God Has No Body
Certain groups, notably the Mormons, have committed the error of
saying that God the Father has a body, and have thus become
anthropomorphites, people who say that God has a human form.
In recent years, this form of doctrinal decay has also set in among
certain segments of American Evangelicalism, most notably in the
Pentecostal Word Faith movement. Evangelicals such as Finnis Dake,
Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth Copeland, and Benny Hinn have all
(temporarily or permanently) bought into the idea that the Father
has a body.
Anthropomorphites argue that man is made in the image of God (Gen.
1:26–27) and point to verses that refer to the strong right arm of
God, the eyes of God, and so forth.
In doing this, they profoundly misunderstand Scripture. First, the
image of God we bear is an aspect of our rational soul that
separates us from animals (the function that the image plays in
Genesis 1 is to separate humans from the animals God has just
created). Second, talk in the Bible about God’s strong right arm,
his eyes, and such is metaphorical language concerning God’s power
and knowledge. This can be seen by the fact that the Bible also
speaks of God as having feathers and wings; yet even the
anthropomorphites would not go this far (cf. Ps. 91:4—"He will cover
you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge").
Anthropomorphites maintain their doctrine in defiance of verses,
such as John 4:24, where Jesus teaches us: "God is spirit, and those
who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." This means God
has no body, because a spirit is, by nature, an incorporeal being.
As Jesus tells us elsewhere, "a spirit has not flesh and bones"
(Luke 24:39).
There is a big difference between being a spirit and having a
spirit. Jesus says that the Father is a spirit, not that the Father
has a spirit; this means that he lacks a body entirely.
The Church Fathers, of course, agreed, and loudly declared the fact
that God is an unchangeable, immaterial spirit who has an entirely
simple ("incomposite") nature—that is, a nature containing no parts.
Since all bodies extend through space and thus can be divided into
parts, it is clear that God cannot have a body.
"What of Christ’s body?" you may ask. It is true that Jesus, who is
God, assumed an earthly body when he was born of the Blessed Virgin,
and that this body, now glorified, continues to exist. But since the
Lord only took on human flesh in these "last days," and since God
has always existed, without beginning or end, we must still conclude
that having a body is not part of God’s unchangeable nature: he
exists in eternity as pure spirit, even though he chose for the Son
to also take on a human nature in addition to his bodiless,
timeless, divine nature.
Tatian the Syrian
"Our God has no introduction in time. He alone is without beginning,
and is himself the beginning of all things. God is a spirit, not
attending upon matter, but the maker of material spirits and of the
appearances which are in matter. He is invisible, being himself the
Father of both sensible and invisible things" (Address to the
Greeks 4 [A.D. 170]).
Athenagoras
"I have sufficiently demonstrated that we are not atheists, since we
acknowledge one God, unbegotten, eternal, invisible, incapable of
being acted upon, incomprehensible, unbounded, who is known only by
understanding and reason, who is encompassed by light and beauty and
spirit and indescribable power, by whom all things, through his
Word, have been produced and set in order and are kept in existence"
(Plea for the Christians 10 [A.D. 177]).
Irenaeus
"Far removed is the Father of all from those things which operate
among men, the affections and passions. He is simple, not composed
of parts, without structure, altogether like and equal to himself
alone. He is all mind, all spirit, all thought, all intelligence,
all reason . . . all light, all fountain of every good, and this is
the manner in which the religious and the pious are accustomed to
speak of God" (Against Heresies 2:13:3 [A.D. 189]).
Clement of Alexandria
"The first substance is everything which subsists by itself, as a
stone is called a substance. The second is a substance capable of
increase, as a plant grows and decays. The third is animated and
sentient substance, as animal, horse. The fourth is animate,
sentient, rational substance, as man. Wherefore each one of us is
made as consisting of all, having an immaterial soul and a mind,
which is the image of God" (Fragment from On Providence [A.D.
200]).
"Being is in God. God is divine being, eternal and without
beginning, incorporeal and illimitable, and the cause of what
exists. Being is that which wholly subsists. Nature is the truth of
things, or the inner reality of them. According to others, it is the
production of what has come to existence; and according to others,
again, it is the providence of God, causing the being, and the
manner of being, in the things which are produced" (ibid.).
"What is God? ‘God,’ as the Lord says, ‘is a spirit.’ Now spirit is
properly substance, incorporeal, and uncircumscribed. And that is
incorporeal which does not consist of a body, or whose existence is
not according to breadth, length, and depth. And that is
uncircumscribed which has no place, which is wholly in all, and in
each entire, and the same in itself" (ibid.).
"No one can rightly express him wholly. For on account of his
greatness he is ranked as the All, and is the Father of the
universe. Nor are any parts to be predicated of him. For the One is
indivisible; wherefore also it is infinite, not considered with
reference to inscrutability, but with reference to its being without
dimensions, and not having a limit. And therefore it is without form
and name" (Miscellanies
5:12 [A.D. 208]).
Origen
"Since our mind is in itself unable to behold God as he is, it knows
the Father of the universe from the beauty of his works and from the
elegance of his creatures. God, therefore, is not to be thought of
as being either a body or as existing in a body, but as a simple
intellectual being, admitting within himself no addition of any
kind" (Fundamental Doctrines 1:1:6 [A.D. 225]).
"John says in the gospel, ‘No one has at any time seen God,’ clearly
declaring to all who are able to understand, that there is no nature
to which God is visible, not as if he were indeed visible by nature,
and merely escaped or baffled the view of a frailer creature, but
because he is by nature impossible to be seen" (ibid. 1:1:8).
Athanasius
"God, however, being without parts, is Father of the Son without
division and without being acted upon. For neither is there an
effluence from that which is incorporeal, nor is there anything
flowering into him from without, as in the case of men. Being simple
in nature, he is Father of one only Son" (Letter on the Council
of Nicaea 11 [A.D. 350]).
Didymus the Blind
"God is simple and of an incomposite and spiritual nature, having
neither ears nor organs of speech. A solitary essence and
illimitable, he is composed of no numbers and parts" (The Holy
Spirit 35 [A.D. 362]).
Hilary of Poitiers
"First it must be remembered that God is incorporeal. He does not
consist of certain parts and distinct members, making up one body.
For we read in the gospel that God is a spirit: invisible,
therefore, and an eternal nature, immeasurable and self-sufficient.
It is also written that a spirit does not have flesh and bones. For
of these the members of a body consist, and of these the substance
of God has no need. God, however, who is everywhere and in all
things, is all-hearing, all-seeing, all-doing, and all-assisting" (Commentary
on the Psalms 129[130]:3 [A.D. 365]).
Basil the Great
"The operations of God are various, but his essence is simple" (Letters
234:1 [A.D. 367]).
Ambrose of Milan
"God is of a simple nature, not conjoined nor composite. Nothing can
be added to him. He has in his nature only what is divine, filling
up everything, never himself confused with anything, penetrating
everything, never himself being penetrated, everywhere complete, and
present at the same time in heaven, on earth, and in the farthest
reaches of the sea, incomprehensible to the sight" (The Faith
1:16:106 [A.D. 379]).
Evagrius of Pontus
"To those who accuse us of a doctrine of three gods, let it be
stated that we confess one God, not in number but in nature. For all
that is said to be one numerically is not one absolutely, nor is it
simple in nature. It is universally confessed, however, that God is
simple and not composite" (Dogmatic Letter on the Trinity 8:2
[A.D. 381]).
Gregory of Nyssa
"But there is neither nor ever shall be such a dogma in the Church
of God that would prove the simple and incomposite [God] to be not
only manifold and variegated, but even constructed from opposites.
The simplicity of the dogmas of the truth proposes God as he is" (Against
Eunomius 1:1:222 [A.D. 382]).
John Chrysostom
"[Paul] knows [God] in part. But he says, ‘in part,’ not because he
knows God’s essence while something else of his essence he does not
know; for God is simple. Rather, he says ‘in part’ because he knows
that God exists, but what God is in his essence he does not know" (Against
the Anomoians 1:5 [A.D. 386]).
"Why does John say, ‘No one has ever seen God’ [John 1:18]? So that
you might learn that he is speaking about the perfect comprehension
of God and about the precise knowledge of him. For that all those
incidents [where people saw a vision of God] were condescensions and
that none of those persons saw the pure essence of God is clear
enough from the differences of what each did see. For God is simple
and non-composite and without shape; but they all saw different
shapes" (ibid., 4:3).
Augustine
"In created and changeable things what is not said according to
substance can only be said according to accident. . . . In God,
however, certainly there is nothing that is said according to
accident, because in him there is nothing that is changeable, but
neither is everything that is said of him according to substance" (The
Trinity
5:5:6 [A.D. 408]).
Cyril of Alexandria
"We are not by nature simple; but the divine nature, perfectly
simple and incomposite, has in itself the abundance of all
perfection and is in need of nothing" (Dialogues on the Trinity
1 [A.D. 420]).
"The nature of the Godhead, which is simple and not composite, is
never to be divided into two" (Treasury of the Holy Trinity
11 [A.D. 424]).
"When the divine Scripture presents sayings about God and remarks on
corporeal parts, do not let the mind of those hearing it harbor
thoughts of tangible things, but from those tangible things as if
from things said figuratively let it ascend to the beauty of things
intellectual, and rather than figures and quantity and
circumscriptions and shapes and everything else that pertains to
bodies, let it think on God, although he is above all understanding.
We were speaking of him in a human way, for there is no other way in
which we could think about the things that are above us" (Commentary
on the Psalms
11[12]:3 [A.D. 429]).
Source: The
Catholic Goldmine (www.catholicgoldmine.com)
