God’s Body and the Material Turn: Divine (Im)Materiality in Biblical Theophanies

Abstract

Although biblical scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the question of God’s body, few clarify how precisely this “body” complicates the long-held claim that God is immaterial. The present article addresses this oversight by attending to the ways in which biblical accounts of God’s body intersect with wider tradents of thought on materiality and immateriality, including, above all, the recent cross-disciplinary “turn” known as new materialism. The article begins by discussing what biblical scholars mean when they say “God’s body” and how biblical theophanies in particular complicate the belief that God is immaterial. It then discusses new materialism and how key emphases in this scholarly shift similarly complicate the belief in God’s immateriality. Third and finally, the article returns to biblical theophanies by reading these accounts through a new materialist lens, focusing in particular on God’s manifestations in material, nonhuman forms. In the end, I suggest not only that biblical theophanies problematize traditional ways of conceiving God within the history of biblical interpretation but also that new materialism can better enable us to see how these accounts portray the relationship between God and embodied materialities.

Introduction

Since the 2009 publication of Benjamin Sommer’s landmark book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, an increasing number of biblical scholars have started turning their attention to the question of God’s body. ¹ While this has become an important site of conversation within biblical studies and other fields that focus on the ancient world, the question remains, what do biblical scholars mean when they say “God’s body”? Do they mean that God has a physical, material body? And, if this is the case, how does such a claim make sense in light of the prevalent belief that God is an immaterial being—a being, in other words, who lacks a physical body? As we shall see, biblical scholars do not typically argue that God has a default material body in some sort of ontological sense. ² At the same time, biblical scholarship on divine embodiment still challenges long-held assumptions that God is immaterial and completely “Other” from material creation. Such assumptions concerning God’s immateriality are evident in a wide range of biblical interpretations, both ancient and modern, and are due in large part to the development of what would become known as classical theism, or traditional theistic understandings of God within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According to classical theism, God’s being or “essence” is not only immaterial but also impassible, immutable, atemporal, and simple (in that God cannot be composed of multiple parts). ³ Because of these divine characteristics (or, more accurately, negative attributes), classical theism also holds that God cannot have a body given that a body is typically material, has various parts, and so forth. Classical theism and the metaphysics that undergird it came under attack with the modern period, but the belief in God’s immateriality is still widespread to this day and continues to shape interpretations of biblical texts in ways often unrecognized. ⁴

Yet while scholarship on God’s body acknowledges that biblical interpretation often assumes God’s immateriality, it rarely discusses how portrayals of divine embodiment in the Bible specifically complicate the persistent view that God is immaterial. ⁵ Moreover, scholarship on God’s body also does not discuss how recent cross-disciplinary conversations concerning the nature of materiality itself can illuminate biblical portrayals of divine embodiment. This current methodological shift, known as the material turn or “new materialism” not only radically reorients the metaphysical assumptions that inform classical theism, but it can also help us recognize the conceptual gap between biblical and classical theistic accounts of the divine. ⁶ In this article, therefore, I address this twofold omission by attending to the threads that connect biblical accounts of God’s “body” with wider tradents of thought on materiality, immateriality, and the significance of material bodies. In doing so, I hope to illuminate how a new materialist approach can reveal aspects of God’s biblical representations that have been occluded in the past, particularly God’s relationship to bodies and material creation.

To explore this relationship, I limit my discussion in this article to three main focal points. I first survey how biblical scholarship on divine embodiment uses the phrase “God’s body” and how biblical theophanies especially problematize the idea that God is immaterial. I next provide a brief overview of new materialism and how key emphases within new materialism likewise problematize the belief in God’s immateriality. Third and finally, I discuss how new materialism reveals the complex relationship between God and material creation in biblical theophanies in ways that have been previously overlooked. In the end, I suggest that a new materialist approach to God’s body better enables us to see how God is (and is not) material in theophanic accounts. I thus argue that at least some biblical portrayals of God are, ironically, more consonant with the current turn toward materiality than with the long-held theistic interpretation of God as an immaterial, disembodied being. But first, let us begin with recent work on God’s body in the field of biblical studies.

“God’s Body” in Relation to Materiality

Confusion can quickly arise when biblical scholars talk about “God’s body” because scholars do not always use this phrase in the same way. At the heart of the confusion is the term “body” itself, for biblical scholars define what constitutes a “body” differently, if they define it at all. Of all the various definitions, Benjamin Sommer’s has garnered the most attention and is perhaps the most controversial. In Bodies of God, Sommer explains that he understands “a body” to mean “something located in a particular place at a particular time, whatever its shape or substance.” ⁷ While some biblical scholars, such as Charles Halton, adopt Sommer’s definition, others have taken issue with Sommer’s understanding of the body, maintaining that it is too broad. ⁸ Mark Smith, for instance, observes that Sommer’s definition might include all sorts of non-living objects not usually regarded as bodies, and he further argues that it discounts the central role that the human body plays in biblical anthropomorphism. ⁹ Smith, along with Anne Knafl, instead prefers the definition of “body” provided by the Oxford English Dictionary, which reads: “the physical or material frame or structure of man or of any animal.” ¹⁰ I take a different approach and follow (with a number of emendations) the definition of the well-known “body studies” scholar Chris Shilling, who defines the body as “emergent material phenomena” that shapes and is shaped by its social environment. ¹¹ I prefer starting with Shilling’s definition because it helpfully captures both the biological materiality of bodies and the social forces that configure and construct bodies, elements that are missing from the definitions in Bodies of God and the Oxford English Dictionary.

Because of these different definitions of the term “body,” biblical scholars, to no surprise, describe God’s body differently. Sommer, for example, maintains that, in some biblical texts, God has a fluid self (or “divine fluidity”) that inhabits different bodies—bodies that can include things that we today often consider to be inanimate, such as rocks. This is why Sommer can refer to God’s “rock body”—or God’s material instantiation in rocks—and why he uses the terminology of God’s “bodies” (plural). Many ancients conceived of God or the gods as having the ability to embody physical objects, and this belief, Sommer argues, can also be seen within the pages of the Hebrew Bible (a point to which we shall return). ¹² Smith and Knafl, on the other hand, focus primarily on God’s anthropomorphic depictions (or verbal descriptions of God’s human form). ¹³ Smith discusses theriomorphic depictions of God as well (and note that his definition of a body refers to both humans and animals), but when he does so, he highlights the intersections between God’s human and animal forms, and he ultimately underscores the centrality of the human body in biblical accounts of God. ¹⁴ I too consider God’s anthropomorphic depictions (and to a lesser degree, God’s theriomorphic depictions), but I also discuss God’s visibility and concrete manifestations more broadly. ¹⁵ Furthermore, I would add that the conversation becomes even more complicated when we consider that the ancients often regarded as “bodies” many objects (like stones) or natural phenomena (like the cosmos) that we do not necessarily regard as bodies today. ¹⁶ As these examples evince, discussions of what constitutes God’s “body” vary depending on how one conceives of the “body” in the first place.

Regardless of these different definitions, many of the above biblical scholars clarify that the Bible does not always portray God’s body (however that is conceived) as a material body. Sommer notes that while some biblical passages indicate that God’s body is material, many other parts of the canon do not. ¹⁷ Smith identifies three main categories when it comes to understanding God’s body, describing the first of God’s three “bodies” as a material body, the second as luminous but not physical, and the third as partaking of a bodily form but with an unclear physicality. ¹⁸ I likewise highlight how biblical texts are typically unclear (or silent) when it comes to the substance of God’s body, even though I caution that such ambiguity does not mean that God’s various forms of embodiment lack a connection to materiality. ¹⁹ As these discussions demonstrate, corporeality and materiality are certainly linked in the ancient world, but they are not always one and the same (which is why I note that Shilling’s definition of the body as “emergent material phenomena” does not always apply to God’s “body”). ²⁰ What biblical scholarship on God’s body makes clear, therefore, is that the Bible itself is not always clear about whether God’s manifestations are—or are not—material.

Nevertheless, despite such reticence, biblical accounts of God’s body still complicate a neat division between God and materiality, for, as the above scholars note, there are at least some texts that portray God’s body in material terms. Of all these texts, biblical theophanies provide the clearest complication of the God/materiality binary since theophanies in effect grapple with the form of God’s appearance to others within the narrative. Theophanies are thus distinct from other descriptions of God, including the wider phenomenon of divine anthropomorphism, because theophanies depict God’s visible manifestation in a manner that other characters can encounter. ²¹ That is to say, since theophanies depict the manifestation of God’s form, such occurrences likewise raise the question of the substance of God’s form. While not all theophanies clearly communicate the substance of God’s manifestation, a number do indicate that the manifestation is material. Of these, the two most famous are when God appears in the form of an ish or “man” in Gen 18 and 32, or what Esther Hamori calls the “ish theophanies.” ²² In the ish theophanies, God is identified as an ish and performs very human, bodily activities, such as eating a meal prepared by Abraham and Sarah and participating in a wrestling match with Jacob. ²³ Given that God interacts with humans in a bodily (and indeed, human) form, it is difficult to dismiss these accounts as being metaphorical—a traditional interpretative move when it comes to anthropomorphic depictions of God in the Bible more broadly. ²⁴ Because Gen 18 and 32 portray these divine-human encounters as realistic events that involve God eating and having a body that can be grasped and even wrestled with for an extended period of time, it is hard to escape the sense that these theophanies are “literal” embodiments.

To be sure, various interpretations have emerged over the years to explain how these theophanies in Genesis and beyond do not convey God’s embodied materiality. Interpreters like the Jewish philosopher Philo have made this claim from as early as the first century CE, and they go to great pains to emphasize that, despite appearances to the contrary, biblical texts do not portray God as a corporeal or material being. ²⁵ According to Philo, biblical theophanies were actually noetic experiences, for the recipients, Philo argues, did not see God in a bodily sense but in a cognitive sense. ²⁶ Some early Christian interpreters, such as Origen, likewise have a noetic interpretation, whereas others, such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, maintain that when humans saw God in theophanies, they were actually seeing Jesus, or “the Son,” and not God “the Father.” ²⁷ According to these two interpretive approaches, which occur in various iterations throughout the history of interpretation, God does not become materially manifest because God cannot become materially manifest. ²⁸ Instead, God only becomes visible in the Son or “manifest” in the human mind. As Robin Jensen observes, theophanies posed a special problem for interpreters who believed that God was incorporeal, immaterial, and invisible, and such interpreters therefore took special care in explaining that these passages did not contradict God’s essential immateriality. ²⁹

Yet, while such interpretations belie an underlying conviction in God’s immateriality, scholars who discuss divine embodiment counter that many people in the ancient world in fact did believe that deities—including the God of Israel—were embodied beings or could become materially manifest. ³⁰ Scholars such as Sommer and Hamori argue that biblical texts themselves evince this belief, with theophanies in particular indicating that God becomes manifest in the material realm and sometimes, as in Gen 18 and 32, in the form of a material being who partakes in mundane bodily activities. Moreover, as Mark Smith and I note, there are a few places in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament that mention God actually having some kind of “form” (temunah; eidos; morphē) (Num 12:8; Ps 17:15; John 5:37–38; Phil 2:6; cf. Job 4:16). ³¹ In these instances, there is an assumption that God has a visible form that can be seen, and Paul even writes that Jesus, before taking the form of a slave, was in the “form” (morphē) of God (Phil 2:6).³² Of course, God’s form is not necessarily material in these references, and the word “form” itself is less concrete than the term “body.” Nonetheless, all three of the terms used to refer to the divine form are elsewhere associated with bodies and materiality in biblical texts, thus making it difficult to rule out the potential material connotations of God’s own “form.”³³

Despite later interpretations, biblical texts also never explicitly say that God is “incorporeal” or “immaterial” (a not surprising occurrence since these words are foreign to the Bible).³⁴ Biblical texts do sometimes call God “spirit” (John 4:24) or “light” (1 John 1:5; cf. Deut 4:24; Heb 12:29) or “invisible” (Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17; cf. Rom 1:20; Heb 11:27), and they also sometimes clarify that God is not like humans (Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29; Ps 50:21; Hos 11:9; cf. Isa 31:3; Mal 3:6).³⁵ But even these verses that arguably suggest God’s immateriality—and have certainly been interpreted in this manner—are not necessarily as clear on this point as they appear at first glance. References to God as “spirit” are complicated because many ancients conceived of “spirit” (ruach or pneuma) in material terms as a more rarefied form of matter.³⁶ References to God as “light” are similarly complicated since some ancients conceived of light as a fine, fiery substance and the purest form of the cosmic element fire, as well as a physical phenomenon. ³⁷ References to God being “invisible” (aoratos), while best approximating a classical theistic understanding of God, could just as easily be translated as “unseen,” which would thus suggest that God is simply unseen by most human eyes and not that God is “invisible” in an ontological sense. ³⁸ And finally, references to God being distinct from humans typically make this distinction in order to highlight how God is not like humans with respect to specific character traits, whether it be lying, changing one’s mind, or executing wrathful anger. ³⁹ In other words, they are not statements that claim God is categorically distinct from humans. ⁴⁰ With all of these typical biblical “prooftexts” for God’s negative attributes, therefore, the link with immateriality and incorporeality is actually quite tenuous.

Overall, biblical scholars have different understandings of what constitutes “God’s body,” and they do not always identify this “body” as a material body. At the same time, they also highlight how at least some theophanies—or God’s visual manifestations—indicate that God becomes materially manifest. In doing so, they stand in tension with early—and still prevalent—interpretative traditions that argue God is disembodied and immaterial. They also, as we shall see, find interesting points of correspondence with new materialism and its own metaphysical framework. But before turning to these correspondences, and how this framework can help us to see God’s relationship with materiality in biblical texts more clearly, it is first important to look a little more closely at new materialism itself.

New Materialism and the Immaterial God

What is new materialism, and why does it matter for scholarship on God’s body? In short, new materialism, or “the material turn,” is a recent, cross-disciplinary reconsideration of the metaphysical import of matter and material realities, and this turn, I believe, can help us reconsider the role matter plays in biblical theophanies. ⁴¹ The new turn toward materiality, which has gained increasing momentum since the start of the twenty-first century, currently spans numerous disciplines across the humanities and the social and biological sciences, and it has also started to make an impact within some theological circles. ⁴² As with other scholarly shifts that are retrospectively labeled “turns,” this particular turn critically responds to the “turn” that directly preceded it: namely, the “linguistic turn” of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. In other words, materialist approaches often critique the perceived shortcomings of postmodern—and specifically poststructuralist—approaches. For many new materialists, poststructuralism has been important in helping us understand the ways in which discourse constructs social norms and mechanisms of power and how one’s social location indelibly shapes one’s view of reality. Yet, while many new materialists build on insights from poststructuralism, they differ from poststructuralists in key ways. New materialists, for instance, demonstrate a revived interest in ontology and metaphysics in contrast to poststructuralism’s focus on epistemology, language, and discursive representation. ⁴³ More importantly, materialists also demonstrate a renewed interest in matter, materiality, and corporeality in contrast to poststructuralism’s rejection of “nature” and biology in favor of culture and social construction. ⁴⁴

Because of this (re)turn to questions of metaphysics and materiality, however, new materialism (or what is sometimes called post-poststructuralism) also challenges the Platonic metaphysics that inform classical theism and traditional readings of biblical accounts of God, including biblical accounts of theophany. Early Jewish and Christian interpreters who argue that God does not become physically manifest in theophanies do so because of their adoption of Platonic beliefs concerning the superiority of the immaterial over the material and the equation of divinity with immateriality. ⁴⁵ Plato maintained that incorporeal “Being” (ontologically speaking) was the highest mode of existence, and the reception of this exaltation of incorporeal Being in philosophical circles played an influential role in later Jewish and Christian conceptions of the divine, beginning with Philo in the first century and a number of the church fathers in the second and third centuries. ⁴⁶ It is for this reason, therefore, that Philo, Justin Martyr, and Origen, among others, interpret biblical theophanies in the manner they do: their interpretations are in effect an apologetic attempt to correlate biblical accounts of God’s (seemingly) material manifestations with philosophical views of God’s immateriality. ⁴⁷

For our purposes, therefore, a comparison between new materialism and Platonism is especially helpful in terms of how they view material realities. Unlike the Platonic tendency to see bodies as somehow “less than,” new materialism invests bodies—and the wider material conditions in which bodies participate—with value and meaning. Thus, instead of privileging the immaterial over the material, new materialists underscore that bodies matter and, indeed, that matter matters. ⁴⁸ With this lens, I maintain, we can also better see that God’s body matters. Instead of trying to “explain away” stories of God’s concrete manifestations in the Bible, new materialism can help us to consider these manifestations anew. ⁴⁹ In fact, new materialism can help biblical scholars recognize how our own inherited assumptions about God’s immateriality have influenced how we read.

To be clear, new materialism does not provide the only alternative to the link between divinity and immateriality. There have always been exceptions to the belief in God’s immateriality throughout the development of classical theistic thought, and Christoph Markschies maintains that this belief did not become theologically “mainstream” until the Middle Ages. ⁵⁰ Since the Middle Ages, and especially since the beginning of the twentieth century, exceptions have continued to surface from across the theological spectrum and range from proponents of process theology and pantheism to Jewish and Christian thinkers such as Michael Wyschogrod, Yochanan Muffs, Jürgen Moltmann, Robert Jenson, and Stephen Webb. ⁵¹ Feminist theologians in particular have questioned the presumed superiority of immateriality within classical theism, noting that the rejection of corporeality as a divine attribute is based on the assumption that embodiment is somehow a distortion of an ideal. ⁵² In my view, new materialism coincides with many of these earlier alternatives to divine immateriality, but new materialism, as the most recent reassessment of matter and materiality, also pushes these earlier arguments forward in important ways.This push, I believe, is necessary, because the notion of God as an incorporeal, immaterial being still remains so prevalent in the West that it is difficult for many theists even to consider the metaphysical possibility of God having a body or being material. Despite the efforts of feminists and other “exceptions” to the rule of classical theism, God remains for many an immaterial, invisible entity, and scholars—whether they are professed theists or not—typically read biblical accounts of God through this lens. ⁵³

Biblical scholars themselves often tend to read God as an immaterial being, and they also have been slow in incorporating critiques of divine immateriality, including the insights of new materialism, into their work more broadly. Although new materialism has made inroads within the field of theology, very few people within biblical studies specifically situate their scholarship in relation to the material turn (a not surprising occurrence given that biblical studies tends to be about 20 to 30 years behind what is happening in other disciplines). ⁵⁴ This lack of engagement is also the case for biblical scholars who write on divine embodiment, even though their work intersects with materialist impulses in a variety of ways. ⁵⁵ For the purposes of space, the remainder of this section will briefly consider three key emphases that emerge in new materialism before turning in the final section to how these emphases shed light on God’s own theophanic “bodies.”

When looking at new materialism, it is first important to note that materialist approaches are not just interested in bodies and materiality but in the agency of bodies and materiality. Whereas postmodern approaches often situate the body as a passive entity that is shaped and controlled by larger social forces, materialist approaches emphasize how the body is an active participant in the wider material world. ⁵⁶ What is more, materialist approaches challenge the Platonic assumption that matter itself is a passive substance intrinsically devoid of meaning. (Indeed, according to Platonism, the immaterial Forms are active, but matter itself is passive.) Instead of understanding matter in passive terms, matter is described as an active agent that is alive, dynamic, and relational. In the words of the new materialist Jane Bennett, matter is “vibrant.” (Hence the title of her often-cited 2009 book, Vibrant Matter.) ⁵⁷ In discussing the vibrancy of matter, many materialists like Bennett turn to the biological sciences to describe how a variety of human and nonhuman materialities (such as food, inanimate things, etc.) interact with one another in a complex network of relations. (In the sciences, Bennett explains, it is especially clear that humans do not simply act upon inert, nonhuman matter. Instead, food, for example, can influence a person’s mood, and even inanimate things can exert agency over humans in complicated ways.) While postmodern approaches tend to dismiss the biological sciences as simply another socially constructed discourse within the wider mechanizations of power, materialist approaches exemplify a renewed engagement with work being done in the scientific community, and they ask how this work connects to actual bodies and biological processes. Such approaches, moreover, likewise complicate popular Platonic assumptions that matter is simply acted upon by higher forms of reality such as God or the immaterial Forms.

Second, materialist scholars do not limit their focus to human bodies but instead shift their attention to nonhuman bodies and materiality more broadly (a shift that is also sometimes called “posthumanism” or “the nonhuman turn”). ⁵⁸ This shift to the nonhuman is in part a response to poststructuralism and its anthropocentric orientation—an orientation that is evident from the fact that the “linguistic turn” concentrates on (human) language and discourse. ⁵⁹ The nonhuman shift, however, is also a response to our current global ecological crisis. Scholars who evince an interest in the nonhuman often focus on environmental concerns, which is why the interdisciplinary field known as “ecocriticism” can be considered part of the material turn. ⁶⁰ On one level, then, scholars who turn to the nonhuman seek to correct the common perception that nonhuman materialities (e.g., animals, plants, inorganic entities) simply exist for human consumption, and they emphasize the importance of social activism and ecological justice. But on another level, such scholars also insist that the human and nonhuman have always coexisted, to the point where the boundaries between the human and nonhuman become indistinct. Nonhuman theorist Richard Grusin, for instance, argues that the human is characterized precisely by an indistinction from the nonhuman since all matter constantly interacts with other matter, whether in human or nonhuman forms. ⁶¹ Similarly, many affect theorists highlight the dynamic interaction between human matter and matter in general, noting that the human is irreducibly bound up with the nonhuman. ⁶²

Third, materialist approaches maintain that these permeable boundaries between the human and nonhuman also extend to the question of agency. It is never the case that a human acts on their own, for human agency always emerges at the intersection of the human and the nonhuman since human bodies are co-constituted with the nonhuman (including the atmosphere, affects, microbes, organic food material, and so forth). Because of this intersection, agency itself is not located in a singular body but is spread across a network of actors. ⁶³ For a new materialist, therefore, to be embodied is already to be a distributed agent. Due to these views concerning a human/nonhuman permeability, materialist approaches complicate the binary between humans and nonhumans as found in Platonic understandings of the hierarchy of creation (e.g., humans are “higher” than animals in “the great chain of being”). Materialist approaches also complicate classical theistic understandings of God (the ultimate “nonhuman”) as being utterly distinct from humans and creation, as evidenced, for example, in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo (i.e., the doctrine that God created matter out of nothing by speaking the cosmos into existence, thus making matter utterly dependent on—and distinct from—God’s eternal immateriality). ⁶⁴

As these key emphases demonstrate, new materialism’s understanding of material realities not only stands in sharp contrast to poststructuralism but also to the Platonic metaphysics that shaped classical theism and traditional interpretations of biblical theophanies. As the most recent turn to the importance of bodies and matter, new materialism provides a more expansive understanding of the relationship between materiality and divinity and reminds us that biblical texts on the whole do not share the Platonic framework out of which classical theism later emerged. In fact, new materialism can particularly illuminate biblical theophany accounts in ways that classical theism has obscured, and it is to these theophany accounts that we now return—this time looking at them with these new materialist emphases in view.

A Material Turn Towards God’s Body

When we make a “material turn” to biblical theophanies, the close relationship between divinity and materiality becomes more apparent since accounts of theophany often evince the three new materialist emphases that I outlined in the previous section. First, the depiction of God inhabiting objects exemplifies new materialist claims concerning the vibrancy of matter. In this case, of course, God is the one who infuses matter, bestowing it with a divine agency and a specific, localized site where God’s presence can be met. ⁶⁵ I noted at the outset of this article that there was a widespread belief throughout the ancient Mediterranean that the gods inhabited the natural world, and Sommer, among others, maintains that these beliefs can be heard within the pages of the Hebrew Bible in reference to Israel’s God. There are suggestions, for instance, that some biblical texts reflect the view that God can become manifest in wood and stones, as when Moses refers to God as “the one who dwells in a bush” (Deut 33:16; cf. Exod 3:1–6) or when Jacob says “this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house” (Gen 28:22). ⁶⁶ According to some biblical texts, therefore, God’s own self can dwell in the very things that God created if God so chooses, a dwelling that saturates at least some particular forms of matter with divine vibrancy.

More generally, however, biblical texts also point to the vibrancy of matter beyond God’s manifestation in objects. Charles Halton, for example, highlights how some scriptural texts indicate that the earth is not inert matter or an inanimate “thing” since passages ranging from Genesis to the prophets to Romans imbue creation and the land with agency and the capacity for suffering, as well as redemption (e.g., Gen 4:10–14; Jer 4:19–31; Hos 4:1–3; Rom 8:19–23). ⁶⁷ Though not writing on the topic of God’s body, Mari Joerstad likewise points to how nonanimal nature performs actions in biblical texts, as well as how nonanimal nature displays affect and is addressed in a manner akin to a person. ⁶⁸ Across the Hebrew Bible, we find stones witnessing (e.g., Gen 31:48, 52; Josh 24:23–27), the ground responding to human action (e.g., Gen 4:10–12; Exod 15:12; Lev 18:24–28; Num 16:32–34), trees rejoicing (e.g., 1 Chron 16:33; Ps 96:12; Isa 14:7–8; 55:12), or the prophets exhorting nonhuman nature to listen (e.g., Isa 1:2; 34:1; Jer 6:18–19; Mic 1:2). ⁶⁹ I would add that such personalistic accounts of nature continue in the New Testament. ⁷⁰ When taken seriously and not dismissed as “mere” metaphor, these accounts complicate the classical theistic divide between the human and nonhuman as well as the divide between the Creator and creation. ⁷¹ It is not as though God and humans alone have agency, but instead God, humans, and nonhuman nature interact with one another in more relational ways. According to some biblical texts, therefore, creation more broadly conceived can also be “vibrant.”

The second point of correlation between biblical theophanies and new materialism more specifically concerns the nonhuman. In some of the examples provided above, God can reside in materials such as bushes and stones, both of which are nonhuman (or God’s “nonhuman bodies,” to adapt Sommer’s terminology). ⁷² Mark Smith likewise considers God’s connection to the nonhuman when he discusses God’s theriomorphic forms. ⁷³ Smith argues that in 1 Kings some Israelites believed that God could become manifest in calf statues, even though the narrator condemns the worship of such images (1 Kgs 12:25–33), and he observes that a number of biblical texts apply theriomorphic language to God, as when God has wings like a bird (e.g., Ruth 2:12; Pss 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 61:4; 63:7; 91:4). ⁷⁴ Indeed, Smith notes that theriomorphic, anthropomorphic, and physiomorphic (or natural, nonhuman) depictions of God often intersect with one another, as when Moses’s song in Deuteronomy 32 refers to God as an eagle (v. 11), a father (v. 6), and a rock (vv. 4, 15, 18, 30, 31). ⁷⁵ Such intersections, Smith argues, point to God’s incomparability, but they also, I would argue, point to the connections between God and nonhuman entities, whether those forms be a “natural” thing like a rock or an animal like a bird. ⁷⁶

While many of God’s theriomorphic and physiomorphic “forms” are descriptive in nature and do not refer to a theophanic manifestation, it is important to note that this is not always the case. God, as we have seen, can become physiomorphically manifest in wood and stone, but God may also become theriomorphically manifest. In the New Testament, for example, the Holy Spirit—a manifestation of God and God’s presence—famously descends “as a dove” in the scene of Jesus’s baptism, and, according to Luke, the Spirit specifically descends as a dove in “bodily form” (sōmatikō eidei). ⁷⁷ While this image may function primarily as a vivid simile since the word hōs (“as” or “like”) often acts as a particle of comparison (cf. hōsei in Matt 3:16), Luke’s placement of the phrase “as a dove” directly after “bodily form” may indicate that “as a dove” is an appositional phrase that qualifies the kind of form in which the Spirit descends. In other words, Luke may convey the Spirit’s visibly ornithomorphic form. ⁷⁸ Regardless, all of the evangelists describe the Spirit as an entity who enters the narrative in theriomorphic terms, with Luke in particular characterizing the Spirit in both theriomorphic and somatic terms. According to the Gospel accounts, the Spirit’s descent is visible and may even take the form of a bird, an image often applied to God in Israel’s scriptures. ⁷⁹

In addition to God’s “natural” and animal forms, God’s connection to the nonhuman can also be seen via God’s angelic forms. As Sommer argues, there are places in the Hebrew Bible where God becomes manifest as an angel or, more specifically, as an “angel of the Lord” (malak Yhwh). ⁸⁰ Commentators have long noted that a number of passages overlap the angel of the Lord with God in confusing ways, to the point where it is difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish the angel from God (e.g., Gen 16:7–13; Exod 3:2–4; Judg 6:11–13). Sommer identifies the angel in such passages as a “small-scale manifestation of God” since the angel, he argues, is a part of God, though not all of God. ⁸¹ In many of these cases, the angel appears like a human or in anthropomorphic form, but the angel, of course, is still ultimately a heavenly, nonhuman being. ⁸² Furthermore, there are also instances where God’s angelic manifestations are not anthropomorphic, as when God and the angel of the Lord appear as fire in the burning bush (Exod 3:1–6; cf. Exod 14:19–20; Deut 4:24; Heb 12:29). Not only are angels nonhuman beings, but they, along with God, sometimes become manifest in nonhuman forms such as fire and light. Furthermore, God’s nonhuman manifestations as fire and light, as well as “Glory,” also arguably point to God’s material manifestations, for a materialist—whether they be ancient or “new”—would not view light as “immaterial.” ⁸³

New materialism, as I have argued, helps us to see how biblical theophanies, and biblical texts more broadly, bestow matter with vibrancy (whether that matter is “divinely” vibrant or not) and how they overlap God with the nonhuman. However, new materialism also enables us to broaden our understanding of divine agency. A materialist approach would thus not only argue that creation is an active agent in biblical texts but that God’s own agency is inextricably enmeshed with creation. In Gen 1, for example, God initiates the work of creation but leaves its execution to the earth, for the earth is what brings forth vegetation in obedience to God’s command (Gen 1:11–12). ⁸⁴ Joerstad explains that the actions of God and the earth overlap and merge in Gen 1, so much so that the activity of nonanimal nature “is a constitutive element in the process of creation.” ⁸⁵ In this instance, creation itself participates in God’s act of creating, doing so in a manner that blurs a neat division between God and creation along active/passive lines. Thus, while not a theophany per se, this example from the outset of Genesis demonstrates that God’s agency can intertwine with the material world, and it may signal that the material world’s participatory role occurs from the very “beginning.”

Some passages, therefore, clarify that material creation participates in God’s actions by responding to God’s initiative (e.g., in Gen 1:11–12, God commands the earth to sprout vegetation and the earth does so in response). Other passages, however, lift up creation as the principal agent in these participatory acts and leave God’s role more oblique. To cite just one example, the book of Acts depicts an earthquake freeing Paul and his companion Silas from prison in a manner that suggests the (shaking) earth is a—if not the—primary actor in the release (see Acts 16:25–34). God, to be sure, is the implied subject of this act, for the earthquake happens directly after Acts depicts Paul and Silas praying and singing hymns to God (Acts 16:25–26; cf. 16:34). ⁸⁶ The prison release also recalls the programmatic scene from Luke’s Gospel where Jesus connects God’s action to the release of captives (Luke 4:18; cf. Isa 61:1). At the same time, the narrator only mentions the earthquake—not God—in conjunction with the physical release. God nowhere appears as the explicitly stated subject of the action, for the narrator relates that a “great” (megas) earthquake suddenly occurred, with the result (hōste) that the prison foundations were shaken, followed by the immediate opening of the prison doors and the unfastening of everyone’s chains (Acts 16:26). ⁸⁷

A reading attuned to new materialism, therefore, would take notice of these textual details and reject the notion that God simply acts through the earthquake, as though the earth is a passive entity that God harnesses. Instead, a new materialist reading would maintain that God and the earthquake together free Paul and Silas; God is a key agent but not the sole agent and perhaps not even the main agent. Here in this “theophanic” encounter, as in numerous other biblical examples, God and nonhuman matter overlap in a way that impacts the lives of God’s followers, in this instance bringing about the liberative act of freeing Paul and Silas from prison. ⁸⁸ In a new materialist reading, then, divine agency—as with agency in general—cannot help but be spread across a network of actors. ⁸⁹ God never acts solely on God’s own, as though God were somehow in a vacuum, for God’s interaction in the world involves an interaction of different actors, human and nonhuman alike.

Because of this understanding of how agency becomes manifest, a new materialist approach to God’s body brings to light the various participants of divine involvement within biblical texts and thus expands our understanding of what constitutes a theophany in the first place. When it comes to traditionally recognized scenes of theophany, moreover, a new materialist approach to God’s body would also maintain that God, matter, and material bodies necessarily constitute one another. When discussing theophanies, therefore, a new materialist would not only talk about God becoming embodied. God does not just temporarily dwell in matter, as though material entities are passive vehicles that God possesses (per Sommer’s understanding that matter is inert until God becomes manifest in it). ⁹⁰ Instead, theophanies entail a dynamic, transformative interplay between God and matter. So when Moses encounters God in the fiery bush (Exod 3:1–12), for example, this theophany entails a co-constitution—or relational imbrication of being—between the bush and God. In other words, the bush is a part of the theophany itself and not just an empty “vessel” that somehow “holds” God. If God’s various “bodies” are in some ways analogous to human bodies, then God’s agency is also distributed across a network of other bodies. And just as human and nonhuman bodies are not singular entities that act on their own, God’s bodies likewise do not operate in isolation. God’s bodies are instead entangled with various other entities in a manner that blurs traditional dividing lines between God and creation and between the human and nonhuman.

In this way, I want to argue, biblical texts suggest a material vibrancy to God’s own self. In scenes of divine encounter, God can be said to be “material” because interaction with the material world inevitably involves a dynamic entanglement of being. Of course, one could argue that God is the great exception to this way of being in the world. Because God is “Other,” God’s bodies do not always operate in the same manner as human or nonhuman bodies. This may very well be the case, but the position that God alone is a self-contained agent primarily emerges as a possibility if the reader has a prior commitment to God’s immateriality, a commitment, as I outlined earlier, that biblical texts do not seem to share. Indeed, the very fact that biblical texts speak of God’s “spirit” (pneuma) becoming manifest or even speak of God as “spirit” (John 4:24), indicates that readers who believed pneuma (“spirit”) to be a rarefied form of matter very likely heard God in material terms, a point that Origen, for example, recognizes and goes to great pains to explain away (e.g., Princ. 1.1–9). ⁹¹ For some New Testament texts in particular, God’s manifestation in the human Jesus presses God’s relationship with materiality even further (e.g., John 1:1–14; Phil 2:5–11; Col 1:19; 2:9), for while later Christian doctrine would distinguish between Jesus’s immaterial divine nature and his material human nature, the New Testament itself betrays no division between Jesus’s “immaterial” divinity and “material” humanity. ⁹²

In sum, God’s relationship with matter emerges more clearly when we look at biblical theophanies through a new materialist lens. Theophanies at times portray matter as vibrantly alive and the divine as a nonhuman entity. They also ascribe agency to creation and depict divine agency in distributed terms. New materialism not only brings these textual elements into sharper focus, but it also expands our understanding of what constitutes God’s “body” in the first place. Biblical texts do not always depict divine manifestations as the appearance of a “self-contained,” human body (as in Gen 18 and 32), for divine manifestations are dispersed across different kinds of materiality, including the human and the nonhuman. There is a “fluidity” of the divine self, as Sommer puts it, across nature, animals, angels, and/or humans: if God so chooses, God can encounter God’s creatures in a variety of concrete, tangible ways. God, in fact, can encounter creatures outside of traditional theophanic scenes simply by exercising an agency which is entangled with the material world. When looking at “theophanies” as a whole, therefore, neither anthropomorphism nor even theriomorphism, can account for all of the ways in which God becomes materially manifest in biblical texts. There is instead a materiality to God by virtue of God’s care for and intervention in the world.

Conclusion

In this article, I first considered the different ways that biblical scholars talk about God’s body, and I then reflected on the implications of these discussions, especially with respect to classic theological claims concerning God’s immateriality and the twenty-first century turn toward materiality known as new materialism. In discussing these implications, I noted that biblical theophanies in particular sit uneasily alongside a Platonic frame and that some theophanies resonate with recent reflections on materialism. I also argued that new materialism can push biblical scholarship on God’s body further and provide clarity with respect to how God is and is not material, using biblical accounts of theophany as a springboard for this discussion. There is, of course, much more work to be done in fleshing out such a perspective. But I hope that my readings of biblical theophanies alongside new materialism can incite further conversation regarding materialist approaches and how they relate to the divine. I also hope that further engagement with new materialism can encourage scholars to explore how other biblical representations of God’s body—and not just God’s theophanic manifestations—intersect with actual bodies and material realities. Indeed, it is my hope that new materialism can open up a range of readings that better reflect the ontological and agentic expansiveness that is evident in biblical texts and the ancient world more broadly.

To conclude, new materialism can help interpreters better appreciate the dissonance between biblical and classical theistic views of materiality and how some biblical texts portray God as becoming physically manifest. As we have seen, the equation of divinity with immateriality mainly arises from early Jewish and Christian engagements with wider philosophical trends such as Platonism. Biblical texts as a whole are not the obvious source of this belief and in fact cause interpretative problems for those wed to a Platonic framework, especially when it comes to theophanies. On a “literal” reading of theophanies, God does not appear as an immaterial being who is far removed from creation and wholly Other from humans and nonhumans. God is instead intimately involved in the created order and intertwines with materiality and material bodies in complex ways. In this respect, biblical depictions of how God becomes manifest in the world have more in common with a materialist point of view rather than a Platonic point of view. In contrast to the Platonism that has informed much of the Bible’s reception history, new materialism can assist readers in being cautious of biblical interpretations that equate divinity with immateriality and exalt immateriality itself as an ideal. Indeed, new materialism can enable readers to return to biblical texts with fresh eyes and to recognize that the God found therein is not “above” having a body.