Maimonides 13 Principles of Faith: 3. Divine Incorporeality

3. I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, has no body, and that He is free from all the properties of matter, and that there can be no (physical) comparison to Him whatsoever.

In Rabbinic Judaism
In hopes of securing dhimmi status for Jews in Muslim lands, Maimonides contradicted much of Talmudic tradition by insisting that God not only has no physical form, but that God is incapable of entering into his own creation in physical form.

Marc Shapiro writes that in the Bible, God is described as a corporeal being, with a back, head, and hands. Nowhere in Tanakh is God described as incorporeal or invisible. Even Isaiah 40 can be interpreted (and has been in Jewish tradition) as affirming that God does have a form, but that it is unlike anything else. Deuteronomy 4 also does not explicitly deny that God has a form, but only that his form was not seen.

Adam walked with God in the garden, and hid from him after Adam had sinned. God appeared to Abraham near the oaks of Mamre. Moses and the 70 elders saw God with white hair and sapphire under his feet. Moses hid his face from God. Isaiah said that he saw God sitting on the throne, and was undone, since no one can see God and live.

The targumim tried to shy away from athropomorphism, but still included some of it. The Talmudic and midrashic literature of the rabbis was filled with anthropomorphism.

Indeed, rabbinic scholars such as Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Yair Lorberbaum state that there is not a single statement in all of rabbinic literature that categorically denies that God has a body or form. The rabbinic literature has many examples of God being described as corporeal, which are very difficult to interpret as mere metaphor.

Meir Bar-Ilan said that "In the first centuries Jews in the Land of Israel and in Babylon believed in an anthropomorphic God."

In the Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 6a, God is described as wearing tefillin.

In Leviticus Rabbah 34:3, Hillel tells his students that just as gentiles are ordered to take care of the images of kings, from which they receive their livelihood, so too was Hillel required to bathe and take care of the image of God.

In Avot d'Rabbi Natan, a prooftext is brought forth for why Adam was born circumcised, "because he was born in the image of God."

In Rosh Hashannan 24b and Avodah Zara 43b, a prooftext is brought forth for why it is illegal to make a portrait of a human face, because to do so would be to make a portrait of God's face.

Even R. Ishmael, who was known for de-emphasizing divine corporeality, still taught that God had five fingers in his right hand, and each had a purpose. One showed Noah what to do, another smote the Egyptians, another wrote the tablets, another showed Moses what to do, and the whole hand God used to ruin the children of Esau.

Midrash tanchuma states that the appearance of God was like devouring fire, but God turned away and hid from them, and therefore the people of Israel saw no manner of form.

In Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Hoshaya said: When the Holy One, blessed be he, created Adam, the ministering angels mistook him for God." God then resolves the event by causing sleep to fall upon Adam, showing the angels that he was a mere mortal.

In Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Shimon said "When Isaac was bound to the altar, he lifted his eyes and saw the divine presence. But it is written that man may not see God and live. In lieu of death his eyes dimmed when he got older. From here you learn that blindness is considered as death."

R. Abraham ben David about Maimonides: "Why has he called such a person a heretic? There are many people greater and superior to him who adhere to such a belief on the basis of what they have seen in verses of Scripture, and even more in the words of those agadot which corrupt right opinion about religious matters."

R. Moses ben Hasdai Taku rejected Maimonides' third principle, and viewed God as being able to take on corporeal form at will. He stated that God sits on the throne literally, and that it is blasphemous to deny that this is the case. Taku interprets Isaiah 40:18 as stating nothing can be compared to God's greatness and splendor, not that nothing can be compared to God's physical form.

R. Solomon Simchah of Troyes said that God was described in human form in prophetic visions, and that this is not to be taken as metaphor. Rather, God actually assumed such a form.

There is good evidence that Rashi himself was a corporealist. He states that the heavenly Torah, measured to be 3,200 times the size of the universe, was measured by the tefach (or cubit) of God himself. Rashi interpret's God's hand in Exodus 7:5 as an actual, literal hand. He also states that for man to be created in God's image is to be created in God's physical form. Rashi then interprets likeness to be man's intellectual understanding. In other words, to be created in God's image and likeness is to be created in God's physical and non-physical aspects.

Rashi's grandson known as the Rashbam might also have been a corporealist. He argues that in Genesis 48:8, Israel both saw God and did not see God, because it is possible to see a person's shape without recognizing the features on his face.

R. Abraham ibn Daud says that masses of Jews believed God to be a material being.

Saadiah Gaon also said that many people beleived God to be a body. Even Maimonides himself said that the majority of the ignorant Jews held an anthropomorphic idea of God.

R. Yedaiah Bedershi writes that it is well-known that in previous generations that belief in God's corporeality was spread throughout virtually all of Israel.

Nachmanides wrote a famous letter to the French sages, who banned Maimonides' teachings on God's corporeality because they contradicted what the majority of French Torah scholars believed.

R. Samuel David Luzzatto openly rejected Maimonides on the issue of corporeality. He argued that the idea of an incorporeal God is what leads to heresy, and that Jews should return to the traditional belief that God is corporeal.

Maimonides is therefore forced to engage in hermeneutical waterboarding, which is to force the text to tell him what he wants to hear. He has to start with the dogma that God is incorporeal and read it into the text. He interprets the interaction with the 70 elders of Israel as the elders having a marred apprehension of God.

So what does one make of the corporealist passages in the Bible? Maimonides argues that the Bible does teach God's corporeality, since the masses need to be instructed in God's existence, and they could only do so on the idea that God is corporeal. The Torah has no choice but to compromise with reality in order to educate the people effectively.

On Maimonides' view, the Torah does not just mislead the people, it actually teaches a heretical doctrine because it is an improvement over the earlier state in which people did not believe in God.

This is absolutely fascinating. Maimonides is so desperate to defend his view, that he would accuse God of not being able to teach his people the truth in a way that they would believe it. Instead, God himself has to openly teach heresy, and one which denies people a share in the world to come because even that is better than atheism.

By implication, this means that belief in Jesus as God, even on Maimonides' view, cannot be worse than atheism, and therefore a Jew is better off in being a Christian than an atheist.

In Christian Theology
John 4:24 says that God is spirit. The definition of spirit by New Testament writers excludes the possibility of God being corporeal. After Jesus was resurrected, the disciples wondered if he was a spirit, and Jesus said that a spirit does not have flesh and bones as he does. 1 Timothy 1:17 also describes God as invisible.

In Contra Brown, Yisroel Blumenthal takes a position which is more at home with Christian theology than with Orthodox Jewish theology.

"In order to establish His relationship with the Jewish people God introduced Himself to the nation as a whole with the words “I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2). This revelation gave the people to understand that there is no power aside from God (Deuteronomy 4:35). This revelation was God’s way of teaching us whom to worship, and through the process of elimination – who we cannot worship. If the being in question was not present at Sinai, then it does not deserve our devotion (Exodus 20:19, Deuteronomy 4:15). Scripture consistently warns against worshipping - “gods that neither you nor your fathers have known” (Deuteronomy 11:28, 13:3,7,14, 28:65, 29:25, 32:17, Jeremiah 7:9, 19:4) – or “that which I have not commanded” (Deuteronomy 17:3). The clear message of scripture precludes worship of a being that was not revealed to us at Sinai. It is on this basis that the Jewish people cannot accept a teaching which deifies a human being."

It is true that if the being was not present on Sinai, it does not deserve our devotion. Since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one being (but not the same person), then any time that one is present, all three are present. To say that the Son was not present at Sinai is just to beg the question against the Trinity.

Jews will often argue that God is not a man, therefore Jesus cannot be God. This is like arguing that blue is not made of metal, therefore my car cannot be blue. It's a fallacy of predication.

A better way to understand the Incarnation is to think of the Shekinah. This is the glory of God which filled the Holy of Holies. it was visible and located in space and time, and yet it was worthy of worship.

One could say that God created a human body, or even a body-soul composite, and then indwelt that body with the Shekinah. Since the Sheknah is part of that person, then that person would be worthy of worship, in the same way that the temple itself was not worthy of worship, but the temple-Shekinah composite was worthy of such worship.

This position is far less extreme than what has been accepted in Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism, and so it has no grounds to dismiss the traditional Christian understanding of the Incarnation as a violation of Maimonides' Third Principle.

For further reading