Defending Divine Embodiment against "God Loves Mormons"

This is a response to an article on the "God Loves Mormons" Website entitled, "Does God have a Body?" One can watch the video here:

One can read my previous responses to this Website at the following:

Yes, We Need Modern Prophets: Responding to Godlovesmormons.com

Review of Can Our Works Save Us? Refuting Sola Fide

As usual, the article engages in eisegesis, which we will refute in the following response. When the article is quoted, it will appear indented and in red; my responses will appear in black.

Contrary to being conceived by, and physically born of God…The Bible teaches that we were created by Him. (Genesis 2:4-7)This means that we are of an entirely different substance as God.

Firstly, the author falsely assumes that "to create" means "to create out of nothing"; Blake Ostler in his article “Out of Nothing: A History of Creation Ex Nihilo in Early Christian Thought” refutes William Lane Craig and Paul Copan's attempts to defend, biblically, creatio ex nihilo. The author, from the get-go, engages in question-begging.

Furthermore, when one examines Gen 2:7, such refutes the concept that Adam was created ex nihilo, and at least implicitly, teaches the personal pre-existence of Adam:

And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

 On p. 301 of their poorly-researched and argued book, Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Mormons (Harvest House, 1995), Ron Rhodes and Marian Bodine write the following against the LDS doctrine that everyone, not just Jesus, had personal pre-existence (emphasis in original):

·       Doesn't a plain reading of Genesis 2:7 seem to indicate that God created both man's material and immaterial aspects at the same time?
·       Where is there the slightest hint in Genesis 2:7 that a pre-existing spirit-being entered a "tabernacle" of human flesh?

I will be the very first to admit that the Bible does not possess a developed doctrine of the pre-mortal existence of spirits as understood within modern Latter-day Saint theology, although there are strong, implicit evidences in favour of this doctrine from the Bible, and no sound exegetical evidence against such a belief; indeed, there is a strong Christological need for belief of the personalpre-existence of everyone  if one wishes to hold to (1) personal pre-existence of Jesus and (2) Christ's true humanity.

Notwithstanding, at least two biblical texts in the Old Testament seem to equate the underworld with human origin. In a statement praising God as creator, the author of Psa 139 declared, "My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being in the depths of the earth" (v. 15 [NRSV]). Psa 139:15 suggests the possibility for understanding Gen 2:7 as a reference to the connection between the human spirit and the underworld.

This perspective certainly concords with the later Adamic curse: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Gen 3:19). One could argue that this statement indicates that some Israelites believed that in the process of creation, deity literally extracted the human spirit from out of the underworld.

Indeed, it was the location from which the life-force was taken, for like the word אֶרֶץ (earth), the term אֲדָמָה (ground) often refers to Sheol, the abode of the dead:

And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. (Gen 4:10)

But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all the appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand these men have provoked the Lord . . . The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households--everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods. (Num 16:30, 32)

And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up together with Korah, when the company died, what time the fire devoured two hundred and fifty men: and they became a sign. (Num 26:10)

And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the sons of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel. (Deut 11:6)

For the waters of Dimon shall be full of blood: for I will bring more upon Dimon, lions upon him that escapeth of Moab, and upon the remnant of the land. (Isa 15:9)

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Dan 12:2)

Therefore, Gen 2:7, when properly understood in its ancient context, is not opposed to the Latter-day Saint doctrine of pre-existence.

In an attempt to downplay the potency of the terms “image” and “likeness” in Gen 1:26, the author writes:

God. In a sense, you could say we are different “species”. But not only were we created…we were created “in God’s image” (Genesis 1:27). That means God has created us with the capacity to share some of His attributes. 

 This is rather disingenuous, as Gen 1:26-27 is explicit biblical evidence for divine embodiment, and, furthermore, represents an argument against a mountain range of scholarship supporting the LDS view, such as:

[T]he Hebrew word for ‘image’ is also employed by P of Seth’s likeness to Adam (Gen 5.3), following a repetition of Genesis 1’s statement that humanity was created in the likeness of God (Gen. 5.1), which further supports the notion that a physical likeness was included in P’s concept. It is also noteworthy that the prophet Ezekiel, who was a priest as well as prophet at a time not to long before P, and whose theology has clear parallels with P’s, similarly speaks of a resemblance between God and the appearance of man. As part of his call vision in Ezek. 1.26, he declares of God, ‘and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form’ (the word demut, ‘likeness’, is used, as in Gen. 1.26). Accordingly, there are those who see the image as simply a physical one. However, although the physical image may be primary, it is better to suppose that both a physical and spiritual likeness is envisaged, since the Hebrews saw humans as a psycho-physical totality.

The use of selem elsewhere in Genesis and of demut in Ezekiel certainly tells against the view of those scholars who see the divine image in humanity as purely functional in nature, referring to humanity’s domination over the natural world that is mentioned subsequently (Gen. 1.26, 28), an increasingly popular view in recent years. Although the two ideas are closely associated, it is much more likely that humanity’s rule over the world (Gen. 1.26-28) is actually a consequence of its being made in the image of God, not what the image itself meant. (John Day, From Creation to Babel Studies in Genesis 1-11 [London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013], 13-14).

Such conclusions are also supported by vv.21-25:

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind (לְמִינֵהו): and God saw that it was good. And God blessed the, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind (לְמִינָהּ), cattle, and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind (לְמִינֵהו): and God saw that it was good. (Gen 1:21-25)

According to this pericope, each class of creation is described as having been created "after its kind (alt. species [מִין])." Subsequently, they were assigned a duty--to multiply and replenish the earth. Horses do not look like mice and fish do not look like cats. They were created after their own kind. This is important as plays an important exegetical role vis-a-vis the relationship between God and the physical nature of man in the verses that immediately follow this pericope:

And God said, Let us make man in our image (צֶלֶם), after our likeness (דְּמוּת): and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image (צֶלֶם), in the image (צֶלֶם) of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Gen 1:26-28)

As Presbyterian Old Testament scholar, Meredith Kline, wrote:

By setting the image-likeness formula in the context of sonship, Genesis 5:1-3 contradicts the suggestion that the image idea is a matter of representative status rather than of representational likeness or resemblance. For Seth was not Adam's representative, but as Adam's son he did resemble his father. The terminology "in his likeness" serves as the equivalent in human procreation of the phrase "after its kind" which is used for plant and animal reproduction and of course refers to resemblance. (Meredith G. Kline, “Creation in the Image of the Glory-Spirit” Westminister Theological Journal, 39 [1976/77]: note 34)

Kline, on this theme, also comments that "the traditional avoidance of the visible corporeal aspect of man in formulating the imago Dei doctrine (in deference to the noncorporeal, invisible nature of God) has not reckoned adequately with the fact of theophanic revelation and in particular has missed the theophanic referent of the image in the Genesis 1 context" and that "the theophanic Glory was present at the creation and was the specific divine model or referent in view in the creating of man in the image of God."

Interestingly, Kline (correctly) rejects the idea that Gen 1:26 is evidence of a plurality of persons within the "one God" (a later reading that desperately tries to read the Trinity back into the Old Testament). On Gen 1:26 in the same article, he wrote:

In Genesis 1:26 it is the plural form of the creative fiat that links the creation of man in the image of God to the Spirit-Glory of Genesis 1:2. The Glory-cloud curtains the heavenly enthronement of God in the midst of the judicial council of his celestial hosts. Here is the explanation of the “let us” and the “our image” in the Creator’s decree to make man. He was addressing himself to the angelic council of elders, taking them into his deliberative counsel.

This understanding of the first-person-plural fiat is supported by the fact that consistently where this usage occurs in divine speech it is in the context of the heavenly councilor at least of heavenly beings. Especially pertinent for Genesis 1:26 is the nearby instance in Genesis 3:22, a declaration concerned again with man’s image-likeness to God: “Man has become like one of us to know good and evil.” The cherubim mentioned in verse 24 were evidently being addressed. In the cases where God determines to descend and enter into judgment with a city like Babel or Sodom, and a plural form (like “Let us go down”) alternates with a singular, [30] the explanation of the plural is at hand in the angelic figures who accompany the Angel of the Lord on his judicial mission. [31] When, in Isaiah’s call experience, the Lord, enthroned in the Glory-cloud of his temple, asks, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” (Isa. 6:8), the plural is again readily accounted for by the seraphim attendants at the throne or (if the seraphim are to be distinguished from the heavenly elders, as are the winged creatures of the throne in Revelation 4) by the divine council, which in any case belongs to the scene. (A similar use of the first person plural is characteristic of address in the assembly of the gods as described in Canaanite texts of the Mosaic age.)

Such conclusions are strongly consistent with Latter-day Saint theology.

God is the only one of His kind. There never has been, and never will be another creator God. (Isaiah 43:10)

The author is guilty of the same time-worn eisegesis of Isa 43:10 that one finds from the likes of James White and others.

 In reality, Isaiah is speaking of Yahweh's supremacy, but is not denying the ontological existence of other gods in His midst. For instance, note the following:

 All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. (Isa 40:17)

The Hebrew locution, "as nothing" translates כְּאַיִן, which is rendered correctly by the KJV (an alternative translation would be like/as nought [cf. the NASB; 1985 JPS Tanakh]). The same locution appears in Isa 41:11:

Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be shamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing (כְאַיִן); and they that strive with thee shall perish.

 Of course, this is a statement of the supremacy of Yahweh, not the denial of the ontological existence of nations apart from Israel.

In Isa 40:23, we read:

That bringeth the princes to nothing; he makes the judges of the earth as vanity.

Again, the term often translated as "nothing" or "nought" (Heb: אַיִן) is coupled with a pre-fixed preposition, in this instance, לְ ( לְאָיִן ). Again, the supremacy of Yahweh (and national Israel) is in view here, not the denial of the ontological existence of the princes in this verse who, obviously, have real existence, not imagined.

The term   אַיִן often means "insufficient" or impotent, even in "Deutero-Isaiah" (Isa 40-47). Note the following:

And Lebanon is not sufficient (אַיִן) to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient (אַיִן) for a burnt offering. (Isa 40:16)

Again, the impotency of Yahweh's (and Israel's) enemies are in view here; not a denial of their ontological existence.

To quote Daniel McClellan (who, in turn is paraphrasing some of the work of Michael S. Heiser):

Deutero-Isaiah is not denying the ontological existence of other deities; rather, he is denying their efficacy and legitimacy. The language used by Deutero-Isaiah and Deuteronomy (“I am and there is no other,” “there is none beside me,” etc.) is also used in reference to Babylon, Moab (Isa 47:8, 10), and Nineveh (Zeph 2:15). The vernacular is placed in the mouths of Israel’s opponents, but the point is clear: these cities are not denying the existence of other cities, but rather that they are at all relevant in comparison (see Ps 89:6 and Isa 40:25). Deuteronomy 32 provides further indication that this is the correct reading. In v. 21 YHWH states, “They made me jealous with a non-god (בלא־אל) . . . so I will make them jealous with a non-people (בלא־עם).” The nation being referenced (Assyria-Babylon) is not one that does not exist, but one that is inconsequential in the eyes of YHWH. That this is part of the same propaganda is supported by v. 39 (ואין אלהים עמדי) and by Isa 40:17: “All the nations are as nothing (כאין) before him, he considers them as less than nothing (מאפס) and deserted (ותהו).”

That the authors of this rhetoric in no way deny the existence of other deities is also made clear by the proximity of explicit mentions of other gods. Deut 32:8–9 and 43, for instance, mention the sons of El and command “all the gods” to bow before YHWH, respectively. In Deut 4:19 the gods of the nations are explicitly said to have been established by YHWH for the worship of the people of those nations. Divine council imagery is also present in Isaiah 40 and 45.

I recently posed this challenge to a Trinitarian critic of the LDS Church about these texts where Isaiah is speaking about Yahweh, which shows the theological and exegetical bind Trinitarians place themselves in if they appeal to such passages:

I am asking you which divine person is speaking. It is YHWH--in your view, is this the Father? Son? Spirit? If all three, why the singular personal pronouns and singular verbs? (unless you are a Modalist who views all three as a singular person .[I know you are not]).

 If you claim YHWH and the three persons of the Trinity are one and the same (some go down this route with these passages), then what about texts where Jesus is distinct from Yahweh? For e.g., in Psa 110:1, Yahweh speaks *l'adoni* (to my lord). Per the NT, Yahweh in this passage (when 109:1, LXX is quoted/alluded to) is the person of the Father while this second lord (adoni) is the Son (e.g., Mark 12:36f; Heb 1:13; cf. Paul's midrash-like expansion in 1 Cor 15:22-28), so unless you will posit that the Father, Son, and Spirit (YHWH) spoke to a second lord who is numerically distinct from this YHWH who is the person of the Son (which is nonsense), then one cannot go down this route unless one wishes to engage in question-begging; special pleading, and rejecting the identity of indiscernibles.

 While I disagree with his Unitarian conclusions, Jaco Van Zyl, speaking of Psa 110:1 in light of texts such as Isa 45:5, was pretty spot-on in the following:

 *Trinitarians like James White argue that Yahweh (Adonai) speaks to someone else who is also Adonai. However they want to look at it, this is troublesome even to Trinitarian theology: If Yahweh is 3-in-1 God, speaking to another Adonai adds between 1 and 3 to the existing 3, leaving us with between 4 and 6 Persons in one God. If, however, you add the second Adonai to the first, then Yahweh is 2 and not 3 Persons, isn’t He (or should I say they)?* (Jaco van Zyl, "Psalm 110:1 and the Status of the Second Lord--Trinitarian Arguments Challenged," in An E-Journal from The Radical Reformation: A Testimony to Biblical Unitarianism, pp. 51-60, here, p. 60).

 That the Bible affirms the ontological existence of (true) gods is affirmed in many places. Note, for instance, Deut 32:7-9.  The NRSV of this pericope reads:

Remember the days of old, consider the years long past; ask your father and he will inform you, Your elders will tell you. When the Most High gave nations their homes and set the divisions of man, he fixed the boundaries of peoples in relation to Israel's numbers. For the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob his own allotment.

One will note that this differs from the KJV; the Masoretic Text (MT) underlying the KJV OT reads "sons of Adam/Man," while the DSS has the reading "sons of god" or, as ANE scholars understand the term, "gods."

In the second edition of The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford, 2014), we read the following note on page 419:

Most High, or “Elyon,” is a formal title of El, the senior god who presided over the divine council in the Ugaritic literature of ancient Canaan. The reference thus invokes, as do other biblical texts, the Near Eastern convention of a pantheon of gods ruled by the chief deity (Pss. 82:1; 89:6-8). Israelite authors regularly applied El’s title to Israel’s God (Gen. 14:18-22; Num. 24:16; Pss. 46:5; 47:3). [with reference to the variant in the DSS “number of the gods”] makes more sense. Here, the idea is that the chief god allocates the nations to lesser deities in the pantheon. (A post-biblical notion that seventy angels are in charge of the world’s seventy nations echoes this idea.) Almost certainly, the unintelligible reading of the MT represents a “correction” of the original text (whereby God presides over other gods) to make it conform to the later standard of pure monotheism: There are no other gods! The polytheistic imagery of the divine council is also deleted in the Heb at 32:42; 33:2-3, 7.

One final example would be Gen 20:13.Firstly, a short Hebrew lesson. The term   אֱלֹהִים is irregular in that, while its form is plural, it can denote either a singular or plural Elohim (“G/god[s]”—not “human judges”) depending on the verb it is coupled with. For instance, in Gen 1:1, it is coupled with a verb in the second person singular, so Elohim is singular; however, there are many instances where it is coupled with a verb in the plural, denoting plural “G/gods” (e.g., Psa 82:6).

In Gen 20:13, the Hebrew reads (followed by my transliteration and translation of the text in red):

וַיְהִ֞י כַּאֲשֶׁ֧ר הִתְע֣וּ אֹתִ֗י אֱלֹהִים֘ מִבֵּ֣ית אָבִי֒ וָאֹמַ֣ר לָ֔הּ זֶ֣ה חַסְדֵּ֔ךְ אֲשֶׁ֥ר תַּעֲשִׂ֖י עִמָּדִ֑י אֶ֤ל כָּל־הַמָּקוֹם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר נָב֣וֹא שָׁ֔מָּה אִמְרִי־לִ֖י אָחִ֥י הֽוּא׃

Wyhy k'sr ht'w 'ty 'lhym mbbyt 'by ...

And it came to pass when (the) Gods caused me to wander from my father's house...

Another way to render the pertinent phrase would be, "And it came to pass when (the) Gods caused me to wander from my father's house . . ."

Not only is this consistent with LDS theology, but also supports the creation story in the Book of Abraham. If it had been the singular 'God', it would have been ht'h 'lhym rather than the plural ht'w 'lhym, consistent with the creation account of the Book of Abraham (Abraham 4:1ff) and LDS theology, though it blows strict forms of monotheism (whether Unitarian or creedal Trinitarian) out of the water. If one want to see the exegetical gymnastics Trinitarians have to engage in to play-down the theological importance of this verse, see this post discussing the NET’s comment on Gen 20:13.

On the topic of the Isaiah texts, here is my exegesis I presented to Desmond Ferguson, formerly of “Irish Church Mission”:

Isaiah 43:10,11; 44:6, 8 and the "Number of God"

In the Autumn 2005 issue of ICM's The Banner, in an article entitled, "Witnessing to the Mormons," Ferguson claimed that Isaiah 43:10, 11 and 44:6, 8 refuted Latter-day Saint theology, often referred to, in scholarly circles, as monolatry (e.g., Michael Heiser [an Evangelical]), or, as D. Charles Pyle once stated it to be (and I agree with him), "relational monotheism," that states that there are (true) gods in the midst of God (cf. Genesis 20:13 [Hebrew]; Psalms 29 (esp. the Hebrew); 82; Deuteronomy 32:7-9 [Dead Sea Scrolls], etc.). Notwithstanding the popularity of such pericope in literature critical of "Mormonism" and text supportive of the Trinity (e.g., The Forgotten Trinity by James White), and notwithstanding the ironic fact, lost on Ferguson, that taking an absolutist view on these passages results, not in Trinitarian theology, but either Unitarianism or a strand of Modalism, such represents proof-texting of the worst degree. What is more interesting is that, instead of engaging my exegesis of pertinent pericope (e.g,. Deuteronomy 6:4; 32:7-9; the Hebrew of Genesis 20; the Greek of 1 Corinthians 8) and on other issues (such as 2 Timothy 3, as discussed below) two years ago, Ferguson simply obfuscated and ignored all the evidence I presented that refuted his fallacious "arguments," and just obsessed over personalities, revealing that he did not have a clue about the issues at hand. That is revealing of how little he truly knows about (1) "Mormonism" and (2) the Bible.

For Isaiah, the point of his screed against the idols and gods was that of comparing Isaiah's theology with that of both popular Israelite religion (which at the time had groups worshiping Yahweh and Baal alongside an Asherah [KJV: "grove(s)" in the temple in Jerusalem) and that of the Canaanite religion in general.

In Isaiah 43:10-11, we read the following:

*You are my witnesses, declares the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe in me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no Saviour.*

Verse 10 is not a statement of monotheism, but a comparison drawn between Baal and Yahweh. Verse 11 is a comment on the Asherah. Verse 10 doesn't make a whole lot of sense if one interprets such a passage in terms of the strict monotheism expounded by errant writers on this topic.

"Before me"? "After me"? When is before God and when is after God? What about the time in between (which, in Orthodox [i.e., Traditional] Christianity is "always")? Is one willing to assert a "before God" or an "after God"? Clearly, simply suggesting that it talks about being created before God is nothing more than suggesting that something was created before God was created (which is incompatible both with Orthodox Christian and Latter-day Saint theology). But "after God" implies an end to God--not that something was created after God was created. Such a view, of course, is not well thought out. The text does not support such an interpretation. Baal assumed his position as chief among the elohim (Hebrew: Gods) after he defeated Yaam ("Sea"). Later, while he was dead, after a confrontation with Mot ("Death"), there was a succession crisis when `Athar attempted to sit in the throne of Baal (which is discussed in Isaiah 14). In this sense, for Baal, there is both a "before" and a possible "after." But for Yahweh, there is no succession. Yahweh did not overthrow another divinity to become the chief among the elohim. Nor can he be displaced from his throne. There is no denial of the host of elohim in this passage, nor is there any denial of the existence of El (Hebrew: "God") there either. Canaanite theology places Baal was king/god of the gods, but El is the God of the Cosmos. Both exist, and the existence of one does not threaten the existence of the other. Likewise, Israel's chief elohim, Yahweh, does not threaten, nor is threatened by the existence of El.

In verse 11, we get his statement: "apart from me, there is no saviour" (New International Version [NIV]). This is translated as "beside me there is no saviour" in the KJV, and "besides me there is no saviour" in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). In fact, most translations, including the modern ones, follow the language of the NRSV and the KJV against the NIV. I bring this up as Ferguson uses the NIV, and used such in his atrocious article, and it is popular among Evangelicals outside the KJV-Only movement. The phrase, "besides me" in Isaiah 43-45 is a reference to Asherah--claimed by some as a consort for Yahweh, and claimed by others as a consort for Baal. Asherah was claimed by those who worshipped her as a Saviour--as a deliverer. This is explicitly stated in Jeremiah, when the remaining Jewish aristocracy was fleeing to Egypt following the assassination of Gedaliah. They dragged Jeremiah with them and complained to him in Jeremiah 44:17-19:

*"We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our fathers, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At the time we had plenty of good and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouting out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine."*

The women then added:

*"When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cake like her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?"*

One should compare the above with 2 Kings 22-24, where the Asherah (KJV: "grove(s)") is removed from the temple and the wooden poles depicting her which were on the outside of the First Temple were destroyed by Josiah during the Deuteronomic Reformation. Essentially, Isaiah is claiming that salvation comes from Yahweh alone--not from an Asherah or from Baal.

But there are other interesting things in chapter 43. Yahweh, in verse 3, states that, "For I am Yahweh your elohim." Then, in verse 12, Isaiah explicitly discusses the fact that he is comparing Yahweh to other divinities: "I have revealed and saved and proclaimed--I, and not some foreign gods among you." It should be noted that nowhere does Isaiah ever claim that it is sinful for foreigners to worship other gods. This doesn't appear in the text until the post-exilic portions of Jeremiah (Jeremiah was pieced together by a number of individuals, thus the unusual chronology in the text, among other things) while Deuteronomy 4 seems to suggest that the foreign gods were given to the foreign nations so that they would worship them (cf. Deuteronomy 32:7-9 [the Hebrew verb here is "to inherit," nahal, which differentiates in this passage Yahweh from Elohim, the former who inherited/received, as a patrimony from the latter, Israel]). The notion here is clearly that Yahweh is superior to these foreign gods--independent of the question of whether or not they are real divinities.

This brings us to Isaiah 44. The primary alleged monotheistic proof-text of Isaiah 44 is that of verses 6 and 8:

*This is what the LORD says--Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and the last; apart from me there is no God . . . Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock [this is the underlying Hebrew word used]; I know not one.*

It should be noted that the NIV misses the chance of some consistency. In verse 6, the "apart from me" is the same as "besides me" of verse 8. This section of Isaiah is essentially a polemic against Asherah worship. I note that some time later, around 622 B.C.E., during Josiah's reform, the Asherah is removed from the temple in Jerusalem. This is described in 2 Kings 23:

*The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the LORD all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. He did away with the pagan priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the LORD and where women did weaving for Asherah.*

This description relates to what follows verse 8 in Isaiah 44. Here is some more of that chapter:

*The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house. He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god. They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand. And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree?*

Did you notice the similarity to Psalm 82:5 here?--

Psalm 82: They know nothing, they understand nothing. They walk about in darkness;

Isaiah 44: They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.

In any case, we have in Isaiah 44 a description of how the carpenter takes the tree, and creates an image from it. The remainder of the tree is burned as ash (it was a public burning and scattering of the ashes in the Josian destruction of the Asherah in 622 B.C.E.). Here is a description of the people mistakenly worshipping a tree. And then later the specific imagery of the forests and the trees worshipping Yahweh. A polemic against Asherah worship - the castigation of the worship of the tree.

These same issues apply to Isaiah 45. But that chapter starts off with a peculiarity. In the very first verse we read:

*This is what the LORD says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armour, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut*

Here, Cyrus is called the anointed one of Yahweh - his salvific agent, his messiah. Go figure.

The question, though, ultimately is whether or not Isaiah's point of view is similar to that of Psalm 82. Psalm 82 does not deny the existence of other elohim (as noted by scholars such as Robert Alter; Frank Moore Cross jnr.; Margaret Barker; Mark S. Smith; Jeffrey Tigay, etc), nor does it claim that they are not divinities. It simply imputes to them impotence--they cannot save, they are incapable of granting salvation. If this is the case (which is seems to be), then Isaiah is not the great voice of monotheism as many errantly portray the text to be, but, instead, a voice of the supremacy of Yahweh as the only divinity who is capable of doing these things--and only for Israel. Sadly, because of his ignorance of the Bible and biblical scholarship, Ferguson's treatment of such passages reflect a poor grasp of the Bible.

God does not have a body

1.     Jesus specifically addressed this topic with the woman at the well. She assumed that God would only receive worship from a specific physical location. But Jesus corrected her misunderstanding by explaining: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).Jesus also teaches that “a spirit does not have flesh and bones…” (Luke 24:39).God, then, does not have a material body, like you and me.

Again, this is eisegesis, not exegesis.

"God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24 [NRSV])

John 4:24 is one of the most common proof-texts used against the Latter-day Saint belief that God the Father is embodied. However, from the get-go, one must note the irony that most critics who raise this verse are Trinitarians. Why? In this verse, there is a differentiation, not just between the persons of Jesus and the Father, but between Jesus and God (θεος)! Notwithstanding, there are some elements on this verse that are often overlooked by critics.

Firstly, the Greek of this verse is:

πνεῦμα ὁ θεός, καὶ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας αὐτὸν ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ δεῖ προσκυνεῖν

The phrase, often translated, “God is spirit” is in bold. In Greek grammar, this is a qualitative predicate nominative, which deals with, not composition, but one's qualities. Furthermore, from the context, this refers to man’s worship of God, not the composition of deity. Jesus is addressing a Samaritan, whose theology privileged Mount Gezirim, while the Jews privileged Jerusalem, one of the many disputes between them. Jesus, instead, echoing the universalism of the New Covenant, states that proper worship of God will not be localised in one place. In other words, this verse does not address God's physiological nature--only the means by which men communicate with God. Such must be done spiritually (i.e., spirit to spirit), and must develop a spiritual nature.

Furthermore, taking the absolutist view of this verse to its "logical" conclusion, one would have to state that it is a requirement that men are to shed their physical bodies in order to worship God--if God is only spirit and this passage requires men to worship God "in spirit," then men must worship God only in spirit. Thus, to cite John 4:24 against the teachings of Mormon theology is to claim that men cannot worship God as mortal beings, which is ludicrous. It would also akin to absolutising 1 Cor 15:45, and stating that Christ currently exists in an unembodied spirit, notwithstanding Christ's corporeal ascension (Acts 1:11) and His being depicted as embodied in post-ascension visions of Jesus (e.g., Acts 7:55-56).

A related criticism that has been raised by some opponents (e.g., Craig Blomberg in How Wide the Divide?) is that if God were to possess a physical body, this would make divine omnipresence impossible as God would be rendered "limited" or "finite" by that body. Therefore, God, in LDS theology, could not be omnipresent, something required by this verse. However, Latter-day Saints affirm only that the Father has a body, not that his body has him. The Father is corporeal and infinitely more, and if a spirit can be omnipresent without being physically present, then so can a God who possess a body and a spirit.

Indeed, the Bible affirms that, though the Father has a body (e.g., Heb 1:3), His glory, influence and power fills the universe (Jer 23:34). He is continually aware of everything in the universe and can communicate with, and travel to, any spot instantaneously (Psa 139:7-12).

Furthermore, a question that is begged is that “spirit” is immaterial. However, many early Christians believed that “spirit” was material (e.g., Origen, On First Principles, Preface 9 and Tertullian, Against Praxaes, 7), something consistent with LDS theology (D&C 131:7).

Another related verse that is often raised by critics is that of Luke 24:39. However, as with John 4:24, this is another example of eisegesis. What Evangelical critics fail to note is that the converse of the statement is not true. A living physical body most definitely does have a spirit. In fact, it is physically dead without one (James 2:26). A spirit alone does not have a physical body. But if God has a physical body, he also has a spirit. Therefore, even though God is corporeal, it is appropriate to say that God "is spirit" (as in John 4:24), for spirit is the central part of His nature as a corporeal being.

Moreover, it would not be appropriate to say that God is only a spirit based on this verse--here, Christ clearly has a spirit and a physical body. His spirit had just been recombined with His perfected and glorified physical body in the resurrection, a point He took great pains to demonstrate (Luke 24:41-43). He was not, however, "a spirit" in the sense of being only a spirit.

In unique LDS Scripture, we find something similar to John 4:24 echoed in D&C 93:33-35:

For man is spirit, The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fullness of joy. And when separated man cannot receive a fullness of joy. The elements are the tabernacle of God; yea, man is the tabernacle of God, even temples; and whatsoever temple is defiled, God shall destroy that temple.

In this pericope, man is said to be “spirit,” though such does not preclude embodiment. 

Biblical scholars would also disagree with the common eisegesis of John 4:24. New Testament scholar, C.H. Dodd wrote:

It should be observed that to translate 'God is a spirit' is the most gross perversion of the meaning. 'A spirit' implies one of the class of πνευματα, and as we have seen, there is no trace in the Fourth Gospel of the vulgar conception of a multitude of πνευματα. (C.H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel [Cambridge: 1958], 225 n. 1)

On the absurdities of understanding John 4:24 as teaching the ontological nature of God, Origen wrote:

Many writers have made various affirmations about God and His ουσια. Some have said that He is of a corporeal nature, fine and aether-like; some that he is of incorporeal nature; others that He is beyond ουσια in dignity and power. It is therefore worth our while to see whether we have in the Scriptures starting-points (αφορμας) for making any statement about the ουσια of God. Here [1 John i.2] it is said that πνευμα is, as it were, His ουσια. For he said, πνευμα ο θεος. In the Law He is said to be fire, for it is written, ο θεος ημων πυρ καταναλισκον (Deut. iv.24, Heb. xii. 29), and in John to be light, for he says, ο θεος πως εστι, και σκοτια εω αυτω ουκ εστιν ουδεμια (1 John i.5). if we are to take these statements at their face value, without concerning ourselves with anything beyond the verbal expression, it is time for us to say that God is σωμα; but what absurdities would follow if we said so, few realise. (Origen, Commentary on John xiii.21-23, as cited by Dodd, ibid., 225-26).

This is mirrored by the comments of Raymond Brown in his magisterial 2-volume commentary on John's Gospel:

[This verse is] not an essential definition of God, but a description of God's dealing with men; it means that God is Spirit toward men because He gives the Spirit (xiv 16) which begets them anew. There are two other such descriptions in the Johannine writings: "God is light" (1 John i 5), and "God is love" ( 1 John iv 8 ). These too refer to the God who acts; God gives the world His Son, the light of the world (iii 19, viii 12, ix 5) as a sign of His love (iii 16). (The Gospel According to John (i-xii), vol. 29 of the Anchor Bible [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966], 167.)

Alan Kerr offered the following comments on John 4:24:

6.6.4 God Is SpiritCommentators generally agree that this statement is not a philosphical proposition but a message about God in his relation to people. Two similar sentences about God in 1 John bear a similar sense: God is light (1:5) and God is love (4:8). It is also generally agreed that ‘Spirit’ here captures the Old Testament nuances of רוח as the life-giving creative power of God. The decisive issue for John is summed up in the stated purpose of the Gospel: ‘These things are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you might have life through his name’ (20:31). The goal is life (ζωή), and it is God the Spirit who gives life (6:63). This life is traced back to being born of the πνεῦμα, the life-Giver (3:5). In some way this life is bound up with knowing—knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (17:3)—that is, knowing the truth.Given this statement—πνεῦμα ὁ θεός—we must interpret ἐν πνεύματι in the light of it. It cannot refer to any spirit, but only to the Spirit that is God. While the primary emphasis of ἐν πνεύματι is on the life-giving and creative power of the worship, there is also a secondary significance intimated by 3:8 where πνεῦμα is the unconfined, uncontrolled and uncomprehended wind/Spirit that blows where it wills. The presence of God who is πνεῦμα is not to be confined to Jerusalem or Gerizim. The true worshipper should therefore not be confined by spatial limitations.
On the other hand, for John the Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. This emerges most clearly in the pronouncement about the Johannine Paraclete, who extends and communicates the presence of Jesus while Jesus is away. So in Jn 14:18 Jesus can say, ‘I am coming to you,’ and refer directly to the Spirit Paraclete in the previous verses (14:16, 17). C.F.D. Moule succinctly comments on how Christology dominated pneumatology in early pneumatic experience, a comment that aptly sums up the entwinment of the Spirit and Jesus in John: ‘The Spirit is Christified; Christ is Spiritualized.’ So given Johannine pneumatology it would be in order to say that worshipping ‘in Spirit’ would be partially equivalent to worshipping ‘in Jesus’. (Alan Kerr, The Temple of Jesus' Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John [New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002], 192-94)

God is limitless

1.     Our bodies are physically limiting to us. Because I only have two ears, I cannot hear every conversation in a single room full of people (let alone the whole world). Because I have only two eyes, I cannot see both in front of and behind me at that same time. My arms can only hold a certain amount of weight, and my brain can only hold a limited amount of information. I can only be one place at any given time. But God, being Creator and Spirit, has NONE of those restraints! And because of this…He is able to be everywhere at once…hear every sound, see every sight, and know everything that can be known. As Jesus said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:27)

Sadly for the author, this “argument” would backfire on him. After all, as a Trinitarian, he accepts the Hypostatic Union. Does he believe that Christ, being 100% God and 100% man, during His Incarnation and even now, as the God-Man (Chalcedon stated that Christ will forever remain embodied) was/is “limited” by having a body? If he answers “yes,” he is guilty of a gross Christological heresy by Trinitarian standards; if he answers “no,” then he cannot consistently argue against Latter-day Saint theology that holds that the Father, too, is embodied.

One text that speaks of Christ remaining, even after his exalted state post-ascension, embodied is that of Acts 7:55-56, which is another strong piece of exegetical evidence for the Father's divine embodiment.

But he [Stephen], being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. (Acts 7:55-56 [KJV])

It is common for Latter-day Saints to cite Acts 7:55-56 as evidence of (1) that the Father and Son are separate persons and (2) that the Father has a “bodily form.” Point number 1 is something Trinitarians and most others will not dispute, though how one defines a “person” will differ (see the debate between Latin/Creedal and Social Trinitarianism, for instance, on this point). Point no. 2, however, is something most within the broad Christian spectrum will disagree with Latter-day Saints. Some may claim that Stephen only saw the “glory” of God (v.55), but only if one isolates this verse from the proceeding verse that speaks of Jesus being at the “right hand” of God (the Father). 

A typical response to LDS usage of this verse as evidence for our theology is that the term, “right hand” can be used in a metaphorical sense. Therefore, they argue, it is being used in a metaphorical sense in this passage. There are a couple of things wrong with this approach, most notably it is the fallacy of undistributed middle—

First premise: Some instances of “right hand” are metaphorical.

Second premise: “Right hand” is used in Acts 7:55-56

Conclusion: Therefore, the use of the term, “right hand” is metaphorical in Acts 7:55-56.

The predicates in both the major and minor premises does not exhaust all the occurrences of this term and would therefore not necessitate such an interpretation in Acts 7:55-56. A more non-dogmatic and accurate conclusion would be that Acts 7:55-56 could have a metaphorical meaning, but such should be said with much caution as the argument for such a meaning is not nearly as simplistic as critics would like it to be.

It is true that the term can be used in a sense of authority (e.g. Biden is Obama’s “right hand man”). However, to claim that this is how it is to be interpreted in Acts 7:55-56 is eisegesis. This passage is describing what Stephen saw in vision; it is not a metaphorical for the relationship Jesus has with Father vis-à-vis authority. Indeed, what is being described is the spatial-relationship between the Father and the Son. Those who critique the LDS understanding have to ignore the literary genre of this pericope. Furthermore, the author of Acts 7:55-56 is alluding to a Messianic text from the Old Testament, Psa 110:1 (109:1, LXX). The LXX of this verse reads:

τῷ Δαυιδ ψαλμός εἶπεν ὁ κύριος τῷ κυρίῳ μου κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου

Psalm of David: The Lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool (my translation)

Here, the first Lord (in the Hebrew, Yahweh) says to a second lord (adoni in Hebrew, meaning “my lord”) to sit at his right hand. The only meaningful, and exegetically sound interpretation of this verse is that the second lord is sitting at the right-hand of God, and not that he is the “right-hand man” of God (though he does indeed serve as God’s vizier, to be sure).

In Trinitarian theology, there is an allowance (albeit, an ambiguous one) for a distinction between the persons of the Father, Son and Spirit (e.g. the Father is not the Son). However, there is no allowance for a distinction between “God” and any of the persons. However, the Christology of the New Testament tends to distinguish “God” (θεος) from the Son, not simply the “Father” from the Son, as it does here, differentiating between ο θεος (literally, the God) from Jesus. Indeed, the other instances of the New Testament’s use of Psa 110:1 differentiates, not just the persons of the Father and the Son, but θεος and the Son. For instance, consider 1 Cor 15:22-28 and Heb 10:12-13:

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order. Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is expected, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God (θεος) may be all in all. (1 Cor 15:22-28)

But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God (θεος); From henceforth expecting till his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet. (Heb 10:12-13)

In both these pericopes, Psa 110:1 is used, and clearly, a distinction is made between not just the persons of the Father and the Son (which is accepted, equivocatingly, by Trinitarian theology), but God (θεος) and Jesus, a distinction not tolerated by Trinitarianism, and something one also finds in Acts 7:55-56.

LDS apologist, Jeff Lindsay, provides a good LDS interaction with this pericope and common objections to its use here.

Further evidence from the New Testament that the Father, like the Son, is embodied can be seen from Heb 1:3. D. Charles Pyle in his FAIR Conference paper from 1999, "I have said, 'ye are gods': Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament Text" offered the following exegesis of the verse:

There is also scripture that can used to potentially support the idea that God could have a physical body. One of these is Hebrews 1:3. Christ could only be the exact representation of the Father if the Father himself possessed a body of some sort. In fact, some who wish to avoid what I feel is the plain meaning of Hebrews 1:3 actually go so far as to separate the natures of Christ or declare that the passage could not possibly infer that the Father is embodied.

Those who criticize this meaning thus, however, do not take into account the fact that there is not one portion of the passage that differentiates between the divine or human nature of Jesus. Secondly, the particle ων on indicates being, i.e., the present state of existence of Jesus from the perspective of the author of Hebrews. It has absolutely nothing to do with only Jesus’ previous state or of only a portion of his supposed dual nature. It only speaks of his total existence as a person.

Further, many grammarians have severely misunderstood the Greek απαυγασμα apaugasma (English: [active] effulgence or radiance; [middle, passive] reflection) in this passage to have the active sense. The Greek kai kai (English: and) is here a coordinating conjunction which combines the first and second parts (the second part being of a passive character) of a parallel couplet. Due to this fact, as much as the Evangelicals wish doggedly to hold to their interpretation, the Greek απαυγασμα aapaugasma should be understood as having a passive sense.

Why? Because the second portion of the couplet indicates that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father’s substantial nature, not that he is synonymous with that nature. Since this passage is a couplet, with the second portion being passive in nature, the first portion must be understood as having a passive sense as well. Thus, Jesus is properly to be seen as he “who is the reflection of the glory (of God) and the exact representation of the substantial nature of him (i.e., the Father).”

In short, the glory of God reflects from Jesus rather than having Jesus as its source, according to the theology of the author of Hebrews. Thusly, Jesus exactly represents God as he exists in all aspects of Jesus’ existence. The passage does not allow differentiation of Jesus’ divine and human natures in relation to God. Quite the opposite is in view here, although I doubt that Evangelicals will wish to agree with my assessment of the passage. Nevertheless, if it is true that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father’s substantial nature in all aspects, the Father must have possession of a physical body. Otherwise, Jesus is not and could not be the exact representation of the Father, for the two would differ. This fact is further strengthened by another pertinent fact: the Father is never said to be bodiless in any place within the text of the Bible. That was for a later generation to develop.

Conclusion

As with the previous articles discussed on this blog (see Yes, We Need Modern Prophets: Responding to Godlovesmormons.com and Review of Can Our Works Save Us? Refuting Sola Fide), this article by the "God Loves Mormons" Website is wholly lacking in exegesis and intellectual integrity and honesty. It is rather obvious that they only care about "boundary control" by trying to scare off gullible Evangelicals from investigating "Mormon" claims; informed Latter-day Saints will not be persuaded by such eisegesis-filled articles.