Anthropomorphites

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Adherents of an early Christian heretical movement who held that God the Father possessed a literal human body and physical form
2. Followers of a Christian heresy that maintained the deity literally embodied human physical characteristics and anthropomorphic features
3. Believers in a heterodox Christian doctrine asserting that the divine nature manifested in an actual human bodily shape and appearance

Etymology: Around 399 CE, a community of Egyptian monks in the Nitrian desert clashed with Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, over their literal reading of Genesis 1:27, "God created man in his own image." They concluded that God must have a human shape, and their opponents labelled them "anthrōpomorphitai," from Greek "anthrōpos" ("human") and "morphē" ("form"), with the suffix "-itēs" meaning "follower of," as in "Arian." The name was a charge of heresy: the monks, it was said, had made God in their own likeness. The term is a transparent Greek compound attached to a specific sect. English adopted it for that group and for the belief itself, and it now appears mainly in theological and historical writing.