A similar document, designed to clarify LDS Church doctrine concerning the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ, was written at JFS’s behest in 1916, although “establish” is a more accurate term than “clarify” for what the document did. In a letter to his son Hyrum, JFS wrote that he felt forced to produce a statement “to settle the questions arising on the subject in the ministry of the Elders and in the Priesthood meetings.” This was part of JFS’s decades-long effort to silence doctrinal debate at all levels of the church. He still regularly responded personally, and not altogether patiently, to letters asking him to settle questions arising in priesthood and Sunday school classes. To one such inquiry regarding Adam-God and the question of multiple mortal probations, JFS asserted that “such questions [that cannot] be settled by accepted revelations should not be raised, either in a priesthood meeting or any other assembly.”

To lay the debates about God and Christ to rest, JFS chose James Talmage to write the text, and he approved it wholeheartedly. In many ways, “The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition” bears the marks of a classic JFS doctrinal innovation. It takes an issue that is, in fact, scripturally unclear—in this case, how the Son can be called the Father and still be a separate being—and presents an interpretation that makes it seem completely obvious and non-contradictory. Thus the interpretation is presented not as interpretation, but as nothing more than a correct reading of the relevant texts.

The significance of “The Father and the Son” is not in the rather banal doctrinal points it makes, but in the way that it further highlights the increasing importance of hierarchical control of official doctrine within Mormonism. The contrast with the way things worked in the nineteenth century could not be starker. The Pratt brothers and other theologians wrote and published under their own names, and they often challenged the church president’s view of doctrinal concepts. JFS, by contrast, cultivated faithful intellectuals like Whitney, Talmage, and John A. Widtsoe who shared his epistemological orientation, and then brought them into the hierarchy. There they were expected to put their minds to work in the service of JFS’ agenda and forgo personal credit for their writing, allowing it to be subsumed under the scope of the First President.