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Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

David L. Paulsen
David L. Paulsen
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University
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Extract

The view that God is incorporeal, without body or parts, has been the hallmark of Christian orthodoxy, but in the beginning it was not so. In this article I show that ordinary Christians for at least the first three centuries of the current era commonly (and perhaps generally) believed God to be corporeal. The belief was abandoned (and then only gradually) as Neoplatonism became more and more entrenched as the dominant world view of Christian thinkers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 83 , Issue 2 , April 1990 , pp. 105 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1990

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References

1 For a historical study of the introduction of Platonism into early Christian thought and its subsequent entrenchment as the dominant world view of Christian thinkers, see Casey, Robert P., “Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Platonism,” HTR 18 (1925) 39–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; esp. 39–45 and 73–101.

2 Harnack, Adolph, History of Dogma (7 vols.; New York: Dover, 1961) 1. 180 n. 1Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 2. 255 n. 5.

4 Murray, Gilbert, Five Stages of Greek Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955) 9–10Google Scholar. For an excellent study of the popular Greek understanding of the gods, see also Nilsson, Martin P., Greek Folk Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

5 See Marmorstein, Arthur, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God: Essays in Anthropomorphism (New York: Ktav, 1937)Google Scholar. Professor Marmorstein points out that the issue of divine embodiment was vigorously debated by opposing rabbinic schools during the early centuries of the current era. Those who interpreted the scriptures literally understood God to be corporeal. Hellenized Jews, on the other hand, followed Philo's lead in attempting to purge the Old Testament of its anthropomorphic and anthropopathic ideas by means of allegorical exegesis.

6 See Cherbonnier, E. LaB., “The Logic of Biblical Anthropomorphism,” HTR 55 (1962) 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cherbonnier provides a clear description of the anthropomorphic God of the biblical record, particularly as contrasted with later mystical/Neoplatonist views of deity.

7 To mention a few, consider Genl:26-27; 5:1; 9:6 (God creates man in his own image and likeness); Gen 32:30 (I have seen God face to face); Exod 34:10 (they saw the God of Israel, there was under his feet…); Exod 33:11 (the Lord spake unto Moses, face to face); Exod 33:23 (thou shah see my back parts; but my face shall not); Acts 7:56 (Stephen sees the Son of man standing on the right hand of God); Phil 2:6 (our vile body… fashioned like unto his glorious body). Cherbonnier acknowledges, of course, that there is considerable variety in scripture, including some passages that apparently reject an overly simple anthropomorphism—e.g., Hos 11:9, “For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst.” However, he points out that standard proof texts such as these do not indicate that the later prophets abandoned anthropomorphism. Rather, he claims, that modern scholarship, “by restoring these passages to their context and so recovering their orginal meaning, reverses such an interpretation.” Ibid., 188.

8 Though the philosophic critique of popular anthropomorphic conceptions of deity has its roots in ancient Greece, Philo Judaeus (20 BCE-40 CE), a Jewish Platonist educated in Alexandria, appears to be the first to apply allegorical interpretations to the anthropomorphic and corporealist passages in the Old Testament. Albinus, a second-century non-Christian and Middle Platonist, followed Philo's lead and, in turn, greatly influenced Origen and patristic thinkers. For an insightful examination of the reasons why the later church fathers rejected the primitive view of a corporeal deity see Jantzen, Grace, “Theological Tradition and Divine Incorporeality,” God's World, God's Body (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984) 21–35Google Scholar.

9 See Trig, Joseph Wilson, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-Century Church (Atlanta, GA: John Knox, 1983)Google Scholar.

10 Origen, De principiis, in Roberts, Alexander and Donaldson, James, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 (10 vols.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1951) 4. 240–41Google Scholar.

11 Origen undoubtedly has reference here to “Greek and Gentile philosophers” of Neoplatonist persuasion who believed the spirit to be immaterial. As already noted, Stoics believed what-ever exists to be material and, thus, corporeal.

12 , Origen, De principiis, 241Google Scholar.

13 See Stroumsa, Gedaliahu, “The Incorporeality of God: Context and Implications of Origen's Position,” Religion 13 (1983) 359–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Ibid.

15 , Origen, De principiis, 242Google Scholar.

16 See discussion in , Stroumsa, “Incorporeality of God,” 345–47Google Scholar. See also , Jantzen, God's World, God's Body, 22–23Google Scholar.

17 , Origen, De principiis, 241Google Scholar.

18 For an excellent analysis of the centrality of the doctrine of divine incorporeality to Origen's theology and his sustained polemics against anthropomorphic conceptions of God see , Stroumsa, “Incorporeality Of God,” 345–358Google Scholar. Though Origen does not explicitly identify his opponents, Stroumsa says “they are, obviously, Christians (quoniam inueniunt scriptum esse apud Moysen)” (p. 346).

19 , Origen, De principiis, 242–45Google Scholar.

20 Heine, Ronald E., trans., Origen: Homilies On Genesis and Exodus (FC 71; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1981) 63–64Google Scholar.

21 Ibid.

22 For an interesting discussion of the significance of anthropomorphic and corporealist conceptions of God in Jewish or rabbinic thought, see Stroumsa, Gedaliahu G., “Forms of God: Some Notes on Metatron and Christ,” HTR 76 (1983) 269–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 , Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, 89–91Google Scholar.

24 White, Richard C., trans., Melito of Sardis, Sermon “On the Passover” (Lexington, KY: Lexington Theological Seminary Library, 1976) 4–6Google Scholar.

25 Hall, Stuart George, ed., Melito of Sardis, On Pascha and Fragments, Texts and Translations, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979)Google Scholar.

26 “Prius discutiendum est ubi consistat illud, ad imaginem, in corpore, an in anima. Et in primis videamus, quibus utantur qui prius asserunt; e quorum numero est Melito, qui scripta reliquit, quibus asserit Deum corporeum esse.” PG 12, col. 94. See also his Comm. in Rom. 1.19, PG 14, col. 870–71, where Origen continues his polemics against Christian anthropomorphites: “qui in Ecclesia positi imaginem corpoream hominis, Dei esse imaginem dicunt.”

27 See , Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 4, chap. 26Google Scholar.

28 See “Melito,” DCB (London: John Murray, 1882) 898Google ScholarPubMed.

29 , Gennadius, Liber ecclesiasticorum dogmatum, 4Google Scholar.

30 Compare , Stroumsa (“Forms of God,” 270Google Scholar) who claims that the affirmation of Melito's anthropomorphism is unfounded, citing Perler, O., ed. and trans., Meliton, Sur la Paque (SC 123; Paris: Cerf, 1966) 13 and n. 1Google Scholar.

31 See the Introduction to Chadwick, Henry, ed. and trans., Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965) 9–32Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 416.

33 Ibid.

34 Pusey, Edward B., trans., The Confessions of St. Augustine (New York: Random House, 1949)Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., 44.

36 Ibid., 89.

37 Ibid., 89–90.

38 , Stroumsa, “Incorporeality of God,” 352Google Scholar.

39 , Augustine, Confessions, 99–100Google Scholar.

40 , Augustine, C. epist.fund. 23. 25Google Scholar. Cf. De haeresibus 50. As cited in , Stroumsa, “Incorporeality of God,” 353Google Scholar.

41 Reported in “The Anthropomorphites in the Egyptian Desert,” reprinted in Florovsky, Georges, Aspects of Church History, vol. 4: Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1975) 89–96Google Scholar.