Doctrine and Covenants 130:22

Sources

• Doctrine and Covenants 130:22, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (opens in a new tab)

Objections & responses

The Bible describes God with a face, hands, eyes, and a back (Exodus 33), and says humans are made in God’s image. Latter-day Saints read those literally; classical Christians call them anthropomorphism. Who’s to say which reading is right?

That is the LDS reply, and the classical Christian answer is that the same Bible says God is spirit (John 4:24), that no one has seen God at any time (John 1:18), that he fills heaven and earth (Jeremiah 23:24), and that he is not a man (Numbers 23:19), and that anthropomorphic language sits alongside those statements without contradiction because it is figurative. The LDS reading has to treat the second set of texts as figurative instead. Put the two sets side by side and ask which is harder to read as a figure of speech.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• Latter-day Saint scripture teaches that the Father has a body and that the faithful may become gods, while Isaiah’s God says there was no God formed before him and none after him: the two pictures of God cannot both be true.