The Holy Trinity in the Old Testament
(Part One)


by Constance Woods, Ph.D.

    The full revelation of the Trinity is not given until the sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The eternal relationships within the Godhead could not be known by natural reason, but were revealed progressively with the Incarnation and Pentecost, which are extensions into time of the eternal processions. Yet there are traces of the triune God throughout the Old Testament. Standing alone, these traces could never be understood as references to Persons in the Trinity. Only with the New Testament revelation is new light cast on the meaning of many Old Testament passages.

    The presence of the Holy Trinity in the Old Testament should be a good apologetic tool for Christians to use in their dialogue with Jews and Moslems. That is exactly Justin Martyr’s tactic in Dialogue with Trypho. He argues very convincingly that Old Testament theophanies are actually manifestations of a Divine Person who is numerically distinct from God the Father. What seems to jump off the page in Justin and other early polemicists, however, is not quite so obvious to Augustine, who questions some of the assumptions the early Fathers were working under, though ultimately their different perspectives are not irreconcilable. The Old Testament theophanies prove to be enigmatic in the same way the revelation of the Divine Name is enigmatic: they reveal and at the same time they conceal.

    Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms and Wisdom literature are especially rich in adumbrations of the Trinity. For the sake of convenience, these references can be divided into three categories: first, passages that hint at the plurality of persons in the Deity; second, passages that refer by name to the holy spirit or to the word or the wisdom of God; third, passages in which God appears in physical form to the patriarchs or prophets.

    In the creation story itself there are indications that God is “not solitary.” In Genesis 1:26-27 God says, “Let us make man in our image.” The Anchor Bible translates this as a singular: “I will make man in my image, after my likeness.” The editor explains that the plural is merely a grammatical peculiarity, since no other gods are mentioned, and suggests that perhaps the fact that God is referring to Himself may account for the more formal construction in the plural.1 This seems to be begging the question, however: since no other gods are mentioned, it must be a grammatical quirk. But why could not the reasoning just as easily be turned around? Since it is a grammatical plural, we have to allow for the possibility that other persons are being addressed. The Jewish teachers represented in Justin’s Dialogue also claim that this plural is either just a manner of speaking, or else that God was speaking to the elements. But Justin points out that the creation narrative goes on to say, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Clearly, knowing good from evil is not an attribute of the elements. Therefore God is conversing with a rational being or beings who are numerically distinct from him. Justin connects the use of the plural in the creation story with the testimony of Proverbs 8, in which Wisdom is personified as a co-eternal presence with the God of creation (Dialogue with Trypho 62).2 Similarly, Theophilus of Antioch concludes that the statement ‘Let us make man in our image’ is addressed to the Second and Third Persons of the Trinity: “But to no one else than his own Word and wisdom did He say, ‘Let us make’“ (To Autolycus 2.18).

    The ancient Semitic name for God may also contain some hint of plurality in the Godhead. Elohim is the plural of el “God.” Again, is this merely a grammatical peculiarity or a cryptic reference to the Trinity to be fully revealed in the New Testament? Isaiah 6:3, with the seraphim calling “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts,” has also been taken as an indication of the triuneness of God. And it is interesting that the seraphim have three sets of wings with which to veil themselves.

    The second category of trinitarian traces in the Old Testament consists of descriptions of God’s word or wisdom on the one hand, or of spirit, breath or wind on the other hand, references to the Second Person and Third Person respectively. Without New Testament revelation, such references in the Old Testament could never be understood as indicating separate persons, but are taken as referring to God’s attributes. In Genesis 1:2 the Spirit of God hovers over the face of the waters. The fact that Hebrew ruah, meaning wind, breath, or spirit, is a participant in the act of creation ties in with subsequent Trinitarian doctrine that creation is the common work of all three Divine Persons. The breath of life that God breathed into the first man can also be seen as the participation of the Holy Spirit in the creation of man. It is echoed on Easter Sunday, when Jesus breathed on the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). The role of the Spirit in creation is also captured in the Psalms: “When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground” (Psalm 104:29-30). In addition to His part in the work of creation, the Holy Spirit is seen throughout the Old Testament as the inspirer of the prophets. In Numbers 11, for example, the Lord tells Moses that He will take a portion of the spirit that was on Moses and put it on 70 elders so that they might share the burden of judging and ruling with Moses.

    The Son’s activity in creation is prominent in the wisdom literature. Wisdom here is still spoken of as an attribute of God, but is anthropomorphized to such an extent that it can almost be seen as a distinct person. Near the end of the Old Covenant, Jewish thought was obviously being prepared to receive the truth of the Incarnation. The Alexandrian Jew Philo (25 B.C.-50 A. D.) sees the Logos as a preexistent agent of creation, and apparently uses the names Wisdom (sofia) and Word (logos) interchangeably.3 Beginning with John’s Gospel, Christians identified this wisdom with the Logos as “a means of correlating the redemption accomplished in Jesus Christ with the doctrine of creation.”4 The feminine noun sofia “wisdom” in the Greek Old Testament was logically identified with the masculine logos “word” or “reason,” in order to serve as a title for the Son of God:

This power and disposition of the Divine Intelligence is set forth also in the Scripture under the name of sofia, Wisdom; for what can be better entitled to the name of Wisdom than the Reason or the Word of God? Listen therefore to Wisdom herself, constituted in the character of the Second Person (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 6).

Tertullian goes on to quote Proverbs 8, the most frequently cited text in which wisdom is personified as a separate person from the Creator:

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; before he had made earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always (Proverbs 8:22-30).

    Although the Arians seized upon the word “created” in verse 22 as evidence that the Logos was a creature, and hence had a beginning, orthodox exegesis of the passage took “created” to mean begotten from eternity). The Son came from the Father but was preexistent, as the remaining verses show by stressing the existence of wisdom before anything that was created. Justin interpreted this passage to mean that the one begotten was “another in number” than the one who begets, and Tertullian asserted this distinction between the Logos and the Father based on the same passage. Origen used this scripture to argue against Sabellianism, in which the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not distinct persons but merely different modes of God.5 Behind all the christological polemics centering on this little verse was the shared assumption that the figure of wisdom in the wisdom books was, in fact, the Logos.

    Wisdom is also shown as the agent of creation in the book of Wisdom: “With thee is wisdom, who knows thy works and was present when thou didst make the world” (Wisdom 9:9). In one place “word” and “wisdom” are actually synonyms of each other by virtue of their parallelism: “O God of my fathers and Lord of mercy, who hast made all things by thy word, and by thy wisdom hast formed man. . . .” (Wisdom 9:1-2). While highly personified as a separate being, wisdom is at the same time depicted as a perfect icon of the Father, thus anticipating the doctrine that the Trinity is distinct persons but one substance. Wisdom is called “a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. . . . a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness” (Wisdom 7: 25-26). Hebrews speaks of the Son in nearly identical terms, as an agent of creation who “reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature” (Hebrews 1:2-3).

    Baruch chapters 3 and 4 describes wisdom as a gift to the Jewish people which sets them apart from other nations. The Israelites are reproached for not having followed wisdom. Sirach develops both themes associated with wisdom: the co-eternity of wisdom with the Creator and the theme of wisdom making her home in Israel. Thus wisdom has another link with Jesus, who identifies Himself with Israel and is sent among the Jewish people. The mission of the Son is foreshadowed in Sirach’s description of the Creator sending wisdom to dwell in Jacob.

    Alone I have made the circuit of the vault of heaven and have walked in the depths of the abyss, in the waves of the sea, in the whole earth, and in every people and nation I have gotten a possession. Among all these I sought a resting place; I sought in whose territory I might lodge. Then the Creator of all things gave me a commandment, and the one who created me assigned a place for my tent. And he said, ‘Make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance.’ From eternity, in the beginning, he created me, and for eternity I shall not cease to exist. In the holy tabernacle I ministered before him, and so I was established in Zion. In the beloved city likewise he gave me a resting place, and in Jerusalem was my dominion. So I took root in an honored people, in the portion of the Lord, who is their inheritance” (Sirach 24: 5-12).

    Sometimes there is even a trace of all three Persons together. In Wisdom 9:17 God the Father is addressed with the question: “Who has learned thy counsel, unless thou hast given wisdom and sent thy holy Spirit from on high?” Similarly, Psalm 33:6 refers to both the word (the Son) and the breath (the Spirit): “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.” Psalm 147 also expresses the creative power of God by this tripartite image of Creator, word and wind: “He casts forth his ice like morsels; who can stand before his cold? He sends forth his word, and melts them; he makes his wind blow, and the waters flow” (Psalm 147:17-18).

    The personification of wisdom was one type of passage of distinction used to argue the preexistence and numerical distinctness of the Son. Another kind of passage of distinction argues this even more forcefully, since there can be no question of it being a literary device. These are the texts in which two separate persons are referred to as Lord or God. The author of Hebrews interprets Psalm 45 as speaking of the Son.

    But of the Son he says, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the righteous scepter is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou has loved righteousness and hated lawlessness” (Hebrews 1:8).

    The same Person who is addressed as God by the psalmist is then immediately said to be anointed by another Person, who is also God: “Therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness beyond thy comrades” (Hebrews 1:9).

    Here is a marvelous example of a tradition of scriptural interpretation in the Fathers that can be traced to the apostles or apostolic men themselves.6 Seeming to pick up the thread from Hebrews, Justin mentions Psalm 45 as proof that the Holy Spirit calls some other one God and Lord, besides the Father of all things (Dialogue 56 and 63). Tertullian uses the same psalm in distinguishing between the unity of substance and the plurality of persons in God: “Now, since He here speaks to God, and affirms that God is anointed by God, He must have affirmed that Two are God, by reason of the sceptre’s royal power” (Against Praxeas 13). In their proofs, the Fathers use the same basic group of texts in conjunction over and over again: “Let us make man in our own image” from the Creation story, “Thy throne, Oh God, is for ever and ever” from Psalm 45, “The Lord said to my Lord” from Psalm 110, and “The Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven” from Genesis 19:24. Different texts are brought in, too, as when Tertullian brings in Isaiah 45 and 53 to prove the distinction of persons. But the whole block of core material is strikingly uniform, a weighty indication of its origin in the teaching of the apostles.

    The interpretation of Psalm 110 as a reference to the Second Person can be traced back to Jesus Himself. The opening verse clearly refers to two persons: “The Lord says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.’“ Jesus asks the Pharisees how the Messiah could be David’s son if David calls him Lord, hinting that the Messiah must be Divine (Matthew 22:41-46). From Jesus’ question we understand that ‘my Lord’ refers to the Deity. Tertullian reasons from this psalm that the name Lord is applied to both Father and Son (Against Praxeas 13). Justin goes into more detail on the prophetic nature of the psalm, proving that the “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” could not be Hezekiah, as the Jews interpreted it, and also demonstrating other verses in the psalm to be prophecies of Christ (Dialogue 32, 33). Justin sees in verse 3 a reference to the preexistence of Christ and to his earthly origins (Dialogue 63): “In the splendors of Thy holiness have I begotten Thee from the womb, before the morning star.”7 We have here both a description of the eternal procession (before the morning star) of the Son from the Father and a prophecy of the Son’s mission in time (from the womb).

    The third category of Old Testament reference to the Trinity consists of actual manifestations or apparitions of Yahweh to the prophets and patriarchs. These are of such a different quality than the verbal traces of the Trinity that they must be treated separately. They could never be understood as mere ways of speaking or intimations of things to come (although Augustine does interpret one as a metaphor of something to be fulfilled in the New Testament), but are historical descriptions of physical encounters with the Deity. Although more concrete than the verbal traces, the apparitions are actually more problematic to interpret. If they are truly manifestations of the Second or Third persons of the Trinity, how do we reconcile these appearances with the idea of the missions? What is “new” in the New Covenant about the sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit if they have already been sent on previous occasions?

    There are several theophanies in the Old Testament traditionally regarded as manifestations of the Second Person. The early apologists uniformly ascribed to the Word any actual communication to the patriarchs, whether in the form of locutions or apparitions. Justin Martyr has the most extensive treatment on these manifestations, which include Yahweh’s visit to Abraham at Mamre, the angel that wrestled with Jacob in Genesis 32:10-30, and the burning bush from which God spoke to Moses in Exodus 3 (Dialogue 56, 58, 60). Justin explains that Scripture at times refers to the Second Person as an angel, because it is he who “publishes to men the commands of the Father and Maker of all things” (Dialogue 60). In the case of Jacob wrestling with an angel, the context clearly shows that the angel is in fact God. The angel gives Jacob a new name (something only God does), Israel, which is based on the meaning “you have striven with God.” Jacob named the place Peniel, which means “I have seen God face to face.”

    It is also the Second Person, according to Justin, who appears to Joshua son of Nun (Joshua 5-6) and identifies himself as Captain of the Lord’s army (Dialogue 62). In Exodus 23:20-21 God tells Moses that He will send an angel before the Israelites to the promised land. They are to listen to his voice and not rebel, “for my name is in him.” Justin interprets this to mean that since Joshua is the one who led the Israelites into Canaan, and since Joshua and Jesus are the same name, it is the Second Person of the Trinity who is speaking to Moses (Dialogue 75).

    Theophilus of Antioch takes the same approach, namely, that whenever God manifests Himself it is not the Father but the Son, because the Son is the revelation, or word, of God, and the one who is sent:

The God and Father, indeed, of all cannot be contained, and is not found in a place, for there is no place of His rest; but His Word, through whom He made all things, being His power and His wisdom, assuming the person of the Father and Lord of all, went to the garden in the person of God, and conversed with Adam. For the divine writing itself teaches us that Adam said that he had heard the voice. But what else is this voice but the Word of God, who is also His Son? . . . The Word, then, being God, and being naturally produced from God, whenever the Father of the universe wills, He sends Him to any place; and He, coming, is both heard and seen, being sent by Him, and is found in a place (Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.22).

    Tertullian reasons that since all judgment has been given to the Son (John 5:22), “all” necessarily means without regard for time. Judgment in the Old Testament therefore was also the work of the Son:

It is the Son, therefore, who has been from the beginning administering judgment, throwing down the haughty tower, and dividing the tongues, punishing the whole world by the violence of waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone, as the Lord from the Lord. For He it was at all times who came down to hold converse with men, from Adam on to the patriarchs and the prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in dark saying (Against Praxeas 16).

    Tertullian calls these manifestations “rehearsals” for the coming of Jesus. It is not that God needed to rehearse how to communicate with man. Rather, mankind needed to be prepared for the Incarnation, “that we might the more readily believe that the Son of God had come down into the world, if we knew that in times past also something similar had been done” (Against Praxeas 16). Tertullian mentions God speaking with Adam in the garden, God instructing Noah to build the ark, and the fourth man in the fiery furnace as other instances of the Second Person manifesting Himself.

    In this way it was that even then He knew full well what human feelings and affections were. . . making inquiry of Adam (as if He were ignorant), “Where art thou, Adam?”—repenting that He had made man, as if He lacked foresight; tempting Abraham. . . . [H]ow happens it that He (who, though) the Most High, should yet have walked in paradise towards the cool of the evening, in quest of Adam; and should have shut up the ark after Noah had entered it; and at Abraham’s tent should have refreshed himself under an oak; and have called to Moses out of the burning bush; and have appeared as “the fourth” in the furnace of the Babylonian monarch (although He is there called the Son of man), —unless all these events had happened as an image, as a mirror, as an enigma (of the future incarnation)? (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 16).

    Irenaeus has a similar understanding of the Old Testament theophanies. When Jesus tells the Jews, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” (John 5:46), he is referring to all the theophanies in the Pentateuch, according to Irenaeus:

. . . [saying this], no doubt, because the Son of God is implanted everywhere throughout his writings: at one time, indeed, speaking with Abraham, when about to eat with him; at another time with Noah, giving to him the dimensions [of the ark]; at another, inquiring after Adam; at another, bringing down judgment upon the Sodomites; and again, when He becomes visible, and directs Jacob on his journey, and speaks with Moses from the bush (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.10.1).

Like the others, Irenaeus also sees the fourth man in the furnace as the Second Person, especially since He is said to be like a Son of God. Irenaeus argues that all such manifestations are the Second Person, since the Father can only be known through the agency of the Son. God the Father and Creator is known to no one, “unless by the Son, and to whomsoever the Son shall reveal Him” (4.7.3).

    The intrepretive tradition that sees Christ in certain manifestations in the Old Testament also goes back to the apostles. Paul says the rock which followed the Israelites throughout their forty years in the wilderness was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4).

    Of the many manifestations traditionally identified with the Logos, I will focus on the encounters experienced by Abraham and Moses because they bring to the fore the most important problems in interpretation. In Genesis 17, 18 and 19 God appears to Abraham. According to the documentary theory of Genesis, chapter 17 derives from a different source than chapters 18-19. They tell the same basic story but with different details included in each. Chapter 17 begins simply (all quotations from the Abraham story are from the Anchor Bible translation of Genesis): “When Abram was 99 years old, Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am El Shaddai. Follow my ways and be blameless. I will grant a covenant between myself and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous’“ (Genesis 17:1-2). Many things are accomplished during this encounter: God establishes circumcision, announces that Sarai is to have a child, and gives Abram and Sarai their new names of Abraham and Sarah. We are not told in what form Yahweh appeared to Abraham until chapter 18, however, which derives from another source. Chapter 18 does not contain the information about the circumcision or the change of names, but it does repeat Yahweh’s announcement that Sarah will have a child and it does give us a very vivid picture of just how Yahweh appeared to Abraham. “Yahweh appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of his tent as the day was growing hot. Looking up, he saw three men standing beside him” (Genesis18:1-2)

    Because of the lead-in sentence stating that Yahweh appeared to Abraham, the reader is better prepared to understand who the visitors are as the story unfolds. But initially Abraham takes his visitors for mortals. He offers them a chance to wash their feet and begs them to stay for something to eat. Abraham orders Sarah to knead bread while he himself prepares a calf. He sets the food before his visitors and stands under the tree while they eat. They (plural) ask where his wife Sarah is, then one (singular) informs Abraham that he will return “when life would be due,” at which time Sarah will have a son. Sarah, who has been listening from inside the tent, begins to laugh to herself. At this point the one who had spoken is identified openly as Yahweh, reflecting Abraham’s dawning awareness of the visitor’s identity: “Yahweh said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I really give birth, old as I am?’ Is anything too much for Yahweh? I will be back with you when life is due, and Sarah shall have had a son!” (Genesis 18:13-14).

    When Abraham initially rushed out to greet his visitors he addressed them as ‘my lord.’ As the Anchor Bible explains, this is not the special form of the Hebrew word “lord” reserved for the Deity. Abraham is not yet aware who his guests are, so he employs the ordinary, singular form of the Hebrew word meaning “my lord,” as well as three other unambiguous singulars. The Anchor Bible commentator concludes that Abraham somehow recognizes that one of the three is the leader, and therefore addresses him alone in this verse, although in verses 4-5 he addresses the group in the plural, including the other two “as a matter of courtesy.”8 Again I think the Anchor commentator is posing the question the wrong way around. He reasons that since Abraham addresses the group in the singular, he obviously recognizes one as their superior. But Augustine reasons from the observation that there is no evidence that Abraham recognizes one of the three as superior. “So why may we not take the episode as a visible intimation by means of visible creations of the equality of the triad, and of the single identity of substance in the three persons?” (The Trinity, 2. 4. 20). Abraham’s alternation between the singular and the plural forms of address indicates that the mysterious visitor is in some way both three and one.

    In verses 16-23 Abraham and the three visitors set out toward Sodom. Two of the visitors go on ahead, while Yahweh, still clearly identified by this name, pauses to talk with Abraham. Yahweh confides in Abraham what he is about to do to the city. Abraham reasons with God, getting him to agree to spare the city if fifty innocent people can be found in it, and ultimately bargaining him down to ten people. Yahweh then departs from Abraham as abruptly as he had appeared. In this segment (vss. 27, 32, 33), when Abraham addresses Yahweh he now uses the form of “lord” reserved for God.9 There is no doubt that Abraham is aware of the visitor’s identity now, since he pleads as “dust and ashes” with the Judge of all the world.

    In the next chapter the two who had gone on ahead arrive in Sodom, a two-day journey covered in a few hours. There is much fascinating material here, but for our purposes there are two relevant points. First, the two men are now referred to as angels, and their celestial origin is confirmed when with a flash of blinding light they stop the Sodomites from entering Lot’s house. But the fact that they are called angels does not necessarily mean it is not the Lord. When the Lord appeared in the burning bush and again when he wrestled with Jacob, he was first referred to as an angel. Second, this chapter contains the key passage that distinguishes between Yahweh who confided in Abraham and Yahweh in heaven: “Then Yahweh rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphurous fire from Yahweh in heaven” (19:24). If “Yahweh in heaven” is the Father, then Yahweh who came to visit Abraham has to be the Second Person of the Trinity. Such is the consistent interpretation of the early Fathers. Justin declares on the basis of this passage that “He who appeared to Abraham under the oak in Mamre is God, sent with the two angels in His company to judge Sodom by Another who remains ever in the supercelestial places, invisible to all men, holding personal intercourse with none, whom we believe to be Maker and Father of all things” (Dialogue 56). Tertullian uses Genesis 19:24 in conjunction with Psalm 110 to prove the distinction of the Divine Persons, demonstrating that the title Lord is applied to both Father and Son, just as two are called God in Psalm 45 (Against Praxeas 13).

    Since it is a regulating principle for the early Fathers that the First Person does not appear on earth in any form, the two men who go to Lot are seen as angels rather than as an image of the Trinity. But in iconography the three are portrayed as the Trinity. The mysterious alternation between singular and plural continues in the segment of the story devoted to Lot. Justin notes that while the One remains behind with Abraham, when he suddenly leaves Abraham he also goes on to Sodom, because Scripture makes it evident that right before the city is destroyed, “the two angels no longer conversed with Lot, but Himself” (Dialogue 56). In fact, Scripture shows Lot’s interlocutor sometimes as singular, and sometimes as plural. In verse 12 the men ask Lot who else belongs to his household, and command Lot to get them out of the place, for they are about to destroy it. Lot could not convince his sons-in-law to take him seriously. At dawn the angels once again urge Lot to remove his wife and daughters. When Lot still hesitates, the angels take him, his wife and daughters by the hand and set them outside the city. In verse 17 when they (plural) had brought Lot outside, he (singular) told Lot: “Flee for your life. Do not look behind you or stop anywhere in the Plain. Flee to the hills or you will be swept away.” Lot is now conversing with one and three at the same time. In verse 18 Lot said to them (plural), “Oh, no, my lord” (singular). A note in the Anchor Bible supplies this literal rendering but says the text “cannot be right,” since immediately after addressing “them,” Lot is addressing a single companion.10 Lot begs his singular/plural rescuer to let him flee to the little town ahead of them. He (singular) grants this request. Only one is talking now. “He answered, ‘I will bear with you in this matter also, by not overthrowing the town you speak of. Hurry, flee there, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.’” Lot makes it to the little town just as the sun is rising. “Then Yahweh rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphurous fire from Yahweh in heaven.”

    Of all the instances of God manifesting Himself in human form in the Old Testament, the appearance of Yahweh to Abraham is surely the most detailed picture. This theophany is thought to be of the Second Person precisely because He does manifest Himself as a human. He converses with Abraham, accepts his hospitality, lets his feet be washed, and eats the feast that is set in front of him. Justin’s Jewish interlocutors had to admit that Scripture compels this understanding of the visitor as Lord, but were unable to understand how God could have eaten the feast prepared by Abraham. Justin is also somewhat at a loss as to how this could be taken literally, and in the end says that it is a figurative mode of speech. He explains that the three ate in the same way we understand it when we say that fire consumes something, which does not mean the thing was actually masticated with teeth and jaws (Dialogue 57).

    Although he does not say so explicitly, apparently Justin sees the visitor as having a human form, but not being truly human. The visitor who appears to Abraham does not have a history as a human. He was not born and will not die. This human form will disappear once its purpose has been served. In that sense he is not really a human being. Augustine will elaborate on this distinction between the human forms and other material forms requisitioned for particular purposes in theophanies, on the one hand, and the Incarnation, on the other hand. But even though the human form taken on by Yahweh in this passage is not truly human in that it has no history, there is no reason why it could not be physically human, if only on an ad hoc basis, and therefore actually able to eat the food Abraham offered. Other material forms in both Old and New Testament theophanies actually functioned in keeping with their forms, even if the forms were only temporary: the dove at Jesus’ baptism actually hovered, the thunder on Mt. Sinai actually thundered and so forth.

    The Word, as the revelation or self-communication of God, is the visible image of the invisible Father. This truth is stated many times in Scripture: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15); “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Hebrews 1:3). The early Fathers ascribed invisibility to the Father and visibility to the Son. Tertullian quotes 1 Timothy 6:16 (“whom no one has ever seen nor can see”), 1 Timothy 1:17 (“immortal, invisible”) and John 1:18 (“No one has ever seen God [the Father]. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known”). Tertullian says that it is a regulating principle that the Father is not seen, while the Son is visible by reason of his derived existence (Against Praxeas 14). To Justin it is self-evident that the Father cannot leave supercelestial matters to become “visible on a little portion of the earth” (Dialogue 60). Theophilus of Antioch likewise says that the Father cannot be contained in a place and that all Old Testament theophanies were of the Son: “The God and Father, indeed, of all cannot be contained, and is not found in a place, for there is no place of His rest” (To Autolycus, 2.22). Irenaeus also says plainly that the Father is not visible: “And all saw the Father in the Son, for the Father is the invisibility of the Son, and the Son is the visibility of the Father” (Against Heresies 4.10.1).

    Are these manifestations and apparitions really God or are they created matter being used in the service of God, in other word, angels? Augustine treats this question at length in The Trinity, but the earlier writers, without being as precise, do seem to be groping for the answer Augustine articulates. Although the early Fathers regard these theophanies as manifestations of the Son because He is the one who is sent in visible form into time, they are not true incarnations of the Word, but cryptic prefigurings of the Incarnation. Tertullian says that although the Logos was actually seen in ancient times, He was “visible only in mystery and enigma, and became more clearly visible by His incarnation” (Against Praxeas 15). Irenaeus also stresses the enigmatic nature of the theophanies as distinguished from the Incarnation: “The prophets, therefore, did not openly behold the actual face of God, but the dispensations and the mysteries through which man should afterwards see God.” Ezekiel, for instance, did not see God himself, but “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God” (Ezekiel 2:1). Neither Moses, nor Elijah, nor Ezekiel saw God, but “similitudes of the splendor of the Lord, and prophecies of things to come” (Against Heresies 4.20.10, 11).

Constance Woods has a Ph.D. in Russian literature and is currently a full-time mom and a part-time student at Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College.

End Notes

1    E. A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible, vol. 1 (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1985), p. 7.
2    All quotations from the Church Fathers, excluding Augustine, are from The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus; vol. 2, Fathers of the Second Century:Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria; and vol. 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. I. Apologetic; II. Anti-Marcion; III. Ethical (Repr. Peabody, Massachusetts, 1994).
3    James T. O’Connor, The Father’s Son (Boston, Massachusetts: Daughters of St. Paul, 1984), p. 56.
4    Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 188.
5    Ibid., 191-193.
6    In fact, the whole first chapter of Hebrews consists of Old Testament passages, primarily from the Psalms, that refer to Christ. The interpreration of these passages as prophecies will be developed in one way or another by the early Fathers. It is fascinating to ponder how quickly such a collection of prophetic texts must have been assembled, perhaps beginning with Christ’s own explication of Scripture to two disciples on the road to Emmaus: “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). The new light in which the apostles and Fathers read Scripture had to originate from Christ’s own teaching, especially during those 40 days after the Resurrection, when he opened scripture to them: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32).
7    As translated in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, p. 229.
8    Anchor Genesis, p. 129.
9    Ibid., 129, 134.
10    Ibid., 141.

The Catholic Faith - January/February '98 - Table of Contents