Reversing the order a bit so that I can answer things in turn:
Did you actually read the chapter? here
Book of Mormon (Palmyra, N.Y.: 1830)
I say this as verse 9 here provides... context.
9 And the Lord said unto him: Because of thy faith thou hast seen that I shall take upon me flesh and blood; and never has man come before me with such exceeding faith as thou hast; for were it not so ye could not have seen my finger. Sawest thou more than this?
Note the "shall" part.
I don't know if the link will work or not, but the "flesh and blood" bit is tabbed with a footnote containing two references for further context.
Flesh and Blood
Jesus Christ, Condescension of
The Topical Guide puts together lists of verses by topic or relation, meaning that one can examine the verses together. If you wish to read a verse in full, just click on the blue text representing the chapter and verse & you'll be immediately taken there.
We can continue discussing this point once you've done so.
As we've seen from the above, your first argument is nullified because verse 9 makes it clear that the flesh & blood bit was to be in the future.
As for 3:14 -
The word "Father" is footnoted, giving us a link to Mosiah 15. This chapter, in turn, explains how Jesus qualifies for both titles... without actually *being* Heavenly Father.
Mosiah 15
And before anyone says anything, "one God" in verse 4 footnotes to the Topical Guide entry for Godhead, clarifying the kind of "oneness" being talked about...
Did you actually read the chapter? here
Book of Mormon (Palmyra, N.Y.: 1830)
I followed the links.
to my knowledge a spirit does not have a spirit body.
"
Ether 3:6,
read out of context, might easily be understood as agreeing with the current Mormon belief that God himself has a physical form like human beings. It is odd, though, that the LDS article cites Ether 3:6 but not the verses later in the same chapter that actually refer to humans as made in God’s image:
Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image. Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh. (Ether 3:15-16)
Mormons assume that if human beings were created in God’s “image” then this must imply that God had a physical body. However, Ether 3:15-16 explicitly says otherwise. The conventional belief (based on Genesis 1:26-27) that God created man after his image is interpreted here to mean that God created man “after the body of [his] spirit.” We see here the notion, which though not strictly orthodox has been a fairly popular belief in the history of Christianity, that God has a “body of spirit,” that is, an anthropomorphic shape composed of pure spirit rather than of flesh. This is not what Genesis 1:26-27 means, but it is also not what the LDS Church teaches about Heavenly Father. According to Ether 3, man is created in God’s image because God has a body of spirit. That this is what the text means is confirmed by the conclusion of Ether 3:16, in which Christ (who in Book of Mormon theology
is God in the flesh) announces that later he will appear to his people “in the flesh.”
Perhaps this is why the 2014 web article cited Ether 3:6 but not 3:14-15. The passage actually conflicts with a central claim of Mormon doctrine, namely, that the God in whose image we were created was a being of flesh and bones.
It should be noted that in Mormon doctrine today, the Father and Jesus Christ are sharply distinguished from each other as two separately embodied beings. From this perspective, what Jared’s brother saw in Ether 3 was a vision of the Lord Jesus, not of Heavenly Father. There are at least two problems with this interpretation. The first is that the divine speaker in Ether 3:15-16 explicitly says that man was made in
his image. The natural way of understanding this statement is that the speaker is God the Father (especially if one accepts the Mormon argument that the image of God shows that we are God’s children). Second, in the immediate context the speaker claims to
be the Father
and the Son: “Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son” (Ether 3:14a). Later Mormon explanations that Jesus can be called “the Father” in a different sense don’t work well here. The text does not quote Jesus as saying, “I am the Father of creation,” or “I am the Father of Israel” (an idea obviously foreign to the context of Jared, who would have lived a millennium or more before Abraham). Instead, it quotes Jesus as saying, without qualification, that he is both the Father and the Son."
Ether 3 and the Mormon Doctrine of God and Man
Note: follow the above link for the above quote concerning the LDS article being referred to.
One can not be a body of spirit and a body of flesh and bone at the same time. So, which is it in LDS theology? Thanks for explaining.
How can Jesus be a father when he was never married?
Clearly I did not read down far enough to see the complete context. But, that does not now do away with the problems your response shows us.
Note: The liberal claims that Jesus was married are based on poor logic and lack of fact.
Bart D. Ehrman,
"
What's another big historical inaccuracy in the novel?
There are several gigantic points that have to do with Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene. Maybe the first thing to say is that it's absolutely false that as [the character] Robert Langdon says, it would have been highly unusual for Jesus not to be married because Jewish men were always married. That's false.
Tell us more about that, because I have heard that on and off over the years.
Yeah, that's kind of a commonsensical claim that isn't true. We know Jewish men from the first century who remained single and celibate. What's most interesting is that the ones we know about are ones with a worldview that's very similar to the worldview ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels-which is an apocalyptic worldview. We know about Jews from Jesus' time from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And by the way, Dan Brown indicates some of these lost gospels were included among the Dead Sea Scrolls. That's absolutely false.
That was Nag Hammadi Codex, right?
He mentions Nag Hammadi as well, but he indicates the Dead Sea Scrolls contain some of the earliest records of Jesus, and that's false. The Dead Sea Scrolls don't say anything about Jesus."Unpacking 'The Code'
Aside to this post:
LDS - Smithsonian Letter Update
