Whether God Has a Body

At this time a question was being stirred up in Egypt that had been raised a short while before: whether it is right to believe that God has a human form. Because they took the sacred words simply and without any questioning, most of the monks in that part of the world held this view, and supposed that God has eyes, a face, hands, and the other members of a bodily frame. But those who searched into the hidden meaning of the words of Scripture held the opposite, and maintained that those who denied that God is without a body were guilty of blasphemy. Theophilus took this latter view and preached it in the church. In the letter he wrote, as the custom was, about the celebration of the Passover, he took the occasion to state that God ought to be regarded as without a body, foreign to any human form. [a]

When the Egyptian monks were told that Theophilus had put forward these views, they went to Alexandria, gathered the people together in one place, stirred up a riot, and resolved to kill the bishop as an impious man. But Theophilus went out to the rioters at once and said to them, “When I look at you, it is as if I saw the face of God.” These words calmed the men enough that they let go of their anger and replied, “Then if you really hold orthodox teaching, why do you not condemn the books of Origen, since those who read them are led into such opinions?” “That has long been my intention,” he answered, “and I will do as you advise, for I blame all who follow the teachings of Origen no less than you do.” By these means he deceived the brothers and broke up the riot.