Mormon Monism
A few weeks ago I received an email from someone I love who has been troubled by a doctrine central to the restored gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Joseph Smith received the first vision that called him as a prophet, he saw "two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other-- This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! " (Joseph Smith History 1:17). Through this experience Joseph learned that God the "Father has a body of flesh and bone as tangible as man's; the Son also" (D&C 130:22). While most Christians I know imagine an anthropomorphic God (ie, one that looks like us), the God they imagine is incompatible with the deity described by the Westminster Confession and other important Christian creeds, "a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions." By insisting that God possesses a ph