Anti-corporealism as binding dogma: is belief that God has a body grounds for exclusion from Israel and the world to come?

Maimonides, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The third principle of faith is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is neither body nor a force within a body, and the biblical verses that describe Him with eyes, hands, feet, anger, and the rest must be read allegorically.1 This is not a metaphysical preference. It is binding dogma. Anyone who imagines God as corporeal — even one punctilious in observance, even one Talmudically learned — has departed from Israel, is a heretic, and has no share in the world to come (Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:7).2

The Torah's iconoclasm is not satisfied by smashing external statues; it requires shattering the internal mental image as well, for the worshipper who envisions God on a throne is worse than one who bows to wood and stone, since the wood-worshipper may treat the wood as symbol while the imaginer absorbs the image into his own consciousness.34

Sources

  1. Behold, it is explicitly stated in the Torah and [the works of] the prophets that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not [confined to] a body or physical form, as [Deuteronomy 4:39, Joshua 2:11] states: "Because God, your Lord, is the Lord in the heavens above and the earth below," and a body cannot exist in two places [simultaneously].
    Mishneh Torah, Foundations of the Torah
  2. I hope their view of the Creator is free from any acceptance of corporeality. There is no harm in their assuming it for the separated Ὁ '7 If a boor is not content with having his doubts about this, so that neither view prevails, but chooses to adhere to the popular opinion, and finds fault with my view and damns me for thinking that the angels and the members of the world-to-come are separated from matter and free…
    Epistles, pp. 63–64
  3. In dealing with such a man, one should stop at this measure of knowledge. But it is not meet that belief in the corporeality of God or in His being provided with any concomitant of the bodies should be permitted to establish itself in anyone's mind any more than it is meet that belief should be established in the nonexistence of the deity, in the association' of other gods with Him, or in the worship of other than…
    Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. 82–83
  4. Conversely, the Torah is less explicit than the later documents regarding the duty of prayer (III 29, 30, 32, 35-37). No less important an adaptation to Sabian habits is the corporealism of the Bible. For Sabianism is a form of corporealism; according to the Sabians, the gods are the heavenly bodies or the heavenly bodies are the body of which God is the spirit (III 2g).
    Guide of the Perplexed Vol 1, pp. xxxv–xxxvi

Where the argument is made

  • Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 1:7-8
  • Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:7 (the heretic-class ruling)
  • Introduction to Pereq Heleq, Principle 3 (incorporeality)
  • Guide of the Perplexed I:1-49 (the systematic re-reading of biblical anthropomorphism)

How the argument was received

Genuinely held, dogmatically formulated, and defended in the most binding language available in halakhah. The Thirteen Principles in Pereq Heleq introduce cognitive principles defining membership in Israel — a move the Talmudic sages did not make. Ra'abad's protest stands as the classical objection within the tradition: how can pious Jews who believed in a corporeal God on the basis of plain readings of Scripture be apostates? My answer is that the allegorical instruction is itself the cure; once it is given, refusal is willful. The position is harder than Ra'abad's mercy on the simple believer, and I hold it.