“I Am Not Alone”
Appendix 3 – We Believe God is Spirit and Incorporeal
These words of Jesus are simple, profound, and absolutely authoritative. We may look to a lot of practices that Jesus strongly rejected and rebuked, but the Jewish knowledge of the “what” of God was not one of them. Unfortunately, there are certain Son of God advocates who have concluded a strange view of God that we want to address; namely, the false notion that God is corporeal and has a body, expressed in the following quote:
Our Father God is a person (Job 13:8, Heb. 1:3), who has a will (Luke 22:42; John 5:30), a personality (Zeph. 3:17), a shape (Num. 12:8; James 3:9)… He is not in any way human, but he has a heavenly body (as do angels–Ps. 104:4; 1 Cor. 15:40, 44; Heb. 12:9; 1 Kings 22:19)… Note: Do not be confused by the Bible verses that make reference to the Almighty’s wings. This is speaking figuratively as the nations of Assyria and Moab are also said to have wings (Isa. 8:8; Jer. 48:9; and the Messiah, Jesus Christ is promised to ‘arise with healing in his wings’ Mal. 4:2). Joel W. Hemphill, God and Jesus: Exploring The Biblical Distinction (Joelton, Tennessee: Trumpet Call Books, 2013), 88.
We must disagree. God, being incorporeal, simply does not have a literal “shape” as the above writer contends. Ironically, the writer has provided us with the very answer to such a dilemma: these are figures of speech. There is no scripture clarifying that only God’s wings are figurative but all these other descriptors are to be understood literally. Thus, each of these attributes is to be understood as a figure of speech designed to help us understand that God isn’t just some impersonal, impassive mass of computational energy.
It really comes down to a simple issue of interpreting the Bible through the lens of Jesus’ authorized Jewish view, rather than through the lens of pagan ideas of metaphysics. Here then is the typical Jewish view:
G-d is Incorporeal: Although many places in scripture and Talmud speak of various parts of G-d’s body (the Hand of G-d, G-d’s wings, etc.) or speak of G-d in anthropomorphic terms (G-d walking in the garden of Eden, G-d laying tefillin, etc.), Judaism firmly maintains that G-d has no body. Any reference to G-d’s body is simply a figure of speech, a means of making G-d’s actions more comprehensible to beings living in a material world. Much of Rambam’s Guide for the Perplexed is devoted to explaining each of these anthropomorphic references and proving that they should be understood figuratively. We are forbidden to represent G-d in a physical form. That is considered idolatry. The sin of the Golden Calf incident was not that the people chose another deity, but that they tried to represent G-d in a physical form. Tracey R. Rich, “Judaism 101: The Nature of G-d,” accessed 1/29/2017, http://www.jewfaq.org/g-d.htm.
This is a typical Jewish view of God: He is incorporeal and non-compound. Any description of God that attempts to make God out to be otherwise, is simply influenced by pagan ideas of corporeality and not the Bible. Note well, therefore, the last sentence cited: the golden calf wasn’t a different God; it was an attempt to represent God in physical form. Thus, the name of this theological error we are addressing is idolatry, after the manner of the golden calf.
The idea of God’s incorporeality can be seen in God coming to Solomon’s temple and the revelatory answer to Solomon’s question: “But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can’t contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). Solomon goes on to answer his own question in the form of a prayer of worship.
Yet have respect for the prayer of your servant…Yahweh my God… that your eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which you have said, My name shall be there; to listen to the prayer which your servant shall pray toward this place. Listen you to the supplication of your servant, and of your people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place: yes, hear in heaven, your dwelling place; and when you hear, forgive. (1 Kings 8:28–30)
Solomon’s temple eventually became one of the cornerstones of the Jewish religion. It was to be the place where God’s name dwelt. It was the place where God’s people would direct their prayers and meet and commune with God. And yet Jewish tradition consistently maintained that all anthropomorphic ideas were entirely figures of speech. If God had a body, then that body would necessarily have abode in the temple, and the priests that served the temple would have testified of such; but they did not, they consistently maintained that God is incorporeal (bodiless/formless). This is the Jewish view of the “what” of God that Jesus affirmed. For those to teach otherwise is to claim they know better than Jesus!
Early Christians continued to view God in non-corporeal terms, and they were shocked at Tertullian’s inventions to the contrary! It is only with the writings of Tertullian that we begin to find philosophers, such as he, redefining God in pagan terms.
In the following passage, Tertullian was writing against someone named Praxeas. Praxeas was a One God (monarchian) preacher who was in open fellowship with the Roman assembly of his day. In this writing, Tertullian was complaining that Praxeas wouldn’t allow God to have a physical substance. Tertullian, writing as if speaking directly to Praxeas, said that Praxeas had asked him if he believed the Word was a certain substance. Tertullian then criticized Praxeas for not allowing God to have a real substance.
He (the word) became also the Son of God, and was begotten when He proceeded forth from Him. Do you then, (you ask,) grant that the Word is a certain substance, constructed by the Spirit and the communication of Wisdom? Certainly I do. But you [Tertullian accusing Praxeas here] will not allow Him to be really a substantive being, by having a substance of His own; in such a way that He may be regarded as an objective thing and a person, and so be able (as being constituted second to God the Father,) to make two, the Father and the Son, God and the Word. For you will say, what is a word, but a voice and sound of the mouth, and (as the grammarians teach) air when struck against, intelligible to the ear, but for the rest a sort of void, empty, and incorporeal thing. I, on the contrary, contend that nothing empty and void could have come forth from God, seeing that it is not put forth from that which is empty and void; nor could that possibly be devoid of substance which has proceeded from so great a substance, and has produced such mighty substances: for all things which were made through Him, He Himself (personally) made. How could it be, that He Himself is nothing, without whom nothing was made? How could He who is empty have made things which are solid, and He who is void have made things which are full, and He who is incorporeal have made things which have body? –Tertullian, Against Praxeas, Chapter 7, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, PC Study Bible.
In this passage, Tertullian showed he still viewed God in a philosophical, metaphysical sense and had departed from, or never accepted, a Jewish, biblically-influenced view of God. He even argued against the idea that the word of God was merely “a voice and sound… empty, and incorporeal…” Yet the majority of Christians at this time (that is, other than the Gnostics) held the latter view, which we know from Irenaeus in particular. Irenaeus had taken the time to describe God in terms that Tertullian later rejected, such as he has done here. Note that, for Tertullian, if the word of God does not have some kind of material substance, it can have no real existence. In the same way, for Tertullian, God was material and corporeal, not incorporeal.
The Bible clearly refutes Tertullian’s belief that God’s nature is an actual material substance. For example, Tertullian compared and likened God’s substance to other great substances that God created. Tertullian explicitly said that God had to have substance in order to produce other substances. The Bible refers to these as, “…man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.” Of course, Tertullian brought himself, and all Trinitarians who ascribe to his reasoning as well, under the condemnation of the Scriptures. For it is written again,
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up… (Romans 1:22–24)
Tertullian stood at the forefront of the Trinity’s development and led the way by first changing the glory of God into an image made like corruptible man. As seekers of truth, we should not relapse into the pagan views of God that ultimately led to the Trinity.
As a final note against the idea of a corporeal, compound (having body parts) God, let us draw upon the same argument creationists use against evolutionists. The creationist argument is that man had to be created simply due to the complexity and balance of all the parts and pieces, not to mention the supportive ecosystem required to feed and sustain man. On the other hand, we contend with the creationist, that God is uncreated, as proven by the fact that He is eternal and is not compound or corporeal. That is to say, creation requires three elements all to exist at once: time, space and matter. If matter doesn’t exist in time and space, when and where does it exist? If there is space, but no time or matter, with which to measure it, it is meaningless. If there is time, but no matter or space, it is just as superfluous. That is why the Bible begins by saying, in the beginning (time) God created the heaven (space) and earth (matter).
God must absolutely transcend time, space and matter to be the Creator of all such, otherwise God is Himself a creation; and if God is a creation, what or who created Him? Who designed the pieces and parts that would make up a corporeal God, and who put them together? Did God Himself have a God? No, God is eternal, incorporeal, non-compound, omniscient, and omnipresent. He absolutely transcends time, space and matter. So let’s not profess to be wise and then become foolish by changing this glory of God into an image made like corruptible man!
