God Is a Physical Being

[Saint Steven]

Where does it say spirit is a substance?

This was as close as I could get. Is faith physical? It has substance.

Hebrews 11:1 KJV
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

 

[Saint Steven]

I think supernatural means just that. A superior form of physicality.

Why does God need a throne to sit on? (careful)

 

[Daniel Marsh]

Which Church Fathers acknowledge that angels are physical, do you have examples?

"Reply to Objection 6. As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xv): "Many persons affirm that they have had the experience, or have heard from such as have experienced it, that the Satyrs and Fauns, whom the common folk call incubi, have often presented themselves before women, and have sought and procured intercourse with them. Hence it is folly to deny it. But God's holy angels could not fall in such fashion before the deluge. Hence by the sons of God are to be understood the sons of Seth, who were good; while by the daughters of men the Scripture designates those who sprang from the race of Cain. Nor is it to be wondered at that giants should be born of them; for they were not all giants, albeit there were many more before than after the deluge." Still if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from the seed of men taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a woman, and afterwards of a man; just as they take the seed of other things for other generating purposes, as Augustine says (De Trin. ii.), so that the person born is not the child of a demon, but of a man." SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The angels in comparison with bodies (Prima Pars, Q. 51)

 

[Daniel Marsh]

Um...Is CPR a physical process, in your view? Or immaterial magic? Again, there is a huge burden of proof on those who seem to be proposing fairytales at odds with, and disconnected from, both biblical and empircal reality.

Have you considered the phenomenology of divine Fire in the OT? Based on what's documented there, why would you propose or consider anything OTHER than physical fire? (Oh that's right. Plato said so). Tell me what part of the following anecdote strikes you as clearly an immaterial Fire in action:

"Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench." (1Kings 18).

Did you see what the Lord did? He sent the Fire INTO THE VICINITY. As I pointed out earlier, if God works by magic, He would simply enchant "Abracadabra" from afar (no need to venture into the actual vicinity). Clearly, these are physical dynamics.

Again, He is outpoured directly into your body - He comes into the vicinity. That makes ZERO SENSE, if He operates magically from a distance, instead of physically at hand. Shall we consider an example? Pentecost. Explain to me how an immaterial outpouring manages to vibrate the larynxes of 120 people with foreign languages. As the noted Pentecostal theologian Howard Ervin pointed out, this attests to a matter/energy continuum (his term), a physical Presence of the Third Person.


Right. You don't believe the Scriptures. You believe Plato. (I thought we discussed that already?).

Maybe you should have considered Augustine? He wrote:

“Whoever saw that dove [descend upon Christ] and that fire [at Pentecost],” he wrote, “saw them with their eyes….in corporeal forms” (Augustine, NPNF Part 1 Vol 3 Book 2 chap 6).

Augustine‟s additional examples of “corporeal forms [were] the fire of the bush, and the pillar of cloud or of fire, and the lightnings in the mount.” (Ibid).

No? Augustine is not worth listening to? Maybe the ISBE, composed of 200 evangelical scholars? The ISBE commented on the "glory" of God, as manifested to Moses when God walked by him:

"The glory of Yahweh is clearly a physical manifestation, a form with hands and rear parts, of which Moses is permitted to catch only a passing glimpse, but the implication is clear that he actually does see Yahweh with his physical eyes."

That passage about Moses merits a little more commentary on the blatant physicality of it. Maybe I'll come back to it again.

Exodus 3
English Standard Version
The Burning Bush
3 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”

 

[Daniel Marsh]

Here's my source. Lewis Sperry Chafer, president and founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, insisted that angels are physical since:

"The term spirit…in both Hebrew and Greek is primarily a material term, indicating wind, air, or breath" (Lewis Sperry Chafer, Angelology Part 1, Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol 98:392 (1941), p. 401).

In that article Chafer named several church fathers who viewed angels as physical: Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and Caesarius

Lewis Sperry Chafer is not a church father.

Produce the quotes from Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and Caesarius with links to newadvent.org pages where the quotes comes from.


Psalm 104:4
Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:

 

[Daniel Marsh]

Here is Origen,

"
Chapter 1. On God.
1. I know that some will attempt to say that, even according to the declarations of our own Scriptures, God is a body, because in the writings of Moses they find it said, that our God is a consuming fire; and in the Gospel according to John, that God is a Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Fire and spirit, according to them, are to be regarded as nothing else than a body. Now, I should like to ask these persons what they have to say respecting that passage where it is declared that God is light; as John writes in his Epistle, God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. Truly He is that light which illuminates the whole understanding of those who are capable of receiving truth, as is said in the thirty-sixth Psalm, In Your light we shall see light. For what other light of God can be named, in which any one sees light, save an influence of God, by which a man, being enlightened, either thoroughly sees the truth of all things, or comes to know God Himself, who is called the truth? Such is the meaning of the expression, In Your light we shall see light; i.e., in Your word and wisdom which is Your Son, in Himself we shall see You the Father. Because He is called light, shall He be supposed to have any resemblance to the light of the sun? Or how should there be the slightest ground for imagining, that from that corporeal light any one could derive the cause of knowledge, and come to the understanding of the truth?
2. If, then, they acquiesce in our assertion, which reason itself has demonstrated, regarding the nature of light, and acknowledge that God cannot be understood to be a body in the sense that light is, similar reasoning will hold true of the expression a consuming fire. For what will God consume in respect of His being fire? Shall He be thought to consume material substance, as wood, or hay, or stubble? And what in this view can be called worthy of the glory of God, if He be a fire, consuming materials of that kind? But let us reflect that God does indeed consume and utterly destroy; that He consumes evil thoughts, wicked actions, and sinful desires, when they find their way into the minds of believers; and that, inhabiting along with His Son those souls which are rendered capable of receiving His word and wisdom, according to His own declaration, I and the Father shall come, and We shall make our abode with him? He makes them, after all their vices and passions have been consumed, a holy temple, worthy of Himself. Those, moreover, who, on account of the expression God is a Spirit, think that He is a body, are to be answered, I think, in the following manner. It is the custom of sacred Scripture, when it wishes to designate anything opposed to this gross and solid body, to call it spirit, as in the expression, The letter kills, but the spirit gives life, where there can be no doubt that by letter are meant bodily things, and by spirit intellectual things, which we also term spiritual. The apostle, moreover, says, Even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart: nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. For so long as any one is not converted to a spiritual understanding, a veil is placed over his heart, with which veil, i.e., a gross understanding, Scripture itself is said or thought to be covered: and this is the meaning of the statement that a veil was placed over the countenance of Moses when he spoke to the people, i.e., when the law was publicly read aloud. But if we turn to the Lord, where also is the word of God, and where the Holy Spirit reveals spiritual knowledge, then the veil is taken away, and with unveiled face we shall behold the glory of the Lord in the holy Scriptures.

3. And since many saints participate in the Holy Spirit, He cannot therefore be understood to be a body, which being divided into corporeal parts, is partaken of by each one of the saints; but He is manifestly a sanctifying power, in which all are said to have a share who have deserved to be sanctified by His grace. And in order that what we say may be more easily understood, let us take an illustration from things very dissimilar. There are many persons who take a part in the science or art of medicine: are we therefore to suppose that those who do so take to themselves the particles of some body called medicine, which is placed before them, and in this way participate in the same? Or must we not rather understand that all who with quick and trained minds come to understand the art and discipline itself, may be said to be partakers of the art of healing? But these are not to be deemed altogether parallel instances in a comparison of medicine to the Holy Spirit, as they have been adduced only to establish that that is not necessarily to be considered a body, a share in which is possessed by many individuals. For the Holy Spirit differs widely from the method or science of medicine, in respect that the Holy Spirit is an intellectual existence and subsists and exists in a peculiar manner, whereas medicine is not at all of that nature.

4. But we must pass on to the language of the Gospel itself, in which it is declared that God is a Spirit, and where we have to show how that is to be understood agreeably to what we have stated. For let us inquire on what occasion these words were spoken by the Saviour, before whom He uttered them, and what was the subject of investigation. We find, without any doubt, that He spoke these words to the Samaritan woman, saying to her, who thought, agreeably to the Samaritan view, that God ought to be worshipped on Mount Gerizim, that God is a Spirit. For the Samaritan woman, believing Him to be a Jew, was inquiring of Him whether God ought to be worshipped in Jerusalem or on this mountain; and her words were, All our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where we ought to worship. To this opinion of the Samaritan woman, therefore, who imagined that God was less rightly or duly worshipped, according to the privileges of the different localities, either by the Jews in Jerusalem or by the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, the Saviour answered that he who would follow the Lord must lay aside all preference for particular places, and thus expressed Himself: The hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor on this mountain shall the true worshippers worship the Father. God is a Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And observe how logically He has joined together the spirit and the truth: He called God a Spirit, that He might distinguish Him from bodies; and He named Him the truth, to distinguish Him from a shadow or an image. For they who worshipped in Jerusalem worshipped God neither in truth nor in spirit, being in subjection to the shadow or image of heavenly things; and such also was the case with those who worshipped on Mount Gerizim."

CHURCH FATHERS: De Principiis, Book I (Origen)

 

[Daniel Marsh]

Here is Tertullian,

"But you ask what becomes of the dove's body, after the return of the Spirit back to heaven, and similarly in the case of the angels. Their withdrawal was effected in the same manner as their appearance had been. If you had seen how their production out of nothing had been effected, you would have known also the process of their return to nothing. If the initial step was out of sight, so was also the final one. Still there was solidity in their bodily substance, whatever may have been the force by which the body became visible. What is written cannot but have been.

...

Let them, then, prove to us that those angels derived their flesh from the stars. If they do not prove it because it is not written, neither will the flesh of Christ get its origin therefrom, for which they borrowed the precedent of the angels. It is plain that the angels bore a flesh which was not naturally their own; their nature being of a spiritual substance, although in some sense peculiar to themselves, corporeal; and yet they could be transfigured into human shape, and for the time be able to appear and have intercourse with men. Since, therefore, it has not been told us whence they obtained their flesh, it remains for us not to doubt in our minds that a property of angelic power is this, to assume to themselves bodily shape out of no material substance.

"
CHURCH FATHERS: On the Flesh of Christ (Tertullian)

 

[Daniel Marsh]

" for He makes those spiritual beings, the angels—"

CHURCH FATHERS: Against Marcion, Book II (Tertullian)

 

[Daniel Marsh]

substance

Hebrews 11:1
Easy-to-Read Version
Faith
11 Faith is what makes real the things we hope for. It is proof of what we cannot see.

Hebrews 11:1
Expanded Bible
What Is Faith?
11 Faith means ·being sure [the assurance; or the tangible reality; or the sure foundation] of the things we hope for and ·knowing that something is real even if we do not see it [the conviction/assurance/evidence about things not seen].

Definition of SUBSTANCE

 

[JAL]

Matter is all we know for sure of, on a daily basis.

After scrolling through this thread a major thing is missing, proof that
God Is a Physical Being, it is simply assumed.

"

Right. Such SHOULD be assumed until exegeticallly demonstrated otherwise, because matter is all we know for sure. The burden of proof lies on those who postulate fairytales of magical immaterial substance.

And by matter I simply mean "tangible", not necessarily matter arranged as protons, electrons, neutrons, such as the fossil record.

 

[JAL]

No, burden of proof rests on you. All you have done is quote non literal passages.

Non-literal? Stop telling lies. On this thread I've covered dozens of literal passages, for example Moses said it was the physical Breath of God that physically parted the waters of the Red Sea. An intangible Spirit would be unable to do such tangible feats. My position is thus backed with hard evidence from Scripture, plenty of examples like that one. All immaterialism does is contradict the hard evidence of Scripture.

 

[JAL]

Psalm 36:7
How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

So, now God is big bird?

You're darn right He is a big bird. The divine Word is a tangible substance spread more or less sparsely throughout the universe that He created, sustaining and monitoring it and upholding it, "sustaining all things by the Word of His power" (Heb 1:3). That means He exists in all possible shapes including eagles for example. Which means there are no valid metaphors for God - all such passages are literal. You know that immense wings can fan you, right? Take a look at the rushing Wind that fanned the 120 on Pentecost, or take a look at Charles Finney's autobiography where he described an outpouring that seemed "to fan me, like immense wings".

 

[JAL]

Lewis Sperry Chafer is not a church father.

He was president and founder of one of the most esteemed evangelical seminaries in church history.

Produce the quotes from Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and Caesarius with links to newadvent.org pages where the quotes comes from.

Scholars of that level are usually correct about church history - otherwise their peers love to rebut them. Produce a shred of evidence that he was wrong about those church fathers.

And everyone knows Tertullian was a staunch materialist.

 

[JAL]

Psalm 104:4
Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:

Stop quoting English translations. You don't win a debate by reasserting what is in debate. The burden of proof lies on those who would tout "spirit" as a valid translation. What we know for sure is that 100 times in the OT, for starters, the underlying Hebrew term means breath/wind - nobody disputes that fact. There is NO passage clearly indicating a magical immaterial substance named "spirit".

 

[JAL]

Where does it say spirit is a substance?

So spirit is not a substance? So:
(1) It's not a material substance?
(2) It's not an immaterial substance?

Thus it doesn't exist? What's your position?

 

[JAL]

What is light?

Excellent question for Moses, when he had to put a physical veil over his face to restrain the physical Light. That event can ONLY be described in physical terms. And lots of other passages point to the divine Light in physical terms, for example the divine Fire radiated Light at night to illuminate Israel's travels.

 

[JAL]

Here is Tertullian,

"But you ask what becomes of the dove's body, after the return of the Spirit back to heaven, and similarly in the case of the angels. Their withdrawal was effected in the same manner as their appearance had been. If you had seen how their production out of nothing had been effected, you would have known also the process of their return to nothing. If the initial step was out of sight, so was also the final one. Still there was solidity in their bodily substance, whatever may have been the force by which the body became visible. What is written cannot but have been.

...

Let them, then, prove to us that those angels derived their flesh from the stars. If they do not prove it because it is not written, neither will the flesh of Christ get its origin therefrom, for which they borrowed the precedent of the angels. It is plain that the angels bore a flesh which was not naturally their own; their nature being of a spiritual substance, although in some sense peculiar to themselves, corporeal; and yet they could be transfigured into human shape, and for the time be able to appear and have intercourse with men. Since, therefore, it has not been told us whence they obtained their flesh, it remains for us not to doubt in our minds that a property of angelic power is this, to assume to themselves bodily shape out of no material substance.

"
CHURCH FATHERS: On the Flesh of Christ (Tertullian)

Tertullian wrote in Latin. The term 'Spirit' in latin (Spiritus) was etymologically rooted in physical breath/wind:

noun
breath
spiritus, halitus, anima, sufflatus, subflatus, respiratio
wind
ventus, spiritus, eurus, aura, anima, zephyrus

In the passage you cited, he said:

"Still there was solidity in their bodily substance,"

Solid means tangible.

 

[trophy33]

Can you prove that the physical world even exists?

 

[JAL]

Can you prove that the physical world even exists?

I can't prove anything 100%. But if you don't believe in matter, I trust you will have no objections if a perpetrator hits you with a baseball bat.

 

[trophy33]

I can't prove anything 100%. But if you don't believe in matter, I trust you will have no objections if a perpetrator hits you with a baseball bat.

I will have an objection to my experience it caused, but this experience is not material at all.

But really, if you split a physical object into smaller parts and again into smaller parts, you will, somewhere in the end, get immaterial, nonphysical basis like vibrations or even just pure mathematics. The material, physical world is just a temporary illusion.

So, God cannot be physical, because He is unchanging.