Anthropomorphism

General Information

Anthropomorphism (Greek anthropos,"human being"; morphe,"shape") is the attribution of human form or qualities to that which is not human. In the history of religion, anthropomorphism refers to the depiction of God in a human image, with human bodily form and emotions, such as jealousy, wrath, or love. Whereas mythology is exclusively concerned with anthropomorphic gods, other religious thought holds that it is inappropriate to regard an omnipotent, omnipresent God as human. In order to speak of God, however, metaphorical language must be employed. In philosophy and theology, seemingly anthropomorphic concepts and language are used because it is impossible to think of God without attributing to him some human traits. In the Bible, for example, God is endowed with physical characteristics and human emotions, but at the same time he is understood to be transcendent. In art and literature, anthropomorphism is the depiction of natural objects, such as animals or plants, as talking, reasoning, sentient, humanlike beings.

The earliest critique of anthropomorphism in the West was made by Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher of the 5th century BC. Xenophanes observed that whereas the Ethiopians represented the gods as dark-skinned, the northerners in Thrace depicted the gods with red hair and blue eyes. He concluded that anthropomorphic representations of the gods invariably reveal more about the human beings who make them than they reveal about the divine. The Greek philosopher Plato likewise objected to a human representation of the gods; in the dialogue The Republic, he particularly opposed the attribution of human failings to divine beings. Both Xenophanes and Plato wished to purify religion by eliminating elements that they considered primitive and crude.

Nineteenth-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel held that Greek anthropomorphic religion represented an improvement over the worship of gods in the shape of animals, a practice called theriomorphism (Greek therion,"animal"; morphe,"shape"). Hegel also maintained that Christianity brought the notion of anthropomorphism to maturity by insisting not only that God assumed a human form, but also that Jesus Christ was both a fully human person as well as fully divine. Because Christianity incorporates humanity into the very nature of divinity, it has been accused of anthropomorphism by both Jewish and Islamic thinkers.

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Anthropomorphism

Advanced Information

The term (not found in the Bible, derived from Greek anthropos, man, and morphe, form) designates the view which conceives of God as having human form (Exod. 15:3; Num. 12:8) with feet (Gen. 3:8; Exod. 24:10), hands (Exod. 24:11; Josh. 4:24), mouth (Num. 12:8; Jer. 7:13), and heart (Hos. 11:8), but in a wider sense the term also includes human attributes and emotions (Gen. 2:2; 6:6; Exod. 20:5; Hos. 11:8).

This tendency toward anthropomorphism, common to all religions, found such full expression in Greek polytheism that the common man thought of the gods as mortal men. Xenophanes (ca. 570-480 B.C.) reacted strongly, accusing man of making the gods in his own image. Later developments in Greek thought considered men as mortal gods (an early form of humanism) or viewed God in the metaphysical sense of pure, absolute Being. The transcendentalism of the latter influenced the hellenistic Jews of Egypt so that the translators of the Greek OT, the LXX, made during the third and second centuries B.C., felt compelled to alter some of the anthropomorphisms. e.g., where the Hebrew reads "they saw the God of Israel" (Exod. 24:10) the LXX has "they saw the place where the God of Israel stood"; and for "I will speak with him mouth to mouth" (Num. 12:8) the LXX translates "I will speak to him mouth to mouth apparently."

However, the OT, if read with empathy and understanding, reveals a spiritual development which is a corrective for either a crude, literalistic view of anthropomorphism or the equally false abhorrence of any anthropomorphic expressions. The "image of God" created in man (Gen. 1:27) was in the realm of personality, of spirit, not of human form. Because the Israelites "saw no form" (Deut. 4:12) at Sinai, they were prohibited images in any form; male or female, beast, bird, creeping thing, or fish (Deut. 4:15-19). The NT declaration of Jesus, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24), is anticipated by Job 9:32; Ps. 50:21; and Hos. 11:9.

The anthropomorphism of the Israelites was an attempt to express the nonrational aspects of religious experience (the mysterium tremendum, "aweful majesty," discussed by Rudolf Otto) in terms of the rational, and the early expressions of it were not as "crude" as so-called enlightened man would have one think. The human characteristics of Israel's God were always exalted, while the gods of their Near Eastern neighbors shared the vices of men. Whereas the representation of God in Israel never went beyond anthropomorphism, the gods of the other religions assumed forms of animals, trees, stars, or even a mixture of elements. Anthropomorphic concepts were "absolutely necessary if the God of Israel was to remain a God of the individual Israelite as well as of the people as a whole.... For the average worshipper...it is very essential that his god be a divinity who can sympathize with his human feelings and emotions, a being whom he can love and fear alternately, and to whom he can transfer the holiest emotions connected with memories of father and mother and friend" (W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 2nd ed., p. 202).

It is precisely in the area of the personal that theism, as expressed in Christianity, must ever think in anthropomorphic terms. To regard God solely as Absolute Being or the Great Unknown is to refer to him or it, but to think of God as literally personal, one with whom we can fellowship, is to say Thou. Some object to this view, to explain how the creatures of an impersonal force became personal human beings conscious of their personality.

"To say that God is completely different from us is as absurd as to say that he is completely like us" (D. E. Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion, p. 270). Paradoxical as it may seem, there is a mediating position which finds the answer in the incarnation of Jesus the Christ, who said, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Finite man will ever cling to the anthropomorphism of the incarnation and the concept of God as Father (Matt. 7:11), but at the same time he will realize the impossibility of absolute, complete comprehension of God, for "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord" (Isa. 55:8).

D M Beegle
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

Bibliography
W. Eichrodt, Theology of the OT, I; J. Hempel, "Die Grenzen des Anthropormorphismus Jahwes im Alten Testament: ein Vortrag," ZAW 57: 75ff.; G. D. Hicks, The Philosophical Bases of Theism; R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy; H. H. Rowley, The Faith of Israel; H. B. Swete, An Introduction to the OT in Greek.

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