Anthropomorphism

[Alexander N.]

I'm ignorant about Orthodox Christianity, so please forgive my simplicity:

I would like to understand Orthodox Christian Theology with respect to Anthropomorphism.

To what extent does the Church use Anthropomorphism towards understanding God or theosis?
Is it a useful imperfect stepping stone towards a higher understanding of God?

For example referring to God as Male or Female.

I refered to God as both Him/Her and I was told that is heretical since God is Male.

Thanks for your thoughts..

[Sacha]

I'm ignorant about Orthodox Christianity, so please forgive my simplicity:

I would like to understand Orthodox Christian Theology with respect to Anthropomorphism.

To what extent does the Church use Anthropomorphism towards understanding God or theosis?
Is it a useful imperfect stepping stone towards a higher understanding of God?

For example referring to God as Male or Female.

I refered to God as both Him/Her and I was told that is heretical since God is Male.

Thanks for your thoughts..

I would also be very grateful to any orthodox believer if he or she could point me to a resource to better understand the church's understanding of anthropomorphism, as used in the Old Testament.

Many thanks,
Sacha

[Alexander Zhdanov]

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. John 4:34

In an orthodox iconography, it was not accepted to represent God Father, this is a Catholic influence.
Our Lord Jesus Christ embodied and was a male, therefore such He is represented on icons.

Kind regards,
Alexander

[Andreas Moran]

The Church uses male terms for God. In English grammar, English being nothing like as inflected as many languages, nouns have no gender and so the word 'God' itself has no gender. The maleness of God is expressed by masculine pronouns 'He' and 'Him'. In Greek, the word 'Theos' is grammatically masculine. Analogies or attributes have their origin in the norms of early Hebrew society; so God is 'Father' and 'King' but these analogies obviously do not describe God Who is transcendent. Indeed, ascribing gender to divinities, as in ancient Greek mythology for example, is very pagan. Even describing God as a person technically has the effect of denying the doctrine of the Holy Trinity since God exists in three Persons. We can only use the language and norms we have and so are limited to analogy and metaphor, but we must always keep in mind that we cannot really describe God.

[Brian Patrick Mitchell]

Even describing God as a person technically has the effect of denying the doctrine of the Holy Trinity since God exists in three Persons.

There are some (including, I would expect, Fr. John Behr, dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary) who would contradict this statement on the grounds that it amounts to or at least tends toward social trinitarianism — the idea that God exists only as the union of three persons and not as the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit. They would point out that the Creed starts off by identifying the Father as God, and then adds that the Son and the Holy Spirit are also God, which is not the same thing as saying that God is the union of the three. They would ask, if God is the union of the three, does this not mean that the three are not divine persons but subdivine persons who are not themselves God?

But to the point of the thread ...


We can only use the language and norms we have and so are limited to analogy and metaphor, but we must always keep in mind that we cannot really describe God.

First, I think we might be carrying apophaticism too far in saying that we cannot "describe" God, but that depends on our understanding of "describe." Clearly, we can characterize God. We do so by analogy, calling Him "Father," "King," and "Lord." He Himself uses these words, which do tell us something about Him and might therefore be said to "describe" Him.

Second, the use of masculine pronouns for God is not required merely by revelation, tradition, or the limitations of human language. There is a similarity between the way God relates to us and the way the man relates to the woman. The man is the arche (beginning, source, origin) of the woman; God is the arche of all creation. The man is the "head" of the woman; Christ is the "head" of man, "and the head of Christ is God." (1 Cor. 11:3) The woman is subject to the man; we as the Church are subject to Christ. (Eph. 5:24) The use of male pronouns for God expresses this relation; the use of female pronouns for God denies it.

This is not to say that the woman is less like God, for her subjection, her "bodyhood" (as opposed to the man's "headship"), and her derivation from the man is analogous to the Son's relation to the Father. Thus in God we find both arche and kenosis, the basis of male and female, but not all that maleness and femaleness are to us, which is why we stop short of saying that God is male or that the Son or the Holy Spirit is female.

In Christ, Dn. Patrick

[Archimandrite Irenei]

Dear Alexander,

Christianity begins its confession anthropomorphically, because it begins all things with its encounter with Christ - an anthropos, a human, experienced and known to be at one and the same time God.

All things start here; and this experience reveals how one is to think about, articulate and know all other dimensions of theology.

INXC, Fr Irenei

[Andreas Moran]

Fr John Behr writes that the 'Trinity is at the same time both One and Three'. This seems to match the words of St John Damascene: there is 'one God, the Holy Trinity'. If we ask, 'who is God', we must answer, 'Father, Son, and Holy Spirit'. I do not know what 'union of three persons' means; the Divine Hypostases are distinct but of one essence and co-inhere. God is not one (in the sense that Son and Holy Spirit are relations the Father has with Himself) - there is One God Who is Three.

[Brian Patrick Mitchell]

Fr John Behr writes that the 'Trinity is at the same time both One and Three'. This seems to match the words of St John Damascene: there is 'one God, the Holy Trinity'. If we ask, 'who is God', we must answer, 'Father, Son, and Holy Spirit'.

I actually tried this with Fr. John. In a draft of an article to appear in the next issue of St. Vladimir Theological Quarterly, I wrote, "But God is not a band of brothers; God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." He wrote back that the second clause is "certainly a modern way of speaking, but deeply problematic ." The brackets are his. He then pointed out that "every creed begins: 'I believe in One God, the Father ... and in ...'" In a second email, after I confessed my difficulty in finishing the phrase "God is ...," he wrote that "as far as I am aware" the Greek fathers did not use [I]theos, a singular noun, to mean the Trinity. In a third email, he pointed out that in the Lord's Prayer and in the prayers of the Anaphora we pray to the Father as God.

Now, maybe Fr. John is wrong about this. Others such as David Bentley Hart seem to think so. I can't really say. But it does seem that if you say, as you have said, that "describing God as a person has the effect of denying the doctrine of the Holy Trinity" and that "God is not one ... there is One God Who is Three," you will get an argument from Fr. John.

But maybe it's not worth arguing about during Holy Week. And maybe monachos.net should shut down during Holy Week, so that we won't be tempted to argue, and so that we can all take a break from telling everybody else what to believe, for everybody's good. All this chatter, even about Godly things, can't be healthy.

In Christ, Dn. Patrick

P.S. For more from Fr. John Behr on this, see "Calling Upon God as Father: Augustine and the Legacy of Nicea," in Orthodox Readings of Augustine (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2008), pp. 153-165.

[Aidan Kimel]

Boy, this conversation takes me back. Almost 20 years ago I edited a book titled Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism (http://www.amazon.com/Speaking-Christian-God-Alvin-Kimel/dp/0802806120). Miraculously it is still in print. I commend it to you. I have been told by many people that it remains the best single volume on this issue.

The volume includes an essay by Fr Thomas Hopko. The question of anthropomorphism is addressed by several of the contributing authors.

[Owen Jones]

I'm going to stick my neck out here but God is both personal and impersonal. Certainly God is beyond the personal in His Essence. Then there is the issue of salvation coming through the man-God Jesus, but He is also the eternal Logos who has been present in all things from the beginning, and Who walked in the Garden with Adam and Eve. And were it not for our spiritual blindness, mankind, but particularly the Jews, would have been able to see this before the Incarnation in the man Jesus. And in a sense today, for us who were not present 2,000 years ago. We have to train our spiritual senses, and allow God to direct them to the reality of Christ in all created things. Also, strictly speaking, anthropomorphic concepts or images refer to ascribing to God human attributes or form. In a sense, it is just the other way around in Orthodoxy. We ascribe deistic concepts and images to man. For it is God's will for man to be deified, and to be seen and thought of as an image of the deity. All too often we reverse this and think in terms of God in all too human terms. Not to negate the truth of the INcarnation, but this can be carried to far with respect to God's Essence. We make an absolute distinction in Orthodoxy between the created and the Uncreated. And we assert absolutely that God is unknowable in His Essence. Perhaps I have misstated things badly, but it is important to grow beyond certain Sunday School concepts.