Q&A: God's Soul and Body
God's Soul and Body
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I give classes in a synagogue on the history of Israelite faith, and we discussed the idea that according to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), God has a body. The audience was shocked, of course, and so on. The next point in the class is that according to the Hebrew Bible, God also has a soul—that is, a psychological structure similar to ours (experiences time as we do, loves, gets angry, hates, seeks honor, cares what others think of Him, etc.).
While most people are shocked by the first claim, almost all of them live quite comfortably with the second.
From the standpoint of medieval philosophy (Maimonides, Rabbi Joseph Albo), the proof that God has no body is that He is "simple" and not composite, and for the same reason He has no soul.
My questions are:
- Do you understand / agree with all the discussions that appear in medieval literature?
- If the answer to 1 is no, do you understand the root mistake of all the Aristotelian / medieval scholasticism?
- Do you think God could have a body or a soul?
Answer
As for your basic claim, I don’t agree that this is what emerges from the Hebrew Bible, although in any case you can’t really learn anything from the Hebrew Bible as such.
- The question is too general. I don’t usually deal with that philosophical literature, because in my view the arguments are very weak, and they are based on unsupported assumptions and faulty inferences.
- I don’t know of one single basic mistake. As I said, the whole system there is based on a collection of assumptions whose basis I do not know, and a large part of them seem to me either incorrect or meaningless.
- In principle, He could, but it is likely that He does not have a body. As for a soul, that depends on the definition. He is a spiritual entity, and you can call that a soul.
Discussion on Answer
"And God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
Seemingly, the plain meaning is that God has an image of male and female, and that is how He created the human being.
And the Kabbalistic literature makes a whole feast out of this.
There is also, "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent," and "for He is not a man, that He should repent" 😉
In any case, on the substance of the matter, I think that everywhere you have "image," you can understand it as something like (in my words) a "reflection" or something that represents something else. The only place where this is a bit harder is in Psalms, but there it is understandable because of its exceptional nature and the "absurdity" between the first half and the second half, and it depends on your assumptions about the World to Come, etc.
In any case, according to what you’re saying, the episode of the calf is not clear:
"He fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf, and they said: These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt."
Are you talking about a body like ours? What does it mean that He has a body? Like skin? Does it age over the years? Become full of wrinkles, etc.?
How do you understand this from the Hebrew Bible, for example in Isaiah 40:
"To whom then will you liken Me, that I should be equal to him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one is missing."
Or even:
"And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it."
"And the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul."
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
"And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters."
And also, in the first style, even in less clear verses:
"Take great care for yourselves, for you saw no form on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire."
……
"Take care lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which He made with you, and make for yourselves a carved image, the form of anything that the Lord your God has commanded you against. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."
And regarding idolatry:
"Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. Their hands, but they do not feel; their feet, but they do not walk; they make no sound in their throat."