The belief that a god is human-like

Question

What is the word that means someone who believes a deity has a recognizable human form and personality?

Usually, these personality traits are virtuous but they can also mimic man's weaknesses and acts of immorality. For example, the Greek god Zeus was perfidious and extremely promiscuous. He sired numerous gods and demi-gods as a result of his sexual encounters with goddesses, nymphs, mortal boys, girls, men and women.

The son of God, Jesus, weary and exhausted, succumbed to distress when confronted with His own mortality, shortly before dying on the cross

About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, e lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”

There are many other examples of deities who resemble human beings, speak like humans, and perform an array of perfectly normal human activities such as eating, sleeping, working, playing, having sex with mortals, begetting children, and finally, even dying. These deities are not always immortal but the fact that a few did die makes them more relatable.

What is the name of the belief, the conviction, that one or more deities have human physical and psychological traits?

_______ is the belief that gods are “human-like”.

I keep thinking of anthropomorphism and personification but it's neither, and none of their synonyms fit, there's another word I'm looking for but I can't seem to grasp it.

Answer 1

Perhaps you are looking for anthropotheism?

Anthropotheism is ascribing human form and nature to gods, or the belief that gods are deified human beings.

Answer 2

The OED¹ suggests that this was the original meaning of anthropomorphism, though I think the more general meaning (The OED's definition 1.b.) now clearly predominates.

anthropomorphism, n.
1.
a. The attribution of human form, character, or attributes to God or a god.
b. The attribution of human personality or characteristics to something non-human, as an animal, object, etc.

Luckily, the OED offers several more obscure options that probably retain their specifically theistic meaning:

anthropomorphite, n. and adj.
B. adj. Of, relating to, or characterized by anthropomorphitism; spec. that ascribes human form, character, or attributes to God. Cf. _{^{ANTHROPOMORPHITIC}} adj.

anthropomorphitism, n.
Now rare.
The doctrine or beliefs of anthropomorphites; (more generally) anthropomorphism; the ascription of human form, character, or attributes to God. Cf. anthropomorphism n. 1a, anthropomorphite n.

anthropomorphosis, n.
The action or an act of conceiving of or regarding God or a god as having human form or characteristics; the fact or process of becoming anthropomorphized; (more generally, with reference to objects, animals, etc.) anthropomorphism.

anthropopathetic, adj.
1. Characterized by or involving the attribution of human feelings and emotions to God or a god; = _{^{ANTHROPOPATHIC}} adj.

anthropopathic, adj.
Characterized by or involving the attribution of human feelings and emotions to something other than a human being, esp. to God; displaying anthropopathy.

theanthropism, n.
1. Theol. The doctrine of the union of the divine and human natures, or of the manifestation of God as man, in Christ.
2. Mythol. The attribution of human nature or character to the gods.
D_^ERIVATIVES
theˈanthropist n. a believer in theanthropism (also attrib. or as adj. ).

Also anthropomorphitic, anthropomorphitical, anthropophuistic, and anthropopsychic, though all of those are very rare and the last may include the more general meaning of anthropomorphic.

I don't see much to distinguish these one from another, so I think you could pick the one you like the sound of. "Theanthropism" and "theanthropist" may have the most transparent meaning.

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¹ _{All definitions are from OED Online, Oxford University Press. Unfortunately, this is a subscription, paywalled service; if you do not have access, check with your local or school library, as many of these have subscriptions which patrons can access. Note that all of the "anthropo-" entries have been updated to the OED 3rd Edition, March 2016, but "theanthropism" has not yet been revised.}

Answer 3

References and citations which confirm Mark Beadles' answer

The Open Court Vol 8, page 4229 (1894)

It is natural that people who still cling to anthropotheism (which is the belief that God is an individual being and an ego-entity as man appears to himself) should look upon this purified God-conception as atheism. And it is atheism if atheism means the denial of an individual God-being. But let me add that anthropotheism is after all a childish view of God, which degrades God and presses God down to the rank of a creature, albeit very great and all-powerful. If there were a man-like God-being, a great ego-deity, and individual cosmic consciousness, would not the God of atheism, who is the unalterable order in all existent realities and the eternal law in nature's transient phenomena, be superior to the God of anthropotheists?

The Essence of Christianity (1843)

In the second part Feuerbach considers religion “in its contradiction with the human essence” (WC 316), arguing that, when theological claims are understood in the sense in which they are ordinarily taken (i.e., as referring to a non-human divine person), they are self-contradictory. In early 1842 Feuerbach still preferred that his views be presented to the public under the label “anthropotheism” rather than “atheism” (GW v. 18, 164), emphasizing that his overriding purpose in negating “the false or theological essence of religion” had been to affirm its “true or anthropological essence”, i.e., the divinity of man.

What the God-seekers Found in Nietzsche Nel Grillaert (2008)

Ludwig Feuerbach's doctrine of anthropotheism, which posits that God is but a mental projection of humanity and foregrounds the human's material status, is for Speshnev the logical response to idealist anthropology:

I now understand that all this means only that for humanity there exists no authority, no creator and no god; and as regards to the philosophical god, humankind is the highest and most genuine incarnation of this god; therefore, there can exist for the human no other god than himself ...

An Atheism that Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought (2010)

…while attempting for a long time to explain humanity's historical ascent toward anthropothesim, toward its own divinization, instead collapsed into a sort of animality upon achieving precisely this divinization