The Seventy's Course in Theology, Third Year / The Doctrine of Deity

by B. H. Roberts

Mr. Van Der Donckt endeavors to anticipate the "Mormon" answer to this argument by saying: "I am well aware that the Latter-day Saints interpret those texts as meaning a spirit clothed with a body, but what nearly the whole of mankind, Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans, have believed for ages, cannot be upset by the gratuitous assertions of a religious innovator of this last century."

At this point, I will not appeal to or quote the "gratuitous assertions of a religious innovator of this last century"—meaning Joseph Smith. There is no need of that. If I were an unbeliever in the true Deity of Christ, I might take up the gentleman's argument in this way: You say God is a spirit, and hence bodiless, immaterial? His answer must be, "Yes." But Jesus says, "a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have."—Hence Jesus is not God, because He is a personage of flesh and bone, in the form of man—not bodiless or immaterial. (This refers to the Christ after his resurrection when he was a resurrected man and immortal in that state). This, of course, is not my point. I merely refer to it in the beaten way of good fellowship, and by way of caution to my Catholic friend, who, I am sure, in his way, is as anxious to maintain the true Deity of the Nazarene as I am; but his method of handling the text, "God is a spirit," might lead him into serious difficulty in upholding the truth that Jesus was and is true Deity, if in argument with an infidel.

6. Of God Being Invisible: Mr. Van Der Donckt thinks he sees further proof of God's being a "Spirit," and therefore immaterial or bodiless, in the fact that He is spoken of in the Bible as being "invisible." Moses "was strong as seeing Him that is invisible," (Heb. 11:27); "No man hath seen God at any time" (I John 4: 12). "The King of kings—whom no man hath seen nor can see," (I Tim. 6: 16); are the passages he relies upon for the proof of his contention.

Of course, Mr. V. is aware of the fact—for he mentions it—that these passages are confronted with the explicit statement of scripture that God has been seen by men. Moses saw Him. At one stage of his experience, the great Hebrew prophet was told that he could not see God's face; "for," said the Lord, "there shall no man see Me and live." But even at that time, Moses was placed in a cleft of the rock, "and thou shalt see My back parts," said the Lord to him; "but My face shall not be seen" (Exodus 23: 18-23). On another occasion, Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, saw God. "And they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink." (Ex. 24: 9-11).

Isaiah saw Him: 'I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.' At the same time the seraphims proclaimed His holiness, saying, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory." Then said Isaiah: "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." (Isaiah 6: 1-5).

To harmonize these apparitions of God to men with his theory of the invisibility of God, Mr. V. appeals to the writings of some of the Christian fathers, and Cardinal Newman, from whose teachings he concludes that God the Father is called "invisible" because "he never appeared to bodily eyes; whereas the Son manifested Himself as an angel, and as a man after His incarnation. * * * Whenever the Eternal Son of God, or angels at God's behest, showed themselves to man, they became visible only through a body, or a material garb assumed for the occasion!" "Surely Tertullian, Ambrose, Augustine, the great English Cardinal of the Roman church, and Mr. V. are in sore straits when they must needs take refuge in the belief of such jugglery with matter as this, in order to reconcile apparently conflicting scriptures. And what a shuffling off and on of material garbs there must have been, as from time to time hosts of angels and spirits appeared unto men! It is but the materialization of the spiritualist mediums on a little larger scale. But there is a better way of harmonizing the seeming contradictions; and better authority for the conclusion to be reached than the Christian fathers and Cardinal Newman. I mean the scriptures themselves." (The argument in illustration of the last statement is too extended to quote here. See Roberts-Van Der Donckt Discussion, pp. 80-84.)

7. Of Anthropomorphism and Understanding the Bible Literally: I must say a word upon Mr. V's remarks respecting the plain anthropomorphism of the Bible, and the matter of understanding that sacred book literally. With reference to the first he says: "All men, after the example of the inspired writings, make frequent use of the figure called anthropomorphism, attributing to the Deity a human body, human members, human passions, etc., and that is done, not to imply that God is possessed of form, limbs, etc., but simply to make spiritual things or certain truths more intelligible to man."

I would like to know upon what authority Mr. V. adjudges the "inspired writings" not to imply that God is really possessed of form, limbs, passions, etc., after attributing them to Him in the clearest manner. The "inspired writings" plainly and most forcibly attribute to Deity a form like man's, with limbs, organs, etc., but the Bible does not teach that this ascription of form, limbs, organs and passions to God, is unreal, and "simply to make spiritual things or certain truths more intelligible to man." On the contrary, the Bible emphasizes the doctrine of anthropomorphism by declaring in its very first chapter that man was created in the image of God: "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created he him." The explanation is offered that it was necessary to attribute human form, members and passions, to God, in order to make spiritual things intelligible to man; but what is the reason for ascribing the divine form to man, as in the passage just quoted? Was that done to make human beings or certain truths more intelligible to God? Or was it placed in the word of God because it is simply true?

The truth that God in form is like man, is further emphasized by the fact that Jesus is declared to have been in "the express image" of the Father's person (Heb. 1: 3); and until Mr. V. or some other person of his school of thought, can prove very clearly that the word of God supports his theory of the unreality of the Bible's ascription of form, organs, proportions, passions and feelings, to God and other heavenly beings, the truth that God in form is like man, will stand secure on the foundation of the revelations it has pleased God to give of His own being and nature.

8. "The Morbid Terror of Anthropomorphism": Dean Mansel, in his "Limits of Religious Thought," administers a scathing reproof to the German philosophers Kant and Fichte (and also to Professor Jowett, in his note xxii in Lecture 1) for what he calls "that morbid terror of what they are pleased to call anthropomorphism, which poisons the speculation of so many modern philosophers, when they attempt to be wise above what is written, and seek for a metaphysical exposition of God's nature and attributes." These philosophers, while holding in abhorrence the idea that God has a form such as man's—or any form whatsoever—parts, organs, affections, sympathies, passions or any attributes seen in man's spirit, are, nevertheless, under the necessity of representing God as conscious, as knowing, as determining; all of which, as pointed out by Dean Mansel in the passage which follows, are, after all, qualities of the human mind as well as attributes of Deity; and hence the philosophers, after all their labor, have not escaped from anthropomorphism, but have merely represented Deity to our consciousness, shorn of some of the higher qualities of the human mind, which God is represented in the scriptures as possessing in their perfection—such as love, mercy, justice. (The very extended passage from Mansel's work will be found as foot note in "Mormon Doctrine of Deity," pp. 85-88.)