Anthropomorphism
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June 19, 2020Today our attention is focused on the mystery that God has a heart; in Jesus, this is revealed as a human heart. The Old Testament writings often speak of God using anthropomorphic language. God has not only a heart, but hands, feet, a face, eyes, nose, and mouth! What does this mean? If we look closely at some examples, we see that these images are used as an analogy. God’s “features” speak of divine characteristics or attitudes in relation to his people:
What are God’s feet?
“Son of man, do you see the place for my throne, and the place for the soles of my feet? Here I will dwell among the Israelites forever.” (Ez 43:7)
Feet means presence. God is present to us in an abiding way.
What is God’s arm?
“The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” (Is 52:10)
Arm means strength, power, salvation. God exercises his power to save us.
What is God’s hand?
“my hand shall always remain with him; my arm also shall strengthen him.” (Ps 89:21)
“My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.” (Ps 63:8)
Hand means providence, care. God reaches out to help us.
What is God’s face?
‘“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”
Your face, Lord, do I seek.
Do not hide your face from me.’ (Ps 27:8-9)
Face means intimacy. God allows himself to be known by us.
What is God’s heart?
“It was not because you are the largest of all nations
that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you,
for you are really the smallest of all nations.
It was because the LORD loved you” (Dt 7:7-8)
Heart means love, tenderness, compassion. God yearns for us.
So, is there problem with anthropomorphism?
Early Christian monasticism faced this question in a rather traumatic way. In the Egypt of the late fourth century, there developed a schism between uneducated monks of Coptic origin, and their more erudite Greek brothers. The former insisted on a common-sense, literal reading of the Bible, which led to some naïve assumptions about God having a physical body and human characteristics. The Greek monks, by contrast, interpreted the Scriptures spiritually, allowing for non-literal understanding, which went deeper into the meaning of things, events, time references and people, especially in light of Christ. Cassian’s tenth Conference tells of a dramatic event in which a Greek monk was invited to explain the meaning of the verse from Genesis: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Gn 1:26). He was able to persuade a Coptic monk that this did not in fact mean that God has a body just like ours, but rather that we have a spirit like God’s. Poor Abba Serapion, a holy old monk who had spent his life praying to God with the image of body, went through a traumatic readjustment of his inner world:
“the old man’s mind was confused during his prayer because he perceived that the anthropomorphic image of the Godhead that he habitually set before himself during prayer had been eliminated from his heart. Suddenly bursting into a flood of bitterest tears and choking sobs as a result, he cast himself down on the ground, exclaiming with powerful groans: ‘Alas, wretch that I am! They have taken away from me my God, Whom I would now grasp—but have not; Whom I would address or supplicate—but know no longer!’” (Cassian, Conf. 10.3.4-5)
The problem with anthropomorphism, put simply, is that it can lead us to worship a god small enough to fit within the limits of our minds, our imagination, our miniscule capacity. Unconsciously, we take our creation in God’s image as justification to create a god in our own image. Hasn’t each of us had some taste of Serapion’s experience? Haven’t we all needed to be purified of an image of God that is just a reflection of our own mediocrity, a domesticated god? For not a few of us, the way we experience God changes significantly after we enter the monastery and as the years go by. We may have been accustomed to a very palpable affectionate presence of God or Jesus, which drew us to a life of consecration with passionate emotions. Suddenly, we may find ourselves abandoned by those passionate emotions, wondering whether we have also been abandoned by God. “Alas, wretch that I am! They have taken away from me my God, Whom I would now grasp—but have not; Whom I would address or supplicate—but know no longer!” Having drawn us into a desert of faith, this mysterious God whom we no longer seem to know begins to introduce himself as the One who transcends us absolutely, and yet chooses to draw near to us in tender love. We discover the truth of John’s words:
“In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” (1 Jn 4:10)
As we come to know the God who is pure spirit, the God whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways, we see the anthropomorphic language offered to us by the Scriptures with fresh eyes. Would it be satisfactory to replace all references in the Scriptures to body parts with divine attributes? Wouldn’t something be lost by exchanging rich imagery and metaphor for abstract definitions? Images are more open-ended than definitions, and so they offer us a profound way to know God spiritually by analogy. And this is not all, because the God who was humble enough to speak of himself in human terms has stooped yet further to unite himself with our flesh. In Jesus, the qualities of God manifested in the Scriptures are definitively revealed. Jesus has actual hands, arms, feet, a face, and a heart, as well as the full depth of spiritual meaning contained in these images. We are no longer faced with divine anthropomorphism, but a divine anthropos, a God-man.
Before us stands our God, his heart laid open in total vulnerability. Love beyond all imagining has found a home in a human heart because this human heart is also divine. As unfathomable as this is to us, we are invited to enter the mystery. Today’s gospel has Jesus crying out a shout of jubilation, praising his Father for having revealed to little ones things hidden from the wise and learned. He invites his listeners to “learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29). The mystery is that God’s heart is humbler than the human heart, deformed as this latter is by self-interest, self-assertion, and self-will. The mystery is that we have to learn from our God how to be authentically human.
“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Gn 1:26).
To be human is to be the beloved partner of the all-transcendent God, called to love beyond measure as he loves. This is why we cannot know God in the spirit unless we love our brothers and sisters in the flesh:
“No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.” (1 Jn 4:11-12)
Today, may we allow Jesus to place his yoke upon us and begin to transform our hearts into the likeness of his own.
Image: Odilon Redon
