Doctrine & Theologyembodimentanthropomorphismtheophanyfirst-vision

An Embodied God

Doesn’t the Bible say God is spirit? How can Latter-day Saints say the Father has a glorified body?

Bible

The Bible answers

Bible · Exodus 33:11

KJV + NRSVUE

Face to face, as a man speaks to a friend. Moses is not hugging a fog.

King James Version
And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.

NRSVUE
Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.

Bible · Exodus 24:10

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version
And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.

NRSVUE
and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.

Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon answers

Ether 3:6, 16
And the veil was taken from off the eyes of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord; and it was as the finger of a man, like unto flesh and blood… Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh.

Also restored

Doctrine and Covenants 130:22
The Father and the Son have bodies. The Holy Ghost does not. That is why the verse in John still works.
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.

Ancient witnesses

Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.

Hebrew Bible theophanies and anthropomorphism; DSS copies of Exodus

Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders see the God of Israel and eat and drink before Him (Exodus 24:9–11). Qumran’s biblical manuscripts preserve these passages without the later philosophical embarrassment that God cannot be seen or have form.

Greek metaphysics taught that the highest God must be immaterial, passionless, and without body. That is not Exodus. Latter-day Saints side with Moses: the Father can be seen, and human bodies image His. John 4:24 (“God is a Spirit”) names His divine mode of life and the necessity of spiritual worship; it does not cancel Exodus 24 or Luke 24:39, where the risen Son has flesh and bones.

Faithful answers

FAIR

Mormonism and the Nature of God

FAIR Latter-day Saints

An embodied, glorified Father is more biblical than an abstract essence. The scandal is not Restoration teaching. The scandal is how thoroughly later councils un-Hebraized God.

The God of Abraham appears, speaks, walks, and is seen. Latter-day Saints take those texts as describing a real, glorified, personal Being—not as crude metaphors to be dissolved by philosophy.

Luke 24:39: the glorified Christ has flesh and bones. The Son did not leave embodiment behind at the Ascension.
If the Son is the express image of the Father (Hebrews 1:3) and the Son is embodied, an unembodied Father is the odd man out.
“No man hath seen God at any time” is qualified in Restoration scripture and in the Bible’s own theophanies: no man has seen Him without transformation, mediation, or the Son’s revealing work.
Stephen, Joseph Smith, and the brother of Jared stand in the same biblical line of seers.

Read the original

Key to the Science of Theology (1855)

Key to the Science of Theology

Parley P. Pratt

Pratt refused the later idea that spirit is nothing. Spirit is matter, more fine and pure; the Father is a glorified, embodied person; the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit who can dwell in us. That is D&C 130 in 1855 English, written so a mechanic could follow it. The creedal “God is a spirit” was never allowed to cancel Moses seeing Him face to face.

An immaterial God is not the God of Abraham. Pratt said it before the seminary handbooks did.

Pratt’s “refined matter” is the Restoration’s answer to Greek immaterialism.
A tangible Father and an embodied risen Son fit Exodus and Luke 24. A fog does not.
Key to the Science of Theology is still the most readable Latter-day Saint account of why we are not embarrassed by a God who can be seen.

Read the original

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