How the Latter-day Saint Conception Is Attested

The Latter-day Saint doctrine of the Godhead and of eternal progression is attested in the movement's own scripture and in the discourses of its early leaders, and its documented history runs directly from Joseph Smith's earliest visionary accounts through to the church's current teaching. The Doctrine and Covenants, a compiled record of revelations Joseph Smith and his successors reported receiving, together with the Pearl of Great Price, sets out the doctrine of three distinct personages in the Godhead in terms the mainstream Christian creeds the movement arose alongside do not use; the Book of Mormon, read alongside the King James Bible, is presented by the church as an additional testament of Jesus Christ rather than a replacement for the Bible.

The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, edited by Terryl Givens and Philip Barlow, is the leading academic reference for how this doctrine developed historically, from Joseph Smith's early revelations through the King Follett discourse and its teaching on the nature of God and humanity's relationship to it, to the more cautious framing later church leadership has applied to some of the doctrine's more expansive nineteenth-century statements. The church's own 2024 statistical report documents a living, global membership still organised around temple worship and these same doctrines, which is why this entry records the tradition as an actively practised faith rather than a historical one.