Sunday, July 16, 2017

The Corporeal God in Christadelphian Theology

While not a tenet of faith (e.g., it does not appear as a doctrine to be affirmed in the Birmingham Amended [and Unamended] Statement of Faith), many Christadelphians have speculated that God the Father is corporeal, similar to the Latter-day Saint perspective.

Robert Roberts (1839-1898), one of the two "pioneers" of the movement, wrote the following in Christendom Astray:

[T]he Father of all is a person who exists in the central "HEAVEN OF HEAVENS" as He exists nowhere else. By His Spirit in immensely-filling diffusion, He is everywhere present in the sense of holding and knowing, and being conscious of creation to its utmost bounds; but in His proper person, all-glorious, beyond human power to conceive, He dwells in heaven . . . the Scriptures quoted plainly teach that the Father is a tangible person, in whom all the powers of the Universe converge.

C.C. Walker (1856-1940), a former editor of The Christadelphian, the flagship magazine of the movement which was established by Robert Roberts, wrote the following on p. 48 of his work, Rome and the Christadelphians (1923), a reply to a Roman Catholic author, J.W. Poynter (emphasis added):

"THERE IS A SPIRITUAL BODY."

Stephen's dying prayer is quite in harmony with the foregoing. The meaning of the prophetic words of Psalm xxxi. 5 : " Into thy hands I commit my spirit." found with but little variation in the mouths of both Jesus and Stephen as they died, is obvious from the case of Jesus himself. God raised Jesus from the dead, and gave him life, preserving his body from corruption. The phrase (to pneuma mou) does not mean " my immortal soul.'" Mr. Poynter says, " We may remark that this common New Testament word for the soul (to pneuma ; Latin, spiritus) is the last conceivable word for a body—even an undying one ! " In this, however, Mr. Poynter is doubly mistaken : (1) To pneuma is '' the spirit," and is not " the common word for the soul " at all; (2) Pneuma, Latin spiritus, most undoubtedly stands for the " undying bodies " of the Lord Jesus and the angels. Jesus became " a quickening spirit " (1 Cor. xv. 45) (pneuma zoopoioun), and as such possessed " flesh and bones " (Luke xxiv. 39). Again it is written of the angels, " What maketh his angels spirits ? " (pneumata) (Heb. i. 7). "Are they not all ministering spirits ? " (verse 14). Jacob wrestled with one of these " ministering spirits," and bore very distinct bodily evidence of the bodily nature of the encounter (Gen. xxxii. 24, 25). " There is a natural (soulical) body (soma psuchikon); and there is a spiritual body (soma pneumatikon) " (1 Cor. xv. 44). Mr. Poynter must look again. In the Bible nobody is found without a body.



For more, see:

The Personality of God and “God is a Spirit” (Jn. 4:24) by Duncan Heaster

God is Corporeal which references many Christadelphian sources