What is an anthropopathism?
Scripture often describes God in words drawn from human life — He is grieved, He regrets, He is jealous, He is moved with pity. An anthropopathism is exactly that: a human feeling ascribed to God, and the question it raises is whether such language tells us something true about Him, or only something comforting about us.
The term and its family
Writers usually explain the word by its better-known relative. One commentator, answering scientists who sneered at Genesis, gave the definition plainly:
The Bible TreasuryAnthropomorphism literally means the imputation of the form of man to God; though it is sometimes applied to scriptural expressions such as "And God said," and so on.
An anthropopathism is the same move applied to feeling rather than to shape — heart, grief, regret instead of hand, eye, arm. Asked what it means when Genesis says God repented that He had made man, one writer answered in a single sentence:
J. N. DarbyIn speaking about God this way, it is simply human language that is being used.
Why God speaks this way
The reason is not that God is small enough to be described, but that we are too small to take anything else. Commenting on the words "It repents me that I have set up Saul to be king," one writer puts the exchange God is willing to make:
Numerical Bible NotesGod speaks as man so that we may understand Him. He would rather have His wisdom called into question than His holiness. His repentance is one of act, founded on His rejection of sin.
What it does not mean
Such language is never a licence to think God fickle. One writer marks off the exact boundary — and names the reason the Bible talks this way at all:
The Bible TreasuryGod is not a man, that He should repent as to His eternal and unchangeable counsels and unconditional promises, which "are without repentance." But in His grace He may repent of, that is, not carry out, a threatened judgment, as in the case of Nineveh. We must remember that the Spirit of God condescends to express Himself after the human way of speaking, on account of our weakness.
Nor does it mean God was taken by surprise. The same expressions are read as His response to events as they happen, not as a gap in His knowledge:
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe idea conveyed in this term is of great importance from the fact of its application not only to man but to God, showing how God, in His government of the earth, is pleased to express His own sense of events taking place upon it. This does not clash with His omniscience.
Not a hollow figure
It would be a mistake to file these expressions away as poetry that means nothing. Writing on the days before the flood, one commentator insists the grief was real, and takes aim at those who prefer a God who cannot feel:
The Bible TreasuryYet the language used movingly suggests the grief it cost Him — the One whom the unbelieving mind of man likes to treat as incapable of feeling… No doubt, as is so characteristic of these early revelations, the expression is by grace adapted in childlike fashion to the heart and conscience of man. Jehovah felt deeply what man ought to have felt but did not.
(The writer follows an older translation of Genesis 6:6; the ESV reads that the Lord "regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.")
The error it must not become
There is a counterfeit — inventing gods who share our appetites. Commenting on man being made in God's image, one writer draws the line sharply:
William KellyNothing is more opposed to the Bible than the anthropomorphism of Greek and Roman mythology, which degraded their deities to fallen males and females with the same passions and lusts, and gave the sanction of religion to the basest immorality… It is the simple yet wonderful truth: not God brought down to the human level, but man alone created after a divine pattern.
Summary
- Meaning. An anthropopathism gives God a human feeling — grief, regret, jealousy; its twin, anthropomorphism, gives Him a human form. Both are "simply human language."
- Reason. God stoops to our way of speaking because of our weakness, preferring His wisdom to be questioned rather than His holiness.
- Limit. He does not change His eternal counsels; He may turn back a threatened judgment, as with Nineveh.
- Reality. The stooping is not pretence — He genuinely felt what man should have felt and did not, and He is not the unfeeling God unbelief imagines.
- Guard. The direction is downward in grace, never upward in myth: man was made after a divine pattern, not God after a human one.