I suspect that it is not widely noted that according to the Jehovah’s Witness doctrine of God he is essentially corporeal (i.e., bodily, albeit not material) and temporal. After documenting statements in Witness literature that affirm these positions, I will note the possible apologetic significance of these aspects of their theology.
In Witness Theology God is Corporeal
Many Bible Student / Witness publications teach that God is a spatially extended, somatically composite substance.
1. “We could not imagine either our divine Father or our Lord Jesus as merely great minds without bodies. Theirs are glorious spiritual bodies, though it doth not yet appear how great is the glory, and it shall not, until we also shall share the divine nature.” (Millennial Dawn Vol. I, p. 200)
2. “Whoever thinks of God as omnipresent necessarily thinks of Him as impersonal; and the more he thinks the more vague his God becomes, until finally he has no God, but merely (as some Christian Scientists, including Mrs. Eddy, express it) believes in a principle of good and calls that principle God. Such wish to believe in a supreme Creator, but by this erroneous reasoning they mislead their own intelligence, into the denial of a personal God. An omnipresent God is not a person. The Bible recognizes a personal God—a great Spirit Being—and gives Him a home, or locality.” (The Bible Students Monthly (1915) Vol. VII, No. 5, p. 2)
3. “God is a spirit being, having a divine organism, immeasurably higher, greater, grander, and more sublime than man can conceive; but a person just the same.” (April 23, 1924 Golden Age, p. 452)
5. “It is not Scriptural to speak of Jehovah as being omnipresent in the sense that the heathen do, as if he were an all-pervading spirit. He has a throne in heaven on the right hand of which Jesus sat after his ascension, but he can reach any part of his universe and extend his power there and his eyes run to and fro through the whole earth to show his strength in behalf of the perfect-hearted ones. (2 Chron. 16:9) If he were omnipresent the Scriptures would not speak of his coming and visiting the earth; he would be already here.” (October 1, 1951 Watchtower, p. 607)
6. “There was a time when God had no sons. He had not yet begun creating the invisible heavens. He was then all alone in eternal space." ("New Heavens and a New Earth", p. 21)
7. “How big Jehovah God is as to his body we do not know.” (December 15, 1953 Watchtower, p. 750)
8. “Before God began creating he was all alone in space, from time without beginning.” (“Your Will Be Done on Earth”, p. 14)
9. “Jehovah further merits being termed incomparable (4) because of his personal glory or excellence of body or organism. Some would have God omnipresent or as a Principle without a body or an organism. But not so. Jehovah God as a person has a body and a location.” (March 8, 1963 Awake!, pp. 27-28)
10. “Being a person, Jehovah God has a location, and to this the Scriptures repeatedly allude.” (August 8, 1963 Awake!, p. 28)
11. “While there are physical bodies visible and palpable, there are also spiritual bodies, invisible to human eyes and entirely beyond human senses. (1 Cor. 15:44) The bodies of spiritual persons (God, Christ, the angels) are glorious.” (Aid to Bible Understanding, p. 247)
12. "Thank you, Paul, for we are glad to learn that the holy place into which the resurrected Jesus Christ entered with the value of his own sacrificial blood was not a holy place on earth where his few disciples then were, but was “heaven itself,” where the “person of God” is, where God himself dwells personally rather than dwelling there by spirit." (December 1, 1972, Watchtower p. 713)
13. "He does not need such a man-made temple at that onetime holy place, for he has plainly told us that he does not dwell in temples made with human hands. He has his true, spiritual temple in which he personally dwells. It is the temple into the Most Holy compartment of which his High Priest Jesus Christ entered in the spring of 33 C.E., with the precious merit of his perfect human sacrifice in behalf of all sinful, dying mankind." (December 15, 1972 Watchtower, p. 751)
14. "High Priest Jesus Christ entered “into heaven itself” where the “person of God” is. This heavenly residence of the very person of God is the true Most Holy, the Holy of Holies, the Holiest of all." (God’s Kingdom of a Thousand Years Has Approached, p. 100)
15. “God is not omnipresent, everywhere at once, an all-pervading spirit. Neither are all things part of him. He created them. Being a Person, he has a location, his place of residence where he can be approached. This residence is in heaven, in the invisible realm.—Matt. 6:9.” (April 1, 1974 Watchtower, p. 220)
16. “The man and the woman, our first earthly parents, were human, that is to say, of the earth, of things that are found here at the earth. But what about their divine Creator? This One had to be superhuman. He was infinitely higher than man in the level of His heavenly existence. He was higher, too, in the kind of intelligent Person that he was. He was, to say it simply, of finer stuff than man was. This is why he was invisible to man, whose powers of vision are limited in range. Naturally, then, the first man and woman never saw their Creator, their Life-Giver, their heavenly Father. Because of his superhuman, heavenly, invisible existence, he was what we call today ‘spirit.’” (Holy Spirit—The Force Behind the Coming New Order!, pp. 5-6) 17. “Let us always keep in mind that ‘God is a Spirit,’ or, ‘God is spirit.’ (John 4:24, and marginal reading) Correspondingly, he dwells in a spirit realm. All alone, and without an agreeable environment? No! It would be shortsighted and unreasonable for us to imagine that God can create only material things visible to us and has not also created things in the invisible heavenly realm. Such things of a higher realm would be of a composition higher than that of the material creation of which we humans are a part. “. . .There is no dependence upon the sun of our solar system for light up there. No night there! The Creator of the light-giving suns is himself a heavenly Sun, a source of light. Literally and figuratively, morally, it is true: ‘God is light and there is no darkness at all in union with him.’ (1 John 1:5)” “. . . [T]he Holy Bible itself testifies that God has with him in the invisible spirit realm intelligent persons of a spirit composition. With these he can have direct contact. They can see him even as he sees them. Beings of higher, superhuman composition, as to their make up, they are not dissolved, disintegrated, annihilated at the mere sight of him. They can be in direct touch with him, serving in his personal presence. (Luke 1:19) Not to angels, but to men, God said: ‘You are not able to see my face, because no man may see me and yet live.’ (Exodus 33:20)” (Holy Spirit—The Force Behind the Coming New Order!, pp. 17-18)
18. “Jehovah God, Christ Jesus and the angels all have spirit bodies, and those who go to heaven receive similar spirit bodies. How big the bodies of spirit persons are – whether God, for example, has a much bigger body than Christ or the angels – or what their bodies look like, we do not know. The apostle John did not know, as he explained: ‘As yet it has not been made manifest what we shall be. We do know that whenever he [God] is made manifest we shall be like him, because we shall see him just as he is.’—1 John 3:2.” (July 22, 1979 Awake!, p. 27)
19. “Actually, by teaching that God is omnipresent Christendom has confused matters and made it more difficult for God to be real to his worshipers. How could God be present everywhere at the same time? God is a spirit Person, which means that he does not have a material body, but a spiritual one. A spirit has a body? Yes, for we read, “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one.” (1 Cor. 15:44; John 4:24) God being an individual, a Person with a spirit body, has a place where he resides, and so he could not be at any other place at the same time. Thus we read at 1 Kings 8:43 that the heavens are God’s “established place of dwelling.” Also, we are told at Hebrews 9:24 that “Christ entered . . . into heaven itself, now to appear before the person of God for us.”
“Moreover, the disciple Stephen and the apostle John had visions of heaven in which they saw both God and Jesus Christ. So Jehovah God must be just as much a person, an individual, as Jesus Christ is. (Acts 7:56; Rev. 5:1, 9) Those Christians who have a hope of eventually living in heaven are assured that they will see God and also be like him, showing that Jehovah God truly is a person and has a body as well as a certain location.—1 John 3:2.”
“It could well be that some have been confused due to the fact that God is allseeing; also his power can be felt everywhere. (2 Chron. 16:9) We might illustrate these facts by likening God to an electric power plant. It has a certain location on a certain street in a city. But its electricity is distributed over all the city, providing light and power. And so with Jehovah God. He has a location in the highest heavens, but his active force, his holy spirit, furnishes enlightenment, and its force can be felt everywhere, over all the universe. “While the Bible repeatedly warns that God’s worshipers are not to presume to make any likeness of him and not to bow down and worship such a likeness, it does use anthropomorphisms; that is, it ascribes to God human characteristics. Thus the Bible speaks of God’s face, his eyes and ears, his nostrils and mouth, his arms and feet. (Deut. 4:15-20; Ps. 27:8; 1 Pet. 3:12; Ps. 18:15; Isa. 1:20; Deut. 33:27; Isa. 41:2) Of course, such descriptive language does not mean that his spirit body has the same kind of members that human bodies have. But by means of these expressions we are helped, inasmuch as Jehovah God thus becomes more real to us.” (February 15, 1981 Watchtower, p. 6)
21. “While there are physical bodies, visible and palpable, there are also spiritual bodies, invisible to human eyes and entirely beyond human senses. (1Co 15:44) The bodies of spirit persons (God, Christ, the angels) are glorious.” (Insight on the Scriptures Vol. I, p. 348)
22. “The true God is not omnipresent, for he is spoken of as having a location.” (Insight on the Scriptures Vol. I, p. 969)
23. “Solomon’s statement does not mean that God has no specific place of residence. Nor does it mean that he is omnipresent in the sense of being literally everywhere and in everything. This can be seen from the fact that Solomon also spoke of Jehovah as hearing “from the heavens, your established place of dwelling,” that is, the heavens of the spirit realm.” (Insight on the Scriptures Vol. I, p. 1060)
24. “All things having life [including God], either spiritual or fleshly, have an organism, or body.” (Insight on the Scriptures Vol. II, p. 246)
25. “There are two vital points this text helps us appreciate: that God is a spirit person and that he has an established place of dwelling, heaven. (1 Kings 8:49; John 4:24) So he could not be at any other place at the same time.” (May 8, 1990 Awake!, p. 19)
26. “Therefore, he resides in a spiritual realm independent of the physical universe. When the Bible refers to “the heavens” as God’s dwelling place, it is referring to the loftiness of the place where he resides in contrast with the material environment in which we reside. In any event, the Bible teaches that God’s abode is, indeed, clearly distinguished from the physical universe but is at the same time a very specific location.
. . . “Jesus spoke about Jehovah’s dwelling place . . . This account teaches us two important facts about Jehovah God. First, he has a literal palace of dwelling, and second, he is a person, not simply an indefinable force that resides everywhere. . . . “While the Bible always refers to God as having a specific dwelling place, it often speaks of his holy spirit in ubiquitous terms. . . . Some have been confused by such references and may conclude that God is omnipresent. Yet, when considering the context of this and other texts, it becomes clear that Jehovah’s holy spirit – or power in action – can be extended from his fixed location to any place in the material universe. . . . “Jehovah God humbly and lovingly allows himself and his dwelling place to be described in the human terms that most closely relate to his state of being. . . . Yet, God’s nature is truly beyond complete human comprehension. “Jehovah is simply too magnificent, too great, and too wonderful to be fully described in human terms. So while the Scriptures speak about his heavenly abode as a place with a specific location, to understand such a spiritual dimension completely is simply impossible for humans. – Psalm 139:6. “Still, there is great comfort in having some understanding of Jehovah’s true nature, realizing that he is not some indefinable, impersonal force permeating everything in the universe. Rather, he is an individual with a specific place of dwelling and a definite personality characterized by love and tenderness.” (March 8, 2005 Awake!, pp. 20-21)
27. “Contrary to popular belief, God is not present everywhere at all times. Rather, he dwells in the spirit realm, in an “established place of dwelling,” or residence. (1 Kings 8:39; 2 Chronicles 6:39) The Scriptures also refer to a specific place where God lives and has his “throne.” (1 Kings 22:19; Isaiah 6:1; Daniel 7:9; Revelation 4:1-3) However, from his “established place of dwelling,” he can use his active force to reach out into every corner of both the spirit realm and the physical realm. – Psalm 139:7.” (July, 2006 Awake, p. 15) 28. “Jesus believed that God is an actual Person living in a specific location. . . . “It is true that ‘no man has seen God at any time’ and that ‘God is a Spirit.’ (John 1:18; 4:24) But this does not mean that he is without any type of body or form. The Bible tells us: ‘If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one.’ (1 Corinthians 15:44) So does Jehovah have a spiritual body? “Yes. . . . This teaches us two important facts about God. First, he has a place of dwelling. Second, he is a Person, not simply an indefinable force that resides everywhere.” (February 1, 2009 Watchtower, p. 5)
29. “The fact that Jehovah has a place of dwelling indicates that he is not in all places at all times.” (April, 2011 Awake!, p. 28)
30. “Actually, the Bible speaks of God as having a specific place of dwelling—the heavens. . . . “. . . Jehovah God dwells, not everywhere, but only in heaven. . . . He resides in the spiritual heavens, a realm independent of the physical universe. – 1 Corinthians 15:44. . . . “Yes, Jehovah’s powerful active force, or holy spirit, can extend anywhere, allowing him to be all-seeing and to accomplish his purpose from a fixed location, his ‘holy dwelling’ in the heavens.” (August 1, 2011 Watchtower, p. 27)
31. “What kind of body does God have? . . . The Bible describes God as a spirit being. . . . Our Creator is so superior to us that we cannot even begin to imagine what he looks like. . . . There are, however, intelligent creatures who can see God and even speak with him face-to-face. How so? Because they too are spirits, and they live in heaven.”
“. . . God is is a person – a ‘Father’ – and he resides in heaven, his ‘established place of dwelling.’” (May 2013, Awake!, pp. 14-15)
34. “However, the Bible does not teach that God is omnipresent – that is present everywhere, in all things. Instead it shows that he is a person and that he resides in a dwelling place.’ . . .
"God resides in the spirit realm, which is distinct from physical creation. Within that realm, God has a “dwelling place in the heavens.” (1 Kings 8:30) The Bible mentions an occasion when spirit creatures “entered to take their station before Jehovah,” showing that in a sense, God resides at a specific location.” (Bible Questions Answered, No. 123)
35. “God is a Spirit.” (John 4:24) Jehovah does not have a physical body. He is a Spirit who lives in heaven, a place that we cannot see.” (Enjoy Life Forever!, p. 29)
In Witness Theology God is Temporal
According to Watchtower publications God is temporal (he exists within time). Time preceded creation and is, in fact, coeval with God.
1. “There must have been a time when the great God was alone. There must have been a time before his creation.” (Creation, p. 10)
2. "There was a time when God began to create. Before that he was all alone in the universe, for immeasurable time. He was not lonesome; because he is perfect, being complete in himself. . . ." "There was never a time when there was chaos, that is, a formless, disorganized and confused state, throughout the universe. . . .He did not bring order out of chaos, because chaos never existed contemporaneously with 'the true and living God'. The universe was never out of his control. When He, the sole inhabiter of the universe and of eternity, began to create, he proceeded orderly." ("The Truth Shall Make You Free", pp. 27-28) 3. "There was a time when God had no sons. He had not yet begun creating the invisible heavens. He was then all alone in eternal space. But he was not lonesome. To be lonesome would have meant that something was lacking for him. But he is completely self-sufficient and is absolutely not dependent on anyone else. Single life was not monotonous for him. His unsearchable qualities are perfectly balanced, and his thinking process brought him satisfying delight. But he is not a mere thinking. He is an active God and he has pleasure too in work. What his movements were during the past eternity of his single being we do not know, but the 'glory of the incorruptible God' always attended him." ("New Heavens and a New Earth", p. 21)
4. “Before God began creating he was all alone in space, from time without beginning.” (“Your Will Be Done on Earth”, p. 14)
5. “THE Creator, Jehovah God, needs no one. He is wholly self-contained. He existed alone throughout a past eternity without ever feeling lonely, without feeling the need of anyone.” (December 1, 1963 Watchtower, p. 734)
6. “HAVE we ever thought about what is implied by the expressions “the Creator of the heavens,” also, “God, who created all things”? Those expressions imply that there was a time when God was all alone. (Isaiah 42:5; Ephesians 3:9) No creation existed. So for an eternal past this God was all by himself and he had not yet become a Creator. That is why the prophet Moses said in prayer to God: “Before mountains were born or earth and universe came to the pangs of birth, and from eternity to eternity, you are Deity.” (Psalm 90:2, Byington’s translation) During all that eternal past before creation God was able to enjoy Himself.
“The time came when God purposed to become a Father. This did not mean to become the Creator of lifeless things, unintelligent things. It meant to give existence to living intelligences, to sons with some likeness to him their Father. Thus he purposed to take upon Himself the responsibility of a family of children. What kind of sons did He purpose to produce first? Not human sons, for in that case he would have had to produce first an earthly globe upon which they could live. Reasonably, God would produce sons who, like Himself, are heavenly, being spirit just as He is spirit. Thus they would be spirit sons, who could see him and have direct access into His presence and with whom he could communicate directly.” (God’s “Eternal Purpose” Now Triumphing For Man’s Good, pp. 26-27)
8. “Jehovah, who has existed for all time, was alone before creation had a beginning.” (Insight on the Scriptures Vol. I, p. 526)
9. “Did God have a beginning?
“Ps. 90:2: “Before the mountains themselves were born, or you proceeded to bring forth as with labor pains the earth and the productive land, even from time indefinite to time indefinite you are God.”
“Is that reasonable? Our minds cannot fully comprehend it. But that is not a sound reason for rejecting it. Consider examples: (1) Time. No one can point to a certain moment as the beginning of time. And it is a fact that, even though our lives end, time does not. We do not reject the idea of time because there are aspects of it that we do not fully comprehend. Rather, we regulate our lives by it. (2) Space. Astronomers find no beginning or end to space. The farther they probe into the universe, the more there is. They do not reject what the evidence shows; many refer to space as being infinite. The same principle applies to the existence of God.” (Reasoning From the Scriptures, p. 148)
10. “ETERNITY—what would you say it is? Do you think time could really go on forever? Well, there is no question that time stretches forever into the past. So why not forever into the future? Indeed, the New World Translation of the Bible refers to God as being praised “from time indefinite even to time indefinite.” (Psalm 41:13) What does this expression mean? We may be helped to understand it if we refer to a related subject—space. “How extensive is space? Is there any limit to it? Up until 400 years ago, our earth was thought to be the center of the universe. Then Galileo developed the telescope, providing for a greatly enlarged view of the heavens. Now Galileo could see many more stars and was able to show that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun. The Milky Way no longer looked milky. It proved to be a galaxy of stars, about a hundred billion in number. We could never count that many actual stars, even in a lifetime. Later, astronomers went on to locate billions of galaxies. These stretch out endlessly into space, as far as the most powerful telescopes can probe. It seems that there are no limits to space. The same is true with eternity—it has no limits.” (April 1, 1996 Watchtower, p. 10)
11. “Moses said in prayer to Jehovah: “You have always been, and you will always be.” (Psalm 90:2, The Holy Bible, New Century Version) Here Moses describes God’s existence as stretching in two directions. One is toward the future. Jehovah is “the One that lives forever and ever.” (Revelation 4:10) Thus, God’s existence stretches forward into the eternal future. The other is toward the past. In other words, God was neither created nor did he come into existence. Rather, God’s existence stretches back into the infinite past.” (July 1, 2010 Watchtower, p. 28)
14. “Before creation, Jehovah was alone. But at one point, he welcomed his firstborn Son into his figurative tent. Jehovah took great pleasure in his new role as Host. The Bible reveals that Jehovah was “especially fond of” his Son. His first guest, in turn, “rejoiced before [Jehovah] all the time.”—Prov. 8:30.” (June, 2024 Watchtower: Study Edition, p. 2)
Apologetic Uses of These Facts
Sometimes Witnesses will argue against the eternal generation of the Son on the grounds that any kind of causation entails that that which is caused did not exist prior to being caused. In other words, they say that if the Son is generated by the Father, there was a time when he was not. Or, in other words, he is past finite.
However, Witness theology teaches that there are two things co-eternal with God: time and space. If they say that these things are caused by God, they could not say that they were caused at any moment in the past, since for any moment they could pick out as the time when they came into existence, such things supposedly always existed. (Though, they do teach that our universe was created, so they might hold that some portions of space might not be past eternal; yet, insofar as they teach that God is a body and dwells somewhere, they are committed to affirming that at least some portion of space has always existed or that at any moment in the past there has been space.) So they would have to affirm simultaneous causation of both of these things, which seems to be relevantly similar to the idea of timeless causation that forms part of the orthodox doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. So their objection that the Son being caused entails that he is not eternal breaks down.
If they deny that these things are caused by God, then they are left with an awkward view that God is not the creator of all that is not God. Moreover, in fact, God would seem to depend upon space and time. (This problem, I would suggest, is not obviated merely by asserting that a spatial and temporal God creates space and time, but I will not try to explore the issue here.)
The main apologetic significance of these aspects of Witness theology. It is false. A temporal and spatial God is inferior to a timeless and non-bodily God (that is, a God who in his divinity is essentially non-bodily; such a God could, of course, assume a human body, if he so wished, even as the Son, in fact, has). This raises the question as to why God’s sole visible channel for communication and the dispensation of spiritual food at the proper time so consistently erred in its doctrine of God? I think that to persuade a Witness of the incorporeality and timelessness of God should tend to undermine their perception of the authority of the Witness organization and its governing body.
Updated: 12.12.2024, 12.31.2024, 1.14.2025
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