Bodies of God in the Bible? Divine Incorporeality, Divine Presence, and Revelation

Abstract

This article will address some claims in recent biblical scholarship about God having a body. This will involve first considering what recent advocates of divine embodiment in the Bible are actually asserting. The following section will then examine the conception of a body that one finds in Aristotle and some Christian authors like Thomas Aquinas in order to discern whether or in what sense proponents of divine embodiment in the Bible in fact present something contrary to the doctrine of divine incorporeality. There, the article also offers a few thoughts on why one might want to retain the doctrine of divine incorporeality and contend that one can maintain divine incorporeality while still making sense of the Bible’s corporeal or anthropomorphic descriptions of God.