Who God is, and who you are

That phrase is not from the Bible. It is from the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1563) and echoed in the Westminster Confession (1646), both of which draw on centuries of Greek philosophy folded into Christian theology, especially the idea that a perfect being cannot change, suffer, or have parts, because change implies imperfection. Augustine and later Aquinas built entire systems on this reasoning. It is careful, serious thought. It is also not how the Bible describes God when it says He walked in the garden, wrestled with Jacob, or that Moses saw Him face to face.

Members sometimes assume the Trinity is simply "three in one" and stop there. The harder claim, the one that actually separates us, is that classical theology holds God has no body, extension, or location at all. That is the claim Joseph Smith's vision quietly overturned: two Personages, standing, one pointing to the other, in a specific place at a specific time.

Godhead. Our term for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost together: three distinct beings, one in purpose, will, and glory, not one being in three modes or persons.

Trinity. The traditional Christian term for one God existing in three "persons" who share a single divine substance (Greek ousia). It is a claim about being, not just cooperation.

Anthropomorphism. The traditional explanation for verses describing God with hands, a face, or a voice: that scripture is speaking figuratively about a being who has none of those things. We read those same verses as plain description.

• 325Council of Nicaea. Bishops, convened by the emperor Constantine, debate whether Christ is of the same substance as the Father (homoousios) or a similar substance (homoiousios), one letter apart. The vote settles on "same substance."
• 325–380Nicaea does not settle it. Emperors after Constantine back the other side, Athanasius is exiled repeatedly, and the empire see-saws between the two positions for more than fifty years. Doctrine decided by vote can be un-decided by the next vote.
• 381Council of Constantinople finalizes the doctrine of the Holy Spirit's full divinity, completing what is now recited as the Nicene Creed.
• 451Council of Chalcedon defines Christ as fully God and fully man in one person, "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." The definitions grow more precise and more philosophical with each council.
• 1563 / 1646The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Westminster Confession codify "without body, parts, or passions" for English Protestants, carrying the same philosophical assumptions into the Reformation.
• 1820The First Vision: two embodied, distinct Personages appear to Joseph Smith, one introducing the other as His Son.
• 1843Joseph Smith teaches in Nauvoo that the Father has a body of flesh and bones, later recorded as D&C 130:22.

None of the councils were working from a new vision or a new revelation. They were working from scripture, reason, and majority vote among bishops, which is exactly the method Preach My Gospel points to when it describes how doctrine drifted after the apostles died.

It is worth being honest about our side of this as well. D&C 130:22, the clearest single verse on the Father having a body of flesh and bones, was not written down by Joseph Smith himself in that form. It comes from notes William Clayton took of Joseph's instruction at Ramus, Illinois, on April 2, 1843, which were later edited into Joseph's history and added to the Doctrine and Covenants in 1876. That is not a reason to doubt the doctrine, which Joseph taught repeatedly and unmistakably in multiple sermons that same year. It is a reason to hold the historical process with the same honesty we ask of critics who point to the multiple accounts of the First Vision: revealed truth reaching us through real people, real notebooks, and real editorial work, which is how nearly all scripture has always come to us.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 202) affirms the Trinity as three persons in one divine substance, and paragraph 370 explicitly says God transcends the human distinction of the sexes and has no body. This is not a minor detail to Catholic theology; it protects God's perfection and simplicity, a concept called divine simplicity, meaning God has no parts of any kind, physical or otherwise.

The strongest thing a Catholic or Orthodox friend will say: A body is bounded and change; a truly infinite, unchanging God cannot be bounded by matter without ceasing to be infinite.

A fair answer: scripture never seems worried about this problem. Moses spoke with God "face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Exodus 33:11). Jacob wrestled with a being he called God (Genesis 32:24–30). These are not late, unreliable texts; they are foundational. The philosophical worry about infinity and body is a Greek import, not a biblical starting point.

Most Reformation confessions kept the same classical definition. The Westminster Confession (2.1) describes God as "without body, parts, or passions," language drawn almost verbatim from the Thirty-Nine Articles a century earlier. The Reformers overhauled soteriology and church authority; they largely left this piece of inherited philosophy untouched.

The strongest thing a Protestant friend will say: "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24) settles it. A spirit has no body.

A fair answer: the same Greek word for spirit, pneuma, describes the Holy Ghost, who we agree is a personage of spirit without a body of flesh and bones (D&C 130:22). Saying God "is a Spirit" in John 4:24 is Christ correcting the Samaritan woman about where and how to worship, not delivering a metaphysics lecture about divine embodiment. Read in context, alongside Stephen's vision and the First Vision, embodiment and spirit are not opposites; the Father and the Son are embodied and are perfectly filled with the Spirit.

The natural pushback: "Doesn't a body make God smaller, more like us?" Turn it around gently: "Or does it make the promise that we can become like Him mean something concrete, instead of a metaphor with no destination?" You are not trying to win an argument about ancient philosophy in one conversation. You are pointing to what Joseph Smith saw and asking them to sit with it.