God as a man
Jan 23rd, 2009 by Bryan
The title of this post is the simpler way of putting a common academic term: the “anthropomorphizing of a deity.” Students sometimes squirm when I start to point out the mythological components of their favorite biblical stories, but it tends to help when I ask them questions along these lines:
- Is God a human? (answer: no)
- Does God speak to people in the Bible? (answer: yes)
- Does God appear to people in such a way that they see him and can recognize him? (answer: yes)
- So, if God is not a human, how can he do such human things?
At this point we will often have a freewheeling discussion, but sometimes I get right to the point: When people describe God (conventionally understood) doing stuff, they tend to lapse quickly into attributing (human) physical, mental, and emotional characteristics to God. In fact, one decent definition of a mythological story is one in which divine beings interact with human beings. And of course interaction requires actions that are recognizable and intelligible to both parties. I ask them, why should “mythology” be such an unsettling category? As a religious concept and a literary motif it is in fact required for us to have the kinds of stories we enjoy reading in Genesis and ff.
I am intrigued by Alan Lenzi’s post over at Bible and ANE on the subject of Deity and Cognition. He says:
I’ve been thinking about anthropomorphism and the shape of deity in the Ancient Near East (which includes biblical Israel) for a while. I think cognitive science and the human cognitive tendency to attribute human characteristics to inanimate and non-obvious things may be a new avenue for approaching our historical data about gods (see my take on Stewart Guthrie’s book, Faces in the Clouds, here). Jacobsen talked about deity in terms of Otto’s notion of the numinous. I tend to think of the phenomenological notion of the numinous as rather methodologically nebulous. In other words, I don’t like it; it’s sloppy. But this notion of human cognitive tendencies to anthropomorphize may offer a new way of understanding some of the earliest and most influential material about deities in the world.
If psychology is the way forward in biblical studies, which I heard actually more than once at SBL in Boston, then it may have to move forward without me. In any case, Alan’s point here seems correct. Perhaps there is a scientific way of exploring the idea that human brains simply must shift into anthropomorphic categories in order to grok certain ideas like God. From a literary-critical and linguistic point of view, with which I am much more comfortable than psychology, it seems fairly straight-forward. Obvious, even? What do you think?
Consider those biblical passages that reflect the peculiar biblical phenomenon in which an angel shows up and starts speaking and acting, only for the scene to morph silently such that this angel is God. Students almost never are confused or put out by this slippery narrative technique. Why? Because thinking of God as something a human would recognize is easy for them. James Kugel has a nice discussion of this in chapter 2 of The God of Old, which he titles “The Moment of Confusion.” You’re telling me.
Does God have to be a human for human characteristics / human notions of characteristics to be applicable?
I’m not sure if most of these cases of “anthropomorphization” would be entirely inaccurate; since human nature is (sans sin) a shadow of God’s nature (made in His image, etc.), a lot of the characteristics are shared. Of course it’s kind of like comparing a car to a plastic scale model of a car; there are lots of imperfections and simplifications to the model, but it still shares attributes and characteristics with the car that it’s based on.
That’s a great comment, Tommy. I suppose it’s the old question about whether God created us in his image, or have we “created” God in our image? I don’t think these have to be mutually exclusive. My point is basically that when humans try to describe something they have indirect or inadequate knowledge of, they draw upon language that they know and understand. In other words, the Bible says that God communicates with Moses, and the way that we envision it is as human speech. Sometimes we imagine Moses hearing a disembodied voice, but even so it is still a voice.
Which reminds me, one thing I really like about The Prince of Egypt is that when Moses hears God speak from the burning bush, he hears his own voice in his ears/head. The movie solves the problem of “what would God sound like” with a clever feint: God’s voice would sound to Moses like Moses’ own voice. Or perhaps he would just be aware of words, like internal human thought, without a vocal component.
But still, the story is anthropomorphizing because it features God speaking. Later on Moses gets to see God’s backside as God moves past him. What did that look like, I wonder?
That’s all fair. And, obviously, I have a bit of a faith-based bias in regards to the question of whether God created us, or we created Him
I think I see what you’re getting at. I just don’t like the term “anthropomorphizing” because it’s usually a flawed characterization. We anthropomorphize our pets, or our cars, or our computers; which is to say we associate human characteristics with them that they clearly do not have. Associating human characteristics with God (or, as the case may be; God associating human characteristics with himself… however you’d like to read it) may *technically* be anthropomorphizing; but from the standpoint of how we normally use the word, it’s almost an insinuation that God is not a personal entity.
This is a recurring problem in which I want to use words in a specific, technical sense but they have other, more problematic meanings that get in the way. “Myth” is a hum-dinger in this regard.
Does “metaphor” work better? Genesis 2 mentions God’s nostrils. God’s blowing of air through his nostrils is a metaphor for some (unexplained) process by which God confers the spirit of life to Adam. How do we explain this phenomenon? By using the very human image of a person blowing air out through his nose. Your argument might imply that we have nostrils because we are in God’s image, and God has nostrils. I would say that we have nostrils because we need to breath air, which God doesn’t. The human phenomenon of air blowing is used in the biblical text to picture something rather inscrutable.
“Your argument might imply that we have nostrils because we are in God’s image, and God has nostrils.”
). I think it should be obvious that “in God’s image” doesn’t imply any physical similarities (as should be evident in Genesis as well: “So God created man in His own image… male and female he created them.” Male and Female is important there to point out that this is not a physical image, but more in the sense that we have a soul that is a dim representation of God; like the model and the car I mentioned before).
Heh, totally forgot to put that disclaimer in (I rewrote that first comment a few times
So I don’t think it implies that, although I know people have tried that argument before.
Honestly, I think “anthropomorphization” works fine, but just like when you use “mythology,” it probably helps to have a “I’m using this word technically” sort of disclaimer.
Nice blog. I’m glad to have discovered it. Thought I’d weigh in on a point mentioned above:
>>I think it should be obvious that “in God’s image” doesn’t imply any physical similarities (as should be evident in Genesis as well: “So God created man in His own image… male and female he created them.” Male and Female is important there to point out that this is not a physical image, but more in the sense that we have a soul that is a dim representation of God; like the model and the car I mentioned before).<<
I’m going to be blunt: This is a theological reading that has no basis in a historical understanding of the text, despite your claim. An image is a representation of a physical entity not an abstraction. It might seem strange that the two sexes are mentioned after “image”. But I think the text is merely trying to say that the entire human race, whether male or female, was created after a divine pattern.
I understand the problem theologically-oriented individuals have with the idea of “anthropomorphism as cognitive strategy” that Guthrie and others have used to explain (away) religion. But trying to solve the theological problem by turning everything on its head or appeal to metaphor or whatever is not going to work. It cries out, “special pleading.” So, even though I’m an agnostic, I’ll tell you what I would do if I were theologically inclined. I’d say, “Isn’t it wonderful that god has given human beings a propensity to posit divine anthropomorphic beings? We’re hard-wired to be theists. And we’re hard-wired in such a way that our conceptions of god are couched in the most familiar terms we could hope for: human. This is just another example of the lengths god goes to make himself known to us.”
Thanks for the comment, Alan, and for the original post. Let me ask you this. Do you think that biblical scholars or ancient historians are in a position to engage cognitive theory, or do we need to find trained psychologists and other social scientists to collaborate with? Over on the biblical side, we have spent a lot of time getting better at literary theory, and there is still plenty of bad literary analysis floating around. Also, I cringe sometimes when i think of what passes for “socio-historical” approaches to the Bible, which are often just naive historicism re-packaged or mere dilettantism.
My original post may have implied an overstatement. So let me nuance a little. I don’t want to sound too revolutionary.
I don’t think cognitive theory is going to transform biblical studies. It won’t change our literary analysis of how Yahweh acts in a story, at least I don’t see it doing that so much. Rather, I was really getting at the notion of the origins of deities and demons. Jacobsen used a rather questionable idea about the origin of deity in the ANE (Otto’s). Others use a theological notion. Still others a sociological (e.g., the pantheon is a projection of human political structure–which I think is really true but not necessarily the explanation of the ORIGIN of deity) or psychological (e.g., Mesopotamian personal gods and goddesses are projections of one’s parents–again, there’s truth here probably but not the whole truth). I think we might be able to take the ideas about human propensity to posit anthropomorphic entities and work it into the fabric of how we understand deity in the ANE generally. I don’t think it will be field changing. Nor do I foresee the need for historians (including biblical scholars) to collaborate with psychologists.
But I’ll be honest here. I’m still trying to work through all of this. Maybe this cognitive insight’s usefulness will be negligible. But I think it might be worth thinking through it for a spell.
Oy, Wordpress needs some sort of quoting functionality
Alan said:
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I’m going to be blunt: This is a theological reading that has no basis in a historical understanding of the text, despite your claim. An image is a representation of a physical entity not an abstraction. It might seem strange that the two sexes are mentioned after “image”. But I think the text is merely trying to say that the entire human race, whether male or female, was created after a divine pattern.
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Ah, but a very specific pattern – the very likeness of God (verse 26 of the same chapter). Theological interpretation or not, that is what the text says. There are two ways that this likeness can be interpreted further – a physical likeness, or some other metaphysical likeness; among many other evidences, the fact that man and woman were *both* created in this image strongly suggests the metaphysical interpretation.
And, as I will happily admit; if this discussion is to exclude any theological consideration of the texts, then I will gladly withdraw my comments as being out of scope. I am neither sufficiently versed in the academic studies to discuss the matter on level ground; nor do I find it profitable to discuss the minutiae of a passage without also considering its impact on the general message.
One problem is what mean by “metaphysical likeness.” My point is simple: we don’t know what a metaphysical likeness is, and use human-based language to help us express things that we believe based on 1) psychological hard-wiring, 2) reflection and observation, and/or 3) revelation.
Alan’s point about the historical development of ideas about the divine world is a separate and different issue, but both are important. Israel’s ideas about YHWH changed over time, and it is interesting to study why and how that happened. The Bible’s overall theological outlook about YHWH represents a kind of snapshot (or maybe a scrapbook) of that development.
Thanks for the comments! I am not teaching this year, and have missed having this sort of discussion.