The following are notes from MacDonald's 1975 essay where he critiques the thesis that the Angel of the Lord is the premortal Jesus (note how he argues that this identification is anti-Trinitarian!):
The seeming reality of the humanlike
manifestation of Abraham’s three visitors, one of whom the view supposes to be
Christ, does not require such an identification. In the first place it burdens
our credulity too much to assume that the eternal Word had to become an “angel”—whether
in form or substance—on the way to becoming a man. Did God “devolve” through
the angel state in becoming incarnate? In the second place, anyone, youth or
scholar, reading the NT narratives gets the all-pervading impression that the incarnation
was unique. The virgin conception, the congregating of heaven’s multitudinous
angels to glory in Jesus’ birth, the historical implications of this secret
name (to be known only by those of faith, “Immanuel” [lit. “God with us”]), all
point to something really new in God’s economy. If Jesus had appeared full
grown on the earth two dozen times or even once, his advent as a child in
Bethlehem would be somewhat anticlimactic. But to the contrary Jesus himself
points us to the proper interpretation. A favorite parable of his was that of
the absentee king who, after sending many servants to his vineyard estate, finally
sent them his son (Mark 12:1-2).
If the incarnation is cut adrift from
its moorings in first-century history, all history—both biblical and universal—will
lose its significance eventually. To dislocate the humanity of God the Son from
its origin in 4 B.C. and its manifestation until A.D. 29 is to undermine the
reality of that humanity. If it was eternal flesh, it is not like our humanity.
If it was temporal but prenatal, it was still not like our humanity. If it was
intermittent, appearing and disappearing without continuity, it was not like
our humanity. If its inception and its conception coincide, it was like our
humanity. (William Graham MacDonald, “Christology and ‘The Angel of the
Lord,’” in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation: Studies
in Honor of Merrill C. Tenney Presented By His Former Students, ed. Gerald
F. Hawthorne [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975], 333, emphasis in original)
It is reading too much into the first
article in the expression, “the angel of the Lord,” to infer that a
special angel within the class is intended and all that instances of this title
have the same personage (should we rather say “angelage”?) in mind. Because
Hebrew has no indefinite article some ambiguity always attends the translation of
an expression like malak Yahweh (m-Y), “angel of Yahweh,” into
English. Malak is in the Hebrew construct state. As such its determinateness
(whether it is articular or anathrous) is decided by the determinateness of the
noun with which it is constructed, in this sense, “Yahweh.” Now every
proper noun is determinate per se. This would in itself authorize us to translate
“the angel of [the] Yahweh” for the anarthrously literal, “angel of
Yahweh.” But the inclusion of the article before angel is by no means necessary
to translation. “In a few instances,” wrote the grammarian Gesenius, “the nomen
regens appears to be used indefinitely notwithstanding a following determinate
genitive; . . . it is often so before a proper name as in . . . a feast
of the Lord . . . an abomination unto the Lord . . . a virgin of Israel . . . a
man of Benjamin,” etc. One may therefore translate m-Y correctly as “an
angel of the Lord” or “an angel of Yahweh,” and m-E as “an
angel of God.”
Of course, the grammatical rule of “second
mention” would always make it proper on the second use to translate, “the angel
of Yahweh.” The LXX does this for angelos Kyriou (the linguistic equivalent
of m-Y) in Judg 2:3, following the anarthrous use in Judg 2:1. Justification
for including the article might also be theological as is done in the RSV
for all instances except one (1 Sam 29:9). Much as translators have been prone
to keep “thee” and “thou” in referring to deity, so they are inclined to designate
with the article anything that belongs to God. For instance, to the reverent
ear “the finger of God” sounds more majestic than “a finger of God.”
Concerning “an angel” sent by God to
guard and direct Israel, the text says: “My name is in him” (Exod 23:20, 21). Can
one legitimately use this saying to justify the equation of “the angel of God”
with God the Son? Hardly, for the term and its counterpart, “the angel of
Yahweh,” are not to be found in the context here, just as they are missing in
all the most sensational of the christophanic episodes, namely, the
incidents of the one—actually there were three—who ate veal and yogurt with
Abraham, Jacob’s opponent clinched in a night of wresting, Joshua’s strategist
for taking Jericho, and the fourth “man” in Nebuchadnezzar’s blazing furnace.
Instead of looking for a divine name cryptographically hidden in Israel’s malak
who led them through the desert, it is far more Hebraic to understand “my
name is in him” by the idiomatic paraphrase: “he has my full authority.” . . .
Furthermore, both m-Y and m-E
are non-specific enough as terms to be used also of men, e.g. of David, m-E
(1 Sam 29:9), of Haggai the prophet, m-Y (Hag 1:13), in fact, of all the
prophets (2 Chr 36:15), including the last before John the Baptist known only
as malaki (lit. my [God’s] angel, Mal 1:3), and of a priest, m-Y (Mal
2:7).
The linguistic argument for the
christological identification of m-Y reaches its nadir in the NT. The terms
angelos Kyriou (henceforth, a-K) and angelous tou Theou (a-Th)
are Hebraisms, lack the indefinite article. These terms occur without the
definite article generally in the NT and might well be translated that way in
both testaments. Action by the a-K occurred before, during, and after
the incarnation. Who was the a-K who spoke with Joseph while Jesus’
human embryo was already lodged in the womb of Mary? Once, before the incarnation,
the a-K, having been ruffled by the incredulously Zechariah, identified himself
as “Gabriel.” The biblical texts disclose parallel terms whose continuity is at
stake. According to traditional angelology, m-Y and m-E are used
congruously with a-K and a-TH. According to the angel-Christ view,
there is a glaring incongruity. The onus probandi must rest with anyone
who would deny the parallelism. (William Graham MacDonald, “Christology and ‘The
Angel of the Lord,’” in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation:
Studies in Honor of Merrill C. Tenney Presented By His Former Students, ed.
Gerald F. Hawthorne [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975], 330-31)
True Christology necessitates the
doctrine of the Trinity. Only by a false separation within God, isolating one “person”
does the angel-Christ equation take its form. (By applying the same isolating methodology
to Num 22:35-38; 24:1, 2 and Isa 63:9, 10 one would determine that the m[alak]-Y[ahweh]
in the former and the “angel of his face” in the latter were “personally” the
Spirit!) Such a theory, held by devout scholars whose motives cannot be impugned,
nevertheless discredits the very doctrine of the deity of Christ it attempts to
demonstrate. Again and again, its advocates have written, “Christ was seen, but
not the Father who is invisible.” But in the incarnation Jesus said that if one
had seen him, he had seen the Father (John 12:45; 14:8-11). If the invisibility
of the Logos, like that of God (John 1:18; 1 Tim 1:17), is not maintained in the
OT, then neither can we maintain his true and full deity there (Exod
33:20; John 1:18; 1 John 4:12, 20). (William Graham MacDonald, “Christology and
‘The Angel of the Lord,’” in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation:
Studies in Honor of Merrill C. Tenney Presented By His Former Students, ed.
Gerald F. Hawthorne [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975], 334-35, italics in
original)