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Show Page 122 "What is God? He is a material, organized intelligence, possessing both body and parts. He is in the form of man, and is in fact of the same species; and is a model, or standard of perfection to which man is destined to attain...he can go, come, converse, reason, eat, drink, love, hate, rejoice, possess, and enjoy. 39 The "anthropomorphic" God of the Mormons, as defined here, makes a sort of debut in Orson's almanac, for this is one of the first printed discussions of the subject. No doctrinal departure from orthodox Christianity made by the Mormons was so radical as this. Although a number of Protestant groups renounced many of the creedal points which distinguished them from one another during this period, most theologians and philosophers in America were evolving further away from anthropomorphism of any kind. In fact, William Ellery Channing, whom many considered the greatest American religious thinker, had publicly embraced religion as "the adoration of goodness - God is love." While Channing expounded this rarefied concept of God, Ralph Waldo Emerson had just published his Essays, conceiving that God was the soul of nature, an 40 immanence, and exalting the sufficiency and sovereignty of the individual. Although Mormonism embodied many contemporary ideals extolling "individuality," it directly and fervently repudiated those currents of Western religious thought which dissolved the personality of God. Orson Pratt was among the most insistent critics of "the immaterial God they choose." Although the almanac was issued in five thousand copies, there is no indication that Orson ever obtained much profit from it. It served, however, to acquaint the Latter-day Saints in the East with much of the doctrinal development current in the Church. Along with this, Orson's editing of the Messenger published to a wider audience than ever before the stormy heterodoxies of the Mormons. Before long, Orson was bidding farewell once again to the Saints in |
