CES Letter Answers

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Godhead Changes ​

The claim:

"The Book of Mormon taught and still teaches a Trinitarian view of the Godhead. Joseph Smith's early theology also held this view. As part of the over 100,000 changes to the Book of Mormon, there were major changes made to reflect Joseph's evolved view of the Godhead."[1]

The CES Letter presents four passages where Joseph Smith inserted "the Son of" in the 1837 edition, quotes several unchanged passages as proof the book "still" teaches Trinitarianism, and cites Boyd Kirkland's claim that Joseph "reversed his earlier efforts to completely 'monotheise' the godhead and instead 'tritheised' it."[1:1]

If Joseph was rewriting the Book of Mormon's theology, why did he leave the most "Trinitarian" passages untouched?

The four changes ​

In 1836-37, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery prepared the second edition of the Book of Mormon. Joseph made four insertions in 1 Nephi, each adding the words "the Son of":[2]

Verse1830 Edition1837 Edition
1 Nephi 11:18"the mother of God""the mother of the Son of God"
1 Nephi 11:21"the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father""even the Son of the Eternal Father"
1 Nephi 11:32"yea, the Everlasting God, was judged of the world""the Son of the everlasting God was judged"
1 Nephi 13:40"the Lamb of God is the Eternal Father and the Savior""the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior"

These are real changes. They aren't punctuation or spelling. Joseph wrote them in his own hand on the printer's manuscript.[3]

The question is what they mean.

What the "100,000 changes" are actually counting ​

The CES Letter drops the phrase "over 100,000 changes" without explaining what it includes. Royal Skousen — the linguist who has spent four decades on the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project — documented approximately 105,000 places of variation across manuscripts and 20 printed editions.[4]

CategoryCountExamples
Punctuation41,619Commas, periods, semicolons added to an unpunctuated dictation
Spelling23,577"haveing" to "having," "cours" to "course"
Capitalization19,455Standardizing proper nouns
Formatting1,420Paragraph breaks, versification
Editorial / substantive~10,355Grammar corrections, minor wording adjustments

Of all these variations, Skousen identified 256 that make a difference in meaning — changes that "would show up in any translation of the book."[4:1]

The four Godhead changes are among those 256. They are also among only five "chestnuts" — the most frequently discussed textual changes in the entire book.[2:1]

The test the CES Letter fails ​

The CES Letter's argument runs like this: Joseph originally taught modalism (Father and Son are the same being). He later adopted a separate-beings theology. He then revised the Book of Mormon to match.

For this to work, two things must be true. The 1830 text must be genuinely modalist. And the changes must represent a systematic theological overhaul.

Neither holds up.

A 20-to-1 ratio ​

Ari Bruening and David Paulsen published the most comprehensive analysis of every deity reference in the Book of Mormon. They found approximately 1,800 references to God. The result:[5]

Antimodalist passages outnumber modalist-sounding ones roughly 20 to 1.

They cataloged six categories of antimodalist evidence present in the 1830 text:

  • Christ ascending to the Father (3 Nephi 15:1; 18:27)
  • Christ as intercessor — praying to a separate being (Mosiah 15:8; 3 Nephi 17:15)
  • Christ subjecting his will to the Father's will (3 Nephi 11:11)
  • Individuals praying to the Father in Christ's name (3 Nephi 18:19)
  • Multiple Godhead members appearing simultaneously (1 Nephi 1:8-10; 3 Nephi 11:7)
  • The Father's voice introducing the Son as a distinct person: "my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased — hear ye him" (3 Nephi 11:7)

A modalist god does not pray to himself. A modalist god does not ascend to someone else. A modalist god does not say "thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one" (3 Nephi 19:23) — because there is no "we."

All of these passages existed in the 1830 edition. None were added later.[6]

The unchanged passages destroy the revision narrative ​

The CES Letter itself quotes Alma 11:38-39, Mosiah 15:1-4, Ether 3:14-15, and Mosiah 16:15 as evidence the book "still" teaches Trinitarianism. But those passages were never changed.

Here's the problem for the CES Letter's theory. If Joseph wanted to purge modalism from the text, he left untouched every passage critics now cite as the strongest "Trinitarian" evidence:

PassageStill in the text, unchanged
Mosiah 15:1-4"God himself shall come down...being the Father and the Son...they are one God"
Alma 11:38-39"Is the Son of God the very Eternal Father? Yea, he is the very Eternal Father"
Ether 3:14"I am the Father and the Son"
Mosiah 16:15"Christ the Lord, who is the very Eternal Father"
Mosiah 3:8"Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and of earth"
Mosiah 7:27"Christ was the God himself, the Father of all things"

Four changes in 1 Nephi. Dozens of identical phrases left alone everywhere else.

That's not a theological overhaul. That's a targeted clarification of the most frequently misquoted verses — the same ones Alexander Campbell had attacked six years earlier.[7]

Why Campbell matters ​

In 1831, Alexander Campbell published Delusions — the first anti-Mormon book. He criticized the Book of Mormon's language as settling "all the great controversies" of Christianity, including "the trinity." The phrase "the mother of God" in 1 Nephi 11:18 sounded conspicuously Catholic to Protestant ears.[7:1]

Oliver Cowdery spent the next several years responding to Campbell's criticisms in the Messenger and Advocate.[8] By 1836, when he and Joseph prepared the second edition, the four passages that attracted the most external criticism were fresh in Cowdery's mind.

The changes weren't secret. They appeared in a publicly printed edition. The 1837 preface stated they had "carefully re-examined and compared with the original manuscripts."[9]

Why Christ is called "the Eternal Father" ​

If the Book of Mormon isn't modalist, why does it call Christ "God," "the Eternal Father," and "the Everlasting God"?

Because the Book of Mormon has its own Christological framework — and Abinadi spells it out in Mosiah 15.[10]

He teaches that Christ is "the Father and the Son" and then explains how:

  • The Father because "he was conceived by the power of God" — invested with the Father's full authority
  • The Son because of the flesh — mortality inherited from Mary
  • Both at once because "the will of the Son" was "swallowed up in the will of the Father"

The 1916 First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve doctrinal exposition "The Father and the Son" formalized three senses in which Christ holds the title "Father":[11]

SenseMeaningBook of Mormon example
CreatorMade heaven and earth under the Father's direction"the Father of heaven and of earth" (Mosiah 15:4; Alma 11:39)
Father of the spiritually rebornThose who accept his gospel become his sons and daughters"ye shall be called the children of Christ" (Mosiah 5:7)
Divine investiture of authoritySpeaks and acts with the Father's full name and power"I am the Father and the Son" (Ether 3:14)

The 1916 exposition didn't invent this framework. It formalized what the Book of Mormon text already said in 1830. Every passage the CES Letter quotes as "Trinitarian" fits cleanly within it.

The "still Trinitarian" passages in context ​

Alma 11:38-39. Zeezrom asks if the Son of God is the very Eternal Father. Amulek says yes. But Amulek has already established their separateness — in verse 22 he testifies that "the Son of God shall come" to "redeem his people," and in verse 44 he distinguishes Christ from "God, the Father of all things." He's saying Christ functions as the Eternal Father through creation and divine authority, not that he is God the Father.

Mosiah 15:1-4. Abinadi says God "shall come down among the children of men" and explains precisely how Christ is both Father and Son. He says "the Father, because he was conceived by the power of God" (v. 3). "The power of God" distinguishes the Father from the Son within the same sentence.[10:1]

Ether 3:14. Christ says "I am the Father and the Son." Two verses later: "Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image?" He's identifying himself as the Creator — one of the three senses of "Father" already defined.

None require modalism. All fit the text's own framework.

A grammar change critics miss ​

The CES Letter doesn't mention a fifth change in the 1837 edition. In Mormon 7:7, Joseph changed "which is one God" to "which are one God."[3:1]

"Is" treats the Godhead as a single entity. "Are" treats it as multiple persons who constitute one God.

If Joseph were moving toward collapsing the Godhead into one being, he'd keep "is." He changed it to "are." Three other passages with identical phrasing were left untouched.[3:2] Same pattern — targeted correction, not systematic revision.

An ancient Christology Joseph couldn't have known ​

The Book of Mormon's Christological framework doesn't just survive scrutiny. It has features a 19th-century author couldn't have produced.

Margaret Barker's reconstruction. Non-LDS biblical scholar Margaret Barker — former president of the Society for Old Testament Study — reconstructed pre-exilic Israelite religion as including a divine Son (Yahweh) subordinate to a high God (El Elyon). Yahweh bore the Father's titles and authority while remaining a distinct divine person. This is precisely what the Book of Mormon describes.[12]

Kevin Christensen demonstrated that Barker's independently reconstructed theology and the Book of Mormon show "elaborate convergence" — convergence that "cannot result from coincidence" because "both differ dramatically from common views" of Israelite religion.[12:1]

Joseph Smith in 1829 had no access to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Ugaritic texts, or the broader ancient Near Eastern studies that revealed this theology.

Ancient triadic deity patterns. Smoot and Hull documented that the Book of Mormon's "three beings, one God" framework parallels ancient deity triads. An Egyptian hymn to Amun (c. 1228 BC) reads: "All gods are three: Amon, Re, and Ptah, and there is no second to them." Three divine persons in one unity — not modalism, not creedal Trinitarianism, but the kind of formulation the Book of Mormon independently mirrors.[13]

Pre-Nicene character. Daniel Peterson demonstrated that none of the hallmarks of post-Nicene Greek Trinitarianism appear in the Book of Mormon. There is no homoousios (one substance). No philosophical apparatus of Greek metaphysics. The Book of Mormon's Christology reads as pre-Nicene — which is exactly what you'd expect from a text whose authors left Jerusalem before the Babylonian exile.[14]

Key Point

The CES Letter treats the Book of Mormon's Godhead language as evidence of 19th-century Protestant confusion. The scholarship points in the opposite direction: it reflects pre-exilic Israelite theology that wasn't reconstructed by scholars until the late twentieth century.

The First Vision problem — for the critics ​

The CES Letter closes by asking: if the 1838 First Vision account is truthful, "why would Joseph Smith hold a Trinitarian view of the Godhead if he personally saw God the Father and Jesus Christ as separate and embodied beings?"[1:2]

The question assumes Joseph held a Trinitarian view. The evidence says otherwise.

The 1830 Book of Mormon already contains the Father's voice introducing the Son as a separate person (3 Nephi 11:7), Christ praying to the Father (3 Nephi 17:15), and Christ ascending to the Father (3 Nephi 18:27). The Book of Commandments (1833) consistently distinguishes Father and Son.[5:1] The Lectures on Faith (1834-35) explicitly ask "How many personages are there in the Godhead?" and answer "Two: the Father and the Son."[15]

Martin Harris — who served as scribe during the earliest stages of translation — wrote in 1870: "I cannot find it in my Bible… Three persons in one God… this is Antichrist."[16] Harris rejected the creedal Trinity outright. If Joseph had been teaching modalism in 1829, the man who sat across the table from him during dictation apparently didn't receive the memo.

The strongest version of this criticism ​

The best version of this argument doesn't come from the CES Letter. It comes from scholars like Dan Vogel and Charles Harrell, who trace a broader pattern: the Book of Mormon (1830) emphasizes Christ's divinity, the Lectures on Faith (1835) introduce two personages, the Book of Abraham (1842) introduces a plurality of Gods, and the King Follett Discourse (1844) teaches that God was once a man.[17]

This is a real pattern of doctrinal development. Latter-day Saints don't deny it — they call it continuing revelation. The question is whether the development represents a human inventor refining his fiction or a prophet receiving progressive light.

The CES Letter collapses that question into a single claim: four changes in 1 Nephi prove theological revision. But the four changes are the weakest evidence for the evolution thesis. They're minor clarifications to ambiguous phrases in a text that already, in 1830, teaches Christ praying to the Father, the Father introducing the Son, and the Son ascending to the Father.

If you want to argue for doctrinal evolution, argue from the King Follett Discourse. Don't argue from four inserted words in a text that already contained 3 Nephi.

What the textual scholar recommends ​

Royal Skousen — the scholar who knows the Book of Mormon manuscripts better than anyone alive — analyzed these four changes and recommended "that they be restored to their original readings."[2:2]

Not because the changes were wrong. Because the originals were theologically sound.

Skousen considers the 1830 readings acceptable within the Book of Mormon's own vocabulary. The changes were editorial clarifications, not corrections to a theological error. If the world's leading Book of Mormon textual critic thinks the original readings should stand, the claim that they represent an embarrassing early modalism doesn't hold.

Bottom line: The CES Letter claims four editorial changes prove Joseph Smith revised the Book of Mormon to match an evolving theology. The 1830 text already distinguishes the Father and Son throughout 3 Nephi, already explains why Christ holds the title "Eternal Father" in Mosiah 15, and already contains dozens of passages calling Christ "God" that were never changed. Four clarifications in 1 Nephi, with every major "Trinitarian" passage left untouched, is the signature of a targeted edit — not a theological overhaul.

  1. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 11, pp. 25-27. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part One: 1 Nephi 1 - 2 Nephi 10 (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2004). Skousen recommends restoring the original readings (ATV 4/1: 233) and classifies these among the five most frequently discussed textual "chestnuts." ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. "Book of Mormon/Textual changes/'the Son of,'" FAIR. Three other passages retaining "is one God" language remained unchanged, and numerous passages calling Jesus "God" or "the Eternal Father" were never modified. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Book_of_Mormon/Textual_changes/"the_Son_of" ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. Royal Skousen, "Changes in the Book of Mormon," Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 11 (2014): 161-176. Skousen documented approximately 105,000 places of variation across manuscripts and editions, with only 256 making a difference in meaning. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/changes-in-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. Ari D. Bruening and David L. Paulsen, "The Development of the Mormon Understanding of God: Early Mormon Modalism and Other Myths," FARMS Review 13, no. 2 (2001): 109-169. Identified six categories of antimodalist evidence and an approximately 20:1 ratio across ~1,800 deity references. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol13/iss2/13/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. David L. Paulsen and Ari D. Bruening, "The Social Model of the Trinity in 3 Nephi," in Third Nephi: An Incomparable Scripture (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2012). See also "Why Is 3 Nephi Important for Understanding the Godhead?" Scripture Central KnoWhy. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-is-3-nephi-important-for-understanding-the-godhead ↩︎

  7. Alexander Campbell, "Delusions," Millennial Harbinger 2 (February 7, 1831): 85-96. Reprinted as a pamphlet in Boston, 1832 — the first anti-Mormon book. ↩︎ ↩︎

  8. Oliver Cowdery's response to Campbell's 1831 "Delusions" appeared in the Messenger and Advocate (1835). See Matthew J. Grey, "Oliver Cowdery's 1835 Response to Alexander Campbell's 1831 'Delusions,'" in Days Never to Be Forgotten (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2009). ↩︎

  9. "Changes to the Book of Mormon," Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/changes-to-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎

  10. Jared T. Parker, "Abinadi on the Father and the Son: Interpretation and Application," in Living the Book of Mormon: Abiding by Its Precepts (Provo, UT: RSC/Deseret Book, 2007). https://rsc.byu.edu/living-book-mormon-abiding-its-precepts/abinadi-father-son-interpretation-application ↩︎ ↩︎

  11. The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, "The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency and the Twelve," Improvement Era 19, no. 10 (1916): 934-942. Republished in Ensign, April 2002. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2002/04/the-father-and-the-son ↩︎

  12. Kevin Christensen, "The Temple, the Monarchy, and Wisdom: Lehi's World and the Scholarship of Margaret Barker," in Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2004). See also Christensen, "Twenty Years After 'Paradigms Regained,' Part 1," Interpreter 54 (2022): 1-64. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/twenty-years-after-paradigms-regained-part-1-the-ongoing-plain-and-precious-significance-of-margaret-barkers-scholarship-for-latter-day-saint-studies/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  13. Stephen O. Smoot and Kerry Hull, chapter in I Glory in my Jesus (2023). See also "Why Does the Book of Mormon Have Trinitarian-Sounding Statements?" Scripture Central KnoWhy. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-does-the-book-of-mormon-have-trinitarian-sounding-statements ↩︎

  14. Daniel C. Peterson, "Notes on Mormonism and the Trinity," Interpreter 41 (2020): 87-130. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/notes-on-mormonism-and-the-trinity ↩︎

  15. Lectures on Faith (Kirtland, OH: 1834-35), Lecture 5, Q&A section. "How many personages are there in the Godhead? Two: the Father and the Son." Published in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. ↩︎

  16. Martin Harris, letter to H. B. Emerson, November 23, 1870. "I cannot find it in my Bible, that there are three persons in one God. I find that our Savior prayed to his Father who was in heaven. Three persons in one God. This is Antichrist." ↩︎

  17. Dan Vogel, "The Earliest Mormon Concept of God," in Line Upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine, ed. Gary James Bergera (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 17-33. See also Charles R. Harrell, "This Is My Doctrine": The Development of Mormon Theology (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011). ↩︎

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