Let’s start with the list “No, God is a bodiless Spirit.”
Yes, indeed God is a Spirit and a Spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones (Luke 24:39). God is incorporeal, but that is no loss for Him as we will see. God is life and the source of all life. He is a living Spirit, therefore He is called the eternal Spirit and the living God (Hebrews 9:14). He created man in his image, that is with his Life: i.e. with possibilities to communicate, senses of hearing, sight, taste, smell, touch etc. When Jesus said: “Whoever has seen Me, has seen the Father.” Truly, this was his greatest statement (John 14:9).
Our physical and non-physical part
Yes, God also has all these possibilities to communicate in a much more perfect way than we have. We need a body for them, a physical framework. Via our body all the impressions arrive in our living heart. For human beings, life has a physical part (body) and also a non-physical part, our heart. Proverbs 4:23 says: “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” Our deepest self, our heart, is our spiritual non-physical part. Life that flows from it has a spiritual as well as a non-spiritual part, it can move our heart as well our body and vice versa.
Spiritual part of life
Because of the spiritual aspect of life it seems impossible for scientists to create life. If they were to try to use their labs to make life (which they probably don’t like to think of), would they succeed? If they had all the many right chemicals (molecules) in the right order to make the first living cell—and they would have to hurry as this bio substance would taint within a short time—it is likely that the cell will refuse to move because of the lack of the spiritual part of it: God has not spoken over it. The problem we all know is: life has a spiritual side. (Genesis 2:7)
The Holy Spirit at work
God being Spirit doesn’t need a physical body. Maybe He has a spiritual body. Anyway in Genesis 1:2 we read that God gave his Spirit to be over the face of the earth. As the Holy Spirit is one with God, all that is felt, said, thought and done on earth, comes to God’s heart through the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has never departed and so God is always at work for his creation through all the senses.
Metaphors
Yes, God experiences all things, but without a physical body.
To smell, touch, taste, move, stretch, speak etc, as expressions of human life, all have indistinguishable spiritual aspects. Therefore all these expressions applied to God by metaphors of human actions are appropriate to express God’s activities. And that is what the Bible has evidenced in many cases. There is nothing contradictory or wrong with that. They not only represent God’s power and possibilities, but also his spiritual proximity to man.
He who planted the ear, does He not hear?
He who formed the eye, does He not see?
Psalm 94:9
Let’s finish with the list “Yes, God has a body.”
God has a voice that can be heard.
Genesis 3:8
They heard the sound [not voice, KJV] of the Lord God walking in the garden …
Adam and Eve heard the Lord approaching maybe with his singing angels, maybe with a sort of wind. They certainly didn’t hear steps of the Lord stamping on the soil.
No Bible Contradiction
He spoke to Moses face to face.
Exodus 33:11
Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face …
This is figurative. The used expression is: speak face to face, or: know face to face (Deuteronomy 34:10) and not: see face to face. This figurative way of speaking is not unusual: “Do not hide Your face from me, …O God of my salvation!” (Psalm 27:9) It gives expression to an intimate connection with God.
No Bible Contradiction
God has a face which no one is permitted to see.
Exodus 33:20
But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
Face is here certainly an expression that stands for a most frontal personal revelation of God’s heart. No one knows how to imagine this, as no one has seen it. But it is very real in a spiritual way.
No Bible Contradiction
God let Moses get a peek at his back parts.
Exodus 33:22-23
“and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”
God’s back is certainly the expression for the moment left shortly after the intense revelation of God’s frontal identity. God’s hand must have been something that covered Moses’ face but which cannot be analyzed further.
No Bible Contradiction
He stood next to Moses on mount Sinai.
Exodus 34:5
The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord.
This was possible as He was covered by a cloud and Moses was before the cloud at a safe distance. Stood there is took his position.
No Bible Contradiction
He told the Israelites to cover up their excrement so that He would not step in it.
Deuteronomy 23:13-14
and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement. 14 Since the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you.
Wrong. The critic is only joking. The most interesting aspect of this passage is that the Israelites in the desert were set high levels of behavior. Their success in entering the promised land depended on their common devotion to God and to each other.
No Bible Contradiction
What about God’s loins?
Ezekiel 1:27
Then I noticed from the appearance of His loins and upward something like glowing metal that looked like fire all around within it, and from the appearance of His loins and downward I saw something like fire; and there was a radiance around Him.
A description of Ezekiel’s vision of God being on his throne. The description goes from the middle as Ezekiel’s devotion forced him to look at the middle (loins) of that being and from there up and down.
Ezekiel 8:2
Then I looked, and behold, a likeness as the appearance of a man; from His loins and downward there was the appearance of fire, and from His loins and upward the appearance of brightness, like the appearance of glowing metal.
Idem as 1:27
No Bible Contradiction
God’s horns coming out of his hands.
Habakuk3:4
His radiance is like the sunlight;
He has rays flashing from His hand,
And there is the hiding of His power.
KJV translates horns instead of rays which is more appropriate (NASB). This vision shows the power coming from God and his works coming forth from his hands. By a powerful hand the Lord had brought out his people out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:3)
No Bible Contradictions