In a comment here, a reader named leeannemeredith wrote:
Do you think God is a Spirit Being? I get tied up in these questions regarding the nature of God. Where or how God came into being. Sometimes I think of the old movie Jason and the Argonauts and a group of godly figures standing around and discussing the human travails and laying bets on the fragile choices we make.
This post is an edited version of my reply, whose original you can see here. The question and answer in this post are a follow-up to the ones in the previous post: “If God Sees Everything, Is Everything that has Ever Happened Still Happening?” Here we go:
You don’t ask any small questions!
In a colloquial sense, God is a spirit being in that God is not a material being, but inhabits the spiritual realm. But in a strict sense, God is not a spirit being because God is a divine being, inhabiting and constituting a realm above the spirit realm.
This is why the Bible says that God is a spirit in John 4:24, but after his resurrection, Jesus—who is God with us (Matthew 1:23)—assured his disciples in Luke 24:39 that he is not a spirit. Yes, modern translations commonly use the word “ghost” instead of “spirit” in this verse, but it is the same Greek word. I am linking to the King James Version this time because its translation is closer to what the original Greek says. Jesus wanted us to know that he, God (John 20:28), is not a mere spirit being.
God is a spirit in the sense that God is not a material being. But God is not a spirit in the sense that God is a divine being, not a spiritual being.
The realms that we, and God, inhabit
Once again, Emanuel Swedenborg’s distinct or vertical levels (see the previous post) come into play here. The three major distinct levels (there are many smaller ones within these) are:
- The divine level (God)
- The spiritual level (the spiritual world and the human mind)
- The physical level (the material universe, including the human body)
All created things exist in the spiritual realm or the material realm. Some exist on both levels at once.
We humans exist on both levels as long as we are living in the material world. After we die, we exist on the spiritual level almost exclusively. At the time of our death we leave our physical body behind, and continue our life in the spiritual world in our spiritual body—which we already have even while we are living on this earth, though most of the time we are not conscious of it.
God, who is the Creator of all things in the spiritual and physical universes, exists in the divine realm. God is the divine realm.
God does inhabit the spiritual and material realms, but God is not the spiritual and material realm, nor is any of the spiritual or material realm God. Pantheism is a mistaken view of God.
It is like a human being inhabiting a house. The person inhabiting the house is distinct from the house. Even though the person is living in the house, the house is not the person, nor is the person the house. Of course, the way God inhabits the spiritual and material realms is much more complex than that! But this provides a simple image to illustrate the concept.
Were humans originally polytheistic?
About Jason and the Argonauts and the gods hanging out in the empyrean realm discussing human affairs, the common view among secular scholars is that humans started out polytheistic, and only gradually developed the idea of monotheism—that there is one and only one God.
Swedenborg begs to differ.
He says that the earliest people on earth knew that there is one and only one God, and they worshiped that God.
They also knew about the “correspondences” or spiritual symbolism of the many and varied earthly animals, plants, mountains, and hills, and of the sun, moon, planets, and stars in the sky. They saw all of them as expressions of various aspects of the one God whom they worshiped. In time, as the arts developed, they created drawings and sculptures to represent these aspects or virtues of God in the form of animals, trees, birds, fish, the sun, moon, and stars, and so on.
In later eras, however, as people become more worldly-minded, they no longer had the direct connection with God that those early human cultures did. They also lost the ancient knowledge of the symbolism of their artwork and statuary, and began to worship them each individually as representing distinct gods and goddesses.
In short, according to Swedenborg monotheism came first, and later degenerated into polytheism as people became less spiritual and more materialistic.
This regression from our original monotheism to a subsequent polytheism is reflected in the Bible story. In the earliest chapters of Genesis Adam and Eve have a personal relationship with God—who is a single being, not multiple gods. God walks among them and talks with them in the Garden of Eden. Only later does the Bible start talking about the many gods of the nations.
Where did God come from?
Where or how did God come into being?
Nowhere, and nohow.
God never came into being. There is no God that made God, and then another God that made that God, as the atheists love to gabble on about. There is no infinite regression. God simply is. God is existence itself. God is being itself. Everything else that did come into existence came into existence from God.
I know this is hard to accept for materialist thinkers who want everything to have a prior cause. Whenever they think about a God or gods, they inevitably think about what made or caused God or the gods.
But nothing made or caused God. God is the being that made and caused everything else. God is what existed in the first place, from which everything else came.
Logically speaking, there must be something from which everything else came. Otherwise there would be nothing at all. Nothing comes from nothing. God is the something from which everything else comes.
God is human
But God is much more than that.
God is not some abstract logical construct. God is human in the ultimate sense: God is love, God is wisdom, God is action. God has all the positive characteristics that make us human. But God has them in infinite degree, whereas we have them in finite degree. Biblically, God made humans, both male and female, in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26–27). We are human because God is human, not the reverse.
God showed us this divine humanity by coming to us as Jesus Christ, a human being who lived among us for a brief human lifespan, then ascended back up to his original oneness with God. But that is an entire vast subject of its own. (See: “What Does it Mean that Jesus was ‘Glorified’?”)
All of this means that God is one, God is human, and we can have a personal relationship of mutual love and understanding with God if that is something we want. Deciding whether we want that relationship with God, and with our fellow human beings, is what our lifetime on earth is all about.
For further reading:
- Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?
- If God Sees Everything, Is Everything that has Ever Happened Still Happening?
- If God Already Knows What We’re Going to Do, How Can We Have Free Will?
- God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
- The Logic of Love: Why God became Jesus
- Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Hi Lee. I enjoy your insights , thank you for sharing your wisdom. Off topic would you make your type face a little larger and darker, it is a strain for me (and maybe others as well) to read. Blessings,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for your kind words, and for your request about the typeface. It was too small for me also, but I hadn’t thought to check whether it is adjustable. I’ve found the setting now and bumped it up from “normal” to “large.” Is it any easier to read now?
Yes it is. Thank you. Did Swedenborg write a book on the second coming? I’d love to read it if there is one.
Hi David,
Good. It’s easier for me to read as well.
Swedenborg didn’t write a book specifically about the Second Coming. But he did write a small book about the Last Judgment that he said took place during his lifetime in the spiritual world. This event is associated with the Second Coming. You can purchase the book, or download a free digital version (PDF or ePub) at the Swedenborg Foundation website here:
Last Judgment / Supplements: New Century Edition
However, if you want the full version that has the scholarly notes explaining many things in the book (recommended!), you’ll need the Deluxe version, which is in this book:
The Shorter Works of 1758: New Century Edition
There is currently a free ePub of this book, but no PDF version. You can also purchase the hardcover on Amazon here (the link contains my Amazon affiliate code), but it is rather expensive.
The other place Swedenborg does talk specifically about the Second Coming is in the last chapter of True Christianity. The link is to my book listing/review for this work, where you can find links to purchase or download it if you don’t already have a copy. The chapter you want is:
Chapter 14: The Close of the Age; the Coming of the Lord; and the New Heaven and the New Church
Alternatively, you can read it on the web starting here. This chapter puts the Second Coming in context, and takes up several related topics.
Though they don’t dig deep into the Second Coming, you may also find these articles here helpful:
And there are more where those came from! 😀
Enjoy! And if you have any questions along the way (probable!), please don’t hesitate to leave further comments on any of the articles.
Hi Lee,
Really cool article ,
I’m curious about the spiritual and material levels. If Swedenborg believes in angelic beings, then where would they fall in that spectrum as you associate the spiritual realm to the human mind?
I have heard of testimonies from people who claim they have had a divine encounter, or experienced miraculous healings, so I was curious to how the spiritual and physical and interconnected in that regards?
Hi Blaine,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and questions.
In Swedenborg’s view, contrary to traditional Christian belief, angels are simply human beings who have lived a regular life here on earth, chosen good over evil, and gone on to live in heaven. They are the spirit that is within us even while we are still living on this earth.
They are not wispy, bodiless beings, though. We do have a spiritual body that is just as solid, real, and complex in the spiritual world as our physical body is in the physical world. It’s just that during our lifetime on earth our spiritual senses, meaning the senses of our spiritual body, are not open and active, just as our physical senses are not open and active while we’re sleeping or dreaming.
In short, angels exist in the spiritual realm, which is the same realm that the human mind exists in. When we die, we simply become fully conscious in that realm.
Many people have had divine encounters, or conscious experiences of encountering God. For Christians, it is commonly an encounter with Jesus Christ, who is God, and is God’s human presence with us. These encounters happen with our spiritual senses, not with our physical senses.
Healing from the spirit world is, I believe, quite possible also. It cannot be studied scientifically because science requires repeatable experiments, and spiritual phenomena are not repeatable in their influence on the physical world. But even non-religious doctors and nurses recognize that there is such a thing as psychosomatic illness, in which our body becomes ill due to negative and disordered states of mind. And if the mind can influence the body toward illness, there is no reason to think it can’t influence the body toward health as well.
I said “the mind” there, but I could have said “the spirit.” For all practical purposes, the mind is the spirit.
As for sudden miraculous healings, I believe this can happen also, but it is much more rare these days. That’s because the bulk of the population has become materialistic and is therefore not open to spiritual influences, including healing from a spiritual source.
Once again, such healings cannot be studied scientifically, except in a very generalized and non-conclusive way, because they cannot be reproduced by any regular set of material-world conditions and influences, which is necessary for scientific study. Healing from a spiritual source by definition does not have material causes. Science can study only material phenomena, not spiritual phenomena.
Such healings would take place through what Swedenborg calls “correspondence,” which is the mechanism by which spiritual things express themselves on the physical level. But that is a huge subject of its own. For a basic explanation of correspondences in a different context, please see this article, and scroll down to the relevant heading:
Can We Really Believe the Bible?
Thanks Lee,
this is really helpful and I will have a read.
I know this is off topic and you may not be able to answer, but what would be your thoughts on God answering prayers of non Christians? A lot of churches have told me that God does not answer their prayers or do miracles through them but I have heard a lot of people who have had answered prayers even when they did not believe in God (new agist for instance). I am just wondering if God has a certain law regarding answering to a call of genuine faith?
Thanks Lee,
this is really helpful and I will have a read of your other articles.
This may be off topic and you might not be able to answer on here but what are your thoughts on God answering the prayers of a non Christian?
I have had churches tell me that God does not answer their prayers or work miracles through them, but I have heard of many testimonies of people from different denominations swear by their prayers being answered (new agists and Muslims for example). I am just wondering whether there is a universal law which adheres to God answering prayers from a genuine cry of faith?
Hi Blaine,
The so-called Christian churches say all sorts of things that are not in the Bible, and are not true.
Jesus gave a universal law when he said:
Now, that’s a tricky statement. Many people think they are believing, but don’t get what they ask for in prayer.
But one thing Jesus doesn’t say is, “If you believe in me, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” In other words, Jesus does not say, “If you are a Christian believer, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Only “If you believe.” And Christians aren’t the only people who can believe.
Really, these so-called Christians believe in a very small-minded God. But God is the God of all people, not only the God of Christians. See:
If there’s One God, Why All the Different Religions?
Thank you again Lee for a prompt and wonderful response
I agree, there seems to be a lot of confusion between churches and message they spew.
I do agree God answers the prayers of those who pray according to his Will. I also heard some new churches in the new age that say he can control gods hand if we believe, but I don’t think that’s biblical
Thanks again Lee, you’re honestly a blessing !
Hi Blaine,
No, we can’t control God’s hand. But we can have an influence on what God can and cannot accomplish, by either accepting or rejecting God’s work in our lives.
God’s will and work is always the same: to lead and carry every one of us to eternal life in heaven. But God does not force us to accept the invitation. God flows in only as much as we are receptive. We can’t change what God wants to do, but we can stymie God from doing it in our own lives if that is our choice.
Hi Lee
I have a question regarding our nature. If God is a spirit does that not make us also a spirit ? The Bible says we are spirit , soul and body. What would your view of function of these parts for us be? I thought our soul is our mind?
And if god is spirit does he communicate with us via spirit? And does everything in this world have a spiritual root?
Hope my question makes sense
Hi Dan,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and questions.
Yes, your questions make sense. In general the answer is, “Yes to all of the above.”
We humans are indeed spirits temporarily inhabiting a physical body in the material world. Our time on this earth is like our time in the womb. It is where we are formed into the person we will be when we enter the spiritual world. Just as we do not stay in the womb forever, but only long enough to be formed into a human being, so we do not stay in the material world forever, but only long enough to be formed into an angel.
And yes, our spirit is a soul and a body, not to mention actions. The soul, when it is put in contrast to the spirit or the spiritual body, means our innermost self, which makes us the person we are. (“Soul” is also sometimes used as a synonym for “spirit.”) Our spiritual body is a body exactly like our physical body, only it is made of spiritual substance, not physical matter. Other than that, it is hard to tell the difference. All the usual parts and organs are present in the spiritual body just as they are in the physical body. And in the spiritual world, our body is just as solid and real as our physical body is on earth.
Our mind is also part of our spirit, but it is the part within the body, just as our mind here is not our body, but is within it. (Actually, it is spiritual even while we are living in our physical body.) So we have a mind that thinks and feels, loves and learns, and we have a body through which our mind acts in pursuit of what it loves, guided by what it has learned. That is who and what we are as a person, both in this world and in the next.
And yes, with the exception of the time God came to earth in a physical body as Jesus Christ, God does communicate with us via spirit, through our spiritual senses, not through our physical senses. When people have encounters with God or hear God’s voice speaking to them, their spiritual senses are briefly opened up so that they can see and hear God.
And yes, everything in this world does have a spiritual root, and everything spiritual has its root in God. The entire created universe, both spiritual and physical, is an expression of God’s nature. Every single thing in each world expresses something specific about the nature of God, and every single thing in the physical world expresses something specific about the nature of the spiritual world. This is what Swedenborg calls “correspondence.” It is the living relationship between God and spirit, and between spirit and nature. There is a brief explanation of correspondence toward the end of this article:
Can We Really Believe the Bible?
I hope this helps.
Hi Lee
I’m not sure if this is the place to ask or if I should forward it as a separate question but what are your thoughts on the following Bible verses:
[17] And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; [18] They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
A lot of believers tell me this is a promise? However I’m not particularly sure we should take that literally
Hi Nur,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and question.
About Mark 16:17–18, in the early days of Christianity this was literally true. And even for some Christians today, these types of miracles are a major part of their faith.
However, that is because the early potential converts to Christianity, not to mention many people attracted to Christianity today, were and are very physical-minded and materialistic in their thinking. For such people, literal, physical miracles are impressive, and incline them to believe the message being preached along with the miracles being performed. This is why Jesus and his apostles did miracles: to attract materialistic and superficial thinkers to the message they were preaching. In those days, very few people were spiritual-minded. Almost everyone was focused on earthly things such as wealth, pleasure, and power.
But there was another reason as well: all of these signs and wonders have spiritual meanings related to our process of “regeneration” or being born again. Specifically:
So yes, for “baby Christians” whose minds are still stuck on an earthly level, these signs can be taken literally. But once Christians begin to grow spiritually and open up their deeper self, physical miracles cease to be impressive or important. The spiritual miracles of being reborn into a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) take their place. And these miracles are far greater, because their effects are eternal, whereas physical healings and similar miracles last only for our lifetime here on earth, if that long.
Hi Lee
Thank you for your insights, I know you may have pondered over all these questions yourself at some point.
Based on the above scriptures, do you believe the Lord still heals us today if he is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and if Jesus was the perfect will of the father on earth? I do believe it is still the Lord’s will to heal, but for reason we may not know maybe not everyone would heal on this lifetime.
I also have heard of Faith healing churches mention the importance of one’s faith. Is there any reason why faith can block the power of God (Mark 6:5)? Its hard to understand what goes on in the spirit realm, but do you think Faith is some type of force that opens the gates of Gods power? however there have been instances where some people may not have faith and experienced miracles, so I’m not sure how it works.
I guess what my question is that many Christians cite Isaiah 53:5 “By his stipes we were healed” as a argument for both spiritual and physical healing, and I am wondering if this was promised in the atonement?
Hi Nur,
I believe that “faith healings” are still possible, but focusing on them is usually missing the point of the Gospel stories.
Of course, there are many seriously ill and handicapped people who would love to be physically healed. And I do think that whatever healing can be done, whether by physical or spiritual means, is a good thing. The ideal is the ancient Greek one of “a sound mind in a sound body.”
However, as Jesus said, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Matthew 16:26). Though healing the body is good, healing the spirit is much better. Healing of the physical body may last for this earthly lifetime. Healing of the soul lasts forever. So while I don’t reject the goodness of physical healing by whatever means, if it distracts us from focusing on the greater issues of life, such as love, understanding, kindness, and service toward our fellow human beings, then it has done us a disservice rather than a service.
It may sound harsh, but under God’s providence it is necessary for many people to have sickness and struggles, or they would just skate over the surface of life and never develop any depth and strength of character. People who have everything handed to them on a platter, such as the children of rich people who have everything they can want and need, often turn out to be rather superficial and useless people. Rarely do they come anywhere near the attainments of their rich parents. They’ve never had to struggle for anything, so they are weak and flabby in character. A disproportionate number of them become addicts and alcoholics.
When people come to this blog, it is usually because they are in crisis or in ongoing pain over the death of a loved one, chronic illness, the breakup of a relationship, or some other painful life circumstance. If these things had not happened to them, how many of them would have gone on a quest to find God and spirit? Honestly, very few. This is why God allows (not causes) us to suffer the many hardships of this life.
Does this mean we shouldn’t seek out healing? Not at all. Healing is good.
But human life, health, and sickness are immensely complex. There are many factors involved that we may not even be aware of. We may try as hard as we can, but still not achieve healing. The important thing is that whatever our state of physical and mental health may be, we continue forward on our life journey of becoming a good and thoughtful person. But there is more on the subject of health and disease in this article:
What is the Source of Human Fragility, Sickness, and Disease?
It also cites in the bible that it is impossible to please god without faith, and in other verses saying that those who are double minded or doubt will not receive from the lord. Which indicates Faith can stop the flow of God in a persons life. Not sure I am interpretating this correctly.
Hi Nur,
The existing Christian church generally has a rather superficial understanding of “faith,” involving essentially intellectual belief in Jesus Christ. But that is not what faith is. See:
Faith Alone Is Not Faith
Faith is not mere belief. It is an entire attitude of mind that not only sees, accepts, and believes the truth, but also lives according to it. Health comes, not from “believing” in healing, but from living in a healthy way, both physically and spiritually.
The healings that Jesus and his Apostles did were real, but they were primarily meant to illustrate the power of spirit in our lives. And the greatest healing, as I’ve said in previous replies, is the healing of the spirit. Meaning, changing us from being self-centered and greedy people to being loving, thoughtful, and kind people who devote our lives to serving and caring for other people.
If we experience this sort of healing, then the malfunctionings of our physical body will pale in comparison. Our physical body with all its weaknesses and dysfunctions will be left behind at death. We will then live in our spiritual body, which will be a perfect expression of the character we have built, whether good or bad. The brief sufferings of this life, as heavy as they are for us now, are little or nothing compared to an eternity of living in the bright and healthy world of heaven.
Once again, this does not mean we shouldn’t seek healing here on earth. It means, rather, that we should seek God’s kingdom first. Then God will give us whatever else we need—even if it may not always be what we want.
Hi Lee
Thanks for a prompt response, I completely agree with what you said about faith, but why is it that scripture indicates that lack of faith or unbelief stops the flow of God? There were examples of Jesus unable to do healing due to peoples unbelief. I’m just wondering whether faith has some type force/power within it that allows us to be receptive for God to flow in?
And do you think healing is promised in the atonement
Hi Nur,
Yes, a lack of faith does stop the flow of God, not because God is unable to flow in under those circumstances, but because God will not force belief upon us, since this would be contrary to God’s purpose in creating us as humans having free will.
In Revelation 3:20, the risen and glorified Jesus Christ, who is God With Us, says:
God does not barge into our lives regardless of our wishes. God stands at the door, knocking and waiting for us to open it. Only then does God come in and share the meal of spiritual life with us.
People without faith have not opened the door to God. Therefore God will not come into their lives and do the good and saving work that God wants to do for them.
I am not quite sure what you mean by “atonement” here. However, if we do open the door to God to enter our lives, then we will experience a spiritual healing. Whether we are healed physically is another matter entirely. As I said earlier, that is a very complex matter.
Those who accept God into their lives, however, will experience even physical healing once they move on to the spiritual world, if they have not already experienced it here on earth. In the spiritual world our body corresponds perfectly to our mind. So if we have a sound mind of love, understanding, and kindness, our body will also be sound and healthy—in fact, far more so than it ever was here on earth. See:
Will Sick or Disabled People Return to Good Health in the Spiritual World?
Hi Lee,
I just wanted to get your thoughts on this FB post https://www.tumblr.com/sams-questions/744952147367641088. It’s says how “the future influencing the past”, and how they are “counterpart worlds where our etheric and astral bodies walk during sleep…and we don’t just walk the astral planes, but the many parallel earth VRs that extend out in all directions.” It then goes on to say “All these worlds are populated by just one very advanced soul, who’s exploring its endless potential, through trillions of individual lives and life times.”
Basically saying that someone can eventually become a God themselves with their “infinite versions of planets and lives”?
I never knew what to make of these kinds of claims.
Thank you Lee
Hi Sam,
Dreams, OBEs, and DMT trips are not the same as reality. A million movies could be made based on the same story, but each handling it in a slightly different way. They would still all be movies, not real life. And each of these movies could be the brainchild of one human being using AI to replicate a million variations on a single theme.
In the real universe, there is still one infinitely loving, wise, and powerful God who has created a spiritual and a physical universe in order to have other beings to love and be in relationship with.
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the clarification. Would you say that all these types of experiences like Dreams, OBEs, NDEs, DMT, etc. trips happen because Gods infinite love and wisdom are flowing down and being influence by the infinite variety of ways we receive? I forgot the exact quote from Swedenborg that says this and I remember you writing about that as well.
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
Yes, I do think that’s how it works. People have different experiences because people have different interests and characters. Each of us receives God’s love, wisdom, and power in our own unique way based on our own unique character. Our experiences in life, including our spiritual experiences, are accordingly different and varied.
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the clarification again on these topics and article. Makes a whole lot more sense now!
I heard the argument that if God is beyond space and time, then that means nowhere and at no time (and the claim is that shows God to be nonexistent). I guess a rebuttal to that is that it is beyond space and time in a transcendent way, sort of like how being out in space means one is not in this world.
PS: Related to that is the argument that if time had a start, there could not be anything before that because there is no before the start of time: the argument that the universe is self-contained in its existence.
Hi K,
Both of these arguments assume the result: that only things that have space and time as properties exist. In other words, that only the physical universe exists.
If God is outside of space and time, this means that time and space simply do not apply to God.
You can’t simultaneously posit that God is outside of space and time and try to apply space and time to God.
So if I understand the New Church God right, God is somehow both omnipresent and beyond physical spacetime (and the spiritual equivalent) as well as the source of all existence, and yet also is a humanoid body somehow that consists of infinite number of cells?
Also, if the New Church God is a body, then can such a God still appear in more than one place at a time in the spiritual or physical somehow?
PS: Personally, although I am not Muslim and I disagree with Islam on quite a number of things, I may be on the same page with how the Muslims view Allah, except that God can also appear in human form (since such a feat should be well within the power).
[[Muslims] do not attribute a form to Allah as Allah is eternal and beyond bodily form. Body and form are creations and are confined to a place. Allah is not a creation. He is our Creator. Anything confined to a place is finite and restricted. Allah is unlimited and not restricted. He has power over everything and is eternal.] – https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/127413/how-should-we-understand-allahs-being/
Hi K,
Yes to all.
But it’s important not to think of God as a having physical body, or even as having a spiritual body, but as a divine body. Everything divine is infinite and eternal. Everything created is finite not eternal, except that humans, once created, continue to exist and live to eternity. But even humans have a beginning point in time, which God does not. So we are, in a sense “half eternal,” whereas God is fully eternal, having no beginning point in time. And of course, even our eternal life comes from God, not from ourselves, whereas God is self-existing. God has no creator. God is the Creator.
The Swedenborgian concept of God agrees with most of what’s said in the Muslim answer you linked. However, one of the key distinctions between Christianity and most other religions, including the other two major Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, is that in Christianity God has come to us and shown God’s nature as a human being. Christians therefore can picture God in their minds as having a human form and even a human body, which Jews and Muslims can’t do—at least, not in the same clear and fully coherent and personal way that Christians can.
If God appeared as a human being, this suggests that God is a human being. Indeed, as I’ve quoted many times, Genesis 1:26—27 says that we are created human in God’s image and likeness. This was before God came to us as Jesus. It tells us that God was already human before the Incarnation.
What the Muslim answer lacks is a concept of a divine body that is not finite or confined to place, but is infinite and present in all places at once.
And yes, God can appear in more than one pace in the spiritual world at a time. Theoretically God could do this in the physical world also, but God doesn’t appear physically anymore. When people have encounters with Christ, they are seeing him with their spiritual eyes, not with their physical eyes.
Also, although technically feelings don’t have a body because they are not a full human being, but only particular elements of a human being, contrary to popular belief they are embodied. I.e., they have a specific, organized substance and form. Physicalists see them as functions of our physical brain, such that they do take place within and as a function of the body. Swedenborgians see them as functions of the spiritual brain and body, which also means they are embodied, and functions of a specific, organized substance and form.
Everything that exists has an organized, detailed substance and form. Nothing can exist without substance and form. This includes not only the human heart and mind (meaning feelings and thoughts), but also God, who is consists of infinite substance (divine love) and infinite form (divine wisdom), which expresses itself in infinite power. God is not formless, but has a form, and it is a human form. This is where the Swedenborgian concept of God sharply disagrees with the Muslim concept of God.
I should add that God is not partly present here and partly present there. One part of God does not manifest in one place, and another part of God in another place. All of God is present everywhere.
However, on the receiving end, the various people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects accept various and differing parts of God. Although God is fully present everywhere, God is not fully received everywhere. Each recipient receives more or less of specific elements of God based on the recipient’s own form and character. And of course, each recipient receives only a finite (limited) amount of God, because all recipients are finite, not infinite. God is fully and infinitely present everywhere, but is received in finite and varied fashion.
>Everything that exists has an organized, detailed substance and form. Nothing can exist without substance and form.
I can conceive of the mind of a being of pure thought, unbound by spacetime or any non-physical equivalent. Something like a brain where each element (the equivalent of a neuron) is formless and yet has a so-called connection or synchronization to a number of others, all working together to make the basis of the thought being.
Unlike the beings of pure thought that Swedenborg was adamant that angels are not, being unbound by space or time (or a non-physical equivalent), such a being of pure thought could use something like ESP to “dip into” or get sensory information from one or more spots in spacetime (or a non-physical equivalent), and abilities like telekinesis or telepathy to to interact with one or more spots in spacetime (ditto): and maybe even in ways that mere gross human sense organs and limbs could never perceive or do.
And maybe such a being could even project an avatar form, which could really be like that transmitter and TV set analogy in action.
Also, why does a sapient (or omnisapient) being _need_ to be in the form of a bipedal mammalian multicellular chemical-based land-dwelling being with all those systems and organs?
So with all that in mind, why not a God that is a being of pure thought beyond all, yet able to project in the physical or afterlife realm with an avatar body? And if there is some special symbolic meaning to the Homo sapiens form in particular, then I could see why such a form would (usually) be humanoid.
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But back to what you said, the traditional Protestant notion of a God who is a Trinity yet one being is confusing. What is also confusing is a God who is somehow a body (a subject that has to occupy spacetime or something like it to be in a humanoid form) and yet also transcends spacetime and any afterlife equivalent. Not to mention somehow appearing in multiple spots at once.
Finally, it seems superfluous or even illogical for a being that is supposed to be the source of existence to have the various organs and systems that physical beings need to fight of entropy (like hunger), disease, and external threats (like the skull surrounding the brain). It seems to imply that God can die (and then take out all of existence with him). And also disturbing: why would God have a reproductive system?
PS: I think I mentioned it earlier: if God is a body, then that implies there is something like space beyond the body of God. How far does it go? Unless God is somehow a body not surrounded by anything (not even something like space).
And where is the spiritual and physical relative to the body of God? All in thoughts in the brain?
Hi K,
Once again, this is thinking of God in terms of time and space. In God, and at the level of reality that God exists on, which is the divine level, there is no time and space, and nothing “like space beyond the body of God.” God is the full reality and extent (non-physically) of the divine being. Asking what is “beyond” God is like asking what is beyond the universe. There is nothing beyond the universe, because the universe is everything that exists on the material level. Even time and space themselves are properties of it, which means “beyond the universe” there is no time or space in which anything could exist.
PPS: There is also the scifi notion of a mind that is embedded in spacetime itself (like in the prologue of 3001), so maybe there could be a God who is embedded in the equivalent of spacetime in the non-physical, if pure thought is not possible.
Hi K,
I think that SF concept is an intimation of the presence of the divine mind throughout the entire physical universe.
Hi K,
Thought itself is not formless. It is highly structured. It consists of multiple—really billions or trillions—of data points all organized into a structured understanding of that data. We see only the crude outline, but in reality, it is a stupendously complex structure, of which we see only the surface.
It’s like looking at the brain. All we see is a lumpy organ that has various folds and furrows. But within the brain there are billions of neurons and trillions of synapses, all of which are necessary for the brain to tell the mouth to say, “Dammit! I forgot my lunch!”
The idea that all that complexity of thought could exist in some formless entity is completely unrealistic.
Hi K,
About this, and your ensuing discussion of it:
God is not a chemical-based land-dwelling being. That is only the physical expression, or correspondence, of what God is. But God is non-physical. There are no chemicals, and there is no land. There are not even cells if we think of them as physical cells. A physical cell cannot be infinite. But everything in God is infinite.
It is necessary to banish all thoughts of time and space, and of physical matter that is extended in time and space, to understand how God has a human body and all its organs. This is not easy for us to do, especially while we are living in the material world, and our thought is mediated through our physical brain.
However, one concept Swedenborg offers that may be helpful is to substitute the idea of “state” for the idea of place, or locality in space. God is infinite state of being, Swedenborg says. So God’s body, organs, and cells are not something organized within space and time. They are infinite states of being that are components of God’s being. They are all differentiated from each other like the parts, organs, and cells of the physical body, but they are states of love and wisdom differentiated from and organized in relation to each other. They are not physical organs, cells, and organelles.
To have some concept of this, we can think of all the parts of our human psyche, which also consist of states of mind and heart (wisdom and love) rather than of physically extended body parts, organs, and cells. Psychology tells us that the human mind is incredibly complex, having many distinct and differentiated elements to it. And yet, none of these elements of our mind is extended in space. They can roam anywhere on earth, or beyond earth, or even into the spiritual world, without any limitations whatsoever in a way that is not possible for our physical body, existing as it does in physical space.
Still, the human mind is not just some ball of energy or formless entity. It is highly structured, and different parts of in interact with one another and provide various “services” to one another such as perception, memory, rational analysis, decision-making, elimination of useless and destructive thoughts and desires, and many more. The parts of the mind that perform these functions are the various organs of the spiritual body.
Further, they are organized into a human form, because our will and understanding are human ones, not animal ones. It’s easy to think that the human form is arbitrary, and that any sufficiently complex form would work, but that’s not the case. Consider speech, for example. Other animals simply don’t have the correct bone structures or musculature to produce human speech, even if they had the intellectual capacity to produce it. That’s why the animated movies of animals talking just don’t look realistic. It requires their bony and muscular form to operate in ways that in reality, those animals’ bodies just can’t do. We could go through other systems as well, but that is a highly visible one, and should make the point. Animals’ bodies are designed to correspond to and express an animal mind. Human bodies are designed to correspond to and express a human mind.
But back to the main point, your discussion of this still draws on material space and time in talking about God’s body and its parts, organs, and cells. This will plunge your mind into all sorts of paradoxes and contradictions. Only by banishing time and space, and substituting states of love and wisdom, will you be able to even approach building an accurate concept of how God can have a human body that is also infinite, omniscient, and omnipresent. And even then, it will be a sketchy idea precisely because our minds are finite, not infinite.
There could be alien life out there that looks like an octopus or jellyfish and which communicates with light or color patterns, and which evolved in a subglacial ocean on an ice moon (like the world known as Europa), so that is how sapient life does not have to be bipedal and mammalian.
Anyway, Swedenborg says in Earths in the Universe of all places that supposed alien humans believe in a God that is both invisible, and visible in humanoid form. Is that a good summary of the New Church concept of God then?
PS: Personally, Earths in the Universe may be the undoing of the credibility of Swedenborg to me BTW. Although I can still agree with New Church morality.
Hi K,
I know it’s popular to believe that intelligent life could take the form of any of our animals, but those animal forms are not intelligent on this planet, and I don’t see why they would be on any other planet, either. Those forms are adequate to an animal mind, but not to a human mind.
In Christian terms, the Father is the invisible part of God, and the Son makes the Father visible. These are not two persons, but the inner and outer levels of one Person of God.
Of course, Swedenborg was wrong about every planet being inhabited, and he was wrong about the other planets in our solar system, plus our moon, being inhabited. As for whether there is other intelligent life in the universe, the jury is still out on that one scientifically. However, recently there has been an upsurge in scientific interest in the search for extraterrestrial life. It’s possible that we’ll find out within the next few decades whether there is life on other planets in our galaxy. As for Earths in the Universe, I deal with that issue in this article:
Aliens vs. Advent: Swedenborg’s 1758 Book on Extraterrestrial Life
And for a related article:
Swedenborg’s Solution to the Fermi Paradox
PPS: Also, I am aware that a being of pure thought is most likely not possible in this reality (and I doubt a being made of thoughts processed by the structure of spacetime itself is feasible), but if there really is a so-called spiritual realm, it can work differently and thus such things could be possible (at least to me). Physics are rather limiting in this reality (and it is doubtful there is so-called magic or the supernatural here).
Hi K,
Physics is about the physical world. It doesn’t apply to the spiritual world. But the spiritual world is still structured and orderly, just like the physical world. After all, the physical world is a correspondential expression of the spiritual world, which, in turn, is a correspondential expression of God. This means that everything that exists in the material universe, including its various physical and biological structures, must exist in some way it the spiritual universe as well. Otherwise there would be no source or pattern for them to exist in the material universe.
But yes, the spiritual world does work differently precisely because it is spiritual, not physical. For example, as discussed before, entropy does not operate in the spiritual world. That is a property of the physical universe, which is intrinsically dead, and tends back toward a dead state. But the spiritual world is intrinsically alive, and therefore life thrives there without the drag of the dead entropy of the material world.
Life on one planet is not enough to discount the possibility of different forms for any sapient life elsewhere though. Especially when other worlds can have significantly different conditions and natural histories from the plains of Africa.
Anyway, so I take it that according to Swedenborg, God is both invisible (the Father), yet also visible as a body made of some transcendent Divine substance (the Son), all as a single entity, and the Holy Spirit is the action of God? If that is not it then I am still confused there.
Hi K,
On your first paragraph, I am aware that this is the common view: that intelligent life on other planets, if it exists, may take forms very different from ours. I think that is most likely a mistaken idea.
First, as I’ve said several times before, the human form is not arbitrary. It is ideally suited to express the human mind. And “human” here means a creature that has will and understanding, and the ability to speak and act from them, not just on the material level (which we have in common with animals) but also on the spiritual level (in which we are unique among animals). If we take any other animal form on this earth, it could not adequately express the human mind because its bone structure, musculature, brain size, and so on would not be adequate to expressing human thoughts and feelings. It would be like attempting to compete in a Formula 1 race using a soap box derby car. It just wouldn’t work.
Even from a materialistic perspective, then, I think it is likely that if there is intelligent life on other planets, it will look fairly similar to human life on this planet.
From a Swedenborgian perspective, it is a general principle that because God is human, and the universe is a creation and expression of God, everything in the universe tends toward the human form. This means that our arrival at our current human form via evolution was not random, but had direction, and that direction was toward the human form that we know and inhabit. And if that principle is operating on this planet, such that through a long series of highly unlikely turns of event in our evolutionary history, we ended up looking the way we do, then the same will be the case on other planets, even if their environments are considerably different from ours, and their evolutionary pathway is not the same.
Swedenborg, of course, was wrong about every planet and moon in the universe being inhabited, and he was wrong in thinking that all the other planets and moons in our solar system are inhabited by human life. My theory, as covered in my “Aliens vs. Advent” article, is that Swedenborg did meet people from other planets in the spiritual world, but that he misidentified them as coming from the other then-known planets and moons in our solar system. If he had special knowledge of conditions in the physical universe based on his spiritual experiences, why did he not also describe meeting people from Ceres, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Planet Nine?
If you can grant for the sake of argument that Swedenborg did encounter multiple populations from other planets, what we find is that they are all human in bodily form, but they have variations, such as being taller or shorter, being slenderer or thicker, having differing facial and skin coloration, and so on. I.e., they are all variations on the theme of the human body that we are familiar with.
This is also common in science fiction, in which most intelligent aliens are humanoid. The ones that aren’t are usually “monsters,” meaning evil creatures. And even these commonly are distorted versions of the human form. Occasionally there is a benign non-humanoid alien, but these are not as common. “Human bias,” some will say. But perhaps it has more to do with the fact that the human form is admirably well-suited to express the thoughts and desires of intelligent life. Trying to get other forms to do that well is usually not very successful because those other forms just aren’t very well-suited to expressing intelligent life.
Currently we have no other available examples of intelligent life forms because we have so far not found any, and it’s unlikely that we will in my lifetime or yours. Only by actually encountering intelligent life other than that of our own planet would we be able to answer this question from a materialistic perspective. This leaves the alternative method of moving on to the spiritual world at the time of our death, and investigating the question there. This is what Swedenborg did, only he did it while still living on this earth.
I, for one, consider Swedenborg’s spiritual-world experience to be valid, even if he sometimes misinterpreted it, such as thinking that some of these people from other planets he was meeting there came from Mercury, Venus, Earth’s moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, when we now know that this could not possibly be the case. However, until we go there ourselves, we don’t have a very reliable way of verifying whether Swedenborg was or wasn’t correct in his statement that other planets are inhabited by human life.
Hi K,
About your second paragraph:
Yes, that’s how it works. The simplest way for us to understand it is that the Father is like our soul, the Son is like our body, and the Holy Spirit is like our words and actions. These are not three distinct human beings (“Persons”), but are all integral and essential parts of a single divine human being.
I think there can be different kinds of sapience out there. Maybe life forms that are so-called starfish aliens (a trope name for non-humanoid of any kind maybe) think that all fully sapient life out there has to look like them before they start really speculating or looking.
But even _if_ all sapient life out there is humanoid, maybe there can still be variation in composition (substance that make them up), eye structure, limbs, etc. More or less similar to but not always mammalian.
Anyway, good that I got the part about the New Church view of God right. There would have to be an invisible if one goes somewhere or sometime in physical spacetime or somewhere and sometime in the afterlife realm and yet God is not there in body. And for God to be able to be beyond time and space and the afterlife equivalent.
When Christ said that what you do to others you do to Him, what did He mean by that? Is everyone like an expression of God (even if twisted or distorted in the case of evil people)? I know New Church does not go by the so-called New Age or Gnostic idea that everyone is merely a manifestation of God and will one day become (one with) God.
Hi K,
We are manifestations of God, but we are also distinct beings who are not God. As an analogy, a painting is a manifestation of the artist who painted it, but the painting is not the artist. It is an entity distinct from the artist that has a “life of its own,” so to speak.
Still, God is in every one of us, and has joy or sorrow in our joy and sorrow. When we do something good for one of the beings God has created, God is in that being, experiencing the comfort, happiness, and joy that the being we did it for (usually humans, but also animals, and so on) is experiencing.
God wants us all to be happy. When we do things that make others happy, or at least that relieves their suffering, this gives God happiness also.
If the ultimate or true form of God is some sort of infinite Homo sapiens body, then does not that imply that there is a space outside of the body where God is not? In order for God to ultimately be a human body, does that not imply an environment (or featureless void) for the body to be in where such a god is not? And if God has lungs, what do they breathe in and out? And would such a God wear clothes? If so, would they not be outside of God because they merely cover the body?
I like to think of the true or ultimate form of God the way Muslims think of Allah (and such a lack-of-form would be the Father), and such a God can manifest in a human form (the Son). Much more logical. I also disagree that a body or form _has_ to be needed for a mind. Maybe in this reality, but not necessarily in a magical dimension beyond space and time.
Hi K,
None of the above, because God’s body is infinite, not finite. There is nothing outside of it on the divine level. And it is not made of physical matter or spiritual substance. It is a whole different, and higher, level of reality that is not possible for us to grasp, though we can think about it abstractly.
I thought Swedenborg said that God is both invisible (the Father) and visible (the Son).
And if God ultimately is in Homo sapiens form rather than merely manifesting as such, then why a Homo sapiens-like form for a true form? Why not something like an ultimate sapience matryoshka brain-like construct made of crystals around some divine sun, for example?
Hi K,
Yes. But the visible part of God is adapted to our perception. The Father, which is the core being of God, is beyond our perception.
Also, I should have mentioned in my previous reply that time and space do not apply to God. So if you’re thinking of God having a body that is stretched out in space, that’s not how it works. With God, instead of space, there is “state,” meaning roughly, state of mind. Thoughts, ideas, feelings, love, and so on are not stretched out in space. They exist outside of space.
And . . . God is not homo sapiens. That is an earthly organism. God is human. And we are human in a lesser version, including the homo sapiens body, as a reflection of God’s infinite humanity.
Something that has only a brain is not human. It lacks, as part of itself, any ability to act on what it thinks. A being that can only think, but not act, is not human. God is complete with the ability to love, the ability to think, and the ability to act. That means God has a heart, a brain, and arms and legs.
By Homo sapiens there, I meant the specific form. Also, why need arms when and if there is telekinesis? The idea of an infinite omnipotent being needing arms to do stuff sounds rather limited. Unless they are metaphorical arms and the Homo sapiens form of God is metaphorical, that is.
Hi K,
Something that’s infinite is, by definition, not limited.
And telekinesis is not how we ordinarily get things done. It’s not how God gets things done, either.
But as long as you think of God’s arms as being like physical arms, existing in time and space and made of flesh, you will not be able to understand what God’s arms are. They’re not mere metaphor. They are real. But they are not in time and space, nor even in the spiritual analogs of time and space. They are infinite and eternal, just like everything in God. And God’s infinity is not spatial, nor is God’s eternity temporal.
I’m not saying we can understand and picture this. We can’t, because our minds are finite, and God is infinite. But we can at least think about it abstractly, and affirm that it is true.
The moment we start to think of God in terms of time and space, our thinking is plunged into all kinds of contradictions and absurdities.
In Swedenborg writings, God is described as doing stuff without arms, like conjuring stuff, making signs appear, etc. And even though it is not literal, in Genesis God just speaks stuff into existence. That does not look like using arms to me. And it can sound like psychokinesis: thinking and something is done without having to use muscle power to do it.
And if the true form of God is human form and can only use arms, there are only 2 of them. I think Chinese mythology gave a human god who created stuff a thousand arms (IIRC).
Finally, God having a visible body (the Son?) who can appear to angels, and yet also having a true form body that is human form seems redundant. BTW, God having eyes in that true form seems to imply there is something outside the eyes are looking at.
To be honest and no offense, but claiming that God has some kind of infinite human form with all those organs sounds like Protestants trying to claim that God is 3 yet 1. Protestants will also claim that the Trinity is a mystery or beyond comprehension or something like it. But at least Protestants may say that God the Father has no form, or rather is beyond it.
Hi K,
First about the Trinity in comparison to Swedenborg’s concept of God:
In Swedenborg’s concept of God, we are a lot like God, because God made us in God’s image. We are human because God is human. Our humanity is an expression of God’s humanity. This is biblical, and it is also sensible. When we make things, something about ourselves and our character is expressed in the things we make. When God makes things, it expresses something about God’s self and character. The result is us, made in the image and likeness of God, just as the Bible says.
The Trinity of Persons is very different. It says that God is a being completely unlike us, who is somehow three individuals who are somehow one individual at the same time.
None of us is three individuals, with three distinct bodies, and three distinct personalities, who are somehow one person. Even people with multiple personality disorder still have only one body. But the God of the Trinity of Persons is conceptualized mentally and depicted visually in artwork as having three distinct bodies, each of which is inhabited by a distinct personality.
This is not a mere “mystery.” It is a contradiction. And it is completely unbiblical. The Bible never presents God as three different individuals with three different bodies and three different personalities, who are somehow one individual. Yes, the Bible talks about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but it never calls them “persons,” and it never says they are distinct individuals. It takes only a slight mental shift to recognize that these are more metaphorical than literal. After all, the Bible is full of parable and metaphor.
Swedenborg’s concept of God may be considered a “mystery” in that we humans cannot entirely grasp infinity due to the finite nature of our minds. However, it is not a contradiction. It is something that our mind can move to and accept in abstract thought because it is an infinite version of what we ourselves are in finite fashion. It is a “mystery” not in the sense of being nonsensical, contradictory, and completely outside our conceptions of how things work, as the Trinity of Persons is, but in the sense that while it makes sense, it does go beyond our ability to fully grasp.
In this, it’s not all that different from the current scientific conception of the universe. The universe as we know it makes sense. It obeys the laws that we can observe all around us. And yet, it is so vast that we really can’t conceptualize in our mind just how big it is except by extension and analogy based on the size scales that we can grasp. Further, according to current cosmological theory, the part of the universe we can see (the “visible universe”) is not the entire universe. It is simply the universe out to the horizon that is visible to us. The universe as a whole extends far beyond that—we don’t know how far.
In other words, Swedenborg’s concept of God is asking us to extend something that makes sense to us on our own level out to the infinite level of God, just as modern cosmology asks us to extend the laws of the universe that we know about out to an unfathomable distance and vastness of the universe as a whole. The Trinity of Persons, on the other hand, asks us to accept something that makes no sense to us at all—that three people can somehow be one person—and apply that nonsensical and contradictory idea to God.
That is the fundamental difference between the “mystery” of the Trinity of Persons, which is really just a nonsensical contradiction, and the “mystery” of Swedenborg’s concept of God, which takes the things we know and experience and extends them to an infinite level that goes beyond the ability of our finite mind to fully grasp and conceptualize, but which still makes sense logically and abstractly.
Hi K,
When you speak of God using “muscle power” to do things, it is demonstrating that your conception of God’s arms is one of God having physical arms, such that they would be made of “muscle.” It’s the same category error as your continual conceptualizing of our spiritual body as being just like our physical body, such that it is made of “spirit flesh,” which, as I’ve said, is a contradiction in terms.
God’s arms are God’s power. Everything God does, God does with God’s arms because that’s what God’s arms are: God’s power doing things. They are not literal, physical arms. They are divine arms. And yet, they are real, human arms.
Is this hard for us to grasp? Yes it is, because we think mostly in terms of physical matter, and physical space and time. We can hardly even think in terms of spiritual reality, in which matter, time, and space don’t exist. So it is even harder for us to think in terms of divine reality (God), in which everything is infinite, and beyond even the apparent distance and the experience of the passage of events that exist in the spiritual world.
God’s body is not a physical body. It is not even a spiritual body. It is a divine body. That’s why, even though it does actually have divine “muscle,” it’s a category to talk about God doing things by “muscle power,” because in saying that, our mind conceives of a physical arm doing things by physical power. That’s not how God does things.
PS: If God is ultimately in human form rather than merely manifesting as it, does that human form have the same design flaws as the Homo sapiens body, such as the backwards retina?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_poor_design#In_humans
Hi K,
The Wikipedia article itself suggests that there may actually be reasons for the “inverted retina.” Similarly, for a long time it was medical doctrine that the appendix is a vestigial, useless organ, whereas now, as reflected in the Wikipedia article, there is some evidence that it actually does serve a purpose in the body’s economy.
Many of the other “fatal flaws” listed in the article are actually not flaws, but adaptations to the conditions in which humans evolved and live. Why would we need a reflex to respond to a high concentration of inert gases such as helium and nitrogen when this never happens in ordinary life here on the surface of the earth? Why should we expect to be adapted to living and breathing at the top of Mt. Everest when that’s not where we evolved, and it’s not where we’ve ever lived? If we decide to create completely unnatural conditions, such as filling a space capsule with pure oxygen, or with high levels of helium or nitrogen, or if we decide we’re going to climb Mt. Everest “because it is there,” is it the body’s fault that we’re asking it to do something that it was never designed to do?
Complaining that the body doesn’t work well in environments it wasn’t designed for—or evolved for if you prefer—is like driving a drag racing car on a mountain bike trail and complaining that it doesn’t work very well.
Further, many of the “flaws” are actually a result of our not living in the way that our body was designed or evolved to live, such as eating foods that are not appropriate to our body, getting no exercise and sunshine, contrary to our entire evolutionary history, putting toxic substances into our body such as cigarette smoke and recreational drugs, and so on. Is it really the body’s fault if it doesn’t work very well because we treat it badly? The fault is ours, not the body’s. If I pour diesel fuel into the tank of my gasoline car, does it really make sense for me to complain that the engine is performing terribly, and can hardly even run?
As for the remaining ones, such as ectopic pregnancies, the bottom line is that life in the material world is not perfect, nor will it ever be. The material universe is the most “distant” “place” in the universe from God, and therefore the least perfect and the most prone to “errors.”
Think of yourself reading a book in bright light, then dimmer light, then dimmer light, until you can hardly see the page or make out the words. This world is like that dimly lit room in which you can hardly read. Things still function pretty well here, but they’re very far from the perfection of God. There’s only so much God can do to make intrinsically dead and inert physical matter behave itself and respond to the spiritual influence of life. Matter would much rather just stay dead, crash into each other, and engage in all sorts of explosions and chemical reactions. Managing to squeeze any life into it at all is a miracle. It’s a bit too much to expect, given the dead, resistive nature of physical matter, that there aren’t going to be some errors along the way.
What if you had to design a computer using only legos? How successful would you be? God basically took legos, and made them into exquisite human creatures capable of housing a conscious, sentient spirit.
Why did God make our physical bodies out of legos in the first place? Because everything has to be complete from top to bottom, which means from the infinite self-existing life of God down to dead matter. Without dead matter, there would be a possible layer of existence that doesn’t exist. And God does everything completely, right to the end. God doesn’t stop halfway and say, “That’s good enough.”
Meanwhile, all of the imperfections in the human body imposed upon it by the dead nature of matter apply only to our physical body, not to our spiritual body. There are no defects in our spiritual body, unless we intentionally choose to be defective by choosing evil over good. And if we do that, once again, that’s on us. Sure, junk food is appealing to people. But we humans have the ability to consciously choose not to do things that are appealing to us when we know they’re not good for us. If we don’t exercise that ability, that’s on us, not on God.
Further, people who avoid junk food eventually lose their taste for it. Speaking for myself, I find most junk food to be gross and unpleasant to eat. Decades ago I made the choice not to eat it. Over the years, I lost my taste for it. Occasionally I eat something that I thought was great when I was a kid, and it tastes like cardboard, even though it’s the very same thing.
This is the effect of what on the spiritual level is called “regeneration,” or being “born again.” As we consciously travel a better path and live a more sensible and healthful life, the stupid and destructive things that used to be appealing to us lose their appeal. We come to prefer more healthful things. Meat-eaters often think that because I’m a vegetarian, I must find my food boring and unappetizing. In fact, I enjoy my food very much. It is quite tasty, whereas I find meat unappealing. I’ve tasted meat a few times over the years since I became a vegetarian over forty years ago, and though I can see why people like it, it really doesn’t do anything for me.
If we fail to use our human rationality and free will to avoid things that we know are destructive and live in a better way instead, is it the really body’s fault that it has problems because we’re being stupid and short-sighted and treating it badly?
The appeal of junk food is no different than God placing the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, then telling us not to eat from it. It wasn’t meant to be eaten from. If we choose to eat from it anyway, knowing that it’s not a good idea, is that really God’s fault? The alternative is to make us into puppets or robots who have no free will, and are not human. Would that be a better alternative than the way God designed things?
I think that even if God is ultimately a body, that there still is a way for God to appear to be, in scifi terms, a pure energy being: in the physical God is nowhere to be seen despite being omnipresent beyond spacetime. And in the New Church afterlife one does not see God in human form everywhere. And God can apparently manifest in the New Church afterlife in multiple places at once and be doing different things. So it can look like God is some sort of pure energy being who can manifest in avatar form here and there, even if that is not really the case somehow.
Hi K,
The most common way God appears in heaven is as the sun of heaven, which could credibly be described as a ball of energy. The sun of heaven isn’t actually God, but it is the first emanation from God. So yes, God can and does appear to angels as a “pure energy being.” God also appears to angels in human form, but this is a projection also: