Theophany Archives - Bob on Books

Theophany, Vern S. Poythress. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2022 (Originally published by Crossway in 2018).

Summary: A study of the visible appearances of God to his people in scripture, what they reveal about God, and how they anticipate God’s ultimate appearing in the person of his Son, God incarnate.

The word theophany refers to a visible manifestation of God. Vern Poythress asserts that all of these point to the wondrous news that God desires to commune with his people and that we have the hope one day of seeing God “face to face.” Poythress sees this closely interconnected with God’s promises and their fulfillment, God’s covenantal relationship with his people, his kingdom rule and his presence, God with us. He believes all the theophanies of scripture anticipate the ultimate theophany of the incarnation of the Son of God and look forward to the consummation of his redemptive purposes in his return.

Poythress begins by cataloging the different types of theophanies and their significance: thunderstorm, fire, cloud, glory, God’s court, as a Man, a warrior, in a chariot. He then considers how we know God, both as transcendent and immanent. The appearances reflect God, and Poythress considers the different ways God is reflected via human appearance, the Spirit, the Trinity, and even reflections in creation and the clothing evident in appearances.

After this, the remainder of the book is a survey of the appearances of God throughout scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. One thing is apparent. God appears abundantly throughout the scriptures, and in doing so reveals his presence, promise, power and purposes to people. Poythress often shows how these appearances anticipate the appearing of his Son in the incarnation.

Poythress is thorough in his survey, clear in his explanation, and frequent in drawing out the significance of particular biblical teaching to larger overarching themes. He also includes appendices discussing the angel of the Lord, and two discussing the early chapters of Genesis. The one thing he does not discuss is that, given the many appearances of God in scripture, what expectation might believers have of theophanies, and what is the extrabiblical evidence of such through church history? The author contents himself to see the significance of theophany as our communion with Christ, which is the believer’s ultimate comfort, to be sure.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

The God Who Became Human: A Biblical Theology of Incarnation by Graham Cole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Christmas could be called the Feast of the Incarnation. It is indeed the time of celebrating the incarnation of the Son of God–of God truly with us in human flesh. And so it was appropriate to read this during the Days of Christmas and I was richly rewarded.

What Cole sets out to do is outline a biblical theology of the Incarnation. That is, he seeks to uncover the development of the theme of Incarnation from Genesis to Revelation. Along the way, he explores the idea of the creation as God’s palace-temple where he walks with creatures who are priest-kings with him. He explores the “theophanies” of the Old Testament, categorizing the language used of God as “anthropomorphic” (describing God with human features), “anthropopathic” (describing God with human emotions), and “anthropopraxic” (describing God in terms of human actions like walking). He considers the appearances of the “angel of the Lord” and would associate with those who consider these as possible pre-incarnate appearances of the Son of God.

He also explores the Messianic passages of scripture and would argue that while they support the idea of the incarnation, cannot be conclusively argued to foretell this. He reminds us of Paul at this point and that the appearing of God in human flesh in Christ was indeed “mystery”. He also brings in material on “the theory of theories” by Nicholas Wolterstorff to suggest that all the OT material reflects the reality of the Incarnation that we only fully understand in the New.

He then explores the gospel and epistolic material on Incarnation and how these draw on Old Testament materials. He asks with Anselm of Canterbury the question of “why did God become Man?”, answering this from the biblical materials. He concludes with consideration of Revelation and the closing of the circle–a new creation with the Incarnate Lamb ruling a kingdom of priests renewing the garden city of the New Jerusalem. He also reflects on the significance of the Incarnation with some wonderful concluding reflections on the wonder of the Incarnation.

Along the way, he engages some of the speculative questions that have arisen around the doctrine of the incarnation, including whether the Son would have appeared in human flesh even without the fall (a tentative yes), and whether Christ’s human nature was fallen or unfallen (he joins most theologians in history in arguing unfallen).

This is part of the New Studies in Biblical Theology series and lives up to the vision of this series as providing scholarly monographs that at the same time serve the leadership of churches in providing a readable account, in this case, of the theology of the Incarnation.

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