Anthropomorphism

ANTHROPOMORPHISM. - A. (from the Greek ἄνθρωπος "man," and μορφή "form") is generally the tendency of man to project himself onto the things that surround him and to give the external world the features of his inner world. This tendency can also influence the conception of the divine. Hence the twofold aspect of a.: one philosophical, the other religious.

Philosophical a., kept within its normal limits, finds its justification in the truth, supported by tradition and by science, that man, from the material and physiological point of view, is a microcosm, in which the elements and laws of the universe are summed up. Another foundation of this a. is the natural attunement between the knowing subject and the knowable object, whereby, according to the best philosophy, the laws of thought are a reflection of the laws of being. But philosophical a. can overstep its legitimate boundaries, if the analogy between man and the world and their relationship of interdependence is exaggerated. A characteristic example of philosophical a. are the bold theories of Telesio and Campanella, which attribute sense and spirit to all things (cosmic sensism and panpsychism), thus preparing the way for certain extravagant forms of modern dynamism, in which force is equated with spirit.

Religious a. is the kind that touches the supernatural sphere. It manifests itself predominantly in pagan polytheism, which, starting from animism (v.) or the attribution of spirit to things, creates a host of gods as personifications of natural forces and phenomena, to which a realistically human psychology is attributed (Tylor). Some unprejudiced critic has sought to find this vulgar a. even in the Jewish religion and therefore in the Old Testament. In Sacred Scripture, in fact, especially in the Old Testament, anthropomorphic expressions recur frequently when God is spoken of. To God are attributed not only actions proper to the human spirit, such as thought, will, feeling, but also the forms of internal and external sensitive life (anger, joy and other passions, sight, hearing and other senses). Indeed, not rarely in the Bible there is talk of the mouth of God, of his hands and of other members, as if God had a body. It is therefore not entirely surprising that in the 4th century a certain Audius dared to propose a literal interpretation of these texts, attributing to God a true human form, matter not excluded. This crude error found in Syria and Egypt a few naive followers, who were an object of mockery even among the Fathers of the Church (St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine). In reality these are passages that cannot be interpreted literally so as to derive from them the concept of a material God, all the more so since the Old Testament is full of admirable affirmations about the perfect spirituality of God and his ineffable transcendence (v. BIBLICAL A.).

One can also add a third kind of a. that could be called theological. It is connected to the important problem of the value of our concepts and of our language concerning God and his attributes. (v. ANALOGY). Here it suffices to recall that in speaking of God we must necessarily make use of concepts and words relating to created nature, for the simple reason that our reason cannot rise to the knowledge of God directly and immediately, but only through creatures, which bear the imprint of his power and have with him a relationship of causality and therefore of likeness. But in this ascent the human intellect runs the risk either of overemphasizing the likeness to the point of univocity, or of exaggerating the transcendence of God and his diversity from the creature to the point of equivocity. In the first case there is a., or the equating of God with man; in the second case there is agnosticism (v.), or the distrust of grasping the divinity with human concepts. Christian theology, strong in divine revelation, avoids these two reefs with the doctrine of analogy, whereby our concepts concerning the divine attributes are true, that is, they correspond to the object (the divine nature), but not adequately.

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