Claim: According to Joseph, “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also...” (D&C 130꞉22) However in John 4:24 we are told “God is Spirit..."
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In the July 2006 Ensignoff-site, President Hinckley addresses this very old criticism:
- In the account of the Creation of the earth, “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1꞉26).
- Could any language be more explicit? Does it demean God, as some would have us believe, that man was created in His express image? Rather, it should stir within the heart of every man and woman a greater appreciation for himself or herself as a son or daughter of God. ...
- I remember the occasion more than 70 years ago when, as a missionary, I was speaking in an open-air meeting in Hyde Park, London. As I was presenting my message, a heckler interrupted to say, “Why don’t you stay with the doctrine of the Bible which says in John, ‘God is a Spirit’?”
- I opened my Bible to the verse he had quoted and read to him the entire verse:
- “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4꞉24).
- I said, “Of course God is a spirit, and so are you in the combination of spirit and body that makes of you a living being, and so am I.”
- ...Jesus’s declaration that God is a spirit no more denies that He has a body than does the statement that I am a spirit while also having a body.
- I do not equate my body with His in its refinement, in its capacity, in its beauty and radiance. His is eternal. Mine is mortal. But that only increases my reverence for Him. I worship Him “in spirit and in truth.”
It is interesting to note that some early Christians actually used John 4:24 as a proof text to support the notion that God has a body. While Origen (De Principiis, 242 off-site) didn't approve, he admits "I know that some will attempt to say that, even according to the declaration of our own scriptures, God is a body, because. . .they find it said in the Gospel according to John that 'God is a spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.'. . .Spirit according to them [is] to be regarded as nothing less than a body."
Tertullian (Against Praxeus, Chapter 7 off-site) believed "This for certain is He who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, In what form of God? Of course he means in some form, not none. For who will deny that God is a body although God is a spirit? (John 4:24). For spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form."
While evangelical scholar Paul Copan off-site views Tertullian's belief in God's corporeality as anti-intellectual and influenced by stoicism, he writes that in Augustine's time "North African Catholics typically believed [in God's corporeality]." Copan indicated that "neo-Platonist Christians in Milan" helped Augustine adopt a belief in an incorporeal God.
The conception of God which Joseph Smith claimed to restore through revelation is clearly a match for the common beliefs of the early Christians—and, that early perspective was later altered and corrupted by philosophical innovations.
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Claim: God has existed for eternity. But Joseph Smith taught "He was once a man like us, yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.” Dr. Phil Roberts says, "In Mormonism God is simply an exalted man. He was born as a man, he was conceived in a natural way and by adherence to a system of Mormonism in a previous world and a previous life through his good works in accordance with that system he became God."
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Answer #2
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Claim: Mormons believe there are many Gods. But Paul says in 1 Cor 8:4-5 there is only one God, and the rest are simply imaginary. "The Bible says before me there were no gods formed (Isaiah 43:10) neither shall there be after me. That means that all the Mormon teachings about many gods is false. It means there was never a God before this God. It also means that Mormon men will never become gods."--Floyd McElveen.
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Answer
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Claim: Becoming a God was the lie that the serpent told to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Dave Hunt is quoted saying, "So Mormonism takes the lie of the serpent, it’s based on the saying that the lie of the serpent is the truth."
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Mr. Hunt might want to read a bit further in his Bible. The serpent talking with Eve occurs in Genesis, Chapter 3 verses 4 & 5 where it says,
- 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
- 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
At first glance, it appears Mr. Hunt is right. But if Mr. Hunt had bothered to turn the page in his Bible he would have found that he was spectacularly wrong. God says the following in verse 22:
- 22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
So God says the man is become as one of us. Is Mr. Hunt trying to contradict God?
The serpent did lie., but the lie wasn't what Mr. Hunt claims. The Serpent lied when he said, "Ye shall not surely die." Man did become mortal and God restricted his access to the tree of life.
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Claim: God would never condone lying. Yet in the Pearl of Great Price, Abraham is told by God to "Let her say unto the Egyptians, she is thy sister, and thy soul shall live.” (Book of Abraham 2:24) This contradicts what is in the Bible. "Why would God give us the Bible for instruction and life-molding and later give us another testimony of Jesus Christ only to contradict each other? Does God make mistakes?"
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Answer
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