Wednesday, March 27, 2024

C. Hampton Price (1938) on Problems with the Common View that God Appearing in Bodily Form was Merely a "Theophany"

  

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