The Bible and the Fair Mormon Corporeal God

I suspect that this topic will be new to many Christians. We often are not exposed to the more extreme views of  pseudo-Christian sects.

This statement is found in the Mormon scriptures: "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit [sic]. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us" (Doctrine & Covenants 130:22). Nor do Mormons make any effort to hide that teaching. As one of their websites says, "One thing that sets Latter-day Saints apart from nearly all of the rest of Christianity is the doctrine that God the Father possesses a body in human form." Yes, "sets apart" seems to be putting it mildly. Evangelicals find the Mormon view to be utterly bizarre!

As that page goes on to say, the Mormon view isn't just the result of the statement in their Scriptures. Rather, they also take the references to God's body parts in the Old Testament to be literal. In contrast, evangelicals take them as anthropomorphisms, i. e., figures of speech intended to make Him more comprehensible to corporeal humans. In addition, Mormons take the reference to the image of God in Genesis 1:26 to be necessarily a physical image, since humans are physical. This is in spite of biblical usage of "image" to refer to spiritual qualities (e. g., Colossians 3:10). The Fair Mormon website mentions this and talks about Seth's being in the image of Adam (Genesis 5:3). This is a case of shameless begging the question by the person who wrote that website. Note that Seth is made in the likeness of Adam, not God. If the image of God is a physical image, that distinction would make no sense. However, since it was a spiritual image it is completely comprehensible: Adam had been created with the unmarred holiness of God; Seth entered life with the image of his father, now marred by sin, and, therefore, not the image of God in the full sense.

And one last thing, an indication of the silly consequences of the Mormon's assumption of the literal nature of the body parts of God. Here is something else said about His body: "Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool; what is the house that you would build for Me, and what is the place of My rest?" (Isaiah 66:1). The immensity of God is such that He fills the space between Heaven and earth. If His body is literal, then why can we not see such a giant? His feet alone would cover a continent!