FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mormonism and the nature of God/God is a Spirit/Lecture of Faith 5 teaches the Father is "a personage of spirit"
This article is a draft. FairMormon editors are currently editing it. We welcome your suggestions on improving the content.
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.
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. (emphasis added.)[citation needed]
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-andbones 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.[1]
The Lectures on Faith clearly believed in a separation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They also clearly taught that the Father and Son were "embodied," with visible forms having precise dimensions and position in space. Whether Joseph understood at this point that the Father had a physical body (as distinct from a spirit body) is not clear. But, he clearly did not believe in the unembodied God of classical trinitarianism.
Endnotes
- [note] 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)
Further reading
FAIR wiki articles
FAIR web site
| D&C FairMormon articles on-line |
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)