Friday, January 26, 2018

Leon Morris on Men Seeing God and John 1:18


No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18)

Commenting on the phrase, “No man hath seen God at any time,” Leon Morris noted:

The emphatic declaration, “No man hath seen God at any time” (notice that the word “God” is in an emphatic position) is in line with Exod. 33:20 where the Lord says, “man shall not see me and live” (cf. John 5:37; 6:46). Yet there are some passages like Exod. 24:9-11 which explicitly affirm that some men have seen God. What then does John mean? Surely that in His essential being God has never yet been seen of men. Men had had their visions of God, but these were all partial. The theophanies of the Old Testament did not and could not reveal God’s essential being. But Christ has now made such a revelation. As Calvin puts it, “When he says that none has seen God, it is not to be understood of the outward seeing of the physical eye. He means generally that, since God dwells in inaccessible light, He cannot be known except in Christ, His lively image.” (Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John [New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1971], 113)

Therefore, this verse, nor 6:46, is problematic to the claim the prophet Joseph Smith saw God the Father as well as Jesus Christ in the First Vision.