Does God Have A Body?

The Christian God may not have a body the way that Zeus had a body, but could the entire cosmos be the body of God? Such a claim, too, would seem intolerable: does it not veer dangerously close to confusing Creator and creature? Pantheism (equating God and universe) has always been considered incompatible with the Christian faith, for it destroys the transcendence of God and ends up justifying whatever exists—whether good or evil—as divine.

Pantheizing God is no less troubling than anthropomorphizing or mythologizing him. And yet. Christianity is not Gnostic. Christians believe in the body as created by God, assumed by God, and raised up by God. And if human bodies matter from exitus to reditus, from beginning to end, then perhaps we ought to think again about whether God, too, might be embodied.

Originally posted at Touchstone Magazine