Anthropomorphism

Holman Bible Dictionary

anthropos morphe

The Biblical Tension Biblical faith emerged in a world where deities often were portrayed in human and/or animal form and were worshiped as physical images. Persons in primitive religions first sought spiritual reality in their daily experiences. Rocks, trees, the sun, the earth, or other natural objects were the focus for their sense of mystery and awe. Later religious thought centered in human experience, and mankind began to personify its gods in graven or molten images.

Basically, idolatry is an attempt to comprehend the mystery and represent the presence of a god. Idolaters express their religious longings by projecting their ideals onto their gods. An idol thus represents a human conception of god. It becomes an object of worship. Its physical image is drawn from human experience and frequently reflects human form and characteristics. Its moral character attempts to describe the mysterious powers that lie beyond human understanding.

Idolatry usurps God's sovereignty, majesty, and ultimate mystery. Prohibitions against idolatry are at the heart of Israel's covenant and revealed law ( Exodus 20:1-6 ). Living in the midst of worshipers of Baal, Ashera, Astarte, and many other deities, Israel struggled against idolatry throughout its history. The highest expressions of its faith affirmed that God is Spirit—holy, eternal, and transcendent. His ways are past finding out (see  Romans 11:33 ).

Despite its prohibitions against idolatry, Israel's faith did not flee from every attempt to personify God. Unlike some philosophical religions, biblical faith does not reduce God to mere abstractions. Instead, God is affirmed as active in daily life. Though eternal and transcendent, He also is personal and present. He reveals Himself through historical actions and relationships with His people.

Actions and Relationships Anthropomorphism grows naturally in a faith that views God as active and relational. Israel received God's revelation and expressed its faith in this personal God who had chosen them. Its religious expressions also were drawn from life (and especially from personal relationships); but the form of God was preserved in mystery, and His character was revealed rather than conceived.

Thus anthropomorphic imagery thrives in the Bible. In the typically concrete fashion of the Hebrew mind, the inspired writers of the Old Testament speak of God's eyes, ears, hands, and feet; but they meticulously avoid letting the descriptions become too tangible and concrete. God's movement among humanity is described as walking; His acceptance of sacrifice is through smell; His awareness of human plight is through sight; His feelings are represented in terms of human emotion. He rules as king, tends as shepherd, loves as father. This picturesque language is metaphor, but it is more. It is faith affirming the reality, uniqueness, and sovereignty of God.

The Image of God Behind the anthropomorphisms of the Old Testament lies another foundational concept. Genesis speaks of mankind—both male and female—being created in God's “image” and “likeness” ( Genesis 1:26-27;  Genesis 5:1-2;  Genesis 9:6 ). Here is the reverse of anthropomorphism. Rather than creating an image of God out of personal experience or imagination, mankind is an image of God. While the degree to which this image is physical or spiritual is subject to debate, certain truths are clear. Mankind resembles God in a manner similar to Seth's resembling Adam ( Genesis 5:3 ). God's image in mankind also conveys a sanctity and a dignity that establishes mankind on a higher plane than the animals ( Genesis 9:1-6; see  Psalm 8:1 ). In the ability to act, to establish relationships, to exercise authority, and to represent God, mankind reflects the image of God.

In some ways, then, anthropomorphic presentations of God and theomorphic (in the form or image of theos , “God”) presentations of mankind are reciprocal. What we are intended to be is most fully reflected in what He is (see  1 John 3:2 ). What He is can be understood more fully in the familiar and concrete images of daily life and experience. Jesus' teachings certainly underscore this mutual relationship. His parables especially speak of God in anthropomorphic terms.

The Incarnation While the Old Testament concept of the image of God is reflected in the New Testament (see  1 Corinthians 11:7;  James 3:9 ), the idea is transformed in light of the incarnation. In a sense, the ultimate anthropomorphism is seen in the eternal Word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us ( John 1:14 ). The uniqueness of God's revelation in Christ so overshadows the earlier concept that some New Testament writers present the image of God in terms of the perfect image revealed in Christ ( 2 Corinthians 4:4;  Colossians 1:15;  Hebrews 1:3; compare  John 1:14;  John 12:45;  John 14:9 ). The image of God in mankind is so eclipsed by the revelation in Christ that one must “put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” ( Colossians 3:10; see  Ephesians 4:24 ). The message of this incarnation is a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others ( 1 Corinthians 1:23 ), but it is God's wisdom revealing His way of salvation. Christ Jesus took the form (morphe) of a slave ( Philippians 2:7 ). Through His sacrifice on the cross He revealed a God of grace whose love knows no boundaries. In Him the mystery of God is revealed and the hiddenness of God removed so that no clearer representation of God is possible and none other needed.

Michael Fink

Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology

(Gk. anthropos [   John 1:18 ) nor human ( Numbers 23:19;  1 Samuel 15:29 ). They are also used to assign human characteristics to angels ( Genesis 16:7;  18:1-19:1 ), Satan ( 1 Chronicles 21:1;  Luke 13:16 ), and demons ( Luke 8:32 ). Evil is also personified, depicted as slaying ( Psalm 34:21 ) and pursuing ( Proverbs 13:21 ). Infrequently, human qualities are attributed to animals ( Numbers 22:28-30 ) or vegetation ( Judges 9:7-15 ).

The use of human terminology to talk about God is necessary when we, in our limitations, wish to express truths about the Deity who by his very nature cannot be described or known. From biblical times to the present, people have felt compelled to explain what God is like, and no expressions other than human terms are able to convey any semblance of meaning to the indescribable. Thus, in Genesis alone God creates (1:1), moves (1:2), speaks (1:3), sees (1:4), divides (1:4), places (1:17), blesses (1:22), plants (2:8), walks (3:8), shuts (7:16), smells (8:21), descends (11:5), scatters (11:8), hears (21:17), tests (22:1), and judges (30:6).

Perhaps the most profound anthropomorphism is the depiction of God establishing a covenant, for the making of covenants is a very human activity. God enters into an agreement (covenant) with Israel at Sinai ( Exodus 19:5-6 ), an outgrowth of an earlier covenant he had made with Abraham ( Genesis 17:1-18 ). Later, this agreement is transformed into a new covenant through Jesus Christ ( Matthew 26:26-29 ). Theologically, the legal compact initiated by God becomes the instrument through which he established an intimate and personal relationship with the people, both collectively and individually. Without anthropomorphic expressions, this theological reality would remain virtually inexplicable.

Anthropomorphisms also attribute human form and shape to God. God redeems Israel from Egyptian bondage with an outstretched arm ( Exodus 6:6 ). Moses and his companions see God, and they eat and drink with him ( Exodus 24:10-11 ). Other texts refer to the back, face, mouth, lips, ears, eyes, hand, and finger of God. The expression, "the Lord's anger burned" ( Exodus 4:14 ) is interesting. A literal translation of the Hebrew is "the nose of the Lord burned."

Indirect anthropomorphic expressions also appear, such as the sword and arrows of the Lord and the throne and footstool of God.

Akin to anthropomorphisms are anthropopathisms (Gk. anthropos [   Exodus 20:5 ) who hates ( Amos 5:21 ) and becomes angry ( Jeremiah 7:20 ), but he also loves ( Exodus 20:6 ) and is pleased ( Deuteronomy 28:63 ).

Anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms are figures of speech that transmit theological truths about God to humankind. Only when taken literally are they misconstrued. Taken as metaphorical expressions, they provide by analogy a conceptual framework by which the God who is beyond our comprehension becomes a person—a person whom we can love. In the New Testament the analogy becomes reality in the mystery of the incarnation ( John 1:1-18 ).

Keith N. Schoville

Bibliography . J. Barr, HBD , p. 32; E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible  ; M. Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 1; W. E. Miles, ed., Mercer Dictionary of the Bible .

Webster's Dictionary

(1): (n.) The representation of the Deity, or of a polytheistic deity, under a human form, or with human attributes and affections.

(2): (n.) The ascription of human characteristics to things not human.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

an - thro - po - mor´fiz ' m  :

1. Definition of the Term

2. Old Testament Anthropomorphisms

3. In What Senses An Anthropomorphic Element is Necessary

4. Anthropomorphism and the Exigencies of Human Thinking

5. Anthropomorphism and Theism

6. Symbolic Forms of Thought

7. Philosophic Pantheism

8. Anthropomorphism and Personalized or Mediated Knowledge

9. From Greek Polytheism to Modern Ethical Monotheism

10. Greek Thought

11. Anthropomorphism of Israel

12. Twofold Nature of the Anthropomorphic Difficulty

13. Need of Rising Higher

14. God in Christ the True Solution

1. Definition of the Term

By this term is meant, conformably with its etymological signification, i.e. as being in the form or likeness of man, the attribution to God of human form, parts or passions, and the taking of Scripture passages which speak of God as having hands, or eyes, or ears, in a literal sense. This anthropomorphic procedure called forth Divine rebuke so early as  Psalm 50:21 : "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."

2. Old Testament Anthropomorphisms

Fear of the charge of anthropomorphism has had a strangely deterrent effect upon many minds, but very needlessly so. Even that rich storehouse of apparently crude anthropomorphisms, the Old Testament, when it ascribes to Deity physical characters, mental and moral attributes, like those of man, merely means to make the Divine nature and operations intelligible, not to transfer to Him the defects and limitations of human character and life.

3. In What Senses an Anthropomorphic Element Is Necessity

In all really theistic forms of religion, there is an anthropomorphic element present, for they all presuppose the psychological truth of a certain essential likeness between God and man. Nor, perfect as we may our theistic idea or conception of Deity, can we, in the realm of spirit, ever wholly eliminate the anthropomorphic element involved in this assumption, without which religion itself were not. It is of the essence of the religious consciousness to recognize the analogy subsisting between God's relations to man, and man's relations to his fellow. We are warned off from speaking of "the Divine will" or "the Divine purpose," as too anthropomorphic - savoring too much of simple humanity and human psychology - and are bidden speak only of "the Divine immanence" or "the Divine ground of our being."

4. Anthropomorphism and the Exigencies of Human Thinking

But these speculative objections really spring from a shallow interpretation of the primary facts of human consciousness, which, in the deepest realm of inner experience, claims the indefeasible right to speak of the Divine nature in human terms, as may best be possible to our being. The proper duty or function of philosophy is to take due account of such direct and primary facts of our nature: the basal facts of our being cannot be altered to suit her convenience.

5. Anthropomorphism and Theism

If we were to interpret the impalpable and omni-present Energy, from which all things proceed, in terms of force, then, as Flake said, "there is scarcely less anthropomorphism lurking in the phrase 'Infinite Power,' than in the phrase 'Infinite Person.'" Besides which, the soul of man could never be content with the former phrase, for the soul wants more than dynamics. But if we have ascribed to God certain attributes in keeping with the properties of the one Protean force behind all nature-manifestations, it has been to help purge our conception of God of objectionable anthropomorphic elements. The exigencies of human thinking require us to symbolize the nature of Deity in some psychical way whereby He shall have for us some real meaning; hence those quasi-personal or anthropomorphic forms of expression, which inhere in the most perfected conceptions of Deity, as well as in the crude ideas of unreflective spiritism. And if all anthropomorphism could be dissipated by us, we should in the process have demolished theism - a serious enough issue for religion.

6. Symbolic Forms of Thought

Even speech has been declared to be a sensuous symbol, which makes knowledge of God impossible. To such an extent have the hyper-critical objections to anthropomorphism been pressed. Symbol of the Divine, speech may, in this sense, be; but it is a symbol whereby we can mark, distinguish or discern the super-sensible. Thus our abstract conceptions are by no means sensuous, however the language may originally have set out from a sensuous significance. Hence, it would be a mistake to suppose that our knowledge of God must remain anthropomorphic in content, and cannot think the Absolute Being or Essence save in symbolic form. It is a developmental law of religion - as of spirit in general - that the spiritual grows always more clearly differentiated from the symbolic and sensuous. The fact that our knowledge of God is susceptible of advance does not make the idea of God a merely relative one. God's likeness to man, in respect of the attributes and elements essential to personal spirit, must be presupposed as a fundamental reality of the universe. In this way or sense, therefore, any true idea of God must necessarily be anthropomorphic.

7. Philosophic Pantheism

We cannot prove in any direct manner - either psychological or historical - that man was really made in God's image. But there is no manner of doubt that, on the other hand, man has always made God in his (man's) own image. Man can do no otherwise. Because he has purged his conceptions of Deity after human pattern, and no longer cares much to speak of God as a jealous or repentant or punitive Deity, as the case may be, it yet by no means follows that "the will of God" and "the love of God" have ceased to be of vital interest or primary importance for the religious consciousness. All man's constructive powers - intellectual, aesthetical, ethical, and spiritual - combine in evolving such an ideal, and believing in it as the personal Absolute, the Ideal-Real in the world of reality. Even in the forms of philosophic pantheism, the factors which play in man's personal life have not ceased to project themselves into the pantheistic conceptions of the cosmic processes or the being of the world.

8. Anthropomorphism and Personalized or Mediated Knowledge

But man's making of God in his (man's) own image takes place just because God has made man in His own image. For the God, whom man makes for himself, is, before all things, real - no mere construction of his intellect, no figure or figment of his imagination, but the prius of all things, the Primal, Originative Reality. Thus we see that any inadequacy springing out of the anthropomorphic character of our religious knowledge or conceptions is not at all so serious as might at first sight be supposed, since it is due merely to the necessarily personalized or mediated character of all our knowledge whatsoever. For all our experience is human experience, and, in that sense, anthropomorphic. Only the most pitiful timidity will be scared by the word "anthropomorphism," which need not have the least deterrent effect upon our minds, since, in the territory of spirit, our conceptions are purged of anthropomorphic taint or hue, the purer our human consciousness becomes.

9. From Greek Polytheism to Modern Ethical Monotheism

To say, as we have done, that all knowledge is anthropomorphic, is but to recognize its partial, fallible, progressive or developmental character. It is precisely because this is true of our knowledge of God that our improved and perfected conceptions of God are the most significant feature in the religious progress of humanity. Only in course of the long religious march, wherein thought has shot up through the superincumbent weight of Greek polytheism into monotheism, and emerged at last into the severely ethical monotheism of our time, has religion been gradually stripped of its more crude anthropomorphic vestments. It cannot too clearly be understood that the religious ideal, which man has formed in the conception of the Absolute Personality, is one which is rooted in the realm of actuality. Not otherwise than as a metaphysical unity can God be known by us - intelligible only in the light of our own self-conscious experience.

10. Greek Thought

It is a mere modern - and rather unillumined - abuse of the term anthropomorphic which tries to affix it, as a term of reproach, to every hypothetical endeavor to frame a conception of God. In the days of the Greeks, it was only the ascription to the gods of human or bodily form that led Xenophanes to complain of anthropomorphism. This Xenophanes naturally took to be an illegitimate endeavor to raise one particular kind of being - one form of the finite - into the place of the Infinite. Hence he declared, "There is one God, greatest of all gods and men, who is like to mortal creatures neither in form nor in mind."

11. Anthropomorphism of Israel

But the progressive anthropomorphism of Greece is seen less in the humanizing of the gods than in the claim that "men are mortal gods," the idea being, as Aristotle said, that men become gods by transcendent merit. In this exaltation of the nature of man, the anthropomorphism of Greece is in complete contrast with the anthropomorphism of Israel, which was prone to fashion its Deity, not after the likeness of anything in the heavens above, but after something in the earth beneath. Certain professors of science have been mainly responsible for the recent and reprehensible use of the term, so familiar to us, for which we owe them no particular gratitude.

12. Twofold Nature of the Anthropomorphic Difficulty

The anthropomorphic difficulty is a twofold one. Religion, as we have just shown, must remain anthropomorphic in the sense that we cannot get rid of imputing to the universe the forms of our own mind or life, since religion is rooted in our human experience. As we have already hinted, however, religion is in no worse case in that respect than science. For nothing is more idle than the pretension that science is less anthropomorphic than religion - or philosophy either - as if science were not, equally with these, an outcome and manifestation of human thinking! It is surely most obvious that the scientist, in any knowledge of reality he may gain, can, no more than the religionist - or the metaphysician - jump off his own shadow, or make escape from the toils of his own nature and powers. For knowledge of any sort - whether religious or scientific or philosophical - a certain true anthropomorphism is necessary, for it is of the essence of rationality. Nature, of which science professes a knowledge, is really a man-made image, like unto its human maker. Say what science will, this is the objectively real of science - a cognition which, critically viewed, is only subjectively valid. There is no other way by which science can know the being of the world than after the human pattern. It is, however, a serious issue that this human element or factor has often unduly penetrated the realm of the Divine, subordinating it and dragging it down to human aims and conceptions.

13. Need of Rising Higher

Hence arises the second aspect of the anthropomorphic difficulty, which is, the need of freeing religion from anthropomorphic tendency, since it can be no satisfactory revealer of truth, so long as its more or less unrefined anthropomorphism contracts or subjugates reality to the conditions of a particular kind of being. It is perfectly clear that religion, whose every aim is to raise man beyond the limitations of his natural being, can never realize its end, so long as it remains wholly within the human sphere, instead of being something universal, transcendent, and independent. This is precisely why religion comes to give man's life the spiritual uplift whereby it rises to a new center of gravity - a true center of immediacy - in the universe, rises, indeed, beyond time and its own finitude to a participation in the universal and transcendent life of the Eternal. It does so without feeling need to yield to the anthropomorphic tendency in our time to attribute a necessity in God for an object to love, as if His egoistic perfection were not capable of realizing love's infinite ideal in itself, and without dependence upon such object.

14. God in Christ the True Solution

We affirm that God in Christ, in revealing the fact of the likeness of man being eternal in God, disclosed the true anthropomorphism of our knowledge of God - it is with respect to the essential attributes and elements of personal spirit. It is easy to see how the early ascriptions to God of the form and members of the human body, and other non-essential accompaniments of personality, arose. The scriptural representations as to God's hand, eye, and ear, were declared by Calvin to be but adaptations to the slow spiritual progress of men - an infantile mode of talk, as Calvin puts it, like that of nurses to children. But we have got finely clear of essential anthropomorphism, if, with  Isaiah 55:8 , we fully recognize that God's "thoughts are not" our "thoughts," nor God's "ways" our "ways."

Literature

E. Caird, Evolution of Religion , 1893; J. Martineau, A Study of Religion , 1889; J. Fiske, The Idea of God , 1901; J. Orr, God's Image in Man , 1905; D. B. Purinton, Christian Theism , 1889; J. Lindsay, Recent Advances in Theistic Philosophy of Religion , 1897; Studies in European Philosophy , 1909.

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

(from Ἄνθρωπος , A Man, and Μορφή , a form) , 1. A term used to signify the "representation of divinity under a human form;" and the nations or sects who have followed this practice have been sometimes called Anthropomorphites (q.v.). The Egyptians represented deities under human forms, as well as those of animals, and sometimes under a combination of the two. The ancient Persians, as Herodotus tells us (1, 131), adored the Supreme Being under no visible form of their own creation, but they worshipped on the tops of mountains, and sacrificed to the sun and moon, to earth, fire, water, and the winds. The Hebrews were forbidden ( Exodus 20:4-5) to make any image or the representation of any animated being whatever. The Greeks were essentially anthropomorphists, and could never separate the idea of superior powers from the representation of them under a human form; hence, in their mythology and in their arts, each deity had his distinguishing attributes and a characteristic human shape. Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans revere God as a spirit, and therefore reject all representations of Deity in human form.

2. The term is also used to denote that Figure of speech by which the sacred writers attribute to God parts, actions, and affections which properly belong to man; as when they speak of the Eyes of God, his Hand, etc. Anthropomorphism ( Ἀνθρωπόμορφος ) differs from Anthropopathy ( Ἀνθρωποπαθής ) in this: the first is the attributing to God Any Thing whatever which, strictly speaking, is applicable to man only; the second is the act of attributing to God Passions which belong to man's nature. Instances of both are found in the Scriptures, by which they adapt themselves to human modes of speaking, and to the limited capacities of men (see Klugling, Ueb. d. Anthropomorph smus d. Bibel, Danz. 1806; Gelpe, Apologie d. anthropomorph. u. anthropopath. Darstellung Gottes, Leips. 1842). These anthropopathies we must, however, interpret in a manner suitable to the majesty of the Divine nature. Thus, when the members of a human body are ascribed to God, we must understand by them those perfections of which such members are in us the instruments. The eye, for instance, represents God's knowledge and watchful care; the arm his power and strength; his ear the regard he pays to prayer and to the cry of oppression and misery, etc. Farther, when human affections are attributed to God, we must so interpret them as to imply no imperfection, such as perturbed feeling, in him. When God is said to repent, the antecedent, by a frequent figure of speech, is put for the consequent; and in this case we are to understand an altered mode of proceeding on the part of God, which in man is the effect of repenting.

Anthropomorphitic phrases, generally considered, are such as ascribe to the Deity mixed perfections and human imperfections. These phrases may be divided into three classes, according to which we ascribe to God:

1. Human actions ( Ἀνθρωποποίησις );

2. Human affections, passions, and sufferings (anthropopathy);

3. Human form, human organs, human members (anthropomorphism).

A rational being, who receives impressions through the senses, can form conceptions of the Deity only by a consideration of his own powers and properties (Journal Sac. Lit. 1848, p. 9 sq.). Anthropomorphitic modes of thought are therefore unavoidable in the religion of mankind; and although they can furnish no other than corporeal or sensible representations of the Deity, they are nevertheless true and just when we guard against transferring to God qualities pertaining to the human senses. It is, for instance, a proper expression to assert that God knows all things; it is improper, that is, tropical or anthropomorphitic, to say that he sees all things. Anthropomorphism is thus a species of accommodation (q.v.), inasmuch as by these representations the Deity, as it were, lowers himself to the comprehension of men. We can only think of God as the archetype of our own spirit, and the idea of God can no longer be retained if we lose sight of this analogy. Anthropomorphism must be supplanted by Christianity; anthropopathism is not supplanted, but spiritualized and refined. Only what is false must be rejected — that crudeness which transfers to God human passions ( Πάθη ) and defects, for want of recollecting the elevation of the Supreme Being, as well as his relationship to man. Christianity must teach us to distinguish what is owing to the corrupting influence of sin from what constitutes the true analogy between God and man. In heathenism a false anthropopathism prevailed, since polytheism presented in its gods the apotheosis of human qualities, not only of virtues, but of vices, and withal a deification of the power manifested in Nature. Among the common, carnally-minded Jews there was a corresponding crudeness in their views of the Divine attributes; for omnipotence was represented as unlimited caprice, and punitive justice as perfectly analogous to human wrath. McCosh remarks that "of all systems, Pantheism is the most apt, in our times, to land in Anthropomorphism. For, if God and his works be one, then we shall be led to look on humanity as the highest manifestation of the divinity, and the natural devoutness of the heart will find vent in hero-worship, or the foolish raving about great men, which has been so common among the eminent literary men of the age now passing away, the issue of the Pantheism which rose like a vapor in Germany, and came over like a fog into Britain and America" (Intuitions of the Mind, pt. 3, § 5). See Seiler, Bibl. Hermeneutik, p. 56; Penny Cyclopoedia, s.v.; Home, Introduction, 1, 362; Neander, Hist. of Dogmas, 1, 102 sq.; Tappe, De Anthropopatica (Dorp. 1815).

The Nuttall Encyclopedia

The ascription of human attributes to the unseen author of things.