GOD ISN’T AN IMMATERIAL SPIRIT
In affirming God’s composition as
an incorporeal spirit, many theologians say deity must therefore be immaterial.
This leads to absolute philosophical distinctions between matter and spirit,
between physical and mental entities, between the spiritual and the worldly.
Charles Hodge illustrates this when he says, “Spirit isn’t matter, or matter
spirit . . . In revealing to us that God is a Spirit, [the Bible] reveals that
no attribute of matter can be predicated of the divine essence.”
Claiming the Spirit as immaterial
puts God in a realm with other immaterial beings, if such beings. People typically
view creatures and creation, by contrast, as material. According to some theologians,
humans represent a mix of matter and spirit: they are, or have, material bodies
with immaterial souls. This way of thinking implies a mind-body dualism
famously articulated by Rene Descartes, in which humans have material bodies
and mental souls/minds.
Two impulses prompt theologians
to say the divine Spirit must be immaterial. We have the biblical claim that
God is invisible. If the Spirit were material, goes the thinking, God could be
seen. Behind the other impulse lies a philosophical framework built primarily
by Plato, which prioritizes abstract forms and ideas. Augustine and Aquinas
united the invisible God of scripture with Plato’s philosophy to argue that God
is an immaterial substance who is timeless, formless, and unchanging.
Claiming God is immaterial deity
could interact with material creation. An immaterial/spiritual God would be
different in kind, after all, from material/physical creatures. The problem of
how an immaterial God might interact with a material world mirrors the
mind/body problem. Traditional theologians claim to solve this by saying that
because an immaterial God supernaturally created matter, divinity can act upon
it. These theologians rarely explain “how” this acting happens, however, and
they often employ the hand-waving phrase “in such a way.”
A second problem with divine
immateriality involves questions about how humans perceive the Spirit. Theologians
typically regard claims about accessing God with our five senses as symbolic rather
than literal. “No one has seen God,” says John’s gospel (Jn. 1:18), and most
think biblical references to hearing God’s voice are metaphorical. By the modern
era, many scholars shifted from saying humans directly perceive deity to
believing humans only infer God’s existence from observations of the world. The
question of how a creature could directly perceive God remained unresolved,
although some appealed to spiritual senses.
Positing an immaterial God
creates a third problem of separating of reality into what is important—the spiritual—and
the unimportant—the material. If people of faith believe an immaterial God is
of the highest value, they will understandably be likely to reject the material
world and want to unite with the immaterial One. The influential spirituality
of Thomas a Kempis in The imitation of Christ, for example, consistently
criticizes the material world and calls readers to the spiritual.
Believing God must be immaterial
easily undermines the appreciation of, and care for, creation. Thinking only
the spiritual is ultimately significant inclines to many to neglect the
material care and needs of the poor and oppressed. After all, their salvation
would be thought spiritual and not also material. The hard spiritual/material
distinction can incline us to think the climate crisis and ecological concerns
are unimportant, and to denigrate the human body, gender, and sexuality in
general.
When theologians strip God of materiality,
problems ensue. (Thomas Jay Oord, A Systematic Theology of Love [SacraSage
Press, 2026], 1:96-98)
To say God has a material dimension
may lead us to ask why we can’t perceive it with our five senses. But God can
be invisible and yet have a material aspect. We know of creaturely entities,
such as molecules, that have materiality but are unseen. The elements of the
periodic table we affirm as real, but some can’t be seen. And phenomena like
gravity can exert real causal influence without being seen. So does dark matter.
(Thomas Jay Oord, A Systematic Theology of Love [SacraSage Press, 2026],
1:99)
Some theologians quote Jesus to
establish God’s immateriality. “Spirit has no flesh and bones” says Jesus in
reference to his resurrected body (Lk 24:39). Most biblical translators use the
term “ghost” instead of “spirit” in this passage; however, saying Jesus isn’t a
ghost here has nothing to do with God being immaterial. Many creaturely objects
have materiality without having flesh and bones. This verse doesn’t establish
divine immateriality. (Thomas Jay Oord, A Systematic Theology of Love [SacraSage
Press, 2026], 1:99)
The phrase “the steadfast love of
the Lord endures forever” makes no sense if creatio ex nihilo were true.
Everlasting love for creatures isn’t possible if God once existed alone and
then created something from nothing. Hesed for creatures isn’t essential
to an independent One who once existed without creatures. By contrast, the
creation theory that says God, in love, everlastingly creates out of, or in
relation to, creation well fits this oft-repeated phrase, “the steadfast love
of the Lord endures forever.” (Thomas Jay Oord, A Systematic Theology of
Love [SacraSage Press, 2026], 1:303)
Some Christians appeal to the
idea of the social Trinity as a metaphysical foundation for saying God always,
and essentially, loving. Essential hesed doesn’t require this claim, because it
says God always and essentially loves creatures and creation. But neither does essential
hesed deny the trinity. Christians who embrace the social Trinity should
also embrace essential hesed. Doing so allows one to say God
everlastingly expresses love among members of the Godhead and everlastingly
loves creation. (Ibid., 1:303 n. 33)
