#"Study historical context of Joseph Smith"

[mindfulldsliving]

Analyzing Michelle Grim's Accusations Against Joseph Smith

Critics of Joseph Smith often bring up his involvement with polygamy, sometimes framing it as evidence of moral failure. Michelle Grim has recently raised concerns about Smith’s character and actions, aiming to challenge his divine calling. These claims deserve a thoughtful and respectful analysis, especially as they involve foundational aspects of Church history and doctrine. In this post, I’ll…

[examiningmormonism]

Divine Perfection and Presence in Christian Theism and Mormonism

The Mormon doctrine of God claims, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, that Mormonism holds to a being of far greater reality than the normative view of God. When a Mormon says “God exists” its defenders argue, they don’t invent esoteric meanings for the word “exist” so as to show God as “wholly other.” God exists as you and I exist. The traditional view of God, Mormon apologists have claimed, is so esoteric that it’s not clear that such a being can coherently be spoken of as existing in the first place. Latter-day Saints are very fond of quoting an Egyptian anthropomorphist monk after the teaching (that God the Father has a physical body essentially like our own) was condemned: “they have taken my God away from me, and I have none to rasp, and I know not whom to adore or to address.” 

C.S. Lewis in “Miracles” pointed out the pitfalls that our theological language can slip into when we subconsciously associate a set of visual images with a particular concept without recognizing the association or unpacking its implications- which would allow a person to see misconceptions driving questions or criticisms about a particular point of view. In defending what I am calling the normative view of God, I emphasize that this view of God is not the provincial view of Hellenic metaphysics and Abrahamic traditions under Hellenic influence, but constitutes the view of God prevalent among countless and widely varied cultures who preserve their memory of the God of Heaven. This is true for cultures as far flung as ancient India and ancient Africa- see an interesting survey of indigenous African views of God in “African Origins of Monotheism” by Gwinyai Muzorewa. 

In launching this discussion, I will quote a small bit of an attempted satire of the normative view of God by a Mormon in a (quite old) email thread. This person, in trying to conceive of God as historically conceived, began with the following:

“Once upon a time there was this ethereal essence that roamed around somewhere in the cosmos...”

A couple problems immediately stick out to the person familiar with normative theism and its associated philosophical traditions. 

-The terms are not well defined. What is “ethereal” and “essence” in this context? It appears that the terms are not chosen for their conceptual significations, but because they relate to an image in the author’s mind. It is this image which dominates his understanding of the normative view of God- the words are haphazardly chosen to capture the sense of this vague image. Lack of definition is a consistent recipe for philosophical disaster.

-If this being is “roaming around somewhere in the cosmos”, clearly we are not dealing with the normative view of God. This being exists in relation to a larger preexisting cosmic background. Because this being’s mode of existence is described in terms of that preexisting cosmos, the latter is more ultimate than the former and defines its existence. 

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What is the image driving the critic’s dismissal of the normative doctrine of God? Clearly, it is something like a thin gaseous substance, spread over a wide area of physical space. This is what most Mormons understand the doctrine of divine incorporeality to entail. And it must be admitted that many Christians have been theologically sloppy in talking about incorporeality as if the “incorporeal” is a distinctive property had by certain substances, one of which is God. 

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In fact, it is exactly the opposite. Words like “ethereal” convey a sense of a being who is thin, hard to see or get a sense of, spread throughout a wide space but only very subtly present in any particular point in space. In reality, the normative view of God is that God in His divine perfection is far *more* “thick” and “concrete” than anything which we experience. Next to the infinite God, the embodied life in which we exist is barely present. C.S. Lewis describes the heavenly places as a world of intense thickness and weight. A human creature in an earthly body could not so much as move a blade of grass in that world. God is, in Lewis’ words, “so truly body that He is no body at all.” When we think of something ethereal and gaseous, we are thinkin of a failure of presence. By contrast, the Christian rejection of anthropomorphism is rooted in its declaration of the totality of divine presence in and through all things. 

Consider how Joseph Smith framed the notion of divine embodiment. For Smith, the Father and the Son each have a glorious, resurrected body. (contra consistent LDS misconceptions, Christians believe that Jesus has and will have forever a glorious body- before trying to use this teaching in an attempt to disprove classical theism, Mormons need to study the precise theology of the Incarnation articulated by the Fathers and Councils. Otherwise, they will have arguments which sound decisive to each other but deeply shallow to a person committed to the traditional doctrine.) Why does the Holy Spirit not have a glorious body? Smith’s answer is striking- so that the Spirit can dwell in us. This underscores a very serious problem, to my mind, in Mormon theology. Attempts to raise arguments against the Mormon doctrine of God by vaguely waving at texts identifying God as spirit are doomed to fail because the terms are not well defined. It is clear that, even prior to the Incarnation, God reveals Himself to the children of Israel in the form of a glorious man. 

But the key texts- the ones which decide the issue- are texts like Jeremiah 23:24- “Do I not fill the Heavens and the Earth?” Or Psalm 139:7-10: “Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to Heaven, you are there. If I made my bed in the grave, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.” Or 1 Kings 8, where Solomon proclaims that “Heaven [the starry skies] and the Highest Heaven [the throne-room of God] cannot contain” the Lord.  For Latter-day Saints, embodiment is an essential step on the path to exaltation unto divine glory. Even for those Mormons who take the non-traditional (and I applaud this, which I believe comes from a grace-inspired pious instinct) view that God is God from everlasting to everlasting, the Father’s glorified body is understood to be one of his divine perfections. But it is precisely this embodiment which constitutes a *limitation* for God. For Smith’s view of God, glorious embodiment restrains the modes according to which God can be present to all things and through all space. As such, at least during the time of the human family’s mortal probation, there must be a kind of “compromise” in the Godhead where the Holy Ghost refrains from taking a glorious body in order that he might dwell in the saints. 

The classical view of God is that His all-suffusing presence is a divine perfection intrinsic to what it means for Him to be God. To say that He lacks “parts” is simply to say that all things true of Him come as a package. If God were made up of parts, then these parts would be prior to the whole- God would exist as a being within a larger cosmic order. This is, after all, the traditional Mormon view of God. And His lacking passion means that He is “impassive”, not that He is cold. He is active in all things, and no creature can impose its will on the Creator. The creature endowed with freedom who uses that freedom in rebellion finds, immediately and unavoidably, that his rebellion is assimilated and integrated into divine providence and will which is acting at all times through all things for the realization of God’s purpose to sum up all things in Jesus Christ the Incarnate Son. No act of God is “reactionary.” He is infinitely and gloriously serene, unfolding His wise purpose without stress or question of defeat. If you needed immediate heart surgery, you wouldn’t want a doctor who was so “moved” by your plight that he was too broken to operate. You would want a doctor who is genuinely and utterly committed to your healing but is in perfect control throughout the whole surgery. His fingers do not shake or slip. His mind never wavers. His next step is always clear in his mind. This clarity and purposefullness is the means by which his fingers nimbly stitch up a heart which would have stopped beating without his skill and calm. 

Rather than being an “ethereal” gaseous presence distributed thinly throughout space, God is so intensely thick and concrete that everything else- from the most solid diamond to the thinnest layer of hydrogen gas- exists by His free constitution of the creation out of the superabundance of His own glory.

Biblically speaking, this perfection is signified in the symbolism of the “Rock.” God is described as the Rock of Ages. The word “glory” is very closely related to the word “heavy.” And this association exists in English parlance, too. A person of great authority and influence, who immediately communicates a sense of presence and sovereignty is said to be “weighty.” God in His glory is infinitely heavy. He is infinitely heavy because there is an infinite “amount” of God to put on the scale. He’s the Rock which is never moved but always moves. He’s the Rock which gives birth to a creation taken up into His glory- a creation described as a stone Temple with a “cornerstone.” We become glorified in Him- we are little stones and bricks in the temple of Christ according to 1 Peter and Ephesians.