ANTHROPOMORPHISM (from the Gr. anthriipos, man, and morphs, a form), the application, in a figurative way, to God, of terms which properly relate to human beings. Thus, in the holy Scriptures, we read of the eye, the ear, the arm, the hand of God, and of his remembering, forgetting, etc. This A. appears to arise of necessity from our incapacity of forming conceptions of things spiritual, or finding any terms in which to express them, except by analogies derived from things cognizable by our senses, so that even the language of adoration is borrowed from the familiar things of this world. It must he evident, however, that A., employed in an unguarded manner, or too grossly understood, might lead to most serious error; and a tendency has manifested itself at various times in the history of the Christian church to ascribe to the Divine Being a form and parts like those of men. Thus, the Audxans (q.v.) or Audians, a Syrian monastic sect which sprang up in the 4th c., were accused, and, it would seem, justly, of holding that God was possessed of a human shape, and that, when the Bible said that "God created man in his own image," the words are to be understood of this shape literally. The same error was at a later period ascribed to the Waldenses, but there is no evidence of the justice of the accusation. A tendency to A. may indeed he regarded as always existing, and so requiring to be guarded against in the mind of every man; but the instances havebeen rare and isolated, although they have from time to time occurred, in which anthropomorphite views have been fully adopted and openly expressed among Christians. The error of the anthropomorphites has, however, found countenance
from the speculations of philosophers. Hobbes, Forster, and Priestley ascribed to the Divine Being a sort of subtle body. Fichte. on the other hand, rejected the very doctrine of the personality of the bivine Being as anthropomorphic, and represented God as the moral order of the 'universe; and Sehelling, Hrael, Feuerbach, and Schleier macher substituted for the objective personality of God a subjective consciousness of God in the human soul.—The term anthropopathism is sometimes employed to denote the ascription to God of human affections and passions, although A., in its most general sense, includes this. The language of Scripture, in the ninny instances of this kind, must be interpreted according to the same general principles which are applicable in those of A. strictly so called, with the same discrimination of the figurative from the literal, and the same constant recognition of the absolute spirituality and unchangeable ness of God; yet so that important truths conveyed by means of such language, and which it is probable could only be conveyed to us by such language, in accordance with our mental constitution. may not be rejected or obscured. And here, it must be con fessed, there is greater difficulty than with regard to A. strictly so called.