[3]" Incorporeality is a quality of souls, spirits, and God in many religions, including the currently major denominations and schools of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
In ancient philosophy, any attenuated "thin" matter such as air, aether, fire or light was considered incorporeal.
Aristotle used the Greek terms soma (body) and hyle (matter, literally "wood").
Following Newton, it became customary to accept action at a distance as brute fact, and to overlook the philosophical problems involved in so doing.
Mainstream Christianity has always interpreted anthropomorphic references to God in Scripture as non-literal, poetic, and symbolic.