BIBLICAL ANTHROPOMORPHISM. — This is the representation of God found in the sacred books, especially the Old Testament, in “human form,” either with bodily organs or phenomena of sensory life (properly speaking, a.), or with activities, states, and effects of human intellect and will (more properly, “anthropopathy”).
The reasons why human features or sentiments are ascribed to God derive from the very nature of knowledge, which proceeds from sensible concreteness, and from the related human language, necessarily analogical and figurative when it must express the spiritual and transcendent. The particular genius of the Semites, moreover, leads them to express themselves with vivid concreteness that at times borders on crudeness; to this popular character is due the preponderance of a. in the Pentateuch, which nevertheless inculcates the prohibition against representing God in material form. The theophanies frequent in the prophetic books, and the poetic style (Psalms), determine the extensive use of anthropomorphic style. The a., as is clear from the general “biblical context,” must be understood as metaphors or allegories, and not in a strictly material sense, as advocated in the fourth century by the Anthropomorphites or Audians.
It is a principle of Catholic hermeneutics that Scripture does not indiscriminately attribute to God the elements of human nature and its activities. God is never attributed, in accordance with the mythological tendency manifested in the religious documents of the other peoples of the ancient Orient, vicious action or an evil passion. Mixed sentiments of perfection and imperfection are attributed to him only with regard to their positive aspect and according to the more formal and excellent concept: “God has zeal without envy, is angered without agitation, has pity without suffering, repents without regretting any evil, is patient without suffering” (St. Augustine, De patientia, 1, 1: PL 40, 611). “The wings of God therefore signify his protection; his hands signify his works, his feet his presence, his eyes the care he has for us, his face the knowledge he offers us of himself: and everything analogous that Holy Scripture mentions must be understood spiritually” (id., Epist. ad Fortunatianum, 148: PL 33, 628). Dante expresses well the causes and nature of this literary procedure (cf. Paradiso, 4, 40-45).