My copy of a new anti-Mormon volume, Travis S. Kerns, The Saints of Zion: An Introduction to Mormon Theology (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2018) arrived today. I hope to go through it later, so who knows, I might make some responses to arguments contained therein on this blog.
However, I stumbled across the following blunder in the book in a section discussing Latter-day Saint pneumatology (theology of the Holy Spirit):
[W]e can conclude Latter-day Saints believe the Holy Ghost to be a spirit being who can, when need arises, take on the form of man. (p. 58, emphasis added)
This is simply false. In Latter-day Saint theology, the Holy Spirit (as with the premortal Jesus [cf. Ether 3:16]) had a body of spirit—his “natural” form is that of a man, albeit, “only” a Spirit (though “spirit” is material in our theology [D&C 131:7-8]).
Indeed, the entry for the Holy Spirit in Bruce McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine, which Kearns cited, in part, previously, shows that he greatly misunderstands our theology:
The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead. He is a Personage of Spirit, a Spirit Person, a Spirit Man, a Spirit Entity. He can be in only one place at one time and he does not and cannot transform himself into any other form or image than that of the Man whom he is, though his power and influence can be manifest at one and the same time through all immensity. (D. & C. 130:22-23; Teachings, p. 190, 275-276; Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed., pp. 59-62.)
There is no "taking on" the form of a Man for the Holy Spirit--his "natural" form is that of a "Man." Had Kerns bothered to read the (short) entry for the Holy Spirit, he would have encountered this at the very beginning.
