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Response to claims made in "Chapter 4: Polytheism Reborn"

Chapter 3: The Making of a Religion

A FAIR Analysis of:
Mormonism Unmasked

A work by author: R. Philip Roberts

Chapter 5: Confronting the Mormon Jesus

Claim
The author states that "not only does the LDS church teach that there are three gods in the Godhead, but that there are other gods as well."

Author's source(s)
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (1979) 576-77.

Response

Polytheism

Summary: Some non-LDS Christian claim that Latter-day Saints are polytheists because we don't believe the Nicene Creed. Others say Mormons are polytheists because they believe humans can become gods. Is this an accurate characterization of LDS belief?

46

Claim
The author claims that the LDS church teaches that "God has not always been God."

Response

Unchanging

Summary: Does the Book of Mormon refute Joseph Smith on the nature of God? Critics point out that the Book of Mormon never says God was once a mortal. In fact, it teaches that God was always God. Take for instance Moroni 8:18. It says God is "unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity." Joseph Smith, however, taught, "We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity, I will refute that idea, and take away the veil so that you may see."

46

Claim
The author states that the Old and New Testaments say that there is "only one absolute, holy God."

Response

"No God beside me"

Summary: Some Christians claim that the Mormon doctrine of the Godhead and belief in theosis are not compatible with multiple statements in Isaiah that "beside [the Lord] there is no God." These passages include Isaiah 43:10-11; Isaiah 44:6,8; Isaiah 45:5-6; Isaiah 45:21-22; and Isaiah 46:9-10.

47

Claim
The author states that Joseph Smith taught that God was once a "finite man on another world."

Author's source(s)
Joseph Fielding Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (1977) 345-46.

Response

"God is a man"

Summary: Critics object to the LDS position that God has a physical body and human form by quoting scripture which says that "God is not a man" (e.g. Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29, Hosea 11:9).

49

Claim
The author states that the Bible cannot be used to attribute human characteristics (body parts) to God, and that John declared that "God is a spirit."

Author's source(s)
John 4:24

Response

God is a Spirit?

Summary: Critics object to the LDS position that God has a physical body by quoting John 4:24: "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

Claim
That author states that Mormons believe in an "infinite regress" of gods, and that if this is true, then "no gods could have ever come to exist."

Author's source(s)
Not provided

Response

Infinite regress of Gods

Summary: Is it true that LDS doctrine teaches a "genealogy of gods," in which God the Father had/has a God, and this God had a God, and so forth? If so, how does LDS doctrine deal with the problem of an "infinite regress" of "great-great-grandfather Gods"?