Monday, July 28, 2025

V. A. Spence Little: Old Testament Theophanes were the Person of the Premortal Jesus

  

In fact, the Old Testament, as Justin shows, contains a number of passages which record the existence of a Supreme and Secondary God, e.g., in the account of the three visitors to Abraham, One remained behind, that One is “the Lord Who is from the Lord in the heavens,” and the same Being is the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Who appeared in human form to Jacob. And again, the expressions, “Let us make man,” and “Adam has become like One of us,” shows that “there is a certain number of (Divine) persons associated together, at least two.” From the above passages, Justin concludes that “it must be admitted that some other (Being) is called Lord . . . besides the Maker of all things.” There are, therefore, two Divine Beings, two Gods, two different Divine Persons in the Godhead existing in perfect moral union and identical in Essence, though both are not equally, and in all senses, God. (V. A. Spence Little, The Christology of the Apologists [London: Duckworth, 1934], 169-70)