Filiophany: The Eternal Son as the Visible Manifestation of God in the Old Testament

Abstract

This paper argues that visible, personal manifestations of God in the Old Testament are best understood as appearances of the eternal Son, whom the New Testament identifies as the Image of the invisible God, the Logos through whom creation exists, and the definitive revealer of the Father. While the traditional theological term “Christophany” remains useful, this paper proposes the more precise term “filiophany” to describe pre-incarnate appearances of the Son prior to His historical incarnation as Jesus Christ. The argument proceeds from the New Testament’s claims concerning the invisibility of the Father, the revelatory function of the Son, the Son’s lordship over creation, and the image-bearing structure of humanity. It concludes that Old Testament theophanies, when they involve visible, personal divine manifestation, are properly understood as filiophanies: manifestations of the eternal Son within the created order.

1. Introduction

Christian theology has long recognized that the Old Testament contains appearances of God that are difficult to categorize as mere angelic visitations, prophetic visions, or impersonal divine effects. The LORD walks in the garden, appears to Abraham, speaks from the burning bush, wrestles with Jacob, receives reverent fear, and is sometimes encountered as the “angel of the LORD” while simultaneously speaking as God and being identified as God (Gen. 3:8; Gen. 18:1–33; Gen. 32:24–30; Exod. 3:2–6; Judg. 6:11–24; Judg. 13:3–22).

The standard Christian term for a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ is “Christophany.” This term is useful and should not be discarded. Yet it carries an ambiguity. “Christ” properly identifies the anointed Son, especially in His messianic office, and in ordinary Christian usage often evokes the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth. The Old Testament manifestations, however, occur before the incarnation. The one manifesting is not yet Jesus according to His assumed human nature, though He is the same eternal Person who later becomes incarnate.

For that reason, this paper proposes the term “filiophany,” from Latin filius, “son,” and Greek phainein, “to appear” or “to manifest.” A filiophany is a visible or personal manifestation of the eternal Son prior to the incarnation. The term does not replace “Christophany” in ordinary theological language. It refines it. All Old Testament Christophanies, in the intended sense, are filiophanies: appearances of the eternal Son who later becomes incarnate as Jesus Christ.

The thesis is this: where the Old Testament depicts God as visibly and personally manifesting Himself to man, the most coherent Christian reading is that the manifestation is mediated through the eternal Son, the uncreated Image of the invisible God.

2. The New Testament Control: No One Has Seen the Father

The foundation of the argument is the New Testament’s explicit teaching that the Father is unseen in His essence and that the Son is the one who makes Him known.

John writes, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18, ESV). The statement is striking because the Old Testament repeatedly describes people as seeing, encountering, or speaking with God. John does not deny those Old Testament encounters. Instead, he provides their theological interpretation: God is made known through the Son.

Jesus makes the distinction explicit: “Not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father” (John 6:46, ESV). The Father, considered in His invisible divine essence, is not directly seen by man. The Son, who is from the Father, uniquely sees and reveals Him.

Jesus also says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9, ESV). This does not collapse the Son into the Father. It establishes the Son as the perfect personal manifestation of the Father. To see the Son is to see the Father revealed, because the Son is the exact and personal expression of the Father’s nature.

Paul uses the same theological category when he calls Christ “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15, ESV). The Father is invisible; the Son is the Image. Likewise, Hebrews says that the Son is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3, ESV). The Son does not merely speak for God. He is the perfect divine self-expression of God.

This gives the controlling interpretive principle:

The Father is invisible.

The Son is the visible Image.

Therefore, visible divine manifestation is properly mediated through the Son.

3. The Son as Logos, Creator, Sustainer, and Lord of Creation

The Son’s role as revealer is inseparable from His role as Creator and Lord. John begins his Gospel by identifying the Son as the eternal Word:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1, ESV).

The Word is distinct from God and yet is God. John then says, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3, ESV). The Son is not part of creation. He is the divine agent through whom creation comes to be.

Paul develops the same point:

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16, ESV).

Creation is not merely made through the Son. It is made for the Son. He is therefore Lord of creation by right of origin, purpose, authority, sustainment, and inheritance. Paul continues: “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17, ESV). Hebrews likewise says that God created the world through the Son and that the Son “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:2–3, ESV).

This matters for Old Testament manifestation. If the Son is the Logos through whom creation exists and the Lord for whom creation exists, then divine manifestation within creation fittingly occurs through Him. Creation is His domain. The Son is not a later visitor to a world foreign to Him. He is its divine Word, ordering principle, sustaining Lord, and final heir.

The incarnation, then, is not the first relation between the Son and creation. It is the climactic historical entrance of the eternal Son into the created order He already made, sustains, governs, and reveals.

4. The Father’s Voice and the Son’s Public Identification

The New Testament contains very few direct manifestations of the Father’s voice. These are concentrated around the Son.

At Jesus’ baptism, the voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17, ESV). Mark and Luke preserve the same event with the direct address, “You are my beloved Son” (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22, ESV).

At the Transfiguration, the voice again identifies Jesus as the beloved Son and adds the command, “listen to him” (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35, ESV). Peter later recalls this event, saying that Jesus received honor and glory from “God the Father” when the voice came from the Majestic Glory (2 Pet. 1:17–18, ESV).

In John 12, Jesus prays, “Father, glorify your name,” and a voice from heaven responds, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again” (John 12:28, ESV).

These are rare events. Their rarity is theologically significant. The Father’s direct audible witness is not the ordinary mode of divine-human encounter. Rather, the Father bears witness to the Son. The Son is the one to whom humanity must listen. The Father identifies, glorifies, and authorizes the Son as the definitive revealer.

This pattern supports the larger claim: God’s direct revelatory engagement with man is ordinarily mediated through the Son. The Father sends and testifies. The Son reveals and manifests. The Spirit empowers, applies, and illumines.

5. Old Testament Theophanies as Filiophanies

A theophany is an appearance of God. A Christophany is commonly defined as an appearance of the pre-incarnate Christ. A filiophany, as proposed here, is a visible or personal manifestation of the eternal Son prior to the incarnation.

The Old Testament presents several key cases.

5.1 The LORD Walking in the Garden

Genesis describes Adam and Eve hearing “the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8, ESV). The text presents the LORD as personally present in the garden in a manner perceptible to man. This is not a mere inward impression. It is an encounter.

If the Father is unseen and the Son is the Image through whom God is made known, then the garden encounter coheres naturally with a filiophanic reading.

5.2 The LORD Appearing to Abraham

Genesis 18 begins: “And the LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre” (Gen. 18:1, ESV). Abraham sees three men, yet the narrative repeatedly identifies the central speaker as the LORD (Gen. 18:1–33). The encounter is visible, personal, dialogical, and covenantal.

Genesis 19:24 adds another striking formulation: “Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven” (Gen. 19:24, ESV). The text distinguishes the LORD present in the narrative from the LORD in heaven, while maintaining divine identity. Later Trinitarian revelation allows this distinction to be read without collapsing into polytheism or reducing the earthly manifestation to a mere creature.

5.3 Jacob Wrestling with God

Jacob wrestles with a man until daybreak, yet afterward says, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered” (Gen. 32:30, ESV). Hosea later reflects on the event and associates the encounter with both God and the angel: “He strove with the angel and prevailed; he wept and sought his favor” (Hos. 12:4, ESV).

This dual identification is characteristic of several Old Testament theophanic texts. The figure is encountered as a man or messenger, yet the encounter is truly with God. A filiophany provides a coherent category: the eternal Son manifests within creation without ceasing to be fully divine.

5.4 The Burning Bush

Exodus 3 is one of the clearest examples. The text first says, “the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush” (Exod. 3:2, ESV). Yet immediately afterward, “God called to him out of the bush” (Exod. 3:4, ESV). The speaker then declares, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:6, ESV).

The figure is called the angel of the LORD, yet speaks as God, bears the divine name, commands holy-ground reverence, and reveals the covenant name of God (Exod. 3:2–15). “Angel” here need not imply a created being. The Hebrew term can mean messenger. The divine Messenger is distinguishable from the LORD and yet identified with the LORD.

This is precisely the kind of textual pattern that later Trinitarian theology clarifies.

5.5 The God of Israel Seen by the Elders

Exodus 24 says that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders “saw the God of Israel” (Exod. 24:10, ESV). The text even describes what was under His feet, yet adds that God did not lay His hand on them (Exod. 24:10–11).

Read in isolation, this seems to conflict with John 1:18 and John 6:46. Read canonically, the tension is resolved by distinguishing the unseen Father from the visible manifestation of God through the Son. They truly saw God, but not the Father in His invisible essence. They saw God as manifested through the eternal Image.

5.6 The Commander of the LORD’s Army

Joshua encounters “the commander of the army of the LORD” (Josh. 5:14, ESV). Joshua falls on his face and worships, and the commander commands him, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy” (Josh. 5:15, ESV). The scene deliberately echoes the burning bush. A mere created angel would not properly receive worshipful reverence. The figure bears divine authority and holy presence.

5.7 Gideon and Manoah

In Judges 6, the angel of the LORD appears to Gideon, yet the text moves between “the angel of the LORD” and “the LORD” as speaker (Judg. 6:11–24). Gideon fears death because he has seen the angel of the LORD face to face, and the LORD answers him with peace (Judg. 6:22–23).

In Judges 13, Manoah and his wife encounter the angel of the LORD. After the angel ascends in the flame of the altar, Manoah says, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God” (Judg. 13:22, ESV). The encounter involves a messenger figure, sacrificial ascent, divine identification, and fear of death because God has been seen.

These texts resist reduction to ordinary angelology. They fit the pattern of filiophany.

6. Image of God and Image of the Son

The doctrine of filiophany also intersects with the doctrine of humanity as the image of God.

Genesis says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26, ESV). Humanity is created as the image of God. Yet the New Testament identifies Christ as the Image in the primary and perfect sense. He is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15, ESV), “the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4, ESV), and “the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3, ESV).

This suggests a structured relation:

The Son is the uncreated Image.

Adam is the first created image-bearer.

Fallen humanity is the corrupted image.

Christ incarnate is the true and last Adam.

Redeemed humanity is restored by conformity to the image of the Son.

Paul makes the Adam-Christ relation explicit: “The first man Adam became a living being”; “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45, ESV). He continues, “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47, ESV). The destiny of redeemed humanity is therefore image-conformity: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49, ESV).

Romans 8:29 gives the same telos: believers are predestined “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29, ESV).

Thus, Adam may be described, in a heritage or representative sense, as the first created son-image: the first human heir placed within creation under God, patterned after the eternal Son. This must not be confused with Christ’s unique eternal Sonship. Adam is son by creation. Israel is son by covenant. David’s heir is son by royal promise. Believers are sons by adoption. Christ alone is Son by eternal divine nature.

This framework gives coherence to imagehood and manifestation. The Son is the eternal Image through whom God is seen. Man is the created image patterned after the Son. Redemption is conformity to the incarnate, crucified, risen, and glorified Son.

7. Objections and Clarifications

7.1 Does This Collapse the Father, Son, and Spirit?

No. The argument depends on Trinitarian distinction. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. The claim is not that every divine action is personally reducible to the Son. The claim is narrower: visible, personal divine manifestation to man is properly mediated through the Son.

The Father sends, speaks, wills, and testifies. The Son reveals, manifests, mediates, creates, sustains, redeems, and inherits. The Spirit empowers, fills, sanctifies, inspires, and illumines. These are not separations of divine essence, but ordered personal relations and missions.

7.2 Does This Mean Every Reference to “God” in the Old Testament Means “Jesus”?

No. That would be imprecise. The Old Testament often refers to God simply as the one covenant LORD, without specifying the later-revealed personal distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit. The proper claim concerns manifestation, not every divine reference.

A careful formulation is:

Old Testament visible theophanies are filiophanies.

That is different from saying:

Every Old Testament use of “God” is a direct reference to the Son personally.

7.3 Is “Filiophany” a Standard Term?

No. “Christophany” is the established term. “Filiophany” is a proposed technical refinement. Its usefulness lies in distinguishing the eternal Son from the incarnate economy without separating them. The Person is the same. The mode of manifestation differs.

Before the incarnation, the eternal Son appears or manifests.

In the incarnation, the eternal Son assumes human nature and is born as Jesus Christ.

After the resurrection, the incarnate Son remains forever the God-man.

Thus “filiophany” helps identify the Person involved without implying that the assumed human nature of Jesus existed prior to Bethlehem.

7.4 Are All Angel of the LORD Passages Filiophanies?

Not necessarily. Care must be taken with each text. Some uses of “angel” may refer to created messengers. The strongest filiophanic candidates are those in which the figure speaks as God, bears the divine name, receives worshipful reverence, commands holy-ground response, forgives, judges, or is identified by the human recipient as God.

The category should be applied textually, not mechanically.

8. Theological Implications

The doctrine of filiophany clarifies the unity of biblical revelation.

First, it shows that the Son’s revelatory role did not begin in the New Testament. The incarnation is climactic, but the Son was already the divine mediator of creation, covenant, judgment, and revelation.

Second, it preserves the invisibility of the Father while taking Old Testament divine appearances seriously. The Old Testament witnesses are not mistaken when they say they saw God. The New Testament is not mistaken when it says no one has seen the Father. The resolution is that God was truly seen as manifested through the Son.

Third, it strengthens the relation between creation and redemption. The Son who appears in the Old Testament is the same Son through whom creation was made, the same Son who assumes flesh, the same Son who dies and rises, and the same Son to whose image believers are conformed.

Fourth, it clarifies image theology. Humanity is made in the image of God because humanity is patterned after the eternal Image, the Son. Adam is the first created son-image. Christ is the true Image, the last Adam, and the final heir. The destiny of redeemed humanity is conformity to Him.

9. Conclusion

The biblical evidence supports the claim that visible, personal manifestations of God in the Old Testament are best understood as manifestations of the eternal Son. The Father remains unseen in His essence. The Son is the Image of the invisible God, the Logos through whom creation exists, the Lord for whom creation was made, and the one who makes the Father known. Therefore, when God appears within creation, speaks personally, receives reverent response, or is encountered in visible form, the most coherent Christian reading is that this manifestation occurs through the Son.

The traditional term “Christophany” remains valid, but “filiophany” offers a more precise technical term for pre-incarnate manifestations: appearances of the eternal Son before His incarnation as Jesus Christ.

The final formulation is:

Old Testament visible theophanies are filiophanies: manifestations of the eternal Son, the uncreated Image of the invisible God, through whom the Father is made known and through whom creation is governed, judged, redeemed, and brought to its appointed end.

References

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton: Crossway.

Biblical texts cited: Genesis 1:26–27; Genesis 3:8; Genesis 18:1–33; Genesis 19:24; Genesis 32:24–30; Exodus 3:2–15; Exodus 24:9–11; Joshua 5:13–15; Judges 6:11–24; Judges 13:3–22; Hosea 12:4; Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5; Mark 1:11; Mark 9:7; Luke 3:22; Luke 9:35; John 1:1–18; John 6:46; John 12:28; John 14:9; Romans 8:29; 1 Corinthians 15:45–49; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15–17; Hebrews 1:2–3; 2 Peter 1:17–18.