The inevitability of Anthropomorphism

It is frequently argued by opponents of the classical conception of God that it reduces most or all of Scripture’s talk about God to “anthropomorphism” or metaphor. The classical conception of God makes God into something remote, unrelated to human beings, that does not interact with the world in the way Scripture consistently portrays him as doing. In other words, the classical conception of God is anti-revelational.

This has never seemed a compelling argument to me. Unless you are the most radical of Socinians, anthropomorphism is an inevitability. If you believe in divine omniscience, the passages in Scripture where God is said to repent, to regret a consequence, or to change his mind are anthropomorphic. There is simply no way to read “God repented” as equivalent to man repented” when God knows all possible and actual future contingents. Similarly, we all interpret passages that describe God as “coming down” to investigate (as in Genesis 11) or walking in the garden (as in Genesis 3) as poetic expressions or otherwise accommodated to human perception.


Perfect being theists who are wary of confessing attributes of God such as atemporality, simplicity, and immutability should recognize the open theists have them on this one. If the argument that the classical conception of God is overly anthropomorphic is to hold, those opposed to it but who want to maintain Christian orthodoxy are going to have to come up with a much more consistent and articulable theory of language about God and what are acceptable and unacceptable anthropomorphisms. Until then, their criticisms will all seem arbitrary to a classical theist and won’t move them an inch from their position.

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