Does God the Father have a soul?

[CEM5]

Can God see? Can he walk? If the answer is yes, and if scripture describes God as having eyes and feet, what is so inaccurate for me to believe that since we are created in his image, to believe that our eyes and feet are created in the image of God who has eyes and feet?

Genesis 3:8-9 “And when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise at the afternoon air, Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God, amidst the trees of paradise. And the Lord God called Adam, and said to him: Where are you?”

Hi Apollos,

We humans always try to explain God in ways that our puny human minds can understand Him best. God is pure Spirit, always has been and the only physical part of Him is now seen in the person (Second Person of the Trinity) of Jesus, who has two natures now: divine and human. As the divine He shares in the Omnipotence and omnipresence of God, however, as the human, Jesus now has the glorious, resurrected body and soul and can be seen and touched.

God (The Trinity) has always been described in anthropomorphic terminlogy because this is how we humans attribute humanlike qualities to God. God is not physical and does not have physcial body. God is pure spirit. Just as Jesus is described in Scriptures in certain ways to attribute qualities to Him (The Lamb; having seven eyes, and such - this is not to be taken literally).

John 4:24, Jesus teaches us: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” This means God has no body, because a spirit is, by nature, an incorporeal being. As Jesus tells us elsewhere, “a spirit has not flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39).

There is a big difference between being a spirit and having a spirit. Jesus says that the Father is a spirit, not that the Father has a spirit; this means that he lacks a body entirely.

The Church Fathers, of course, agreed, and loudly declared the fact that God is an unchangeable, immaterial spirit who has an entirely simple (“incomposite”) nature—that is, a nature containing no parts. Since all bodies extend through space and thus can be divided into parts, it is clear that God cannot have a body.

Our “image and likeness” of God that He created us in has nothing to do with the physical: We were created in the “likeness” of God by being good (holy - having sanctifying grace), “immortal” (our soul), and the “image of God” with intelligence and free will which all possess.

The Catechism and the liturgy make a distinction between image and likeness as well: In the Eucharistic Prayer we pray: “Through Him You restored us to Your likeness.” Through the sacrament of baptism we now have that sanctifying grace restored to us.

blessings,

 

[zarthan]

When “soul” is used in the Old Testament it is synonymous with the Greek understanding of "being’ (a word not in the OT vocabulary). Thus “soul” when employed in the OT is used in the sense of “being” or having a “personhood” - a personal identity, not as having a “soul” (psyche) in the Greek sense of a “mind”/“intellect” in union with a physical body (true in man’s case and not true in God Who is Uncreated Spirit); thus your question “does God the Father have a soul” can only be answered “no”. I note your change from “have” to “is”, btw.

The Church does not disregard these Scriptures; the Church understands the meaning, where you do not. Thus it is you who are opposing Scripture, not the Church.

Thank you for responding in a reasonable manner.

Yes, God is being (nephesh), if that is how you want to translate the Greek or Hebrew. When God says the **nephesh/psuche (being) **of me is well-pleased, or **the nephesh/psuche (being) **of me abhors, God is telling me that He has Divine emotions. These Divine emotions are of Him.

God is supreme will, and what His being(nephesh) desires, that he does.

When the LORD GOD says, that he swares by his being(nephesh), there is nothing greater of his essence to sware by.

Our souls which are the seat of our wills and emotions are a very imperfect replica of God’s being. “Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name.”

The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ must prevail

 

[zarthan]

For the sake of peace, I will stop posting on Catholic forums. My soul is in my Heavenly Father’s care’ and He will deal with me in justice and peace, in mercy and truth.

Truly, may the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, and with his church.

 

[Ron_Conte]

Zarthan’s position on this topic is contrary to the teachings of the Church Fathers.

Below are some relevant quotes from a book which I recommend as a good resource for Catholics:
The Teachings of the Church Fathers
by John R. Willis S.J.

1. The essence of God is His very existence.

St. Hilary: “It is known that there is nothing more characteristic of God than to be…what is divine is not liable to destruction nor does it have a beginning…”

St. Gregory Nazianzen: “But we are enquiring into a Nature Whose Being is absolute and not into Being bound up with something else.” “He is Eternal Being.”

St. John of Damascus: “For He keeps all being in His own embrace, like a sea of essence infinite and unseen.”

1. God is per se independent existence

St. Athanasius: “God has being, and men are said to be, having received from God this gift also. Yet does God create as men do? or is His being as man’s being? Perish the thought… God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without partition or passion.”

St. Hilary: “It is the Father from whom everything that exists has been formed… His being is in Himself and He does not derive what He is from anywhere else, but possesses what He is from Himself and in Himself. He is infinite… He is always outside of space because He is not restricted; He is always before time because time comes from Him.”

1. The divine attributes are really the same as the divine substance

St. Augustine: “God’s substance is eternity itself, which has nothing changeable. There, nothing is past as if it were no longer; nothing is future, as if it existed not as yet. There is nothing there but, Is.”

St. Augustine: “But in God to be is the same as to be strong, or to be just, or to be wise, or whatever is said of that simple multiplicity, or multifold simplicity, whereby to signify His substance.”

1. God is utter simplicity, and admits of no composition whatever

St. Clement of Alexandria: “Nor are any parts to be predicated of Him. For the One is indivisible; wherefore also it is infinite…. there is nothing antecedent to the Unbegotten.”

Origen: “God, therefore, is not to be thought of as being either a body or as existing in a body, but as an uncompounded intellectual nature, admitting within Himself no addition of any kind; so that He cannot be believed to have within Him a greater and a less….”

St. Athanasius: “If then any man conceives God to be compound, as accident is in essence, or to have any external envelopment and to be encompassed, or as if there is anything about Him which completes the essence, so that when we say ‘God,’ or name ‘Father,’ we do not signify the invisible and incomprehensible essence, but something about it, then let them complain of the Council’s stating that the Son was from the essence of God; but let them reflect, that in thus considering they utter two blasphemies; for they make God corporeal, and they falsely say that the Lord is not Son of the very Father, but of what is about Him….”

St. Basil: “God is universally confessed to be simple and not composite.”

St. Augustine: “God is of an uncompounded nature; nothing can be added to Him, and that alone which is Divine has He in His nature….”

St. Augustine: “in God nothing is said to be according to accident, because in Him nothing is changeable….”

St. Cyril of Alexandria: “We are made to [God’s] image and likeness. But … we are at an infinite distance. For we are not simple by nature, whereas the divinity, which is perfectly simple and not composite, possesses in itself every perfection, and nothing is lacking to it.”

See also, St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I., 3, articles 1-8.
newadvent.org/summa/1003.htm

 

[atassina]

God doesn’t have anything. He is it. He does not have love; He is love. He does not have a principle of life within Him; He is the principle of life within any creature.

 

[Ron_Conte]

God doesn’t have anything. He is it. He does not have love; He is love. He does not have a principle of life within Him; He is the principle of life.

Yes. The divine attributes are really the same as the divine substance. God is not merely loving, He is Love. The existence of God is the Love of God. Existence and Love are the same in God.

He is the principle of life within any creature.

No, this view reduces God to some part of His living creatures. Since God IS His attributes, if He were the principle of life within any creature, He would then be contained within any creature. This is not possible, since God is infinite. So God is not merely the principle of Life, He is infinite life, infinite love, infinite wisdom, etc.

 

[Bookcat]

For the sake of peace, I will stop posting on Catholic forums.

Take care Zarthan!

May God bless you in your life!

 

[StrawberryJam]

There is a remnant within the body of Christ, that are truly living in the will of God our Father. Such a remnant is holy, the rest of us who are not abiding and living in the will of God our Father are not holy. When Jesus said to us,** be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect, **he was not using hyperbole. If you consider yourself one of the one’s who are perfect and holy, then my apology for not including you.

Hold on now, are you saying that one can sin and be holy? Or that the sinner is not ever holy?

Is anyone living in the will of God the Father of all creation?

Anyone?

Jesus made it possible to open the door to holiness…

Maybe I don’t understand you.