God Is a Physical Being

[JAL]

I
John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Since the church has, for 2,000 years, indoctrinated us to read a passage in one way, and in one way only, it is virtually impossible to extricate ourselves from that perspective as to entertain a different one. But if we're going to try to be objective interpreters, we should make such an effort, now and then. Let's give it a try, shall we?

When I think of a wind as a set of lightweight sparse particles, I tend to think of the term gas. The point is that every language has terminology "buckets" for phenomena. Thus for example, I would tend to fit the term wind into a category/bucket called "gas". Of course some languages offer a broader choice of words than others. What term do you suppose the ancient Hebrews used for a phenomenon fitting the following description:

"A physical substance that is normally invisible."

How should such substance be classified? Under what bucket? I submit to you that the term favored in the ancient Hebrew mindset was ruach (breath/wind). Note, however, that the same description applies to the inner man of any human being, and to the Third Person as well. All of these can be described the same way:

"A physical substance that is normally invisible."

and thus all of them classify as breath/wind. They all fit into that bucket/category. This is powerfully reinforced at Gen 2:7:

"Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

Charles Hodge admitted of this verse that God is here seen to infuse Adam's soul into him. And it's depicted in terms of wind/breath! Thus it appears that the divine Breath (Pneuma) is here seen respirationally pushing a created pneuma into Adam's body. This implies a physical soul, because only a physical soul could be pushed.

Anyway that's the ancient Hebrew mindset, reinforced by Scripture. To summarize, all souls classify as breath/wind. Souls are of type breath/wind (similar to saying they are of type "gas"). Thus the verse:

"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth"

is a poor translation. It doesn't comport well with Gen 2:7. Here's a better translation:


"God is wind [i.e. He is of type breath/wind], and they that worship him must worship him in Wind and in truth."

 

[Andrewn]

For example, God need not be omnipresent in the absolute sense to be an effective ruler and administer justice perfectly. Rather, He merely needs to have His hand on every particle of matter in the universe as to monitor and supervise it closely.

I think this is called the minimal view of omnipresence.

"Omnipresence means minimally that there is no place to which God’s knowledge and power do not extend."

The following quotes from Wikipedia seem to agree with this view:

"William Lane Craig states that we shouldn’t think of God as being in space in the sense of being spread out like an invisible ether throughout space. He is not like an invisible gas that is everywhere present in space. This would be incorrect for several reasons. For one, it would mean that if the universe is finite, which is perfectly possible, then God would be finite. We do not want to say that because God is infinite. More seriously, if God is spread out throughout space, like an invisible ether, that means that he is not fully present everywhere."

"Marbaniang points out that omnipresence doesn't mean divine occupation of all space, nor divine distribution over all space, nor indwelling of every entity, nor that God cannot move in space, nor the divinification of the universe; but means that God is fully present every-where, and that God can do different things at different places at the same time."

Omnipresence - Wikipedia

I don't personally believe the anthropomorphic view of God. But Pope Theophilus of Alexandria did (385 - 412 AD). He was one of the 3 influential patriarchs at that time, the others being those of Rome and Antioch. He condemned Origen and John Chrysostom and was accompanied by his nephew Cyril to Constantinople in 403 and there presided at the "Synod of the Oak" that deposed John Chrysostom.

Pope Theophilus of Alexandria - Wikipedia

After Theophilus' death, his nephew and successor Cyril came to be knows as Pope Cyril the Great. He presided over the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus that condemned Nestorius in 431 AD and later was canonized as a saint in both eastern and western Christendom. But he never condemned his uncle's anthropomorphic view of God.

I'm not aware that anyone condemned Pope Theophilus. But in Eastern Orthodoxy, Greek philosophers are considered "forerunners" of Christianity. They have icons for Homer, Thucydides, Aristotle, Plato and Plutarch.

https://www.omhksea.org/archives/6141

Some of these philosophers have also been quite influential in western Christianity. Christians did _not_ believe in strict Sola Scriptura, perhaps not even the Reformers.

"The entire concept of God occupying physical space, or having any category of spatial reference apply to him was completely rejected by pure Judaic monotheism."

So, even Judaism rejects the anthropomorphic view. There is perhaps no reason to believe in strict Sola Scriptura, so long our beliefs do not contradict the NT.

 

[A_Thinker]

Since the church has, for 2,000 years, indoctrinated us to read a passage in one way, and in one way only, it is virtually impossible to extricate ourselves from that perspective as to entertain a different one. But if we're going to try to be objective interpreters, we should make such an effort, now and then. Let's give it a try, shall we?

When I think of a wind as a set of lightweight sparse particles, I tend to think of the term gas. The point is that every language has terminology "buckets" for phenomena. Thus for example, I would tend to fit the term wind into a category/bucket called "gas". Of course some languages offer a broader choice of words than others. What term do you suppose the ancient Hebrews used for a phenomenon fitting the following description:

"A physical substance that is normally invisible."

How should such substance be classified? Under what bucket? I submit to you that the term favored in the ancient Hebrew mindset was ruach (breath/wind). Note, however, that the same description applies to the inner man of any human being, and to the Third Person as well. All of these can be described the same way:

"A physical substance that is normally invisible."

and thus all of them classify as breath/wind. They all fit into that bucket/category. This is powerfully reinforced at Gen 2:7:

"Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

Charles Hodge admitted of this verse that God is here seen to infuse Adam's soul into him. And it's depicted in terms of wind/breath! Thus it appears that the divine Breath (Pneuma) is here seen respirationally pushing a created pneuma into Adam's body. This implies a physical soul, because only a physical soul could be pushed.

Anyway that's the ancient Hebrew mindset, reinforced by Scripture. To summarize, all souls classify as breath/wind. Souls are of type breath/wind (similar to saying they are of type "gas"). Thus the verse:

"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth"

is a poor translation. It doesn't comport well with Gen 2:7. Here's a better translation:


"God is wind [i.e. He is of type breath/wind], and they that worship him must worship him in Wind and in truth."

So ... why would Jesus say that the Spirit is ... like the wind ???

 

[JAL]

So ... why would Jesus say that the Spirit is ... like the wind ???

Where did He say that?

 

[A_Thinker]

Where did He say that?

This passage certainly implies it ...

John 4:8 The wind blows where it desires, and you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from, or where it goes: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

 

[friend of]

God is Spirit. Those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

 

[JAL]

I don't personally believe the anthropomorphic view of God.

Let's bear in mind it's not just a "view" - i.e. not just one of many possible "translations" of a verse. Rather it is a description of actual physical events recorded in Scripture, combined with an inability to explain those events in non-physical terms.

Again, leadership needs to be candid, honest, forthcoming. Having rejected the biblical data as a bunch of misleading disinformation, they need to openly acknowledge this decision in the pulpits, and admit they have more confidence in Plato than Scripture. At least the Catholic Encylopedia was quite frank on this point:

"Christian thinkers, from the beginning, were confronted with the question: How are we to reconcile reason with revelation, science with faith, philosophy with theology?...The [early Christian] apologists met the situation by a theory that was as audacious as it must have been disconcerting to the pagans. They advanced the explanation that all the wisdom of Plato and the other Greeks was due to the inspiration of the Logos; that it was God's truth, and, therefore, could not be in contradiction with the supernatural revelation contained in the Gospels. It was a hypothesis calculated not only to silence a pagan opponent, but also to work constructively. We find it in St. Basil, in Origen, and even in St. Augustine." (Catholic Ency on Scholaticism).

Did you catch that? The church fathers placed Plato on a par with Scripture! In their view, Greek philosophy had the same authority as Scripture! That is your theological heritage. That is where DDS (Doctrine of Divine Simplicity) came from. By no means have I "anthropomorphized" God. I've simply accepted the biblical data in contrast to those who would Platonize Him.

 

[Andrewn]

According to Charles Hodge, the orthodox view, which he accepted, is that God fills all space repletely/plenally. Thus the fullness of God is fully present at every point in space (as opposed to being more or less sparsely distributed, volumetrically, throughout space). This assumption flatly contradicts the biblical data. How so? It contradicts the notion of an outpouring of the Third Person. If God is already fully present everywhere, there is no meaningful sense in which He can translocate. In fact Jesus foretold Pentecost as trading places. Meaning, the Son would return to the throne and, in His stead, the Third person would descend down here. And that's precisely what happened.

You make a good point and I've often thought of this difficulty. Perhaps someone here can explain it to me. In fact, few months ago, I asked about Christ's assertion to remain with believers and in believers and all the answers I received were that He was present in the person of the Holy Spirit. Christians apparently don't believe in omnipresence of God the Son. The issue of translocation may be partly resolved if rather than the orthodox view, one believes in the minimal view I described in my previous post.

 

[JAL]

This passage certainly implies it ...

John 4:8 The wind blows where it desires, and you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from, or where it goes: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

Wow. Did you even bother to read my response to you at post 51? Evidently not.

And I think you meant John 3:8, not 4:8.

 

[JAL]

God is Spirit. Those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

See post 61. Probably 51 would serve well here too.

 

[JAL]

You make a good point and I've often thought of this difficulty. Perhaps someone here can explain it to me. In fact, few months ago, I asked about Christ's assertion to remain with believers and in believers and all the answers I received were that He was present in the person of the Holy Spirit. Christians apparently don't believe in omnipresence of God the Son. The issue of translocation may be partly resolved if rather than the orthodox view, one believes in the minimal view I described in my previous post.

I think they already gave you the correct answer. Having the Third Person inside us is precisely what it means to have Christ in us.

Traditional theology is plagued with a tendency to absolutize everything to the extent of prematurely condemning doctrines a bit more flexible. While I do believe in three distinct Persons, I am not convinced that the distinction between Christ and the Third Person is so absolute as to be devoid of cognitive overlap. In some sense they form one God, and thus are, in some sense one-minded, while sustaining three separate volitions.

It is the same with the human brain. Which cell in your brain is the real you? You are in some sense one person, and yet a multiplicity as well.

 

[lsume]

The church father Tertullian (200 AD) was rightly a staunch materialist who realized that all of the biblical data - not just some of it, literally all of it - favors a wholly physical God. In fact the entire exegetical case for an immaterial God is predicated on the blatant, exegetically unsupportable mistranslation of the terms pneuma and ruach (breath/wind) as "spirit", due to the influence of a Platonic philosophy known as The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS). The term "spirit" is, in a nutshell, an English term unjustifiable exegetically. Moreover the human soul (i.e. the human pneuma) is truistically/tautologically material on an essentially empirical basis - for example Tertullian's tautological argument for the materiality of the human soul has never been refuted.

Understand that I'm a staunch Trinitarian, like Tertullian. In fact:
(1) Tertullian is the first person known to use the word Trinity.
(2) Phillip Schaff, one of the world's foremost experts on othodoxy, considered Tertullian to be one of the best defenders of orthodoxy in church history.

This discussion began on another thread closed at the request of the opening poster. I will copy some of that material, as it pertains to my posts, over to this thread.

Please consider seeking Him with all that you have. Seek and ye shall find.

 

[A_Thinker]

Wow. Did you even bother to read my response to you at post 51? Evidently not.

And I think you meant John 3:8, not 4:8.

But you're trying to use scripture to firmly establish the nature of God.

If God created the Earth, and all that is required to support life on Earth, which would include the surrounding space ... and, perhaps, the entire universe, ... then that might be an impossible task.

The Bible writings, to me, suggest that God has a nature which is different than ours, whether wind-like or not.

And what is "spiritual" anyway. For the writers of the scriptures, I think that it simply means, ... something different than us.

God is not the wind, for God has attributes has attributes that wind doesn't have. Honestly, God has attributes that matter doesn't have. Recall that Jesus entered a locked room when He first revealed Himself to His disciples after His resurrection.

God has attributes that we don't experience in the physical world. He is of a different nature than what we experience in the physical world. He is Spirit ... or different ... in a way that incorporates all of His described attributes.

So ... Spirit is just a name for the nature which incorporates ALL of our experienced attributes of God. We don't know exactly what it is.

We just know that it is different ...

 

[JAL]

But you're trying to use scripture to firmly establish the nature of God.

If God created the Earth, and all that is required to support life on Earth, which would include the surrounding space ... and, perhaps, the entire universe, ... then that might be an impossible task.

The Bible writings, to me, suggest that God has a nature which is different than ours, whether wind-like or not.

And what is "spiritual" anyway. For the writers of the scriptures, I think that it simply means, ... something different than us.

God is not the wind, for God has attributes has attributes that wind doesn't have. Honestly, God has attributes that matter doesn't have. Recall that Jesus entered a locked room when He first revealed Himself to His disciples after His resurrection.

God has attributes that we don't experience in the physical world. He is of a different nature than what we experience in the physical world. He is Spirit ... or different ... in a way that incorporates all of His described attributes.

You seem to be rambling. I don't see that any of these points are clear, cogent, consistent, or proven.

Recall that Jesus entered a locked room when He first revealed Himself to His disciples after His resurrection.

See post 28, for example, and 29 as well.

 

[A_Thinker]

You seem to be rambling. I don't see that any of these points are clear, cogent, consistent, or proven.

You seem to have resorted to ad hominem. That simply means that you have no further viable counter-argument.

 

[JAL]

You seem to have resorted to ad hominem. That simply means that you have no further viable counter-argument.

Oh trust me, even though I've already mentioned several passages rather decisive on this debate, I still have a few more not yet cited.

And you have nothing, because there is no plausible exegetical case for "magical immaterial substance". Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you don't have ANY evidence.

 

[Andrewn]

In some sense they form one God, and thus are, in some sense one-minded, while sustaining three separate volitions.

Having the same volition is important in defining the Holy Trinity. Even Mormons believe this.

The church fathers placed Plato on a par with Scripture! In their view, Greek philosophy had the same authority as Scripture! That is your theological heritage. That is where DDS (Doctrine of Divine Simplicity) came from.

If it's good enough for Church fathers, it's good enough for me .

 

[A_Thinker]

Some insects can bat their wings 1000 times per second. Now imagine how fast Yahweh can move. Thus in the blink of an eye, He can accomplish amazing sleight of hand, for example:
(1) He could part the material wall, push you through the gap, and then reassemble the wall. (Kinda reminds me of parting the Red Sea).
(2) Permeation. He could simply diffuse your particles through the spaces between the wall's molecules, pushing them through.

We can't do that ... in our PHYSICAL nature.

This is simply another example of God having a different nature from us.

Similar to ... appearing a column of flame/smoke to the Israelites fleeing Egypt.

... or ... a hand writing on Belshazzar's banquet hall
... or ... the Shekinah glory which came and rested upon the Tabernacle
... or ... a dove descending upon Jesus at his baptism

Nothing in our natural physical world ... has all of the attributes which are variously attributed to God in the scriptures.

P.S. in addition to WIND, God, in the scriptures, is also likened to FIRE, FOOD, WATER, LIGHT, a VINE, etc.

 

[fewme]

Does God have gravity?

 

[DamianWarS]

The church father Tertullian (200 AD) was rightly a staunch materialist who realized that all of the biblical data - not just some of it, literally all of it - favors a wholly physical God. In fact the entire exegetical case for an immaterial God is predicated on the blatant, exegetically unsupportable mistranslation of the terms pneuma and ruach (breath/wind) as "spirit", due to the influence of a Platonic philosophy known as The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS). The term "spirit" is, in a nutshell, an English term unjustifiable exegetically. Moreover the human soul (i.e. the human pneuma) is truistically/tautologically material on an essentially empirical basis - for example Tertullian's tautological argument for the materiality of the human soul has never been refuted.

Understand that I'm a staunch Trinitarian, like Tertullian. In fact:
(1) Tertullian is the first person known to use the word Trinity.
(2) Phillip Schaff, one of the world's foremost experts on othodoxy, considered Tertullian to be one of the best defenders of orthodoxy in church history.

This discussion began on another thread closed at the request of the opening poster. I will copy some of that material, as it pertains to my posts, over to this thread.

"material", as we understand it, is God's creation (not God) and whatever God is he is not his creation. So if God can be called a physical being how do we define what is physical and how does this fit into an infinite divine space?