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Refuting Reed and Farkas Verse By Verse

By Kerry A. Shirts

(A Note: I will finish this as I have time. I will add to it as I can. This is the start of a very fun project for me personally)

David A. Reed a former Jehovah’s Witness and John R. Farkas, a former Mormon, have teamed up to share their talents showing how Mormonism is a false religion and not biblically sound in their book Mormons Answered Verse By Verse. I find many of their arguments simply wrong, and many completely unconvincing. I will examine the scriptures and commentaries pertinent to what they are discussing about Mormonism from the Bible. I believe their main failing is understanding how Mormonism accepts the Bible and understands the Bible in ways apparently not thought of before by either of these gentlemen. Yes, yes, I am well aware the Farkas used to be a Mormon. I still don't have a reason for believing he understood Mormonism's view of the Bible whatever. Their own views of the Bible hardly squares with the Bible itself in many instances, which I will demonstrate. I am skipping entirely their introduction and view about what Mormonism teaches in order to get right on the subject, their interpretation and refutation of how Mormonism understands the Bible. I begin with their own use of the Bible and go from there.

The very first impression I had when I saw they were commenting on Genesis 1:26-27 was why did they skip over Genesis 1:1 and Joseph Smith’s comments on the very first verse in the Bible about the head God of the Gods and all that? This apparently is not a verse by verse refutation of Mormonism at all. I suspect they pick and choose what they think they are safe in discussing. We shall see shortly if this is the case.

This (Genesis 1:26-27) is the famous passage where God says let us make man in our own image, which Reed and Farkas claim supports two key Mormon doctrines (they ignore the ex nihilo discussion, a third key element in Mormonism, because we don’t believe it, which was wise on their part I think). Two key teachings of Mormonism from this verse are:

  1. God has a body resembling ours
  2. The trinity consists of three separate and distinct Gods who are one only in purpose.

They then say we understand this physically while Christians understand it in a moral sense rather than a physical resemblance, hence verse 26 is in a spiritual sense, not a physical sense. But I say Mormons are closer to the true meaning of the scripture here than this "spiritual" view.

Alan Goshen Gottstein, whom Reed and Farkas conveniently have ignored, states the matter very plainly. In rabbinic thinking, there was anthropomorphic tendencies. It is that plain. In fact, "…in all of rabbinic literature there is not a single statement that categorically denies that God has a body or form."2 Can it be any plainer said of the Jewish rabbinic view? Yes it certainly can. Gershom Scholem says "Any discussion of God must necessarily use the imagery of the created world, because we have no other. Anthropomorphism – the application of human language to God – is as intrinsic to the living spirit of religion as is the feeling that there exists a Divine that far transcends such discourse."3 He also says "there is nothing more foolish than attacking and denigrating anthropomorphism."4

Walther Eichrodt discusses the Biblical anthropomorphism in stark language. He notes how it is a "descriptive realism" that we read in Genesis 18f and 32:24ff, as well as the stark biblical fact that Moses saw and talked with God (Heb. Elohim) "face to face."5 The Hebrew reads Elohim panim El panim. The Hebrew word panim has many significations, but as used in Genesuis 32: 24ff, it means literally "before the face of anyone, in the presence of."6 Granted in other contexts this can mean "before"

or "in front of",but this context is one of two people literally talking to each other. They are imploring and questioning each other with words. The context is one person facing another. It was in spiritual language such as found in 2 Clement that expositors of Genesis 1:26-27 said that in creating man male and female this really meant the male was Christ while the female was the Church, and various other ways of interpreting the literalistic Jewish scriptures in later ages.7 It was later Gnostics, such as Heracleon, who spiritualized the early Christian teachings, the spiritualizing which Reed and Farkas accept.8

It was Plato who had the spiritualized concerns for the soul rather than the body, not the ancient Jewish and early Christians.9

Endnotes

  1. David A. Reed, John R. Farkas, Mormons Answered Verse by Verse, Baker Book House, 1992: 37.
  2. Alan Goshen Gottstein, "The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature," in Harvard Theological Review, 87:2 (1994): 172.
  3. Gershom Scholem, Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit: Studien zu Grundbegriffen d. Kabbalah, Translated by Joachim Neugroschel, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, Schocken Books, English ed., 1991: 15.
  4. Scholem, p. 16.
  5. Walther Eichrodt, Theologie des Allten Testaments, Translated by J. A. Baker, Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols., Westminster Press, vol. 1 (1967): 20.
  6. Gesenius Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon of the Old Testament, Baker Book House, 1979: 681, 2nd column bottom of page.
  7. Karl Paul Donfried, "The Theology of Second Clement," in Harvard Theological Review, 66(1973): 495.
  8. Elaine H. Pagels, "A Valentinian Interpretation of Baptism and Eucharist – And its Critique of "Orthodox" Sacramental Theology and Practice," in Harvard Theological Review, 65:2(1972): 165, for an example of spiritualizing the passion of Jesus. See also Heracleon’s prayer on p. 166.
  9. Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, "Caro Salutis Cardo: Shaping the Person in Early Christian Thought," in History of Religions, 34:1(Aug. 1990): 33.