A Systematic Exposition of the Corporeal Theology of Finis Jennings Dake

The theological framework constructed by Finis Jennings Dake, primarily articulated in the *Dake Annotated Reference Bible* and his book *God’s Plan for Man*, presents a distinct and highly controversial departure from historic Christian orthodoxy. At the heart of his system is a unique set of teachings concerning the nature of God, particularly the assertion that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each possess a physical form. This report provides a detailed transcription and systematic analysis of these specific doctrines, focusing on Dake’s teachings regarding God’s body, personhood, attributes, and the consequential effects on his wider theology.

The Hermeneutical Foundation of Dake’s Theology

To comprehend Dake’s conclusions about the nature of God, one must first understand the interpretive lens through which he reads all of Scripture. This foundation is built upon a principle of rigid, systematic hyper-literalism. Dake established an overriding rule of interpretation that dictates the outcome of his theological inquiries.

Dake’s Core Hermeneutical Principle: “We shall let what God says mean what He says and reject any theory of men to the contrary.” A further articulation of this is to “Take every statement of the Bible as literal when it is at all possible”.

Dake posits that this method is not merely an option but a moral imperative for the faithful reader. He asserts, “There is no excuse for anyone to misunderstand God’s Word if he will, like a child, accept the Bible for what it says…”. For Dake, any deviation from this literalism, including the traditional recognition of metaphor, anthropomorphism, or figurative language, is a result of spiritual and intellectual failings such as “Pride, willfulness, and rebellion against what ‘is written’”. His theological system, therefore, contains “no gray areas. Scripture either says it or it doesn’t”.

This hermeneutical starting point effectively inverts the traditional relationship between biblical interpretation and systematic theology. Rather than allowing the comprehensive, synthesized doctrines of the church (e.g., God’s aseity and immateriality) to inform the reading of passages that use human-like terms for God, Dake’s rule forces the opposite. A single, isolated verse interpreted with absolute literalism is given the power to dismantle and reconstruct the entire doctrine of God. His hermeneutic is not a tool to understand established doctrine but a machine that generates new doctrine by disassembling biblical data and reassembling it according to one unyielding rule.

Section 1: The Corporeal Nature and Personhood of God

The most direct and controversial outcome of Dake’s hyper-literalism is his doctrine of a corporeal God. He systematically rejects the orthodox understanding of God as an infinite, immaterial spirit and instead posits a deity who possesses a tangible form and body parts.

1.1 The Doctrine of the “Spirit Body”

Dake’s central claim is that “God has a spirit body with bodily parts like man”. This concept is applied to all three persons of the Godhead, with Dake teaching that each member of the Trinity “has a soul, spirit, and spirit body”. To resolve the apparent conflict with scriptures stating that “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24), Dake introduces a novel distinction. The difference between God’s body and a human body, he argues, is not one of essence (material vs. immaterial) but of substance: God’s body is composed of a “spiritual substance while man’s body is a material substance”.

He attempts to ground this concept biblically by referencing 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, which speaks of the resurrected human body as a “spiritual body.” Dake reasons that since these resurrected bodies will be tangible and material, then God and other spirit beings can also have real, tangible bodies and still be considered “spirit”. This argument fundamentally redefines the biblical term “spirit.” In orthodox theology, “spirit” denotes an incorporeal, immaterial essence—the negation of matter. In Dake’s system, “spirit” becomes merely a different type of subtle, non-fleshly matter. This philosophical shift from an ontological distinction to a substantive one is the linchpin that allows him to construct a theology of a tangible, physical deity.

1.2 A Compendium of God’s Bodily Parts and Form

Applying his literalistic hermeneutic, Dake asserts that all biblical references to God’s body parts are to be understood as descriptions of His actual “spirit body.” He contends that such language is “not figurative but refer[s] to his spirit-body” and describes the “real bodily parts of God”. His primary justification for this is a literal interpretation of the *Imago Dei*: “If man was made in the image and likeness of God bodily, then God must have a body, and an outward form and shape”. Dake claims this is not a matter of interpretation but of plain reading, “proven by hundreds of plain Scriptures that do not need interpretation. They are too clear and literal to misunderstand”.

The following table provides a summary of specific biblical anthropomorphisms and Dake’s literal interpretation of them, offering a clear, quotable compendium of his teachings.

1.3 The Physical Location and Activities of the Godhead

The logical consequence of a corporeal God is that He must exist in a specific location. Dake affirms this by teaching that God is “localized in His body”. This location is not an ethereal realm but a physical place. According to Dake, Heaven is a “created, material planet in the ‘northern’ part of outer space”. God “inhabits a mansion in a city on a material planet called Heaven” and engages in physical activities just as humans do: He “walks, rides in a chariot, sits on a throne, and can do anything that humans do”.

This teaching creates an immediate and irreconcilable conflict with the classical doctrine of divine omnipresence. If God’s body can only be in one place at one time, how can God be everywhere? Dake’s solution is to bifurcate the divine being, separating God’s person from His influence: “His presence can be felt everywhere but His body cannot”. This effectively means that when a believer experiences God’s presence, they are not encountering God Himself in His personal being, but rather a projected force or power that emanates from His distant, localized body. This diminishes the Christian doctrine of divine immanence, creating a deistic-like gap between God’s personal location and His active presence in the world.

Section 2: The Tritheistic Reconstitution of the Trinity

Dake’s doctrine of a corporeal God inevitably leads to a radical reformulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. If each person of the Godhead has a distinct body, they cannot logically be a single being.

2.1 A Godhead of Three Separate Beings

Dake explicitly rejects the historic, creedal formulation of the Trinity, calling the doctrine of one being in three persons “unscriptural and foolish, since one person cannot be three persons”. In its place, he proposes a model that is functionally tritheistic.

Dake’s View of the Godhead: The Godhead is a “union of three persons… three separate and distinct persons as to individuality” who are “as separate and distinct as any three persons we know of in this life”.

This is not a mystery of one essence but a committee of three separate beings. He further specifies that each of these three individuals—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—possesses a complete, tripartite nature: each “has a spirit-body, a spirit-soul, and a spirit-spirit”. They are described as living “as one in unity, but not as one being”.

By defining the persons of the Godhead as being as “separate and distinct as any three persons we know of,” Dake uses a human social analogy as the literal reality of the divine. This replaces the metaphysical unity of being (*ousia*) central to orthodox Trinitarianism with a sociological unity of purpose. The “oneness” of God in Dake’s system is not an ontological fact but a statement about the perfect agreement, shared goals, and harmonious relationship between three distinct divine beings. This is a clear articulation of Tritheism—the belief in three gods unified in purpose—rather than the Christian monotheistic doctrine of one God in three persons.

Section 3: Consequential Doctrines on Divine Attributes and Salvation

Dake’s foundational redefinitions of God’s nature and the Trinity create ripple effects throughout his entire theological system, altering classical doctrines of divine attributes and the nature of salvation.

3.1 The Limitation of Divine Omniscience

A being who has a body and is located in space is necessarily a being who exists within time, experiencing events sequentially. Such a being cannot possess the exhaustive, simultaneous knowledge of all past, present, and future that defines orthodox omniscience. Dake’s theology embraces this limitation.

Dake on Omniscience: “God is omniscient ‘in a limited sense’” and must “learn things by seeing, testing, and discovering.” Consequently, “God does not know all the possible events of the future and does not know what people will do”.

Dake teaches that God is “limiting himself in his dealings with man where Omniscience is concerned”. He uses scriptures like Jeremiah 19:5 (“…which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind”) not as examples of divine accommodation to human language, but as literal proof that certain evil acts had never occurred to God’s mind. This view of limited omniscience is the necessary epistemological consequence of his corporeal ontology. His doctrine of God’s body *causes* his doctrine of limited knowledge; one cannot exist without the other within his system.

3.2 The Doctrine of Conditional Salvation

Dake’s theology extends to the doctrine of salvation, where he argues against the concept of unconditional eternal security. His view frames salvation as an ongoing cooperative process that is contingent upon human performance.

Dake on Salvation: Salvation is “conditional upon man remaining faithful until the end.” He states, “Eternal life is not an eternal possession until the end of a life of holiness, for one can make a failure before then and be lost just as Adam did in the beginning”.

To receive and maintain eternal life, a person must not only believe but also “hear His voice, and follow Christ… not only at the beginning of a Christian experience, but daily and throughout life”. This teaching reflects a broader transactional model that underpins Dake’s entire system. Just as his God is a comprehensible being who relates on human-like terms, salvation and other blessings (such as health and wealth) are not sovereign gifts of grace but benefits secured by meeting specific “terms and conditions”. This creates a performance-based relationship with God, where human faithfulness is required not merely as evidence of salvation, but as the ongoing condition for keeping it.

3.3 Pre-Adamic Creation and the Gap Theory

A final, powerful illustration of Dake’s hermeneutic is his teaching on the “Gap Theory.” While not directly about God’s body, it demonstrates the methodology that produces his other unorthodox doctrines. Dake taught that there was a “pre-Adamic race of people before the creation of Adam, killed at the fall of Lucifer/Satan”. He argued for a vast “gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and verse 2”.

This entire cosmic history is derived from interpreting the phrase “the earth was without form, and void” (Gen. 1:2) as a state of judgment and ruin rather than an undeveloped state, and by interpreting the King James Version’s “replenish the earth” (Gen. 1:28) to mean “refill”. From these few textual points, Dake constructs an elaborate, unrevealed history. This method functionally resembles a form of Gnosticism, where special, hidden knowledge (*gnosis*) about cosmic origins and dramas is made available to those who possess the correct interpretive key. Dake’s system positions his work as that key, unlocking secret histories that are invisible to a traditional reading of the text.