Why does the Book of Mormon call Jesus the Father and the Son?

What Abinadi says in Mosiah 15

Abinadi begins with a claim about the Redeemer. God Himself will come among His people. Abinadi calls Him the Son because He dwells in flesh, connects His fatherhood to being conceived by God’s power, and says the flesh is subject to the Spirit. He calls the Redeemer the Eternal Father of heaven and earth. In verses 6–9, the Redeemer submits to death and makes intercession. In verses 10–13, those who hear the prophets and look to Him for redemption are called His seed. Mosiah 15:1–13

Ronald V. Huggins argues that the flesh and Spirit language identifies the Son and Father as one divine person expressed in different ways. The “because” clauses are his strongest evidence. Abinadi is explaining the titles, not merely listing them. A Latter-day Saint reading can grant that the subject of these verses is one Redeemer. The question is whether the Redeemer’s fatherly title identifies Him as the same person He calls His Father elsewhere in the book. Huggins’s argument

Compare the other passages

Huggins takes the heavenly voice seriously. He proposes a form of modalism in which one divine person can act through more than one manifestation at once. That is a stronger objection than a model where God can only appear in one role at a time. The harder passage for his reading is 3 Nephi 9:15. The Creator says He was with the Father from the beginning, before the mortal ministry. Reading that relationship as one person with two expressions requires an additional explanation. The Latter-day Saint reading takes the relationship as a distinction between the Son and His Father.

What changed in 1837

The 1837 edition inserted “the Son of” in four passages in 1 Nephi. Each wording below links to its printed page. Church history of the changes

The edits make the distinction more explicit in these passages. The 1830 edition already contained the Father’s introduction of the Son in 3 Nephi 11, and the revised Book of Mormon still uses the title Father for Jesus in Mosiah and Ether. The editions establish what changed. They leave room to debate what the editors intended. Father’s introduction in the 1830 edition, p. 476

How Latter-day Saints read the title Father

The First Presidency and the Twelve’s 1916 exposition distinguishes God the Father as the parent of our spirits from the ways Jesus can bear the title. Jesus creates the world under His Father’s direction, gives new spiritual life to His followers, and acts with His Father’s authority. The first meaning fits the title “Father of heaven and earth.” The second fits the children of Christ in Mosiah 15 and Ether 3. The third explains why the Son can speak in His Father’s name. Church teaching describes the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as distinct and perfectly united. The Father and the Son, 1916 exposition · Church teaching on the Godhead

Fr. Chris Vorderbruggen raises a separate question about how fully the Book of Mormon expresses historic creedal theology. The Catholic Catechism distinguishes the divine persons who share one divine essence from the two natures, divine and human, united in the one person of Jesus Christ. Those are two different claims. Reading Abinadi alongside 3 Nephi helps answer the question of personal identity. It leaves a broader debate about the nature of divine unity and the authority of the creeds. Vorderbruggen’s comparison · Catholic Catechism, the Trinity · Catholic Catechism, the incarnation