Joseph Smith's First Vision/The Father as Spirit vs. Embodied

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Criticism

When the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants was published in 1835 it portrayed God the Father as a personage of spirit whereas Jesus Christ was portrayed as a personage of tabernacle or one having a physical body. Yet the official LDS First Vision story portrays the Father as a physical Being.

Source(s) of the criticism

• Christian Research and Counsel, “Documented History of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” full-color pamphlet, 10 pages. [There is a notation within this pamphlet indicating that research and portions of text were garnered from Utah Lighthouse Ministry]

Response

The "offical" 1838 First Vision account (first published in 1842 in the Times and Seasons) does not say anything about God the Father possessing a physical body. In fact, it says nothing at all about the Father's body: spirit or otherwise. Critics of the LDS Church should be much more careful in what they say about the content of historical documents.

However, it is correct to say that the Lectures on Faith which were contained within the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants did refer to God the Father as a personage of spirit with a human or bodily form.

LECTURE #5, paragraph 2: “the Father being a personage of spirit, glory, and power, possessing all perfection and fullness, the Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made or fashioned like unto man, or being in the form and likeness of man, or rather man was formed after his likeness and in his image; he is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father”

LECTURE #5, questions and answers section: "What is the Father? He is a personage"

Presbyterian minister Rev. Truman Coe - who lived among the Saints in Kirtland, Ohio for a span of four years - wrote that the Mormons "believe that the true God is [color=red]a material being, composed of body and parts[/color]; and that when the Creator formed Adam in his own image, he made him about the size and shape of God himself." Ohio Observer, 11 August 1836, 1-2 [Hudson, Ohio]; reprinted in Cincinnati Journal and Western Luminary, 25 August 1836, 4 [Cincinnati, Ohio].

Several Latter-day Saints wrote in the 1830s that they rejected the traditional belief that God was an immaterial being, without body and parts. See Vinson Knight to his mother, June 24, 1835, typescript, BYU; Parley P. Pratt, Mormonism Unveiled, p. 42, reprinted in Parley P. Pratt, Writings of Parley Parker Pratt, pp. 232-33.

Endnotes

None

Further reading

FAIR web site

• FAIR Topical Guide: