GR33N wrote:The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power: possessing all perfection and fulness: 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;--he is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father: possessing all the fullness of the Father, or, the same fulness with the Father
The full quote above from the Fifth lecture on Faith.
If the Father possesses all perfection and fullness and the Son possess the fullness of the Father. Then it appears to me that any attribute that the Son has (including a tabernacle of clay) is first possessed by the Father.
GR33N,
If the phrase "he is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father: possessing all the fullness of the Father, or, the same fulness with the Father" was all we had to work with, I would agree with your implied conclusion that there is no conflict. We have, however, the preceding portion which clearly expresses the contrasting attributes of the Father vs the Son: "personage of spirit, glory and power" vs "a personage of tabernacle".
This is a defense of the idea that the Father was known since the 1820 first vision to be a personage of flesh. Critics and defenders of the church focus on these few passages and have made them something of a battleground because this is a key make-or-break point for modern LDS theology.
The faithful perspective is that the 1820 first vision was a real, tangible event, literal not figurative, and that the knowledge gained by Smith that the Father was a personage of flesh and blood was to become an integral, foundational part of the restoration and one of the key doctrines which differentiates the restored church from all others churches which had fallen in apostasy.
The critical perspective is that the 1820 first vision was a fictional innovation made by Smith some 18 years after it was said to have happened, likely done to help cement his position of authority over the church he had created, and that the contemporaneous letters, diaries, writings and official publication, including canon, make apparent that the 1820 vision and the specific knowledge gained from it are simply not in evidence anywhere.
If the apologist can successfully argue that the 1820 first vision was real and tangible, and that the knowledge gained from that event is reflected in the ensuing record, the church will retain a member or gain a convert, or, at the very least, diminish the effectiveness of LDS critics.
If critics can show that the 1820 first vision is found to be revisionist, the entire catalogue of authority and truth claims made by the LDS Church comes down in quick succession.
Of course, this tug of war between apologist and critic happens in the minds of any person who actively investigates LDS church history. And there is very little being said on this subject which is truly new; most of the rigorous fact-gathering was done decades ago. Now, there are only new investigators seeing these arguments for the first time.