God's Material Body

Research by Kerry A. Shirts

The scripture Luke 24:39 is where Jesus is speaking to his Apostles and he tells them to behold his hands and feet and handle him in order for them to understand that he is really there in front of them. He further states "for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." This is the same being that Thomas said "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). It seems to me that this scripture demonstrates the Bible view of God as an embodied being. It certainly does not support the idea of God as an incorporeal being. This is the reason that we Mormons believe that God possesses a glorified body. The Son, who is the perfect image of the Father, was resurrected and ascended bodily into heaven. (Acts 1:9-11). Christ retained his physical body because he was expected to return "in the same manner" that he "was taken up from you into heaven."

Is God merely by nature "spirit"? The ancient Israelites believed that God's spirit has bodily form. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that spirit is somehow contrary to material states. God consistently revealed himself in human form in the Bible. Terence Fretheim reviewed the appearances of God in the Old Testament and finds it stirking that God *always* appears in human form. ("The Suffering of God", he notes Exo. 24:10, God appears and under his *feet* is a work of sapphire, God also ate and drank with Israel - implying a physical body. Amos 7:7 and 9:1 speak of God standing. Isaiah 6:1 says God was sitting on a throne. Jeremiah 1:9 says God put forth his *hand* and touched his throne. in RSV Ezekiel 1:26 Ezekiel sees God seated above the "likeness of a throne...a likeness as it were in human form." RSV Numbers 12:8 tells of speaking *mouth to mouth* and "of the form of the Lord". RSV Exodus 33:21-23 refers to the place by God and to God's back and hand. Acts 7:56 says Christ was on the right hand of God.)

It may be said that the human form says something not only about God but also about the relationship between God and world/people. Fretheim further notes something interesting that Christians grossly misunderstand. It is a mistake to assume a discontinuity between spirit and materiality in Hebrew thought:

"Is the human form one which God assumes for the sake of appearance; or is there an essential continuity between the form and God as God is, or both? It would be a mistake to move to a consideration of God as spirit in this connection. It is remarkable how seldom the OT, and even the NT uses such language to speak of God....The spiritual and the physical/material are not mutually exclusive categories. To speak of God as spirit does not necessarily entail formlessness."

So if God is spirit - and the Bible emphatically declares this truth - it does not mean that he does not have material form! It is consistent to say that God, *in the sense of an individual person* has a body of spirit (e.g., Ether 3:16). Indeed, David Paulsen has demonstrated that "spirit" was considered to be a species of material states in late antiquity! (Paulsen, "Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Being: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses," in "Harvard Theological Review" 83 (1990): 108-9 - see below)

"While final clarity cannot be achieved on this point on the basis of the evidence we have, it is probable that Israel did not conceive of God in terms of formlessness, but rather that the human form in the divine appearances constituted an enfleshment which bore essential continuities with the form which God was believe to have." (Fretheim, "The Suffering of God," p. 105).

The fact that Israel believed God has a human form is quite clear from Gen 1:26 where God makes man in their image (demut), and their likeness (tselem). That this image and likeness refers to *genetic* resemblance is made clear from Gen 5:1,3 where Adam begets a son after his own likeness (tselem) after his image (demut) and called his name Seth.

The biblical record fully supports the Mormon view that God has a human bodily form - or more accurately, humans have bodies made after God's image. God is not so much anthropomorphic as persons are theomorphic. (From Blake T. Ostler's review in "Review of Books", vol. 8, #2, 1996, pp. 143ff)

David Paulsen notes that Origen points out that nowhere in the Bible is God explicitly described as incorporeal. The Greek term "asomatos" for incorporeal does not appear in the Bible. And when this term appears in noncanonical Christian writings the use of the term meant for Early Christians "a material body that is just much finer and palpable than those conceived through the senses." (Paulsen, "Ibid." p. 108).

Origen even noted that the text John 4:24 "God is spirit" was initially understood as proof ***against*** incorporeal thinking!

"I know that some will attempt to say that, even according to the declaration of our own scriptures, God is a body, because they find it said in the Gospel according to John that God is a spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Spirit according to them is to be regarded as nothing less than a body." (Paulsen, p. 109).

The Greek term "pneuma" literally meant air, or breath, thus implying that spirit is both material and corporeal. Interesting also, for the Christian Stoics, since existence is confined to material bodies, God being a spirit, was only the purest of all bodies! (Paulsen, p. 109).

Fascinating too is the fact that Origen argues against the Christians who believed the corporeality of God! In "De Principiis" he argues that scriptures that describe God as spirit, fire, light, etc., which, literally understood, would indicate that God is corporeal, so Origen says they ought to be understood allegorically instead!

In "Homily III" Origen acknowledged that Jews as well as Christians supposed that God should be understood as a man, that is, adorned with human members and human appearance. Origen notes that the philosophers despise these stories, therefore, to keep the peace with them, he tries to convince the Christians that God speaks, but not really with a mouth! God has passions, anger, hate, love, but not in the Christian way of thinking, but rather as the philosophers think, as allegorical! Origen specifically says that the learned Melito was among the prominant and prolific Christians of the second-century who believed that God is embodied. In his "Selecta in Genesim" he links Melito as *among* the Christians who taught that God has a body in the form of humans. ("Prius discutiendum est ubi consistat illud, ad imaginem, in corpore, an in anima. Et in primis videamus, quibus utanur qui prius asserunt; e quorum numero est Melito, qui scripta reliquit, quibus asserit Deum corporeum esse." in Paulsen, p. 112). Gennadius affirms that Melito was responsible for a sect of Christians who followed him in the belief that the bodies of humans are made in the image of God.

Origen also noted that Celsus argued at length against his [Celsus] understanding of the Christian belief that God is corporeal by nature and has a body to be in human form. (Paulsen, p. 113).

Augustine, in fact, would not at first join the Christians because of their belief in divine corporeality, especially as it related to Deity! From his youth and for many years thereafter, because of the teachings of his mother, who was a devout Christian, Augustine understood Christians to believe that God is embodied. They taught that God was corporeal. Augustine acknowledges that belief in God's corporeality was *still* found among contemporary Christians, whom he mocked for not being able or willing to interpret the Bible allegorically. (Paulsen, p. 115f).

In addition, let me add some Early Christian Thinkers views on this here:

from the Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., "The Ante-Nicene Fathers" (hereafter cited as ANF), Eerdmans, reprint Oct. 1979.

Iranaeus says of the early Christians "...they imagine that He [God] sits after the fashion of a man, and is contained within bounds..." (Vol. 1, p. 465). Obviously this was an Early Christian conception, otherwise why would Iranaeus, who adapted later Greek philosophy, be trying to refute it?

Tertullian notes that "This for certain is He who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, In what form of God? Of course he means in some form, not none. For who will deny that God is a body although God is a spirit? (John 4:24). For spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form. Whatever therefore, was the substance of the Word that I designate a person, I claim for it the name of Son; while I recognize the Son, I assert the distinction as second to the Father." Now interestingly, in the footnote, the editors themselves note "This doctrine of the soul's corporeality in a certain sense is treated by Tertullian in his "De Ressur. Carn" xvii and "De Anima" v. By Tertullian, spirit and soul were considered identical." (ANF, Vol. 3, p. 467).

Origen in speaking of the resurrection and man being made in God's image says that the argument arose of "whether God of all things is clothed with a body... He was with some material covering "that the likeness of the life of God, may be in the end produced also in the saints." (Origen, "De Principiis", ANF., vol. 4, p. 345).

Hippolytus in his "Elucidations" went so far as to proclaim that the maxim "Know thyself" means to "discover God *within* thyself, for he has formed thee after his own image." (ANF., vol. 5, p. 153).

Arnobius in his treatise "Against the Heathen" noted that they limit the gods by forms, "you even confine them to the human figure." (ANF., vol. 6, p. 467).

He was arguing for a God without human form, because that was the currently held conception!

Arnobius even asked them "Does God speak?" (he went into great detail to show that the human form has all sorts of vulgarities and was shocked that a God was in this form) "He may in his own, but not in our way." (ANF, vol. 6, p. 468). So far had he come from what the Bible taught of God! Arnobius concludes his treatise with "There is but one thing man can be assured of regarding God's nature, to know and perceive that nothing can be revealed in human language concerning God." (ANF. vol. 6, p. 469). Yet the Bible so very obviously contradicts his premise here, that it scarely needs mentioning!

Tatian "To the Greeks" does note that God is a spirit, not pervading matter, but the maker of material spirits, and of the forms that are in matter. In the footnote it is claimed that Tatian asserts spirits to be material though not fleshly. (ANF, vol. 2, p. 66). Here clearly, Early Christians agree that there is not an opposition in spirit and matter.

Clement in the fragments asks "What is God? God, as the Lord sayeth, is a spirit. Now spirit is properly substance, incorporeal (that is it does not consist of a body). (ANF, vol. 2, p. 585). So the spirit is not the material body, but it ***is*** substance. And we have Jesus as proof positive that God ***IS*** a spirit, yet clothed with a physical, corporeal body, fused together forever.

In Origen's Commentary on John we read that the Father is the arche of Christ who is the arche of man. Yet "men are according to the image, but the image according to the Father" Who of course, is the arche for the image of God for Christ and men. (ANF, vol. 10, p. 307).