Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Deuteronomy 4:15 and the Question of Whether God Can Be Seen

  

. . . it may be argued that Deut. 4:15 is saying only that God did not manifest his form at Horeb, not that no form could ever be attributed to him. Stephen Geller takes this further, claiming that, whereas the old Deuteronomic thinkers allowed but one breach of divine transcendence, at Horeb, Deut. 4:36 wants to reject even this one concession (Geller, Sacred Enigmas, 42). Whatever our views on Deuteronomy 4, we should not globalize its message so as to create an unbridgeable gulf between the God of the Old Testament and the physical world of his making. (Robert P. Gordon,”’Comparativism’ and the God of Israel,” in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Versions: Selected Essays of Robert P. Gordon [Study for Old Testament Study Series; London: Routledge, 2016], 190)

 

Further Reading


Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment