God the Father has no body

Here are some notes on The Incorporeality of the Father: God the Father does not have a body, mainly stolen from John M. Frame, Doctrine of God, (P&R) pp576ff.

The subject has become a matter of mini controversy around Oak Hill of late and some allege that a version of the corporeality of the Father was being taught by Revd Dr Paul Blackham, minister at All Souls' Church, Langahm Place.

Notes:

God’s relationship to space: immensity and spacial omnipresence – God transcends space

The heavens – so nor the temple – can contain God: 1 Kings 8:27; c.f. 2 Chron 2:6
Heaven is God’s throne, earth his footstool: Is 66:1-2 [he must have big feet?!]

“… it is important to say that although God manifests his presence in a special way in various places, even to the point that a place can be called his dwelling, he is not bound to any place. He cannot be confined. He is greater than any place where he may be said to dwell, including the heavens and the earths themselves.” (Frame, p578)

God is simple, he has no parts - Since he is fully present / entirely with all his people he cannot be spacially extended (Frame, p579)

God is Lord of space: A body implies a limitation to a point in space – God is not limited as we are by our bodies. We are subject to the material universe in many ways – God is not

(Non-corporeal special) omnipresence = “God’s power, knowledge and ability to act in the finite universe are universal” (Frame, p580)
Sovereign Lordship à omnipresence (of this sort)

God’s presence is inescapable and universal – Ps 139:7-10
We (all) live and move and have our being in God – Acts 17:24-28 (c.f. 1 Kings 8:27)

God’s presence can be specially manifested in particular places (Frame, p581)

God can be specially present to the righteous in blessing (Frame, p582)

c.f. God’s temporal and special omnipresence

The Bible does not explicitly state God’s incorporeality
A hint of God’s incorporeality / immateriality in Lk 24:36-40 ?

God is spirit – Jn 4:24 – (? Frame ties this verse in some way to the Holy Spirit / spirituality of God?)

“God’s incorporeality is clearly a good and necessary consequence of biblical teachings we have already considered. Certainly God in his atemporal and/or nonspatial existence cannot be a physical being.” (Frame, p583)

Photocopy Frame, pp584-5

(?) “… God, as immanent in time and space, has qualities analogous to those of physical bodies…. We should not be surprised that there are significant analogies between God’s experience of the world and our own. Scripture tells us that we were made in his image.” (Frame, pp584-585)
e.g. should we say God has True Handedness although he does not have a physical hand? – not so much anthropomorphic language as God is the prototype for humanity not vice versa

Theophany and Incarnation (Frame, pp585ff)

“God is able to take a physical form.” (p585)
God appears in the form of an angel – Gen 32:22-32 esp. v30
And in the form of a man – Gen 18:16-33
Glory cloud etc. – e.g. Ez 1:1ff; 3:12ff
Is 6:1-13
Bk of Rev
Mt 17:5
The incarnate Jesus is a theophany – Jn 14:9
Jesus had all the (essential) attributes of God (inc. omnipresence) in the incarnation since it was truly God who was incarnate

“The body of Jesus is God’s body… [in some senses]. But at the very same time, God (the Son as well as the Father and the Spirit) has an existence that transcends all physical limitation.” (Frame, p587) – “Even the incarnate Son of God has a divine sovereignty over space and time.”

Invisibility of God (Frame, p587ff)

Gk aoratos – invisibility of God – Rm 1:20; Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17; Heb 11:27
No one has ever seen God – Jn 1:18; 5:37; 6:46; 1 Jn 4:12,20 – though “in a real sense, to see the theophany or the incarnate X is to see God” (Frame, p588)

Can a man see God and live? – Ex 33
people terrified to look on God: Ex 3:6; Job 13:11; Is 6:5
Yet Hagar meets God in Gen 16:13
Jacob wrestles with the theophanic angel – Gen 32:30 – “I saw God face to face [panim], and yet my life was spared.”
Judges 13:22
Ex 24:10
Is 6:1
Amos 9:1
Ex 33:23 – saw God’s back but his face [panim] must not be seen
Dt 4:15 – “you saw no form [temunah] of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire”
But Num 12:8 – God speaks to Moses face to face [note this is peh=mouth, not panim] and he sees the temunah=form of the LORD (!)

(See Frame, footnote 13, p589, God can be “pictured” in X & theopahies etc. but “he intends to assert his exclusive right to make images of himself.” )

Incarnate X makes God known / “visible” – Jn 1:18; 14:9; 1 Jn 1:1-2; c.f. Acts 1:3; 1 Cor 15:3-8; 2 Pt 1:16-18; Lk 1:21; 2 Pt 1:16 – we “see” Jesus – Heb 2:9
2 Cor 4:18; Heb 11:27 – “Moses saw him who is invisible” (!!!)

“God is essentially invisible.” (Frame, p590) – chooses when to make himself visible

“The New Testament writers positively exult over the visibility of Jesus’ coming. The incarnate X is as emphatically visible (as in 1 Jn 1:1-3) as Yahweh in the Mosaic covenant was emphatically invisible. The new covenant begins with a revelation of profound visibility.” (Frame, p591)

Eschatological seeing of God – Mt 5:8; 1 Cor 13:12; 1 Jn 3:2; Rev 1:7; c.f. Zech 12:10

Spirituality of God: God is Spirit (esp. Frame p595ff)

Jn 4:24
Hints of Spirit as immaterial – Is 31:3; Lk 24:36-43
Glory cloud as a manifestation of the Sp – Neh 9:19-20; Is 63:11-14; Haggai 2:5
“In general, God’s Spirit is his presence in the world performing his work as Lord…. Spirit, like God’s Word (Jn 1:14) and God’s fatherhood, is both a divine attribute and a person of the Trinity.” (Frame, p596)
(Wind’s invisibility – Jn 3:5-8)