DOES GOD HAVE a BODY?
Marcel Kahne
Translated by Gerald D. Woodard
(Original French text at www.idumea.org)
When referring to modern Scripture, traditional Christians often accuse the Latter Day Saints of adding to the Bible, claiming that it contains everything and that it is enough. Some go so far as to claim inerrancy of the Bible, i.e. that there are no mistakes in the Holy Scriptures. Given these claims, it is odd to find that the Christian world rejects what the Bible says about the most fundamental doctrine of faith, the view of God, when Jesus says in his intercessory prayer “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). In effect, while the Bible presents God as an anthropomorphic personage (having the form of man), the Christian world describes him as an immaterial, immutable, immovable being outside of time, who created everything from nothing.
This contradiction is explained by the fact that post‑apostolic Christianity is the product of a blending of two diametrically opposed cultures, the Hebrew and the Greek. As stated by Daniel Peterson, “It has often been noted that Hebrew thought is characteristically dynamic and active, while Greek thought tends to the static and the contemplative.” The Jews can discuss without end the fineries of interpreting and applying the law in everyday life, but are much less interested in theology and doctrine. Thus, Christ’s teachings are based on rules of behaviour, not any given theology. There is no attempt in the New Testament to define God or the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Greeks, however, are much more focused on the nature and origin of things, hence their passion for philosophy. While the main text of primitive Christianity is the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon on Christian morals, the main founding text of traditional Christianity, filled with Greek philosophy, is the Nicene Creed with its Definition of God and the Holy Trinity.
When the young Church of Jesus Christ turned its evangelical efforts toward the pagans, after having first taught the Gospel to the Jews, it faced a world dominated by Academies that taught Greek philosophy, particularly Plato’s concept of an immaterial God, and that instructed the intellectual elite in the art of rhetoric (“the art of persuasion” according to Aristotle). Compared to the lofty world of Greek philosophy in which the pagan intellectuals lived, the teachings of the Christian missionaries seemed out of date and childish in its literal reading of the Scriptures, and the Christian Church was mocked and disdained by its pagan enemies.
“The first few pages of the Clementine Recognitions, an early third-century Christian text, offer us a glimpse of a clash between Hellenized philosophical culture and a Christian witness that had not yet succumbed to its attractions. The first-person narrator, who identifies himself as Clement of Rome, tells of his youthful anxiety about the immortality of the human soul and his desperate search for proof of it. Clement joined the philosophical schools of his native city, but he was very disappointed and depressed to find no truly convincing arguments and to see that his teachers and fellow students were more interested in demonstrating their cleverness than in attaining to the truth. So desperate did he become that he even, for a time, considered taking up spiritualism…
“But then rumors began to reach Rome of a great and powerful worker of miracles in the distant land of Palestine. And one day, while he was walking in the city, Clement encountered a Jewish Christian named Barnabas, who was proclaiming the coming of Christ to the passersby. ‘When I heard these things,’ recalls Clement, ‘I began, with the rest of the multitude, to follow him, and to hear what he had to say. Truly I perceived that there was nothing of dialectic artifice in the man, but that he expounded with simplicity, and without any craft of speech, such things as he had heard from the Son of God, or had seen. For he did not confirm his assertions by the force of arguments, but produced, from the people who stood round about him, many witnesses of the sayings and marvels which he related.’
“Impressed, a number of those in the crowd began to give credence to what Barnabas and his fellow witnesses related. But then a group of philosophically minded onlookers challenged Barnabas. They ‘began to laugh at the man, and to flout him, and to throw out for him the grappling-hooks of syllogisms, like strong arms.’ They asked him, Why do tiny gnats have six legs and a pair of wings, while the much larger elephant has only four legs and no wings at all? But Barnabas declined to enter into their frivolous objections. ‘We have it in charge,’ he said, ‘to declare to you the words and the wondrous works of Him who hath sent us, and to confirm the truth of what we speak, not by artfully devised arguments, but by witnesses produced from amongst yourselves.’”
A new interpretation of Plato’s philosophy appeared in the third century: Neoplatonism. Its founder was Ammonius Saccas, who worked at an academy in Alexandria. He stated that it is impossible to know God and that we must therefore look for him in the shadows of mysticism. His successor, the Egyptian Plotinus, who opened an academy in Rome where he was very successful, seemingly succeeded three times, through asceticism, in attaining mystical ecstasy, i.e. a brief and striking meeting with God. “Neoplatonic philosophy is both the keystone in a long series of philosophical systems and a cornerstone in the culture of the Middle Ages.”
Historian J. W. C. Wand wrote “It is easy to see what influence this school of thought [Neoplatonism] must have had upon Christian leaders. It was from it that they learnt what was involved in a metaphysical sense by calling God a Spirit. They were also helped to free themselves from their primitive eschatology and to get rid of that crude anthropomorphism which made even Tertullian [160-220] believe that God had a material body.”
It was also in the third century that Christians created their own academies, the largest of which by far was “the true home of conventional Christian theology, whose foundations were laid by the famous Clement of Alexandria and his more famous pupil, Origen. Both these men are typical schoolmen, brought up from infancy in the four walls of an institution from whose authority they can never free themselves.”
Nibley continues: “It was Clement's project to put the intellectual superiority of Greek philosophy at the disposal of the church… [he] generously offered to make Christianity intellectually respectable. For him, says Harnack … ‘Greek religious philosophy . . . was the means of achieving and explaining for the first time the highest and inmost meaning of Christianity.’ He was all for the church; he was going to give it a break by lending to it the advantages of his training and intellect… Such a point of view … was only possible, says Harnack, because Clement missed the whole point of what Christianity was all about, ‘because for him the heritage of the Church in its totality … was something foreign.’ The university was his world, and his offer of assistance to the church had dangerous strings attached to it… He would embrace the teachings of the church, but only on his terms. He would take the literal Christianity and "spiritualize" it… he saw no reason why he should not go all the way in giving the Christian message a new intellectual stature that would recommend it to the more educated classes… firmly convinced that what he had learned in school was the truth, and that all knowledge is revelation (following Plato), he proceeded to re-edit the gospel to something nearer to his heart's desire … ‘The total revamping of the Christian heritage into a Hellenic religious philosophy … cannot be denied,’ says our authority Harnack. And what remained of Christianity after that…? He asks, and gives an almost shocking answer: ‘Ein Phlegma—a sediment, a scum—that can under no possible circumstances be called Christian.’”
Again, as Peterson says: “It was the early Christian ‘Apologists’ Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr, and others with their desire to make Christianity intellectually respectable, who may have done more than any other group to deform early Christian doctrine. With the best will in the world, they adopted and adapted the philosophical concepts of their day to express Christian beliefs and, in that very process, subtly but unmistakably altered those beliefs.”
So we have two converging schools of thought:
On the one hand, we have the original teachings of Christianity, such as the Homilies of Clement, in which God is anthropomorphic. “And Simon said, ‘I should like to know, Peter, if you really believe that the shape of man has been moulded after the shape of God.’ And Peter said, ‘I am really quite certain, Simon, that this is the case.... It is the shape of the just God.”
On the other hand, we have the school of intellectual Christians who had been won over to Greek philosophy and who would form the doctrine of Christianity in the image of the Hellenic ideal. This group is represented by Origen, among others, who “rejected anthropomorphism, not because the scriptures or unanimous Christian tradition specifically rejected it, but because the philosophers despised it: ‘The Jews indeed, but also some of our people, supposed that God should be understood as man, that is, adorned with human members and human appearance. But the philosophers despise these stories as fabulous and formed in the likeness of poetic fictions.’”
The Greeks worshipped a wide range of gods with human appearance and passions, gods that were plotting, intriguing, power hungry, jealous, etc. That was not the view of their philosophers, who considered worship childish. In particular, Plato developed a view of God based on reason alone. As with the chicken and the egg, everything comes from something. Everything that is was therefore produced and is thus “contingent”, i.e. it could have not existed. Plato thus considered the material world to be an inferior reality, the true reality being the world of Ideas or Forms, which is perfect and unchanging. God is the primary power, the one behind everything that exists, because he is “necessary”, i.e. he could not have not existed. He must therefore be infinite, perfect, immaterial (because a material being is made up of parts and is therefore dependent on them) and perfectly immovable, as any movement would mean that the situation prior to the movement was imperfect, and finally, outside of time. If not, he would not be what he was yesterday and not yet what ye would be tomorrow.
Christians, seen as atheists because they rejected the gods worshipped by the Romans, were persecuted for more than two centuries, but they continued to grow, even while being divided. “Beginning in the fourth century… everyone, at least in the east, became involved in theological disputes, leaving the discreet, almost secret meetings and taking to the streets, public places, amphitheatres and courts.”
The Roman Empire included a lot of people who were not unified. It needed a solid link that could create that unification.
“Constantine had a great idea. Why not turn to the Christian religion for that mystical link, the only one capable of uniting the Empire, which Hellenism and Paganism had not been able to do? Had not the Christian religion triumphed over the worst persecutions? Constantine therefore made the Catholic Church the State religion, resulting in mass “conversions” because it was the politically correct thing to do.
“However, the unity of the Church itself proved to be more show than real. Violent conflicts would tear it apart. Constantine did everything to appease them, more as Emperor than Christian. He showed no scruples in intervening in issues where he understood only one thing: that they were disturbing the public peace. To settle them, he convened the first ecumenical council.
Constantine then set about to settle the disputes among Christians. Systematically siding with the majority, he imposed doctrinal unity on the Church to make it a great unifier in his empire. He began by resolving the great controversy regarding the Holy Trinity by convening the first ecumenical council in Nicaea in 325, attended by more than three hundred bishops from almost all provinces of the empire. “It was the Emperor, as such, who convened and presided over the council, thus setting a precedent that naturally allowed for State involvement in the affairs of the Church.” It should also be noted that the Bishop of Rome, Sylvester, did not even attend this council, where the most fundamental dogma of the Catholic Church would be decided, choosing instead to send two priests.
At that council, bishops steeped in Neo‑Platonic philosophy attempted to resolve the major problem of defining Divinity that must be both one and three at the same time, and the relationship between the three personages of that Divinity. The debate was heated, while “the Emperor tried to keep spirits calm, much like the chair of an assembly.” The Nicene council did not resolve the problem. As stated by Salles-Dabadie: “the various views of the divinity of Jesus and the union of that divinity with his humanity led very early to conflicts that would last for more than four centuries. That time was needed for Greek reason to accept that the person of Jesus was an unfathomable mystery that can be circumscribed by not penetrated. Those from the West, less metaphysical, had quickly found wording that skirted the mystery and were seeking beyond that.” A lot of time was needed before debates at future councils would result in the Athanasian Creed in about the year 500.
The athanasian creed
“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father Uncreate, the Son Uncreate, and the Holy Ghost Uncreate. The Father Incomprehensible, the Son Incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost Incomprehensible. The Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Etneral and yet they are not Three Eternals but One Eternal. As also there are not Three Uncreated, nor Three Incomprehensibles, but One Uncreated, and One Uncomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not Three Almighties but One Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not Three Gods, but One God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not Three Lords but One Lord. For, like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, there be Three Gods or Three Lords. The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father, and of the Son neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. So there is One Father, not Three Fathers; one Son, not Three Sons; One Holy Ghost, not Three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore or after Other, None is greater or less than Another, but the whole Three Persons are Co-eternal together, and Co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity is Trinity, and the Trinity is Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity. Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting Salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man. God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the substance of His mother, born into the world. Perfect God and Perfect Man, of a reasonable Soul and human Flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood. Who, although He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but One Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into Flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by Unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one Man, so God and Man is one Christ. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into Hell, rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire. This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved. Soli Deo Gloria.”
This is far removed from the words of Paul:
“For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:19‑25).
Saint Augustine
There is no better way of summarizing the evolution of thought that led to the traditional Christian view of God than by retracing the steps of him who would become the greatest thinker in Catholicism, St. Augustine, as presented in the Confessions.
Augustine was the son of a pagan father and a deeply believing mother, who provided for him the best education that they could. A good student, he could say: “And now I was chief in the rhetoric school … and I swelled with arrogance” (III, 3). He led a dissolute life, but there was a thirst inside him for the absolute, which would gradually redirect his life.
At 19 years old, after reading a book by Cicero, he developed a love for wisdom: “the book … recommends the reader to study philosophy. It altered my outlook on life … my heart began to throb with a bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth” (Book III, chapter 4).
However, like all intellectuals of his day, he felt disdain for the Christian religion, which he saw as childish:
“I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I saw something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing, and veiled in mysteries… they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Cicero. For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones… but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown” (III, 5, p. 96).
In 373, he joined Manichaeism, which attracted him for some time. Over the years, however, deception set in and he finally abandoned Manichaeism in 386. In 384, he was appointed professor of rhetoric in Milan. It was there that he heard Bishop Ambrose, an individual of great reputation, preach. It was that preaching that would change everything for him. What had, until then, prevented him from becoming a Christian (Catholic) were the beliefs that he attributed to the Church, apparently what he had heard around him and found unacceptable.
For instance, he could not accept that God had a body:
“I did not know that God is a spirit who has no parts extended in length and breadth, whose being has no mass--for every mass is less in a part than in a whole--and if it be an infinite mass it must be less in such parts as are limited by a certain space than in its infinity. It cannot therefore be wholly everywhere as Spirit is, as God is” (Book III, chapter 7).
“And it still seemed to me most unseemly to believe that thou couldst have the form of human flesh and be bounded by the bodily shape of our limbs. And when I desired to meditate on my God, I did not know what to think of but a huge extended body -- for what did not have bodily extension did not seem to me to exist -- and this was the greatest and almost the sole cause of my unavoidable errors” (Book V, Chapter 10).
“… that you were surrounded on all sides by such a small circumference as the human body, which was the opinion that the Manicheans said was the Faith of your Church” (Book V, Chapter 10).
However, the Manicheans were clearly not the only ones teaching that God had a body. The “less spiritual” Catholics, undoubtedly the common people, believed this also, probably because popular beliefs were more conservative and were more in line with the teachings of the past.:
“But when I understood withal, that “man created by Thee, after Thine own image,” was not so understood by Thy spiritual sons, whom of the Catholic Mother Thou hast born again through grace, as though they believed and conceived of Thee as bounded by human shape … For Thou… Who hast not limbs some larger, some smaller, but art wholly every where, and no where in space, art not of such corporeal shape, yet hast Thou made man after Thine own image; and behold, from head to foot is he contained in space.” (VI, 3, p. 187)
It would seem that neither his mother nor the catechism that Augustine had learned as a child had taught him that God was immaterial, but the preaching of Ambrose would set things straight for him by showing him that the Bible is to be taken figuratively, not literally:
“…whilst he drew aside the mystic veil, laying open spiritually what, according to the letter, seemed to teach something unsound…” (Book VI, Chapter 4)
“…after I had heard one or two places of the Old Testament resolved, and ofttimes “in a figure,” which when I understood literally, I was slain spiritually …
“Very many places then of those books having been explained, I now blamed my despair, in believing that no answer could be given to such as hated and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets.” (Book V, Chapter 14)
Augustine breathes:
“Lo, things in the ecclesiastical books are not absurd to us now, which sometimes seemed absurd, and may be otherwise taken, and in a good sense.” (Book VI, Chapter 11)
And how did Augustine explain the fact that the Bible made “absurd” statements? It was because “For such were that rude and carnal people to which he spake, that he thought them fit to be entrusted with the knowledge of such works of God only as were visible.” (Book XII, Chapter 17)
“the Catholic Faith teaches not what we thought, and vainly accused it of; her instructed members hold it profane to believe God to be bounded by the figure of a human body.” (Book VI, Chapter 11)
The door was opened to his conversion to Catholicism. In 386, nearly one year prior to his baptism, he is astounded by the discovery of Neo‑Platonic thought (Plotinus, Porphyry VII, 9-10), that would help him understand the divinity of the Eternal Word.
Augustine would continue the work of his predecessors in Hellenizing Christianity. His teachings would include the Platonic view of God as a primary, immaterial, immovable force outside of space and time:
“How, O God, did Thou make heaven and earth? Truly, neither in the heaven nor in the earth did Thou make heaven and earth; nor in the air, nor in the waters, since these also belong to the heaven and the earth; nor in the whole world did Thou make the whole world; because there was no place wherein it could be made before it was made, that it might be; nor did Thou hold anything in Your hand wherewith to make heaven and earth. For whence couldest Thou have what You had not made, whereof to make anything? For what is, save because You are?” (Book XI, Chapter 5)
“…in the Eternal nothing passes away, but that the whole is present; but no time is wholly present… all time past is forced on by the future, and that all the future follows from the past… all, both past and future, is created and issues from that which is always present. » (XI, 11, p. 418)
“You are eternal, having alone immortality. Since You are not changed by any shape or motion, nor is Your will altered by times.” (Book XII, Chapter 11).
As for what God did prior to creating the world, he responds that this is not a problem because it was God who created time:
“For whence could innumerable ages pass by which You did not make, since You are the Author and Creator of all ages? Or what times should those be which were not made by You? … nor could times pass by before You made times… All Your years stand at once since they do stand.” (Book XI, Chapter 13)
As nothing exists outside God, He would have had to create the universe from nothing:
“For Thou created heaven and earth, not out of Yourself, for then they would be equal to Your Only-begotten, and thereby even to You; and in no wise would it be right that anything should be equal to You which was not of You. And anything else except You there was not whence You might create these things, O God, One Trinity, and Trine Unity; and, therefore, out of nothing You created heaven and earth—a great thing and a small.” (XII, 7, p. 453)
Augustine’s influence would be such that no one else would challenge that philosophical vision of God and the Christian world would accept it without question, particularly since western culture is replete with Greek and Roman ideas.
This explains why, when Latter-Day Saints, armed with Joseph Smith’s First Vision, teach that “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” (D&C 130:22), for traditional Christians, it is a return to a retro view of God, which they associate with mythology, where the gods had bodies... and human faults.
One certainty remains: the traditional Christian concept of God is not biblical. It does not come from revelation, but is a consensus barely reached by men using their own reasoning, resulting in a fabric of contradictions that we must believe without understanding, as it is a “mystery”.
Latter-Day Saints have another certainty, that of Joseph Smith, who saw God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, confirming by direct observation that we can in all confidence trust in what the Bible says.
WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS
THE PHYSICAL RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN MAN AND GOD
A careful study of the first chapters of Genesis gives us the essential information right away: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:26-27).
“In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him... Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and called his name Seth” (Genesis 5:1, 3).
The parallel between the resemblance of Seth to Adam and Adam to God is clearly deliberate: it is truly a physical resemblance in the mind of the sacred author.
“The Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil” (Genesis 3:22).
THE FATHER AND SON
So who was there with God? The undeniable answer is found in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. He clearly wanted the start of his Gospel to remind the reader of the start of Genesis. Verses 1-5 contain the same ideas as Genesis 1-3: the beginning, the creation, the light, darkness:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:1-5).
Who was the Word? Jean states it such that there can be no mistake:
“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spoke, He that cometh after me is preferred before me; for he was before me.” (Jean 1:14-15).
That is, Jesus Christ. With this voluntary allusion to Genesis, Jean wanted us to fully understand that it was Jesus who “was with God and was God”.
When Adam and Eve were sent out of the Garden of Eden, God is called “JHVH Elohim”. Elohim is a plural and we can easily imagine that the Father and the Son appeared to Adam and Eve, even though the Hebrew verb is in the singular (it is in the plural in 1:26).
APPEARANCES OF GOD
IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Many passages speak of appearances of God:
“And the Lord appeared unto Abraham, and said, Unto they seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him.” (Genesis 12:7).
“And the Lord appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of” (Genesis 26:2).
“And the Lord appeared unto him the same night, and aid, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake” (Genesis 26:24).
“And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him” (Genesis 35:13)
“And Jacob aid unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me” (Genesis 48:3)
“And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will not turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off they shoes from off they feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.” (Exodus 3:2-6).
“And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.”(Exodus 6:2-3).
“And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.” (Exodus 19:20).
“Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the Elders of Israel: 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. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.” (Exodus 24:9-11).
“And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” (Exodus 33:11).
“And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.” (Exodus 33:20-23).
“My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold.” (Numbers 12:7-8)
God appeared to Solomon (1 Kings 3:5; 1 Kings 9:2; 1 Kings 11:9).
“And he said... I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left.” (1 Kings 22:19).
“In the year that king Uziah died [states Isaiah] I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple... Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:1, 5).
Ezekiel gives this fascinating description:
“And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.” (Ezekiel 1:26-28).
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
“But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56).
Paul spoke to the Athenians on the Areopagus: “as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring… Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.” (Acts 17:28-29).
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2).
jesus christ, revelation of the father
We thus have an important series of testimonies in which the anthropomorphism of God is clearly expressed. This also appears in the passages regarding Jesus:
“Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and sufficient us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hat seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” (John 14:8-9).
“Who [Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” (Colossians 1:15)
“For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” (Colossians 2:9)
“Who [Jesus Christ] being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” (Hebrews 1:3)
All this could not be any clearer, even though some object, saying that it is a figure of speech, or that God takes on a bodily form to reveal himself. However, the Bible never says that God is immaterial and without form or that he takes on a bodily form to reveal himself. The objection is therefore based on an extra-biblical view of God.
Objections
Can we see God?
In addition to Exodus 33.23, four other passages of Scripture, including three written by John, seem to go against what we have just read:
“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” (John 1:18).
“No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:12).
“Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.” (John 6:46).
“... Jesus Christ: Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.” (1Timothy 6:15-16).
Joseph Smith made the following corrections in the inspired translation of the Bible:
John 1:18: “No man hath seen God at any time, except he hath borne record of the Son; for except it is through him no man can be saved.”
1 John 4:12: “No man hath seen God at any time, except them who believe. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
1 Timothy 6:15-16: “Jesus Christ, which in his times he shall know, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, to whom be honor and power everlasting; whom no man hath seen, nor can see, unto whom no man can approach, only he who hath the light and the hope of immortality dwelling in him.”
Regardless of these corrections, it must be noted that these passages concern only the Father and therefore only affect visions in which Jesus is seen on the right hand of God, i.e. those of Steven and Joseph Smith, as the God of the Old Testament was Jesus Christ.
IS GOD A SPIRIT?
The idea that God has a body of flesh and bone is sometimes refuted using the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, which seemed to say that God is a spirit:
“The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. Got is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:19-24).
An examination of the Greek text shows that Jesus’ words are not an affirmation of the nature of God, but a play on the preposition “ènn”, which means “in”, to show how God must be worshipped. Translated literally, the dialogue would read as follows:
“The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” In other words: worshipping is not a matter of location, but a matter of communication from spirit to spirit.
Conclusion
For the Bible and early Christians, God had a body. He is the perfect Man. He loves, gets irritated, sympathises, forgives, chastises, is patient, etc. He is a God who we have no problem seeing as our Father and loving as such. Traditional Christianity has made him a being that is “the totally Other”, with nothing in common with us. He is immaterial, immobile, and impassable, and one can ask, in such conditions, how he could have any affinity with us. Maybe that is why worship of him was replaced with that of the virgin and the saints, who are closer to man.
In any case, that god is the god of philosophy, the result of debates by several councils, not revelation. It is a god conceived by man. What credit can we give to that method for defining God? As stated by Joseph Smith, who was well placed to know of what he spoke: “Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject.”
