Q&A: The Negation of Corporeality
The Negation of Corporeality
Question
Why, according to Judaism, can God not make Himself corporeal? After all, by denying corporeality we are effectively limiting God’s ability to limit Himself within a physical body. I did not find Maimonides addressing this question. He mainly says that one cannot put God into the cage of limited physical matter, but by saying that we have in fact canceled God’s ability to limit Himself, and thereby diminished His infinity.
I would be glad for an answer!
Answer
First, who said He can’t?
Second, not every limitation on Him contradicts His omnipotence. Suppose He were to turn Himself into something corporeal and then I would burn Him. Would He disappear from the world? If yes, then that cannot be, because He is the necessary existent. If not, then He did not really become corporeal. That consideration shows that turning God into a material object is a logical contradiction, and therefore the fact that He cannot do it does not detract from His omnipotence. He also cannot make a round triangle. We have already discussed this here ad nauseam in the past (search for logical constraints, or the laws of logic, or the stone that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot lift, or the problem of evil in the world).