it might assume a definition but it certainly does not assume a Christian definition, the majority of Classical deities were distinctly anthropomorphised, indeed the inspiration for my initial reply was a quote from I think Aristotle that because Greek gods took the form of men rather than the fantastic creatures that were the manifestations of many Near Eastern deities it meant that they could be understood and bargained with because humans could more easily relate to them.

The advantage is that people often relate better to anthropomorphised concepts and therefore find interacting easer.  The risk is exactly the same.

The question assumes a definition of the 'divine'. And a Christian one at that.

it might assume a definition but it certainly does not assume a Christian definition, the majority of Classical deities were distinctly anthropomorphised, indeed the inspiration for my initial reply was a quote from I think Aristotle that because Greek gods took the form of men rather than the fantastic creatures that were the manifestations of many Near Eastern deities it meant that they could be understood and bargained with because humans could more easily relate to them.

TEJ, yes I agree with your comment.

However, is the question as presented about only the last few thousand years in the 2 million years of evolution of religion? If so, the questioner needs to explain why only the short-chronology is being used. What's the justification for that? What about all the rest of the religions of the world? Not a few with no anthropomorphic god? Especially Nilo-Saharan Africa where the focus is on a personal and cosmic life-force rather than any personification. To get an even bigger picture of what the 'divine' might mean, see my papers on a Trans-species Definition of Religion and The Case for Chimpanzee Religion.

Thanks for the questions about clarification. I'm not sure the question assumes a Christian view of the divine. I think it works equally well on a Hindu, Mahayana Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Shinto, or indigenous concept of the divine (not to mention the concepts of Judaism and Islam). Nor do I think the question presupposes the last few thousand years, i.e., a short-chronology. The fact that I ask about the risks suggests (and this may be a controversial suggestion) that religions that do not employ or have not employed anthropomorphism have reasons for doing so. I'd like to hear those reasons. 

We are bound by our human language when we attempt to describe the divine.  Any such attempts, be they anthropomorphic or not face the same dilemma , our language simply cannot adequately describe that which is far beyond our typical experience.  Based on all the accounts in literature I have studied, if an individual would have direct experience of the divine as many as 10 times in their entire life (I know I am being extremely generous with regards to possibilities) they would be extraordinarily blessed.   With such infrequency, as most do not have even one such encounter, how can we develop language to describe it?

one possibility that occurs from comparing Classical Greek and animist approaches is that rather than there being risks and benefits, which implies a conscious decision, 'defining the divine anthropomorphically' may be more a feature of world view.  The Greeks, believing themselves both separate and superior to the rest of nature, e.g. Thales' famous quote, could not but help so defining the divine those groups who see humans as part of a continuum are more likely to think in terms of non anthropomorphic divinity

Depends on what one would classify as Divine? Stone, wood, ideology or as the old hymn puts it Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, God only wise? 

Or is evangelical Christianity always condemned as bigoted , irrelevant and out of date?

A risen, living Saviour with the hope of eternal life, joy and forgiveness, I like, believe and accept that in simple trusting faith. It cost me nothing but my Lord Jesus Christ everything. Perfect love.

How dreadful to even think about writing such a thing on a  research site!!!! I think not. If my simple Christian faith means anything it means I must share it, not force it, but share. 

Quran 42: 11: "Like Him there is naught" 

Ralph, I respectfully disagree with your remark that my question was dreadful and should not have been written on a research site. I myself am an evangelical Christian! So I do not regard evangelical Christianity as bigoted, irrelevant, or out of date. My question was intended to be cross-cultural and just as applicable to Christianity as any other religion. For instance, the Bible frequently uses anthropomorphisms to describe God, such as the arm of God, the eyes of God, God's changing his mind, the hand of God, and so forth. So I'm trying to ascertain what are the advantages and disadvantages of using anthropomorphic language in theological description.

How else would you like to define it?

That's an interesting observation! One could say that, in the Christian tradition, God's becoming human in Jesus of Nazareth is the divinely endorsed anthropomorphism par excellence. For in describing the human Jesus, we are describing God, as what's true of Jesus is true of the second person of the Trinity (since the soul or immaterial mind of Jesus is the second person of the Trinity). 

Well thank you. I know that anthropomorphism is something like an idolum and it can substantially distort ideas about God. On the other hand, I can not imagine that we could approach God other way than with anthropomorphic ideas, as we are human beings. But maybe we have one more option: not approaching to him with any idea at all. But what then would be the centuries of theology, if not about such antropomorphic ideas?

Marc surely this is merely a modified version of 'man is the measure of all things', attributed to Protagoras by Plato so the concept considerably predates any Christian philosophy.  As to there being 'only one representation of the divine' the many polytheists will disagree, even those who generally anthropomorphise their divinities.

Apologies for a second comment on this subject but surely it is men and women who are   the anthropomorphic beings as we are made in His image (Gen. Ch. 1) but so often think that we are superior and try to put an infinite Almighty God in our box. Sorry, wont work. 

Any response would be predicated on one's worldview and understanding of the divine. Although we can not come to a complete knowledge, for the Christian the divine is personable and, therefore, can be known. To seek to describe the divine from our experiences and the reality the divine has created, is seen as an act of worship, for it relies on the functions given to us by the divine (functions which come from being made in the image of God [who is both creative, logical, transcendent,  etc.]). For the Muslim, the divine is not personable and cannot be known nor should we seek to describe the divine (for doing so would be blasphemous).

From a Biblical worldview, anthropomorphic descriptions of deity are appropriate for the following reasons (these reasons are predicated on the understanding that all Scripture is divinely inspired and authoritative):

1) Prophets, psalmists, and historians all used anthropomorphic descriptions of God.

It would appear that God allows this on the basis of our limited ability to fully comprehend the divine (Isa 55:8).

2) Jesus is the fullest expression of the image in which we were made, the fullest manifestation of the Godhead, and He came in human form (Heb 1:1-3).

3) We might also respond with the following question: What is the better alternative?

To consider the words of Jordan B. Peterson may be helpful,  "The absence of specific depiction, appropriate to inexplicable circumstance, does not alleviate the necessity of appropriate action -- even though the nature of that action cannot yet be specified. This means that the nature of the unknown, as such, must become represented, in order to design action patterns, which are broadly suited for response to what cannot yet (and cannot eternally) be predicted or controlled" (Maps of Meaning, 1999, 149).

Understanding God Anthropomorphically seems a trap , and insufficient, due to the limitations of mortal human beings. When Definitionally we require God to be Creator and Organising Intelligence of the Universe , Universally and Eternally Real and True. But it is the possible extent of our necessary enlightened participation in being One in God which gives Anthropomorphic descriptions of God a limited and qualified Truth. God needs Human Involvement , as higher order beings  in the Likeness of God, and human understandings of the Universe to complete the Great Unity of Gods Truth in its entirety in Eternity and .Universally

The Inverse trap is  worse.To regard God as "utterly other than human" (Rudolph Otto's phrase) and leading to agnosticism characterised by the argument "If God existed we could not hope to understand such a vastly different greater being and intelligence".

That God includes and involves humankind born in Gods Likeness with higher order Logos Ordering minds is the Truth which allows us also to say God is alike to humankind. The Origin of God Given Human Rights and our human and divine angelic potential.

It seems that a certain understanding/comprehension of what humans are undergirds any understanding/use of 'anthropomorphic'. Historical and actual limits like these (whether explicit or intuited), would necessarily be implicit in any anthropomorphic terms attributed to divinity/deity(ies). Any limits of/on comprehension will always involve difficulties if such are attached to aspects of reality with absolute characteristics/nature/being/etc...

Kirk -

You raise a very important question indeed. Thank you. Here I speak as both a former Christian pastor and as a queer scholar of religion and theology. I'd suggest perhaps reframing the question--accept that people will and do anthropomorphize the Divine. Not all people and not at all times, but frequently enough that we need to look at it, as you help us to do.

For me, the question is how do we keep ourselves "honest" when we anthropomorphize? How do we query others when they do so? It's been said that we create god(s) in our own image--and it is rather amazing how often the god(s) we worship share our exact prejudices, passions, and beliefs!! Like poetry, anthropomorphizing can be a way of expressing an experience that cannot be captured by straight prose. But like poetry, anthropomorphizing is not an end in itself...it can only point us toward a deeper mystery.

And building out from there, anthropomorphizing is a humble, human experience. Its danger lies in reifying the ineffable and requiring others to worship that reification.

A bit wordy, but, I hope, respectful.

Re: Buddhist view of projection of divinities. Among other traditions I am a practicing Vajrayana and also HIndu kundalini meditator. In Vajrayana mid-level practitioners visualize mandala deities, recite their mantras, etc. and then visualize themselves as that deity and then dissolve that 'projection' into the heart vastness. As the Buddha originally taught, in brief, all the deities are projections of one's own meditation-realized vajra-body (vajrakaya). Low-level Buddhist practitioners have their projections as projections, and this might enable them to be more moral people, but also runs the risk of enabling them to be violent killers and dogmatic oppressors with respect to other people and their religious traditions.

While this violence is the down-side of globalization, the positive side is the new global eclecticism in which creative and prophetic people draw on the best and most appropriate religious myths and rituals to help us cope with both the culturally intermixing world and on-going environmental catastrophes and extinctions and global warming. As Nietzsche once said the most creative cultures in human history were those that created from the mixing of religious traditions, ethnic groups and other diversity.

When did the idea of the Divine first occur to humans and did these humans give the Divine an anthropomorphic form?

Circumstantial Scientific evidence is that first occurred in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees about 8 million years ago. See my posted published articles on chimpanzee religion and a trans-species definition of religion. If so I could not have begun as an 'anthropomorphic form' unless of course it also occurred as a 'pan-morphic' form (chimpanzee divinity). Since there are religious traditions around the world that do not give the cosmic 'higher power' an anthropomorphic form but simply view it as an energy in cosmos and in us humans as well as other animals, it is likely in at least the last two million years of human evolution based on archaeological / palaeoart evidence that, my guess, it arose in the Middle Paleolithic 250,000 years ago and definitely by 125,000 years ago, at which time such notions spread out-of-Africa and globally. At the same time other religious mythological systems which have no anthropomorphic goddesses or gods diffused out-of-Africa. All this is based on archaeological, genetic and linguistic evidence. This is the emerging scientific consensus although there may be academics trying to defend the sale of textbooks quickly becoming obsolete.

Thanks to James Harrod. You think think​.it started before Hominids with Chimpanzees?

Virgil, I believe James used the term that 'circumstantial evidence' supports his hypothesis. This is stronger than 'think it'. While I would not go so far as agreeing that chimps had religion, even if some Ancient Greek philosophers implied that they considered horses did, it has been proposed that pre AMH had some kind of spiritual belief. In which case the absence of anthropomorphic representations may imply a non anthropomorphised view of the divine.

to take a slightly cynical view one possible advantage of anthropomorphic descriptions of the divine is that it may make it easier for elites within society to claim natural superiority by presenting themselves as the actual offspring of deities. While this not the case in Abrahamic faiths, only Christianity acknowledging a physical child and that only once, it is frequently the case that 'being made in God's image' is used to justify poor treatment of those that are not. On occasions this has extended to humans of different skin colour, gender or physical ability in addition to the non human animal condition. Therefore, at least to some the advantage of anthropomorphising may be to facilitate justification of power relations both within and between societies.

Timothy, It is lack of discrimination between the existence of the adversary as process with the existence of the anomaly as constituent element of experience that has led to some of the worst excesses of humanity and religion (Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning, 1999, p. 317). 
Some peoples throughout history have confused the existence of threats to their felt security and felt moral integrity with evil. In this view, I would not say that anthropomorphising facilitates justification of power relations both within and between societies. Perhaps it is the adversary who is motivated by desire to transform the act of persecuting others into a moral virtue rather than the societies who desire to transform reason's belief -- manifest in procedure and image -- that seek to facilitate justification of power relations.

From the Islamic tradition: God is the Creator of everything, but He does not resemble any of the creations.

🔹Here are some of the proofs of this precious statement.

1. Allah, the Exalted, said in the Qur'an, in Surat ash-Shura, ayah 11:

قال الله تعالى: لَيْسَ كمثلهِ شىءٌ وهوَ السَّميعُ البصيرُ [سورة الشورى]

The ayah means: there is absolutely nothing like Allah whatsoever, and He has the attributes of Hearing and Seeing.💧

Explanation: This ayah absolutely clears Allah of resembling the creations. It comprises that Allah, the exalted, is absolutely different from the creations in the Self, Attributes, and Actions. Hence, it shows that Allah, the exalted, exists without a place, because whatever exists in a place is, by nature, i.e., composed of particles, i.e., it is a body, occupying a space. Allah, ta`ala, is clear of occupying spaces.🔸

2. Al-Bukhariyy, al-Bayhaqiyy and Ibn-ul Jarud related that the Messenger of Allah said:

قال رسولَ الله

صلى الله عليه وسلم: "كان الله ولم يَكُنْ شَىءٌ غَيْرُهُ".

The hadith means: Allah existed eternally and nothing else existed.

Explanation: This hadith proves that only Allah existed without a beginning, i.e., before creating any of the creation. There was nothing with Allah: no place, no space, no sky, no Earth, no light, and no darkness. It is determined in the rules of the Religion and the judgments of the sound mind that Allah, the Exalted, does not change. Hence, it is impossible that after having been existing without a place, Allah will change and dwell in a place, because this is a development. The development is a sign of needing others, and the one who needs others is not God.🔸

Two short thoughts out of a christian perspective:

1. Emil Brunner (famous Swiss theologian) made a case for anthropomorphism with the incarnation of Jesus Christ at it's center. Interestingly he argues - because of the self-revelation of God - for a theomorphism. Because God is the person per se and we are made in his image (theomorph as relational beings, not connected to any substance-theology) we speak about God in this way and not in any other.

2. John Sanders recently wrote an interesting book (Theology in the flesh) that tackles many of those questions about anthropomorphisms, metaphors out of a christian perspective combined with developments in cognitive linguistics. He makes a case, that we have no other way than to use human language, imagery etc.

can it be helped? Can an animate body be defined without resorting to talk about its constituents, cells? If God cannot be conceived, why even bother talking about it? If God can be conceived, then it must be anthropomorphically.

noting that the original question referred to the Divine, rather than a particular Abrahamic version, one thing that occurs is that the more urbanised a culture becomes the more anthropomorphic its version of the Divine. The Old Testament god is conceptualised the same way that Derya notes Islam conceptualises its divine, by the Renaissance we have artwork such as Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel which depict the divine as entirely human, perhaps because, unlike shepherds and hunter gatherers, the direct contact with nature is limited meaning it is unnecessary to think how the ruling divinity of trout or wolves or a given passage behaves and thinks,

I suppose we can leave it to Evangelicals to continue the mindless business of anthropomorphism.

what if "God" is not a being (Jean-Luc Marion), or more drastically, simply not definitional? What if "God" is merely a convenient human device--a name for otherness/transcendence/the whole--basically, that which cannot be grasped or domesticated by language?

I do not find Marion's position convincing. (1) Use a term but not define it? (2) And as I recall years ago reading his writings, they are basically revised semi-Christianity.

(3) And 'convenient human device' I don't feel is adequate.

(4) As I have published demonstrating chimpanzee religious behaviors matching a trans-species definition of religion, they have a ritualized response to their experiences during rites of passage and in response to special places and events in 'nature'. While some self-interested humans claim human uniqueness for religious behaviors and morality, these are only a matter of degree and evolving for millions of years. On this Darwin was totally correct.

(5) In my view the best definition of the divine must incorporate all the components I clarify in my trans-species and human definitions and maybe more.

(6) In the human case I find Kierkegaard's definition of 'spirit' (i.e., 'self') as the best of any philosopher I have read or known. "...a relation that relates itself to itself as it relates . . .and as it is posited by . . ." That which posits or grounds the self-relationship-in-other-relationship (neither simply subjective nor objective, a popular view in current extended cognition theory, which unfortunately also has an extroverted bias so weak on the introverted side of the relationships) may be considered under the name 'divine' (but only if the etymology of that term is placed in its global language macrofamily context, and not narrowly European or Eurasiatic language context).

(7) This 'divine' for purposes of prayer and gratitude and general consultation in 'inwardness-in-relationship, etc.' can be viewed as the Beloved (fluid gendered) and simultaneously as beyond iconic personification as in the higher philosophical interpretations of Islam, especially, or of Buddhism, many indigenous hunter-gatherer religious traditions, etc. I use the term 'simultaneously' to capture the experience as something like the particle/wave duality in quantum mechanics as reflected on the famous shield of Niels Bohr, which drew on the Chinese symbol.

(8) That a large mass of people do not seem to have progressed from Piaget's level of cognitive concrete operations to formal operations may (or may not) imply they require a concrete image and personification in concrete texts and icons along with traditional threats of punishment in order to cope with vices and propensities to harm themselves or others. If so I think to describe this as a 'convenient device' would be inadequate.

Best regards to all,

Hello,

A very good question. In respecting and worshiping the divine, we should seek no special ways or rituals. Notably, God is great and is free from all spheres of materialistic needs conceived by human beings. The main thing is to call Him and ask Him for forgiveness. Therefore, calling the divine in anthropomorphic ways should not be considered sacrilegious.

Best regards,

R. Biria

I think Question meant should we look at the Divine as being human.

We may only describe something within the limits of our language. Most mystics, I believe, would agree that ultimately one encounters what may best be described as a greater person that is not separated from the experiencing self, whether this is a case of absolute unity or merely lack of boundaries separating is debatable. But given this ultimate type of encounter, the easiest and most logical terminology to use is anthropomorphic.