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God’s body

Does God have a body? If so, what kind of? Is His/Her body comparable to ours? And, by the way, do persons have bodies? Or are they identical with their bodies?

The question is intricated, but difficult to avoid, as shown by the last comments (by Roger) to this post. Let me then start with a basic dychotomy:

  1. The idea that God(s) can have a body similar to ours is fraught with problems. To begin with, if they had one body, how could they receive sacrifices and offerings from people all over the world? More in general, they would be limited by their bodies, which would seriously threaten any claim to omnipotence and omniscience.
  2. If God(s) have no body at all, then it is difficult to understand how they can act in the material world, since our experience only allows for actions being done either through a body (e.g., a potter makes a pot) or through influence (e.g., a mother makes her —well-trained— 6-years old girl get ready to school by wanting her to do it). But the latter way of accounting for actions only works with conscious agents, not with material ones. Unless you believe in telekinesis, in fact, you will not find any case of my will being able to influence pure matter.

To solve the dilemma, one might postulate that God has Him/Herself created matter and that matter is, thus, obedient to Him/Her. This is not impossible (since it is not contradictory and omnipotence entails that everything which is not logically contradictory is possible for God), but very different from our experience. So much different, that it entails a departure from our being made —as explained in the OT— at God's image. This brings us back to the problem of our relation with our bodies. If it is only accidental and we embrace some form of dualism, then the departure from the image of a bodiless God is not that big. If, by contrast, we maintain that bodies are essential to our being persons (as seems to be suggested by the concept of a resurrection of bodies, which would in the first case be useless), then why has God no body? (The fact that in the Christian account the second person of the Trinity has a human body does not seem to me to solve the problem, since the Son only acquired a body through His human birth.)

Some other authors have tried different solutions. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955, now followed by Vito Mancuso and by Richard Rohr) has spoken of the world as God's manifestation, with Evolution being the completion of His design. In this sense, Sallie McFague has spoken of the world as "God's body". But McFague is quite keen to explain that this usage is purely metaphorical and instrumental to our re-appraisal of the value of the world (and of the bodies) and de Chardin's theology entails a strong departure from the Christian doctrine of the possibility to be saved through the unique event of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Now, let me ask a provoking question:

  • If bodies are constitutive of persons,
  • if we are made at God's image
  • if bodies are the only way we can act on matter
  • and given that God is omnipotent in this world and can act on matter according to His/Her will,

Why not assuming that God's body  is the world?* That S/He can act on it at will, just like we can move our limbs at will?

The main advantages of this position are that it explains how God can interact with unconscious matter and it maintain the parallelism between human persons and God. It does not end up in Pantheism, since the world is said to be God's body  and not directly God. The main disadvantage of this thesis, as I see it, is that it leaves us with an unsolved puzzled, namely: If the whole world is God's body, what are we? Are we part of God's body, although we also have bodies? And can we still have free will, although we are part of God's body? If not, then one of the main reasons for postualting that God has a body, namely the fact that we are done at His/Her image, vanishes…

How do philosophers on the Cocoon look at the issue?

 

(*Since nothing is really new, this position has been already upheld, in South India by Veṅkaṭanātha , (traditional dates: 1269–1370).)

 

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11 responses to “God’s body”

  1. Matt

    Would this be akin to Panentheism? One problem for the view is that traditional theists (esp. Judeo-Christians) hold that God is distinct from the world in the creator/created sense. For instance, the world is contingent; God is not or the world will end one day; God will not, etc.

    Reply
  2. Elisa Freschi

    Interesting point, Matt. Panentheism is surely a better definition than pantheism.
    As for the criticisms you raise, on the one hand, one might reply that just like God created the world (in the “orthodox” account), so He might have created His body, which happens to be coincidental with the world (thus, contingency would be preserved); on the other, however, the scenario of a disembodied God who creates the world has something very difficult to accept. Can a disembodied entity be a “person” in the same sense as we are persons? Can a person interact with matter without a body?
    Last, could not we understand the scriptural statements about the creation of the world as referring to the manifestation of His body which we know (i.e., with the Milk Way, the Sun, the Earth, etc. etc.)? Could not we think that the “end of the world” refers to the “end of this world”, given that there are also scriptural statements about the creation of “new heavens and a new earth” (Is 65.17, Rev. 21.2) and given that our bodies will allegedly also resurrect, so that we will need again a world?

    Reply
  3. Roger

    Yes, I’d say this is panentheism.
    As far as the orthodox Christian account goes, I think we have to rule out the world as God’s body; for, I think that the biblical accounts of creation, etc. rule this out.
    If you read the first three or so chapters of Genesis, for example, you get the account of God’s creating the world. This account mirrors similar accounts from other middle-eastern cultures in which the god creates the world as a sort of temple in which to be worshipped. What the god does is create the temple in stages (hence the 6 days of creation in the Genesis account), and then he places his image within the temple. According to the Christian account of things, God made humans his image bearers, and so were the image that God placed within the ‘temple’.
    The point is that what God created was a temple through which his image could be shown to the world. If the temple itself bears his image (since the temple would be God’s body, and it seems like God would be able to use his own body to manifest his image in ways like we use our bodies (allegedly) to bear God’s image), it wouldn’t make much sense to have humans as his image bearers.
    Moreover, according to the Christian account of things, God is outside (ontologically speaking–he might, e.g., be ‘within’ creation in another sense if he’s inside of time) his creation; he’s not a part of the world. This is evidenced (supposedly) by the (supposed) fact of God’s having become incarnate in Jesus. This required, so the story goes, God’s breaking into the created order. Where it used to be the case that Heaven and Earth were two sort of separate dimensions that were ‘missing’ each other, in Jesus, Heaven and Earth come together. (cf. NT Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God.) I think, at least on the orthodox Christian view, the world is something over which God is the caretaker. But it wouldn’t be appropriate to say that it is him (in the sense that, even if I’m a substance dualist, I might say that my body is me, even though I don’t mean this strictly).
    Additionally, why wouldn’t/couldn’t a disembodied entity be a person in the sense that we are persons? What does personhood have to do with embodiment?

    Reply
  4. Elisa Freschi

    Roger, if you would say, as I believe you would, that for human persons being embodied is a constitutive element, and given that we might discuss about the status of persons of dolphins and the like, but we have no experience of disembodied persons (as are, perhaps, the angels), why are you surprised at my question? Saying that God created us “at His image”, i.e., as persons, like He is, and then assuming such a big difference between our being persons and His, does this not seem problematic to you?

    Reply
  5. Roger

    I would think there was a problem only if i thought that there was a big difference between God’s being a person and our being persons. But, I don’t think there is a big difference. I think we’re persons just like God is; that is, our personhood is defined by the same characteristics as God’s personhood (whatever those characteristics are, if there are any).
    I guess my surprise is based on an assumption. I assume (but do not know) that, were God, or an angel, or a whatever, were to speak to you, you would assume that that thing speaking to you was a person. You wouldn’t stop and wonder ‘well, wait a second, this thing speaking to me isn’t embodied; so, is it a person that’s speaking to me?’ No, I’d think you’d just assume, without any thought, that that thing speaking to you is a person. It is speaking to you, after all.

    Reply
  6. elisa freschi

    Roger, of course I would assume that it is a person who is speaking to me, since S/He is speaking to me, but you know what? Speaking involves being embodied (how else could you have a voice?). I know, there might be other possible ways of accounting for that and God’s power is boundless, but still it seems to me that my possible encounters with God are via His/Her having a body of some sort (be it the burning bush, or the breeze, or the voice…).

    Reply
  7. Roger

    Ah, yep. Good point. Still though, why think that because all of our experiences of persons are experiences of embodied persons (what else would they be given our being embodied?), that embodiment is a necessary condition for personhood? Especially since we can imagine persons that aren’t embodied (like God, or angels, or demons, or etc.).

    Reply
  8. Roger

    It’s been a while, but I think Aquinas held the view (or a view) that God is a kind of material thing, but the sort of ‘material’ that God is isn’t the sort of material that we are. So, maybe on Thomas’s view, God is embodied in the sense that He’s a kind of material thing (in the sort of way I just mentioned).

    Reply
  9. Elisa Freschi

    Thanks, I will try to trace this passage in the Summa. As for the non emobodied persons, the easy objection would be that we have no experience at all of them (in fact, experience somehow presupposes embodiement and even the less “corporeal” mystical experiences speak of “presences”, “warmth”, “light” and the like). In other words, the idea of demons, angels and of a disembodied God might be nothing more than a human construct (obtained by subtraction and due to the influence of a pre-Christian dualism). Just wondering…

    Reply
  10. Cecil Burrow

    What has been ignored by everyone thus far is the divinity of the divine, and the complications that arise when the essence of an individual does not lie in its materiality but in something else. Although the standard connection between corporeality and causal potency is epistemically necessary, it is not metaphysically necessary.

    Reply
  11. Elisa Freschi

    Thank you for the contribution, Cecil. I am not sure I understand your point, though.
    1) by body I was hinting at a living organism (one which ensures the possibility of experience and interaction), not at matter in itself.
    2) how can you be sure that the connection between corporeality and action is not metaphysically necessary?

    Reply

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