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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Some Christians claim that the Bible teaches that God cannot be seen by mortals, and so claims by Joseph Smith and others to have seen God the Father or Jesus Christ must be false. However, numerous Biblical verses attest that God has been seen by select humans. John 1:18, which the critics use to argue otherwise, has been interpreted differently by early Christians to avoid the self-contradiction which the critics' reading creates for the Bible.
If God can say "I change not," (Malachi 3:6) and he has appeared to mortals in the past, as the Bible bears record, why would he change his tactics and refuse to appear to modern prophets?
The most commonly used Biblical citation invoked by the critics is probably John 1:18, which reads “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
Early Christian author Irenaeus wrote in A.D. 180 that this scripture should be read “For "no man," he says, "hath seen God at any time," unless "the only-begotten Son of God, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared [Him]."[1]
Interestingly, Joseph Smith's revision of the Bible agrees with Irenaeus' reading:
Irenaeus' "unless" (or Joseph's "except") makes all the difference. Irenaeus knew that righteous men had seen God in the past:
Furthermore, by adopting this approach, Irenaeus' interpretation of John 1:18 harmonized with the rest of the Bible and the qualifications which the Bible provides for those who may see God. The requirements are:
As the numerous Biblical references demonstrate, the idea of seeing God is hardly foreign to Hebrew or early Christian thought. There are also non-scriptural examples: Philo the Jew taught that the name Israel was compounded of 3 words “ish” “rah” “El”, which means “man seeing God;” this view is also found in the apocryphal Prayer of Joseph. [2] And, an early Christian document called the Clementine Homilies portrays the apostle Peter as agreeing with Irenaeus' view:
Joseph Smith revealed the same essential truth (D&C 67꞉11, D&C 84꞉22).
It is the critics' view of John 1:18 that is novel and at odds with the earliest Christian understanding of the scripture, not Joseph Smith's.
Notes
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