They are the Father and the Son: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory, and power, possessing all perfection and fullness.
[Lec 5:2d] 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.
Jason, you are losing credibility, philosophical credibility. You're going to have to do far, far better than this at playing gadfly. Some deeper, more creative, imaginative reflection would help this situation no?
Now before I start going to the nuclear option, which I'm trying very hard to get away from in this forum, let's start with the assumption that the Church is true.
OK, does everyone have their tin foil hats on now? Good. Let us then proceed.
Fundamental Gospel doctrine:
1. The Father is a personage of Spirit and a personage of tabernacle.
2. The Son is a personage of Spirit and a personage of tabernacle.
The lecture in question mentions the Father as being a personage of spirit, but declines mentioning his physical body.
However, with respect to Jesus, it mentions his physical body, but neglects to mention his spirit body. This is interesting, because Church doctrine teaches that Jesus Christ had a premortal Spirit body, and indeed, was the Jehovah of the Old Testament.
The nature and attributes of the Father and the Son, as well as the Holy Ghost were already well established doctrinally at the time, so what might this suggest to your mind?
To me it simply suggests that Joseph (or whoever wrote these lines) was here emphasizing certain divine attributes over others (hyperbole), to impress upon the minds of the reader a specific truth or point. God is spirit, and we must worship him in spirit and truth. So says the New Testament. This, however, in no way negates the clear teachings of both the Old Testament and New Testament regarding God's physical nature. In the same way, Joseph, in describing the Father as a personage of spirit and Jesus as a personage of flesh and bones, need not, as Jason infers without a thorough analysis, be understood as contrasting these two with each other in any absolute way.
Let's look at what the text actually says again:
They are the Father and the Son: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory, and power, possessing all perfection and fullness.
[Lec 5:2d] 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.
[Lec 5:2e] He is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father, possessing all the fullness of the Father, or the same fullness with the Father, being begotten of him;
So Jesus is fashioned in the likeness of man; in his form and likeness. At the same time, Jesus is the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father.
Now, the implication of this is rather strong, if not obvious: If Jesus is in the form and likeness of man, and if Jesus is the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father, then the following must be the case:
1. If the personage of the Father has been defined as "a personage of spirit, glory, and power, possessing all perfection and fullness", and if Jesus is the express image and and likeness of this personage, then Jesus must be a personage of spirit and the Father must share the material substance said to be a attribute of Jesus' nature, and be also a personage of Matter. Jesus is being here compared to the personage himself, not to an abstract set of attributes. Jesus possesses "all the fullness of the Father, or the same fullness with the Father...". The only manner in which this could be the case, according to fundamental LDS doctrine, is if Jesus shared in a primary attribute without which, the Father could not have a fullness himself...a resurrected body. A fullness can only be achieved when the spirit is inseparably connected to a perfected, glorified, resurrected body.
The Encyclopedia of Mormonism gives a straight forward, but not very sex
2.
"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", then man must be in the likeness of the Father. Man then, becomes, according to central LDS doctrine, a personage of both spirit and matter.
You know what? Joseph may have here been indulging in just a little rhetorical flourish, thinking he could do that because he assumed that most Latter Day Saints, in his time at least, would have the intelligence, knowledge of basic gospel principles, and good faith to make these connections without them being spelled out explicitly, as if for tiny children?
Now let's look at Jason's criticisms of Nehor:
Sorry Nehor. That one does not work in Lecture Five. It states the Father is a personage of spirit then states the Son is a personage of tabernacle. It contrasts the Son against the Father:
No, It does not. Taken as a whole, it emphasizes the Father's perfect spirit with Christ's physical nature, a nature intimately connected to his mortal messiahship. In so doing, it explicitly implies a unity of attributes between the Father, Jesus, and humankind. In other words, the whole thing implies a distince species relationship between all three, with mankind implied in the attributes of both.
So for 15 years Joseph Smith from the FV Joseph Smith did not know who or what the HG was?
The metaphor of the HG as the "mind of God" is apropos. He is understood to function in this way in the sense of him being the agency or medium through which the Father knows all things. Perhaps he could be understood as the medium or means by which God extends his own mind and consciousness throughout the universe.
They were not revelations. But they were the doctrine portion of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. The revelations were the covenant part. They were accepted as part of the D&C by sustaining vote of the presiding quorums of the Church. They were part of the canon. They were actualy the first segment of planned series of lectures on various docrtinal topics. There were and still are other sections of the D&C that were not revelations that are considered canon. The original article on marriage that was later removed, the article on government, letters from Joseph Smith, the manifesto and the declaration on the priesthood. None of these are revelations but are still canon. The Lectures were canon from 1835 until 1921 when they were removed without any sustaining vote at all.
The Encyclopeida of Mormonism has a straigforward, but nor very sexy answer to this:
Until 1921 the "Lectures on Faith" were printed in almost all the English-language editions of the Doctrine and Covenants, and in many, but not all, non-English editions. An introductory statement in the 1921 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants explains that the lectures were deleted because "they were never presented to nor accepted by the Church as being otherwise than theological lectures or lessons" (see Doctrine and Covenants Editions). The decision may also have been influenced by what many readers have perceived as conflicts between statements about the Godhead in the fifth lecture and certain later revelations (D&C 130; Dahl and Tate, pp. 16–19). Others have found these conflicts to be more apparent than real and have attempted reconciliations (R. Millet, in Dahl and Tate, pp. 221–40).
They may have not been revelations. This does not necessarily meant that portions of them were not inspired. It may mean that portions were not directly revealed, and were liable to rhetorical or grammatical imprecision or flourish.
So the teaching of the KFD are not doctrine. But they are in Gospel Essentials and the new Joseph Smith manual. The idea that God was once a man certainly was taught as doctrine when I was growing up as well.
Some portions may be inspired, some may not be. I consider the doctrine that God was once a man like we, ourselves, core, settled, foundational Gospel doctrine. That it is not "official' is immaterial. It is logically required by the concept of the Plan of salvation as understood in the Church, and by the concept of eternal progression. The entire Gospel as an "eternal" plan of salvation extended to the spirit sons and daughters of a heavenly Father and Mother turns to rubbish if we are not following in the footsteps of our eternal parents but doing something spun from whole cloth to which God himself is an utter stranger, and we are right back to the Alexandrian Christianity that Joseph was raised up to upstage. GOOD HEAVENS Jason, this doctrine can be easily extracted from the New Testament, we don't need the KFD for this. Jesus said that he was doing nothing but that which he had seen his Father do before him, and then asked his followers to come and follow him. He who follows Jesus, follows the Father, as Jesus follows the Father. Now, among other things, Jesus was born into this world with a physical body, suffered all mortal temptations and vicissitudes, died, was resurrected, and received a fullness of godhood. Now, is it the case that Jesus did nothing save what he had seen the Father do, or was the entire Plan of Salvation created de novo and was life in this universe a first run feature.
As far as this doctrine goes, the lectures were hardly covering new territory.
It is also logically required by the doctrine of Jesus being the only begotten Son of God in the flesh, as well as by the long held and pervasive teaching that the plan of salvation has existed from all eternity past and will exist to all eternities future.
The core, the foundation, of our entire faith, as far as I'm concerned, is the idea of the continuity of our existence with the existence of God; the idea that what we are going through here is what our Father, and countless others before him went through...successfully.. We know therefore, that no matter what happens to us here, or what sacrifices we may have to make, it can be done because we know that is has been done. As man is, God once was; as God is ("see, sons and daughters, you can do it!"), man may become.
Indeed, the argument for the continuity of the plan of salvation in our case with that of God is similar to the arguments for the necessity of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Without it, the principles taught in the Book of Mormon are nothing but abstractions without application. The drama-the story with real protagonists and antagonists, is gone, and with it, the immanence.
The idea that we are all a part of a great undertaking for the salvation and exaltation of God's children that has never had a beginning and which will go on forever as we provide our own spirit sons and daughters the opportunity to become like we are, and that those of our children who achieve exaltation will seek the same for their own eternal children, is quite literally too profound to conceptualize in words. Language utterly fails the concept.
