This may sound like an odd idea. For more than a thousand years, Christian
theology has been almost unanimous in affirming that God has no parts and
cannot have parts. The Westminster
Confession of Faith (1646) says, for example, “There is but one only living and
true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit,
invisible, without body, parts, or
passions, immutable…”
The claim that God is without parts is not due to any
statement in the Bible. The Bible itself
constantly mentions parts of God: his
ears (2 Sam. 22:7, Psa. 18:6, etc.), his eyes (Gen. 6:8, Psa. 17:2, etc.), his
feet (2 Sam. 22:10, Psa. 18:9, Isa. 41:2, etc.), his hands (Gen. 49:24, Exo.
15:17, etc.), his arms (Deut. 33:27, Isa. 51:5, etc.), his mouth (Deut. 8:3,
Psa. 33:6, etc.), his breath (Gen. 2:7, Psa. 33:6, etc.), even his bowels (Isa.
63:15, Jer. 31:20) are mentioned. These
are not always just figures of speech.
Sometimes these body parts were actually seen: Moses and the elders on the mountain “saw the God of Israel , and beneath his
feet….” (Ex. 24:10). Micaiah saw the
LORD sitting on a throne (1 Kings 22:19, also Isa. 6:1). Isaiah saw him wearing a robe (“the lower edges of his robe were filling
the Temple,” Isa. 6:1). This is not
the description of a formless spirit.
On the contrary, God himself (God the Father) is described
as having a spirit, the Spirit of God. When
we use a similar expression to describe a human being, “the spirit of a man”
clearly refers to a part of that man. So
what about the Spirit of God? Does that
refer to a part of God? Christian
theology has uniformly insisted that God the Father does not have a
spirit as a part of who he is, but rather that the Spirit of God is a distinct
entity—or rather a separate identity—within the Trinity of God.* Here again, there is nothing in the Bible
that requires this counter-intuitive understanding. So why have Christian theologians insisted
that God cannot have a part of himself that is his Spirit?
