—including, as I will later explain, truth itself and the divine nature.

The conditions for existence, drawn from these scriptures, are: (1) Law—the governing structure that defines bounds and conditions. (2) Opposition—the duality that allows distinction between states. (3) Agency—the self-acting capacity of intelligence within its sphere. (4) Truth—the very substance of existence. Remove any one of these, and “all things must have vanished away.”

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Part XIII: Progression from Grace to Grace

The model includes a mechanism of eternal progression that applies to all beings—even to Christ Himself. Doctrine and Covenants 93:12–13 records: “And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness.”

This progression is not unique to the Savior; it is the pattern for all of God’s children: “He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things” (D&C 93:28). And: “That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day” (D&C 50:24). The mechanism of progression is: keep commandments → receive truth and light → grow in intelligence → receive more truth and light → and so on, from grace to grace, until glorification and the knowledge of all things. “Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come” (D&C 130:18–19).

Joseph Smith taught: “When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom, and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the gospel—you must begin with the first, and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 268).

The spectrum is traversable in both directions. Sanctification, quickening, and glorification represent the refinement of matter from coarser to purer states. The earth itself will undergo this transformation: “Notwithstanding it shall die, it shall be quickened again, and shall abide the power by which it is quickened, and the righteous shall inherit it” (D&C 88:26). In its celestialized state, the earth “will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest” (D&C 130:9). Physical matter, refined to the point of transparency and truth, becomes a revelatory instrument. And through disobedience, refined understanding can coarsen and be lost.

The Savior’s own progression included His mortal experience as a necessary component. He “ascended up on high” in His premortal state but needed to “descend below all things” through mortality and the Atonement “in that he comprehended all things” (D&C 88:6). During the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). After His resurrection, He expanded the declaration: “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect” (3 Nephi 12:48). Having descended below all things and risen again, and unified eternally in the compound nature of truth (explained in the next part), He now possess a fullness of truth independently of himself and is include in the standard of perfection.

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Part XIV: The Compound Nature of Truth and the eternal reality of gender

The model advances a speculative but scripturally grounded theory regarding the nature of truth and gender. This theory draws on two foundational scriptural principles: Lehi’s teaching that “all things must needs be a compound in one” (2 Nephi 2:11) and the revealed doctrine that the fullness of God’s glory requires the eternal union of male and female.

Doctrine and Covenants 132:19 declares that those sealed in the new and everlasting covenant shall receive “exaltation and glory in all things… which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.” Verse 6 of the same section states: “As pertaining to the new and everlasting covenant, it was instituted for the fulness of my glory; and he that receiveth a fulness thereof must and shall abide the law.” The fulness of God’s glory—which is intelligence, light, and truth (D&C 93:36)—is attainable only through eternal marriage, the union of male and female.

The theory proposes that this requirement is not arbitrary but reflects the fundamental nature of truth itself. Truth possesses two complementary aspects: a finite totality (the sum of all that is, was, and will be—comprehensible, bounded, orderly) and an infinite potentiality (the endless applications, combinations, and creative expressions that arise from that totality). These two aspects are inseparable yet distinct, much as the digits 0 through 9 constitute a finite set of truth, yet in another perspective and application can be used to count to infinity. The totality of truth can be obtained (a “fullness” is possible, as D&C 93:26–28 affirms), yet from that fullness, infinite creative expression and ongoing life and creation remains possible.

These natures can be described through the dual concepts of Order and Chaos. Both, when considered correctly, are good and necessary: in order we have knowledge, structure, bounds, and processes; in chaos we have possibility, imagination, creativity, growth, life, and empathy. There is overlap between the two—indeed one cannot exist without the other—but the distinct natures of each lend themselves to more common types of behaviour in each category. Order representing male, chaos representing female—and these concepts have been associated with gender for thousands of years across cultures.

The Family Proclamation issued by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1995 declares that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” If gender is eternal—not a product of mortal biology but an essential characteristic of premortal spirits—then it must be rooted in something deeper than physical form. The theory suggests it is rooted in the compound nature of truth itself: the ordered totality and the creative potentiality, both of which manifest as two distinct natures that must be united for truth to be full or to achieve its fullness and for God to be God.

If indeed truth has two halves that manifest from the fact that truth has two types of ways it must be comprehended to be complete, and we know that if truth is God and God can only be God by the combination of an exalted male and female spirit, this means the two halves of truth are the two gendered eternal beings that comprise the true and living God. Gender truly is eternal, uncreated, self-existent, and Heavenly Mother was by unavoidable contextual reality with Heavenly Father from before the beginning. Male existing from the totality of truth. Female existing from the potential of truth.

Many have assumed—falsely—that a resurrected body is needed to have spirit children. How would a physical body be needed to beget spiritual offspring? A spirit is a single greater intelligence that, without God comprehending them into a universe and instituting laws, would never know existence. That is how we are spiritually begotten of God, and this process is not physical at all. What the scriptures do say is this:

“For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy.” (D&C 93:33)

That does not say “enable them to have spirit children.” A physical body grants God greater joy, indeed a fulness of joy. The union of male and female is necessary in obtaining a fullness of light and truth because of the unique fundamental gendered nature of truth itself. We are spirits of truth, and with truth being gendered, mankind has gender, male and female. This is why the eternal spirits of man and woman must be united to beget spirit children:

“And they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.” (D&C 132:19)

But this is not like physical birth. Spirits are not formed from the material; they are given life by God as the model describes. For God to do this, they must possess a fullness of truth, otherwise reality could not exist. But to possess a fullness of truth requires the comprehensive union (or pre-existent union in the case of God) of the two halves of truth—male and female.

This reframes the very meaning of the word “God” when referring to the eternal God of whom we are spiritually begotten. It cannot mean just Heavenly Father. It must, by ontological necessity, refer to both Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, for God cannot be God—cannot independently possess the power of God which is a fullness of light and truth—without being a dual entity of male and female.

With this understanding, this was how God begat spirit children, being able to fully comprehend them and give us life. A physical body was not necessary for this, but God, meaning Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, could experience greater joy by creating for themselves physical bodies, for when spirit and element are inseparably connected they receive a fulness of joy. So, God the Father has gone through a type of mortal experience whereby He laid down His body and took it up again, becoming an exalted man with a physical body of flesh and bone within a universe Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother are comprehending into existence.

Remember, the acquisition of a glorified physical body within a dimensional universe represents the realization of joy that was, from outside of time, always part of God’s eternal totality, but which, from within time, constitutes a genuine progression.

This interpretation remains speculative and is not established Church doctrine. However, it finds resonance in the scriptural requirement that eternal marriage is necessary for exaltation, in Lehi’s principle that all things are compounds, and in the revealed truth that the glory of God—intelligence, light, and truth—requires the union of male and female for its fullness.

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Part XV: Synthesis—The Mechanics of Existence

The complete model, assembled from the scriptural and prophetic sources examined above, may now be stated:

The Eternal Givens: (uncreated, indestructible, self-existent): Truth (knowledge of reality, D&C 93:24). Intelligence (light of truth, D&C 93:29). Element (eternal matter, D&C 93:33). Law (governing principles, D&C 88:36–42).

The Spectrum of Matter: Intelligence (raw truth) → Spirit (fine truth) → Physical Element (coarse truth). All one substance, differing in refinement. No ontological gap between them.

The Conditions of Existence: (from 2 Nephi 2:13 and D&C 93:30): Law + Opposition + Agency + Truth. Remove any one, and “all things must have vanished away.”

The Creative Process of comprehension: Possess a fulness of truth (D&C 93:11-26) → Give law (D&C 88:38 D&C 93:30) → Watch Until Obedience (Abraham 4:18). This process produces both the spiritual and physical worlds, both self-aware spirits and the fundamental particles of matter.

The Substance of God: God (Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother) is truth—not merely a possessor of truth but the conscious manifestation of the totality of truth (D&C 93:26, 36). They are self-existent because truth cannot be created (D&C 93:29) and they are the fulness of truth. They transcends time because past, present, and future are dimensions of the truth they are (D&C 130:7; Alma 40:8). They are unchangeable because they exist as all their temporal states in one ever-present whole (Mormon 9:9; D&C 29:33). Yet they are personable—our Father is a being of flesh and bone (D&C 130:22), who loves, weeps, and relates to His children within time (D&C 130:2; Moses 7:28–29).

God's Relationship to Time: From their absolute state, God's works have "no end, neither beginning" (D&C 29:33). The Father speaks to us in sequential language so we may "naturally understand," but from His vantage, all moments exist as one. Their progression within our timeline is the temporal manifestation of what they already are from outside of time, making God forever "the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Mormon 9:9; Hebrews 13:8).

The Dual Nature of Truth and Divine Union: Truth possesses a finite totality and an infinite potentiality—order and creative possibility—which manifest as the eternal masculine and feminine natures that must be united for God to be God and for a fulness of glory to be achieved (D&C 132:6, 19; 2 Nephi 2:11).

The Mechanism of Progression: Keep commandments → Receive truth and light → Grace for grace → Glorification → Knowledge of all things (D&C 93:13, 28; 50:24). This progression, when experienced within time, is real and sequential; from outside of time, it already exists in its entirety within the fulness of truth.

The Mechanism of Omnipresence: God comprehends all truth. All things are constituted of truth. Therefore all things are present before Him, and He is in and through all things (D&C 88:41; Moses 1:6; D&C 38:2). Reality is a spiritual construct—truth comprehended and organized by God—within which physical experience is made possible by law.

 

If the entire model had to be reduced to a single verse of scripture, it would be this:

“All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.” (D&C 93:30)

Truth. Intelligence. Spirit. Element. Agency. Law. Sphere. Existence. They are not separate things. They are different facets of one eternal reality—a reality whose totality is God Himself—without which nothing exists at all.

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Conclusion: The Ordered Definitions of the Model

The theology of the Restoration, as revealed in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, the Book of Mormon, and the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, presents a model for understanding existence that is without parallel in the history of Christian thought. It collapses the ancient dualism of spirit and matter, redefines creation as organization rather than manufacture ex nihilo, identifies the laws of nature as spiritual laws, resolves the self-existence of God through the uncreatable nature of truth, reconciles divine immutability with progression through God's transcendence of time, and offers a coherent account of consciousness, agency, divine omnipresence, and the purpose of eternal creation.

This model reveals that God is not merely a being who possesses truth—God is a dual entity of two spirit consciousness of male and female. They are the conscious manifestation of the totality of truth. Their glory, power, and substance are intelligence: light and truth (D&C 93:36). Their self-existence follows necessarily from the uncreatable nature of truth itself (D&C 93:29). Their omnipresence follows from Their comprehension of all truth (D&C 88:41). Their immutability follows from Their transcendence of time, in which all moments of Their existence are ever-present before Them as one whole (D&C 130:7; Alma 40:8; Mormon 9:9). Their creative power follows from Their possession of a fulness of all truth (D&C 93:26), which enables Them to comprehend any intelligence into existence by instituting laws for its governance (King Follett sermon). And Their ongoing purpose—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man (Moses 1:39)—represents the infinite creative expression of the finite fulness God eternally possesses.

This model is not the product of nineteenth-century frontier philosophy. Joseph Smith, translating and receiving revelation in the 1830s and 1840s, articulated concepts that science and philosophy would not begin to approach for well over a century: the holographic nature of reality, the materiality of spirit, the institution of law as the mechanism of life, the information-theoretic nature of existence itself. The holographic universe theory, simulation theory, the information-theoretic approach to physics—all of these modern developments find startling resonance in scriptures that preceded them by nearly two hundred years.

Yet the model's most important contribution is not metaphysical but personal. The God it reveals is not an abstraction or a cosmic principle but a glorified, embodied, loving Father (and Mother who might not be embodied as we don’t know) who dwells in everlasting burnings, who weeps over His children (Moses 7:28–29), who speaks face to face as a man speaks with his friend (Exodus 33:11; D&C 93:1), and who invites every soul to come unto Him and receive of the fulness he and Heavenly Mother complete in each other. "And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory" (D&C 130:2). The totality of truth is not cold or distant; it is our Heavenly Father and Mother, and They knows us, and They love us.

As Joseph Smith declared with characteristic confidence: "This is good doctrine. It tastes good. I can taste the principles of eternal life, and so can you. They are given to me by the revelations of Jesus Christ" (Ensign, April 1971, 13). The mechanics of existence, as revealed in Restoration scripture, are not merely doctrines to be believed. They are realities to be comprehended—light to be received, grace for grace, until the fullness is obtained and all things are known.