Assalamu alaikm dear brothers,
I would like to add something to brother Osama’s point.
Christians are not going to listen to the word of the Quran. So we need something from the bible, something solid!
Who are called ‘spirits’?
“Who makes the angels ‘spirits’, and His minister a flame of fire…”
Angels are called ‘Spirits’, and the main angel Gabriel is called ‘Holy Spirit’.
Also, in the gospels, demons are referred as ‘Evil spirits’…. So yet, spirits.
So what difference does that make? Yep. It does!
“Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me,” (Isaiah 46:9)
This is one of my favorite verses from the OT. As it sounds much like Sura Ikhlas, and also says ‘There is none like God’! So how can God be ‘Spirit’ if there is none like Him? He created the angels, the demons and us, our ‘spirits’. So how can He be like us?
So according the bible itself, ‘God can’t be a spirit’.
Now for your question- Is it a pagan idea?
Yeah, it is.
The Hindus believe in a ‘Param-atma’. ‘Param’ means ‘Most, Super, Grand’ etc and ‘Atma’ means spirit. This Param-atma or Super Spirit is believed to be god, who is everywhere, and everything in him. That’s why they believe in everything is god, so worship anything. They also believe that our spirits are part of God’s spirit and you can become one with the param-atma through deep meditation, and this is called ‘Nirban’.
Actually. From ancient times pagans believe that God is a spirit. For example, in the movie ‘The Message’, a pagan Arab says in front Najjashi in Abyssinia’ “We don’t worship the form, but the spirit that dwells within the form’. (I don’t know if he really said that, but it’s just one example how pagans believed that God is a spirit)
Later, the Sufis adopted this idea. As Gazzali says in his book ‘Qimia-e-Sa’adat’- “As a spirit is all over the body, Allah is all over the world”. Almost all Sufis believe that Allah is a ‘Super-spirit’ and the goal in their life is to be lost in the essence of God, or to be one with Allah, which is known as ‘Fanafillah’.
Like Christians believe, Sufis also believe that when someone becomes one with Allah, Allah speaks through him, like being filled with the ‘Holy spirit’. A sufi named Al-Hallaz thought he became one with the ‘The spirit of God’ and started to say ‘Anal Haqq’ or ‘I am the Truth’.
Only Islam teaches pure monotheism while other religions teach anthropomorphism or teachings like ‘God is spirit’. Nothing is like Allah (Sura Shura:11) and so He is not a spirit.
Indeed Allah has power over all things.
Tahmeed