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+⧖Care to defend this one, Papists?
Care to defend this one, Papists?That idea of substance existing a tier down from divinity in a hierarchical sense that matters to the creation of the world is not significantly contained within ancient Jewish doctrine. The idea that substance is a lower form of existence that is created by divine thought and which is inherently lower for being created is entirely reliant on Greek philosophical ideas about matter and it's potentiality. In that lens, God has to be totally immaterial and inhuman because both matter and humanity are a product of divine power and therefore lesser by nature. No ancient Jew was thinking about the "absurdity" of the idea that an anthropomorphic God could create the world. They didn't have that idea of a hierarchy of creation. God could make the world and look like a person because they didn't make up systemic rules about how creation has to work. Ancient Semitic religions generally viewed some amount of matter as being always extant in the first place. The Earth was an always existing naturally barren and infertile dusty clay plain and the God(s) shaped and gave life to it. God(s) shaped this clay into useful and bountiful forms. That is why Genesis focuses on what God did to the Earth to make it hospitable more than the exact mechanics of God creating matter and the laws of physics. Because that was not important to the Ancient Jews. Genesis is not remarkable in its context other than it being just one deity doing the work. But if we do follow that God created the Heavens and Earth totally ex nihilio that still wouldn't create an absurdity about God looking like a human male at all. The Old Testament is clear about God having a personality and being able to feel human emotions. God is able to be angry, pleased, sad, and even regretful. That is a very human deity. Not some abstract Greek demiurge. Ancient Jews thought that God was more than human and greater than humans but also fundamentally of the same shape and ability to think and feel as humans.
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