Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 19:1 (Spring 2022)
Article: “He Who Is And The Angel Of Him Who Is”: Nicene And Post-Nicene Views Of Christophanies
Author: Rex D. Butler

“He Who Is And The Angel Of Him Who Is”: Nicene And Post-Nicene Views Of Christophanies

Rex D. Butler

Rex D. Butler is professor of church history and patristics, occupying the John T. Westbrook Chair of Church History at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Note: A version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society on Nov. 16, 2021, in Fort Worth, Texas.

Introduction

Historically-oriented biblical scholars seek Christ in all Scripture. Such a study benefits from a comparison of the Nicene and Post-Nicene fathers’ understandings of divine appearances in the Old Testament. Further examination of how the fathers from different eras applied their interpretations to their Christology, Trinitarian doctrines, and polemics against heresies can inform the contemporary discussion of Christ in the Old Testament.

During the second and third centuries of the church, the fathers read the Old Testament and found Christ in the divine appearances to the patriarchs and heroes of Israel. These appearances, or Christophanies, seemed to be effective proofs of Christ’s deity and pre-existence as well as the plurality of Persons in the Godhead. According to James Borland in Christ in the Old Testament, “the Ante-Nicene period . . . was one in which the Christians believed that the Lord Jesus Christ was the one who appeared in the Old Testament Christophanies.”1

In their christophanic interpretations, however, the Ante-Nicene fathers introduced problematic concepts such as the extreme transcendence of God the Father and the subordination of God the Son. The Arians pressed such convictions to their logical extremes, arguing that if the Father were invisible while the Son was visible in the Old Testament, then the Father would possess a higher nature than the Son. Thus the Ante-Nicene interpretation

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of the divine appearances as Christophanies, so it seemed, undermined the orthodox assertion that the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

Scholars such as H. P. Liddon and James Borland contended that Post-Nicene fathers, in their rejection of Arian exegesis, departed from their predecessors’ positions, which seemed to diminish rather than enhance Christ’s divinity. Augustine, in particular, insisted that theophanies in human form were appearances by angels created specifically for their missions, to represent God to the biblical forefathers of the faith. He pointed to many of the same theophanies cited by earlier fathers, but he maintained that the appearances to Abraham and Moses were the work of angels, whether themselves speaking or doing or representing the pers...