If you walk into a physics lab and ask what the table is made of, you’ll get a straight answer about atoms, electrons, and a whole lot of empty space. But ask what is God made of and the room goes quiet. Or, more likely, everyone starts talking at once, and nobody agrees. It’s the ultimate "black box" question. We spend trillions of dollars smashing particles together at CERN to find the "God Particle" (the Higgs boson), but that’s just a cheeky nickname for a mass-giving field. It doesn’t actually tell us what a divine being—if one exists—is physically, or metaphysically, composed of.
Honestly, the answers range from "pure light" to "nothing at all," and weirdly, both might be right depending on your philosophical zip code.
The "Substance" of the Divine in Classical Theology
For centuries, guys like Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine wrestled with this. They didn't think God was made of stuff. To them, the idea that God could be made of "parts" was a logical failure. They called this Divine Simplicity. Basically, if God is made of parts (like atoms or energy), then those parts had to exist before God to be put together. That didn't fly with their definition of a Creator.
So, their answer to what is God made of was "Spirit." But what is spirit? In the Greek, it’s pneuma; in Hebrew, ruach. It translates to breath or wind. It’s a substance that isn't material. It doesn't have weight. It doesn't take up space. Think of it like a thought. A thought is real—it can change the world—but you can't put a thought under a microscope and find out what it's "made" of. It’s information without mass.
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Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century philosopher who got kicked out of his community for his "heretical" ideas, had a different take. He argued that God and Nature are the same thing. Deus sive Natura. In this view, God is made of... everything. The trees, the dark matter, the coffee you're drinking, and the neurons firing in your brain. You’re not just a creation; you’re a tiny piece of the divine "substance" looking back at itself. It’s a beautiful thought, but it makes God subject to the laws of physics, which most traditional religions hate.
Light, Energy, and the Quantum Connection
If you talk to someone into New Age spirituality or even certain Eastern traditions, they’ll tell you God is "Pure Energy" or "Higher Frequency Vibration." It sounds scientific-ish. But when we look at the actual physics, energy is just a property of matter, or a way to describe the capacity to do work.
However, there is a recurring theme in the Bible, the Quran, and the Vedas: Light.
- The New Testament says "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all."
- The Quran’s Ayat an-Nur (the Verse of Light) describes God as the light of the heavens and the earth.
- Hinduism speaks of Brahman as a self-luminous reality.
Is this literal? Photons (light particles) are weird. They have no mass. They don't experience time. From a photon’s perspective, the moment it's emitted and the moment it's absorbed—even if it's billions of light-years away—are the same moment. If you’re looking for a "material" for God, a massless, timeless, infinite speed particle is a pretty good candidate.
But modern physicists like Roger Penrose or even the late Stephen Hawking might push back. They’d argue that the universe doesn’t need a "substance" to start it. It needs a law. Specifically, gravity or quantum fluctuations. If God is "made" of anything in a scientific sense, some argue it's the fundamental laws of mathematics themselves. Math isn't physical, yet it dictates every single thing the physical world does.
The Problem of Consciousness
Maybe the question isn't about "stuff."
What if God is made of Consciousness?
There’s a theory in philosophy called Panpsychism. It suggests that consciousness isn't something that only happens in big, fancy brains like ours. Instead, it’s a fundamental feature of the universe, like mass or charge. If that’s true, then the "stuff" of God is simply the foundational awareness that allows anything else to exist.
Biocentrism, a concept championed by Dr. Robert Lanza, suggests that life and consciousness are actually the keys to understanding the universe, rather than the other way around. In this framework, "what is God made of" becomes a question about the observer. If the universe requires an observer to collapse wave functions (a nod to the observer effect in quantum mechanics), then God could be the "Ultimate Observer."
Why the "Composition" Question Breaks Down
We have a hard time imagining something that isn't "made" of something else. It’s how our brains work. We see a house; it’s made of bricks. We see a brick; it’s made of clay. We see clay; it’s made of molecules.
But if God is the "Ground of Being," as theologian Paul Tillich put it, then God is the stage, not the actor. You don't ask what the stage is made of to understand the play. Or, more accurately, God is the existence itself.
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Think about a dream. You’re in a dream, you’re running from a giant squirrel. What is the squirrel made of? Dream-stuff? Sure, but really, it’s made of you. Your mind is the "substance" of every character, every tree, and every mountain in that dream. If we are living in a divine "dream," then what we are "made of" (protons, neutrons, quarks) is actually just the texture of God’s thought.
Different Perspectives on Divine Composition
- Mormonism (LDS): Uniquely, the LDS church teaches that God has a body of "flesh and bones as tangible as man’s." They believe spirit is actually just a very refined form of matter that we can't see with our current eyes.
- Classical Theism: God is "Actus Purus"—pure act. No potential, no matter, no parts. Just a singular, infinite "To Be."
- Simulation Theory: In a high-tech twist, some (like Nick Bostrom) argue we might be in a simulation. In this case, "God" is the programmer, and he/she/it is made of the same biological or technological stuff as any other intelligent creator in a "base" reality.
- Pantheism: God is the sum total of the laws of physics and the matter of the cosmos. No "spirit" required.
The Practical Side of the Mystery
Does it matter?
If you think God is made of "Love" (as many 1 John 4:8 adherents do), that changes how you treat your neighbor. If you think God is made of "Vengeance and Law," you probably act differently.
But if we’re talking purely about the "physics" of the divine, we hit a wall. That wall is called the Planck Wall. It’s the limit of what we can know about the universe’s earliest moments. Beyond that, the math breaks. The laws of physics stop working. Whatever is on the other side of that wall—the "stuff" that kicked off the Big Bang—is the closest we might ever get to a scientific answer for what is God made of.
Most people find this frustrating. We want a periodic table for the heavens. But there is a certain "unbearable lightness" to the idea that the source of everything might be nothing physical at all. It forces us to look at the world not as a collection of objects, but as a collection of relationships and information.
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How to Explore This Further
If you're trying to wrap your head around the "substance" of the divine, don't just read theology books. The real insights are often hidden in the fringes of other disciplines.
- Look into "Quantum Non-locality": It explains how two particles can be connected across the universe instantly. It’s the closest thing science has to "omnipresence."
- Study "Information Theory": Some physicists, like John Wheeler, argued the universe is made of information ("It from Bit"). This aligns weirdly well with the idea of a "Word" (Logos) creating the world.
- Practice "Via Negativa": This is a theological method where you describe God by what He is not. (e.g., God is not material, God is not finite). Sometimes, knowing what something isn't is the only way to see what it is.
- Check out the "Hard Problem of Consciousness": Read David Chalmers. If you can understand why science can't explain why you feel "like something" inside, you'll understand why it can't explain what God is made of either.
Ultimately, the search for the divine "material" usually leads back to the self. If there is a creator, and that creator is infinite, then the "stuff" of that creator must be present in the very fabric of your own existence. You aren't just looking at the mystery; you are part of the mystery's composition.