Abstract
It has been recognized by at least some scholars that many early Christians, and not only the simpliciores , believed God to be corporeal (materially embodied) or anthropomorphic (humanlike in form), as some biblical narratives portray him. Likewise certain trajectories of Christian mysticism, under the influence of Jewish kabod speculation, maintained that the pinnacle of mystic ascent was the contemplation of the body of God. Among theologians there was also a stoicizing school, prominently represented in Tertullian, who held that God was corpus , even if not anthropomorphic. All of this stands in stark contrast with that Christian theology which developed, primarily under the influence of Platonism, a nonanthropomorphic and incorporeal conception of God that has come to dominate all subsequent theology and philosophy. It is difficult for moderns to transcend these subsequent norms and recognize among early Christians some quite different theological conceptions, or to do so without dismissing them as crude and primitive notions and, hence, as isolated aberrations.
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