Mormonism and the nature of God/God is a Spirit/Lecture of Faith 5 teaches the Father is "a personage of spirit"

Criticism

The Lectures on Faith, which used to be part of the Doctrine and Covenants, teach that God is a spirit. Joseph Smith's later teachings contradict this.

More generally, critics argue that Joseph Smith taught an essentially "trinitarian" view of the Godhead until the mid 1830s, thus proving the Joseph was "making it up" as he went along.

Source(s) of the criticism

• "Godhead Doctrines," Mormons in Transition website (accessed 2 October 2005).
• Dan Vogel, "The Earliest Mormon Concept of God," in Line Upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine, edited by Gary James Bergera, (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 17–33.
• Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Case Against Mormonism, 2 vols., (Salt Lake City, 1967), 1:120–128.
• Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality, 4th edition, (Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1982), 169.
• Grant Underwood, "Origins of Mormonism Revisited," Jouranl of Mormon History 15 {1989): 16–17.

Response

The Lectures on Faith are seven lessons on theology delivered by the presiding officers of the Church to the School of the Elders at Kirtland, Ohio, in late 1834. The lectures are organized in the form of a catechism, which each lecture starting with instructions on doctrine, and the first five lectures concluding with a question-and-answer section to check class participants for understanding.

The Lectures were included as the "doctrine" portion of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants (the revelations comprised the "covenants" portion), and remained in the D&C until they were removed from the 1921 edition.

Lecture 5 deals with the nature of God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. Lecture 5.2 teaches:

There are two personages who constitute the great, matchless, governing, and supreme power over all things—by whom all things were created and made that are created and made, whether visible or invisible; whether in heaven, on earth, or in the earth, under the earth, or throughout the immensity of space. They are the Father and the Son: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory, and power, possessing all perfection and fullness. The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made or fashioned like unto man, or being in the form and likeness of man—or rather, man was formed after his likeness and in his image. He is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father, possessing all the fullness of the Father, or the same fullness with the Father, being begotten of him;(emphasis added.)^[1]

Efforts to see this as evidence for an essentially 'trinitarian' view, are flawed, however.^[2]

Early conceptions of God

Critics who wish to claim that in the 1830s Joseph Smith had only a vaguely "trinitarian" idea of God (and so would see the Father and the Son as only one being) have missed vital evidence which cannot be ignored.

1829

The Book of Mormon (translated in 1829) contains numerous passages which teach a physical separation and embodiment (even if only in spirit bodies, which are clearly not immaterial, but have shape, position, and form) of the members of the Godhead. (See: 3 Nephi 11, 1 Nephi 11꞉1-11, Ether 3꞉14-18.)

1830

Between June and October 1830, Joseph had dictated his revision (the "Joseph Smith Translation") to Genesis. Joseph rendered Genesis 1꞉26 as:

And I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so....And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them. (Moses 2꞉26-27.)

There can be no doubt that Joseph understood "in mine own image" to refer to a physical likeness, rather than merely a moral or intellectual one. The JST of Genesis 5꞉1-2 read

In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; in the image of his own body, male and female, created he them (Moses 6꞉8-9, emphasis added)

Thus, by 1830 Joseph was clearly teaching a separation of the Father and Son, and insisting that both had some type of physical form which could be copied in the creation of humanity.

Joseph's mother, Lucy Mack Smith, also noted that other Christian denominations took issue with the new Church because of its teachings about God:

"the different denominations are very much opposed to us.... The Methodists also come, and they rage, for they worship a God without body or parts, and they know that our faith comes in contact with this principle."^[3]

1831

Anti-Mormon writers in 1831 noted that Joseph Smith claimed to have received "a commission from God"; and the Mormons claimed that Joseph "had seen God frequently and personally."^[4] That the Prophet's enemies knew he claimed to have "seen God," indicates that the doctrine of an embodied God that could be seen was well-known early on.

1832

Furthermore, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were to receive a visionary revelation of the three degrees of glory in the same year that Joseph wrote his earliest-known First Vision account. The 'three degrees' vision clearly teaches a physical separation of the Father and Son, bearing witness of seeing both of them, side by side. (See DC 76꞉14,20–24.)^[5]

1832–1833

Two of Joseph's close associates reported their own visions of God in the winter of 1832–1833. Both are decidedly not in the trinitarian mould.

Zebedee Coltrin:

"Joseph having given instructions, and while engaged in silent prayer, kneeling...a personage walked through the room from East to west, and Joseph asked if we saw him. I saw him and suppose the others did, and Joseph answered that this was Jesus, the Son of God, our elder brother. Afterward Joseph told us to resume our former position in prayer, which we did. Another person came through; He was surrounded as with a flame of fire. [I] experienced a sensation that it might destroy the tabernacle as it was of consuming fire of great brightness. The Prophet Joseph said this was the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I saw him....

He was surrounded as with a flame of fire, which was so brilliant that I could not discover anything else but his person. I saw his hands, his legs, his feet, his eyes, nose, mouth, head and body in the shape and form of a perfect man. He sat in a chair as a man would sit in a chair, but This appearance was so grand and overwhelming that it seemed that I should melt down in His presence, and the sensation was so powerful that it thrilled through my whole system and I felt it in the marrow of my bones. The Prophet Joseph said: 'Brethren, now you are prepared to be the apostles of Jesus Christ, for you have seen both the Father and the Son and know that They exist and that They are two separate personages.'"^[6]

John Murdock:

"During the winter that I boarded with Bro[ther] Joseph... we had a number of prayer meetings, in the Prophet’s chamber.... In one of those meetings the Prophet told us if we could humble ourselves before God, and exersise [sic] strong faith, we should see the face of the Lord. And about midday the visions of my mind were opened, and the eyes of my understanding were enlightened, and I saw the form of a man, most lovely, the visage of his face was sound and fair as the sun. His hair a bright silver grey, curled in a most majestic form, His eyes a keen penetrating blue, and the skin of his neck a most beautiful white and he was covered from the neck to the feet with a loose garment, pure white, whiter than any garment I had ever before seen. His countenance was the most penetrating, and yet most lovely. And while I was endeavoring to comprehend the whole personage from head to feet it slipped from me, and the vision was closed up. But it left on my mind the impression of love, for months, that I never felt before to that degree."^[7]

Before 1836

Truman Coe, a Presbyterian minister, lived in Kirtland for four years (1832–1836). He described LDS beliefs:

[The Mormons] contend that the God worshipped by the Presbyterians and all other sectarians is no better than a wooden god. They believe that the true God is a material being, composed of body and parts; and that when the Creator formed Adam in his own image, he made him about the size and shape of God himself. ^[8]

Other Lecture evidence

The "catchecism" section of Lecture 5 also contains the following:

How many personages are there in the Godhead.

Two: the Father and Son.

Thus, even the Lecture in question saw the personages of the Father and Son as separate. The role of the Holy Ghost was less clear at this point; the same catechism describes the "Only Begotten of the Father possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the Holy Spirit." (emphasis added).

The exact nature of the relationship between the Spirit and the Father and the Son was not made explicit until 1843:

22 The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.DC 132꞉22

Thus, the Lectures did not have a trinitarian view of God—the Father and the Son were clearly distinct personages, united in mind by the Holy Spirit. But, the conception of the Holy Spirit as a personage in the same sense as Father and Son was not so clear. Nor was the form of embodiment of the Father specified, though there can be no doubt that he was seen as embodied.

Conclusion

After exploring the early evidence for Joseph's belief in an embodied Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (whether in flesh or spirit bodies), one author concluded:

What, then, shall be made of the lecture’s referring contrastingly to the Father as "a personage of spirit" and to the Son as "a personage of tabernacle"? Again, Webster’s 1828 dictionary is helpful. It lists "our natural body" as one use of the term tabernacle. Our natural body, I take it, is a body of flesh and bones. If so, the lectures affirm that God the Son has a flesh-and-bones body, humanlike in form, while God the Father has a spirit body, also humanlike in form. As mentioned, Joseph later knew that the Father, as well as the Son, has a glorious, incorruptible body of flesh and bone. No doubt, his understanding of the mode of the Father’s embodiment was enlarged and refined as he continued to receive and reflect on revelation.^[9]

The Lectures on Faith clearly believed in a separation of the Father and Son. They also clearly taught that the Father and Son were "embodied," with visible forms having precise dimensions and position in space. Evidence from the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, other Church members, and the Church's antagonists all demonstrate that these doctrines go back to the earliest days of the restoration. (This is not surprising, given that Joseph's First Vision would have made the separate nature of the Godhead crystal clear.)

Whether Joseph understood at this point that the Father had a physical body (as distinct from a spirit body upon which man's body was patterned) is not clear. But, he clearly did not believe in the unembodied God of classical trinitarianism. Nor did Joseph teach of a Father and Son "of one substance" as the trinitarian creeds of his day would have understood them.

Endnotes

1. [note]  Lectures on Faith
2. 5, 5:2a–5:2e. off-site
3. [note]  See Daivd L. Paulsen, "The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment: Resotration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives," Brigham Young University Studies 35 no. 4 (1995–96), 6–94. PDF link (Key source)
4. [note] Lucy Mack Smith, The History of Joseph Smith By His Mother Lucy Mack Smith, edited by Preston Nibley, (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1956), 161. AISN B000FH6N04.
5. [note] The current D&C 76 vision was first published in Evening and Morning Star, Independence, Missouri, July 1832.
6. [note] 3 October 1883, Salt Lake School of the Prophets Minute Book 1883 (Palm Desert, California: ULC Press, 1981), 39; cited in Paulsen, 34.
7. [note] An Abridged Record of the Life of John Murdock Taken From His Journal by Himself," (typescript) Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 13; cited in Paulsen, 35.
8. [note]  Milton V. Backman, Jr., "Truman Coe's 1836 Description of Mormonism," Brigham Young University Studies 17 no. 3 (1977), 347–350, 354. PDF link

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

• Godhead and the Trinity

FAIR web site

D&C FairMormon articles on-line

•  ^{[needs work]}

External links

• Daivd L. Paulsen, "The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment: Resotration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives," Brigham Young University Studies 35 no. 4 (1995–96), 6–94. PDF link (Key source)