Examples of the teaching
For example, Brigham Young said that,
"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, volume 8, p. 115)
He also taught:
"When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost... Now, remember from this time forth, and for ever, that Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost." (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1, pp. 50, 51)
Ezra Taft Benson taught:
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the most literal sense. 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. Jesus was not the son of Joseph, nor was He begotten by the Holy Ghost. He is the Son of the Eternal Father." (The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, pg.7; cf. Come unto Christ, p. 4)
Orson Pratt taught:
"[God] had a lawful right to overshadow the Virgin Mary in the capacity of a husband, and beget a Son , ...it may be that ... He intended after the resurrection to again take her as one of his own wives to raise up immortal spirits (bear his children) in eternity." ('The Seer, p. 158)
The 1985 edition of Gospel Principles teaches:
"Thus, God the Father became the literal father of Jesus Christ. Jesus was born of a mortal mother and an immortal father." (p.57)
In this manual Joseph F. Smith is quoted under the heading, "A MODERN PROPHET'S ANSWER":
"Now we are told in Scriptures that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God in the flesh. Well, now for the benefit of the older ones, how are children begotten? I answer just as Jesus Christ was begotten of his father... We must come down to the simple fact that God Almighty was the Father of His Son Jesus Christ. Mary, the virgin girl, who had never known mortal man, was his mother. God by her begot His son Jesus Christ. And he was born into the world with power and intelligence like that of his Father."
Joseph Fielding Smith wrote:
"Christ was begotten of God. He was not born without the aid of man, and that man was God! They tell us the Book of Mormon states that Jesus was begotten [conceived] of the Holy Ghost. I challenge that statement. The Book of Mormon teaches no such thing! Neither does the Bible." Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 1, pp. 18,19
James E. Talmage taught:
"[our Heavenly Father beget [conceived] Jesus of a virgin] not in violation of natural law but in accordance with a higher manifestation thereof" (Jesus the Christ, p. 81).
Bruce McConkie taught:
"Some words scarcely need definition⦠Two such words are father and son. Their meaning is known to all, and to define them is but to repeat them. Thus: A son is a son is a son, and a father is a father is a father. I am the son of my father and the father of my sons. They are my sons because they were begotten by me, were conceived by their mother, and came forth from her womb to breathe the breath of mortal life, to dwell for a time and a season among other mortal men. And so it is with the Eternal Father and the mortal birth of the Eternal Son. The Father is a Father is a Father; he is not a spirit essence or nothingness to which the name Father is figuratively applied. And the Son is a Son is a Son; he is not some transient emanation from a divine essence, but a literal, living offspring of an actual Father. God is the Father; Christ is the Son. The one begat the other. Mary provided the womb from which the Spirit Jehovah came forth, tabernacled in clay, as all men are, to dwell among his fellow spirits whose births were brought to pass in like manner. There is no need to spiritualize away the plain meaning of the scriptures. There is nothing figurative or hidden or beyond comprehension in our Lord's coming into mortality. He is the Son of God in the same sense and way that we are the sons of mortal fathers. It is just that simple. Christ was born of Mary. He is the Son of God-the Only Begotten of the Father" (The Promised Messiah, pg. 468).
Again:
"And so, in the final analysis it is the faithful saints, those who have testimonies of the truth and divinity of this great latter-day work, who declare our Lord's generation to the world. Their testimony is that Mary's son is God's Son; that he was conceived and begotten in the normal way; that he took upon himself mortality by the natural birth processes; that he inherited the power of mortality from his mother and the power of immortality from his Father-in consequence of all of which he was able to work out the infinite and eternal atonement" (The Promised Messiah: The First Coming of Christ, p. 473).
Again:
"These name-titles all signify that our Lord is the only Son of the Father in the flesh. Each of the words is to be understood literally. Only means only; Begotten means begotten; and Son means son. Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers." (Mormon Doctrine, 1979, pages 546-47)
Again:
"God the Father is a perfected, glorified, holy Man, an immortal Personage. And Christ was born into the world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal, real, and literal sense that any mortal son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events, for he is the Son of God, and that designation means what it says." (Ibid., page 742)
A 1916 first presidency doctrinal statement reads:
"God the Eternal Father, whom we designate by the exalted name-title âElohim,â is the literal Parent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and of the spirits of the human race... Jesus Christ is the Son of Elohim both as spiritual and bodily offspring; that is to say, Elohim is literally the Father of the spirit of Jesus Christ and also the body in which Jesus Christ performed His mission in the flesh... "[2]examples from wiki
