The
Catholic Church teaches that God merely “assumed” a body for the sake of
manifestation whenever He was seen by man. There are numerous inconsistencies
in this statement which should be considered before going further with the
Catholic conception of God—if a belief in an “immaterial” God is accepted.
When
God manifested Himself to man there were three possible explanations regarding
his body: (1) He created it for the particular manifestation; (2) He occupied
the body of some individual already on this earth; or, (3) He must have
appeared in His true form.
Let
us consider these three possibilities: It is not unreasonable to believe that
God would find it necessary to create a body for Himself each time He desired
to appear to man Had He done this it would have been necessary for Him to
create many bodies as we know that He appeared many times. What would have
become of the bodies “In which” He was seen? Would it not be detracting from
the glory and power of God to say that it was necessary for Him to do this when
He could have kept one body for all manifestations? And yet had He used only
one body what became of the body between manifestations? It certainly wouldn’t
have gone on living for there would have been no spirit to give it life. God’s
spirit could not have remained in the body for this would have necessitated His
having a body! And a body is contrary to Catholic doctrine. Would God have
occupied the body of some human being on earth, the original spirit or “soul”
returning after He had used it for the purpose of manifesting Himself to
mankind? Need the unreasonableness of this assumption be further pointed out?
Let
us assume for a moment that He did not use the body of some individual already
on earth or the body He procured from some other source. Would HIs entire
spirit have entered the body? If such were the case He could not have been
everywhere present since HIs spirit would have entered a body. This would have
been, and would be today, a direct contradiction to Catholic doctrine which
teaches that God is everywhere present at all times. However, how would a
“volume” of 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
cubic miles of an “immaterial substance” reasonably and logically fill a
body of human size? On the other hand, if only a part of His spirit had entered
the body He would have been divided (since part of his spirit would have been
in the body, the remaining part being outside the body) something again in
direct contradiction to Catholic doctrine. Need it be pointed out how
unreasonable it would be to maintain that a fraction of God’s spirit could have
given life to a body and moved from place to place, while the remaining
portion would have filled the entire universe?
There
remains only the third alternative: God must have had a body of HIs own!!
And if He had it then He has it now. Although this conclusion contradictions
Catholic doctrine and may be termed “blasphemous,” it is in accord with and as
we have seen in chapter 2, substantiated by scripture and reason. (C. Hampton
Price, Concerning God [1938], 41-42)
Further Reading:
Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment