Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks on Man as Theomorphic

“ And, finally, does anthropomorphism really disqualify those who believe in it from being Christian? It would be odd if it did, for most Christians of the very earliest period were almost certainly anthropomorphists. As a recent article in the Harvard Theological Review contends, "ordinary Christians for at least the first three centuries of the current era commonly (and perhaps generally) believed God to be corporeal," or embodied. "The belief was abandoned (and then only gradually) as Neoplatonism became more and more entrenched as the dominant world view of Christian thinkers." [David L. Paulsen, "Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses," Harvard theological Review 83 (1990): 105-16; quotation from p. 105.] And these early Christians had excellent biblical reasons for believing in a corporeal deity, as the contemporary fundamentalist preacher Jimmy Swaggart, an anthropomorphist himself, has noticed. [Swaggart, "What is Meant by the Trinity? And When We Get to Heaven Will We See Three Gods?", typed, undated paper.] But pursuing this argument would take us too far afield. Roland J. Teske has shown that the great Augustine turned to Manichaeism out of disgust at the anthropomorphism that characterized the Christianity in which he had been raised, and that he had thought was typical of Christianity as a whole. "Prior to Augustine (and, of course, the Neoplatonic group in Milan)," writes Teske, "the Western Church was simply without a concept of God as a spiritual substance." [R.J. Teske, "Divine Immutability in Saint Augustine, The Modern Schoolman 63 (May 1986): 233-49, especially 242 n. 25, 244 nn. 34 and 35.]” (Daniel C. Peterson, Stephen D. Ricks, Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints [Salt Lake City: Aspen Books, 1992], pp. 74-75)