Among the more confusing questions that the assertions of scripture raise is the question of how Christ can be both the Father and the Son. Isaiah 9:6 calls Christ “the everlasting Father.” John 3:6 refers to Christ as God’s only begotten Son. Mosiah 15:1-5 attempts to explain how Christ can be both:

And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son—And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth. And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people (Mosiah 15:1–5).

One of the best pieces of writing on this issue was produced by Scripture Central. They first note that, in a 1916 statement by the First Presidency, it is proclaimed that Christ is “the Father” in the sense that He (1) created the earth, (2) spiritually “fathers” everyone who accepts the Gospel and when they become “born again,” and (3) acts with the authority of and in alignment with the goals of God the Father since they are two of the perfectly-united members of the Godhead. The Book of Mormon and other scripture talks about taking on people’s names in the context of representing them in your actions. Believers are supposed to take upon themselves the name of Christ (Mosiah 5:8–9). In a similar way, Christ takes the Father’s name upon Him when He represents Him and performs actions that He is tasked by the Father to do. The Book of Mormon confirms this understanding since Christ is called “Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning” (Mosiah 3:8).

Abinadi’s passage affirms that Christ is the Father in that he (1) was conceived by the power of God and thus possesses some of the Father’s genetico-spiritual makeup and (2) acts in perfect alignment with the Father’s will. This is similar to what is affirmed in the 1916 statement.

Scripture Central also notes the following:

It is also significant how this passage is illuminated when read in an ancient Mesoamerican context. Mark Alan Wright and Brant Gardner have commented on the so-called ancient Mesoamerican “deity complexes,” or the phenomenon in which  “a single god could be represented with a variety of differing characteristics or manifestations. Their names, attributes, and domains of influence were fluid, yet they retained their individual identity. Each of the elaborations that a modern reader might see as a different deity was actually considered to be merely an elaboration of the complex essence of one particular deity.” In other words, ancient Maya religion allowed for a single deity to take on a number of interchanging titles and attributes, but remain a single, unique deity. With this in mind, Wright and Gardner argued that “Abinadi’s explanation in Mosiah 15 of how Christ is both the Father and the Son could also be read as an example of multiple manifestations of a single deity,” and therefore can easily be understood as an ancient Nephite version of the Maya deity complex. What changes isn't Christ's inherent nature or relationship to God the Father (they don't suddenly become “one God” in a Trinitarian sense), but rather the roles, attributes, and titles Christ carries based on the context of how he's being depicted or described. Wright and Gardner emphasize that the Nephites lived in a world that “might” easily reenvision the Nephite God (with multiple names) as a deity complex, being composed of distinctive manifestations in different circumstances. As such, “The Book of Mormon can be read as teaching that each deity [i.e. God the Father and Jesus Christ] had his own identity and at times was described in terms of different manifestations.”¹¹⁸

Scholars Stephen O. Smoot and Kerry Hull have similarly explored ancient Egyptian and Mesoamerican triads of gods and concluded that there is “a plausible ancient context for the Book of Mormon’s trinitarianism. . .The social Nephite triad of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost who act in concert as ‘one God’ (or Godhead) but who also clearly retain their individual personhood is a trinitarian concept basically unique to the Book of Mormon, but one that does find intriguing parallel with the evidence reviewed above.”¹¹⁹

The reasons for Christ’s identity as the Father and the Son can help us better understand ourselves as we consider our unique relationship to the Father.