Seems everyone’s biggest fear, when I talk about theology, is that I’m gonna start dumping vocabulary words upon them. Folks, I’m not teaching graduate-level (or even college-level) theology. I’ve taught this stuff to children, so there’s no reason you can’t keep up. I try to avoid the vocabulary words whenever possible. But sometimes it’s not. “Theophany” is one of those times.
A theophany* is a God-sighting. God is spirit, and usually interacts with us in spiritual, not physical, ways. But whenever God decides prayer, prophecy, bible, or poking us in the conscience just isn’t communicating effectively enough, sometimes He makes an appearance. The bible is full of such appearances. Jesus, fr’instance.
The bible begins with such appearances: God was apparently in the habit of walking in the garden and hanging out with Adam and Eve. (Ge 3.8) This was a habit that God wanted to regularly practice… but Adam and Eve’s sin effectively closed the garden and separated us from God.
But sin didn’t stop God from making personal appearances. It only meant that now, humans were scared to death that these personal appearances would kill us. The popular belief was that if humans ever actually saw God, or even hear God, they’d die. (Dt 18.16, Jg 13.22) And that’s not actually a wrong belief; if we ever saw God as He actually is, our fragile selves wouldn’t be able to take it. (Ex 33.20)
Which is why, when God comes down from heaven to interact with our universe, He does it in a way that we can understand, in a way that won’t kill us. He meets us where we are, rather than hoisting us up to His level and overloading our tiny minds. (Not that He doesn’t still overload our tiny minds, Mk 9.2-6.) In the scriptures He appeared to people in lots of ways. Usually He appeared as a man. Sometimes He appeared as an angel, as a burning bush, as a bright cloud, as a pillar of cloud and fire, as thunder, as smoke, as something like a dove, as fire or tongues of fire… or even as close to what He actually is as He could represent, considering that He’s invisible.
These appearances have really confused people. We know God isn’t a fire, or voice, or angel, or bird. He’s a spirit. He’s invisible. He’s huge. Yet here we have some stories where God isn’t as He usually is. What are we to make of this?
Well, not too much. The Latter-Day Saints have taken this idea and ran with it, and teach that God has always had a physical body (though it’s kinda spiritual). That’s not correct. When Moses taught, “God is not a man… He is not human,” (Nu 23.19) that’s because, at that time, God was not a man, and was not human. These man-like appearances were solely for our benefit. They weren’t to give us a picture of what God was really like.
The Pharisees, in Jesus’s day, went to the opposite extreme. When they translated the bible into Aramaic (which was what native Jews spoke back then) whenever they came across a story where God did something a little too human-like for their comfort, they translated it so that He sorta didn’t. Like this verse:
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden…
—Genesis 3.8 KJV
The Pharisees tweaked it a bit, and got:
And they heard the voice of the word of the LORD God walking in the garden…
—Genesis 3.8, Targum Jonathan,
translated by J.W. Etheridge
So it’s not specifically God walking around and talking with people in the Aramaic Old Testament. It’s the Word of God.
Ordinarily I would say that’s not quite correct either. But Jesus’s student John actually took this idea and ran with it. He wrote:
In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
… So the Word became human and made his home among us.
—John 1.1ƒƒ NLT
Christians frequently teach the very same thing: Whenever you see God appearing like a man in the Old Testament, or whenever you see the Angel of the LORD doing stuff, that’s actually Jesus, making a special appearance before His first coming. He just hadn’t become human yet.
(I don’t teach this, myself. I believe it’s more accurate to teach that every appearance of God in the Old Testament is actually Jesus. Like John said, God created everything through Him, (Jn 1.3) which likewise applies to creating faith, creating the Law, creating relationships with us humans, creating leaders… Saying “This Old Testament appearance is Jesus, and this other appearance is God” divides God in a way that God doesn’t wish to be divided. God is One. The Trinity is more about how three are One than about how One is three. Best to stick to this idea: Jesus is God, and God is One.)
But Jesus is definitely a theophany. He’s probably the best example of God making a visible appearance. Jesus is when God became a human. (Bonus vocabulary word: “incarnation,” which literally means “getting put into meat.” Eww; but a wholly accurate description.) Not sorta human, not kinda human, not human-looking, not even temporarily human. And at the same time, mind-bendingly enough, God. I’ll have to explain that—as best I can; it’s tricky—another time.
Jesus is an out-of-the-ordinary theophany, ’cause unlike the previous, Old Testament theophanies—where God was sometimes one thing, and sometimes another—Jesus was born a human, lived as a human, died as a human, went to the afterlife as a human, and was raised from the dead like every human will eventually be raised. And He didn’t stop being human when He went back to heaven. He’s still human. He isn’t a temporary manifestation of God; this humanity of His is permanent. When people see God nowadays they tend to see Jesus. Not that God can’t appear in any of the other ways anymore; sometimes He does. But Jesus is the way He is, now: human. You notice, in Acts and Revelation, whenever God decided to appear to people, what did they see? Most of the time, they saw Jesus. Sometimes scary-looking, really shiny Jesus, (Rv 1.12-18) but still Jesus.
The reason God became Jesus is to save us from sin and death, (Jn 3.16-17) of course. But it’s not just for that reason. Obviously, being God, He could have invented some other way that didn’t involve becoming human and getting killed. Preachers are fond of saying, “No, there is no other way,” but God invented the rules; there’s no reason He couldn’t have invented different rules.
The reason He invented these rules is because He wanted to become human. Remember how He used to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve? He still wants that. That was His original goal, from the very beginning. He wants to hang out with us. He loves us. We’re His kids.
Appearances of God are scary and rare because sin has truly screwed our universe up badly. We’re far too dysfunctional to be able to handle God that way. When He did show up that way, we freaked out and crucified Him. Thankfully He undid all that—and is expanding that undoing to affect the entire universe—because when Jesus returns to take over things, He wants a universe that’s finally ready to accept Him. We Christians are the beginning of all that. We just have to work on how well we personally accept Him; we still suck at it. But we’re trying.
And every once in a while, He visibly shows up and points us in the right direction. Or tells someone to follow Him. Or commissions an apostle. Or shows the future. Or encourages people. (Ac 26.14-18) Or whatever He likes.
These appearances aren’t what many of us Christians call the Second Coming—which is actually a really lousy title for His return, ’cause it makes people assume He’s staying away from the world till then. He’s not staying away. He’s heavily involved—with us Christians in particular. There is a better-than-average chance that you will see Him, if you keep your eyes open. But if you assume He doesn’t do this sort of thing anymore, you’ll miss Him when He does. Or worse: you’ll think, like cessationists,* that the devil’s trying to trick you, and reject Him like people did at the First Coming. Don’t do that. Theophanies absolutely still happen.