Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Andrew Malone on God being "Invisible" and 1 Timothy 1:17 and 6:16


Commenting on the term αορατος (“unseen”/”invisible”) as used in texts such as Col 1:15, Andrew Malone, himself a Trinitarian, wrote the following:

The meaning of ‘invisible’

Scholars may sometimes intend ‘invisible’ in a nuanced fashion. But the word is no longer adequate as a convenient shorthand. It is now too easily misunderstood and any nuance overlooked. We need to reconsider what we understand when encountering this word—and what the biblical authors themselves intended us to understand . . . As the Old Testament drew to a close, Greek thought increasingly flourished. Philosophers such as Plato (428-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) probed the visible and invisible realms. Plato especially was fond of describing divinity negatively: God should be unlike anything in the imperfect created order. If creation is ‘visible’, by definition God must be ‘in-visible’. And so a new Greek term was birthed. The adjective for ‘visible’, oratos (itself only recent; sometimes written horatos), yielded a-oratos. It’s aoratos that occurs in key New Testament passages (Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17; Heb. 11:27) and that has cemented the notion of ‘invisible’ in Christian language.

Before considering such passages, it is instructive to consider how other Greek authors of the era understood and used the word.

Josephus’ life overlapped with Jesus’ disciples’ (AD 37-100). Josephus uses aoratos to depict things that ‘are not seen’ more than things that strictly ‘cannot be seen’. At least five of his seven uses mean this. He describes the off-limits interior of the Jewish temple, a city concealed in the mountains, a cave at the bottom of a well, and the deep valleys around the fortress mesa of Masada. Only once does he describe something intrinsically invisible, the human soul, which ‘remains invisible to human eyes, just as God himself’. This application, including mention of God, is important. But the other uses show that aoratos confirms only that something is unseen; it does not explain why the object cannot be viewed (Respectively, Josephus, Jewish War 1.7.6 §152 [Antiquities 14.4.4 §71]; 3.7.7 §160; 3.8.1. §341; 7.8.3 §280; 7.8.7 §346).

This same sense is attested by another contemporary author, Plutarch (AD 46-120). Souls and divine forces are ‘invisible’, especially when he echoes forebears such as Plato and Aristotle. Yet Plutarch also uses the word for tangible items hidden from view. He writes of captive women who have been cloistered from men, ‘incommunicado and invisible to others’. He describes war catapults and signal fires strategically stationed to be ‘invisible to the enemies’ (Respectively, Plutarch, Alexander 21.3; Marcellus 15.5; Romulus 29.5). The Greek word aoratos has the broader sense, and the English translation ‘invisible’ may be too narrow or misunderstood.

Scholars who delve into the origins and applications of the word confirm this broader sense. One wide-ranging study of theophanies summarizes it this way: ‘In Classical Greek invisibility is normally affected [sic] by materially obstructing visibility’; it is not at all a statement about (in)tangibility. A standard Greek dictionary like-wise promulgates this breadth of meaning: ‘unseen, not to be seen, invisible’ (Respectively, W. Wesley Williams, ‘Tajallī wa-Ru’ya: A Study of Anthropomorphic Theophany and Visio Dei in the Hebrew Bible, the Qur’ān and Early Sunnī Islam’ [PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008], p. 30-34 [quote on p. 31]; Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon [Oxford: Clarendon, 1889], p. 86).

This is further affirmed by similar negated adjectives in the New Testament. Preaching in Athens, Paul mentions an altar dedicated ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD’ (Acts 17:23). Paul means ‘a god not currently known’ rather than one forever knowable. Jesus fences with the Pharisees about people eating with ‘unwashed hands’ (Matt. 15:20). He obviously means hands that ‘have not been washed’ rather than those that ‘cannot be washed’ (cf. Mark 7:2, esp. NRSV). The general consensus, backed by Paul’s own explanation, is that the ‘inexpressible words’ he heard in a heavenly vision are not cleared for publication (2 Cor. 12:4, esp. NRSV, ESV); it’s less likely he is describing concepts for which there is no adequate language. A similar phrase occurs elsewhere as Paul describes the Spirit’s interceding through ‘unspoken groanings’ (Rom. 8:26 HCSB); though less consensus exists here, most scholars again affirm that the Spirit could (but does not) articulate his intercessions.

In short, there’s every basis to take such negated adjectives as describing something that, for whatever reason, does not happen. There is no claim being made as to whether it could happen or not. This means it’s far wiser to translate aoratos as something that is currently ‘unseen’, not something that is permanently ‘invisible’. (Andrew Malone, Knowing Jesus in the Old Testament? A Fresh Look at Christophanies [Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2015], 47-50)

In other words, as LDS apologists have been arguing for a long time, αορατος is not about the ontological nature of God; instead, it just means God is “unseen” in the sense we cannot see him, not that it is impossible to see him as he has no “form” or is, ontologically, invisible. On Col 1:15, see Anthony Hoekema on Man being in the "Image" and "Likeness" of God

With respect to 1 Tim 1:17 and 6:16, two common "proof-texts" against the historicity of the First Vision, Malone wrote:

In the first and last chapters of this letter, Paul breaks into praise of ‘the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God . . . who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see’. Once again, the New Testament seems to teach that God cannot be seen and, thus, has not been. Case closed? . . . this may be a way of praising God’s excellence without fully defining him as never seen, never mortal, and so on. Thus we need to determine whether Paul is praising God this way because God is unique in all these respects or whether Paul is using this idiom as part of his rhetoric without intending the claims to be taken as absolutes.

Long story short: reading these as absolute claims creates many more difficulties than if we see them as a way of exalting God with superlative idioms. Consider the problems if we insist that Paul is being completely definitive.

The word ‘only’ recurs several times in these doxologies, praising ‘the only God’, ‘the . . . only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone [only] is immortal’ (1:17; 6:15-16). We have to presume that Paul is describing God the Father; if the Son is addressed in any way, a new dilemma is created with the Son himself praised as ‘invisible’! But then it’s the Father who is the ‘only Ruler’. Common sense tells us that the word ‘only’ is being used in a special way, not least because there are other human rulers named in Scripture (e.g., Luke 1:52; Acts 8:27). Moreover, the last book of the Bible says it’s the resurrected Lamb—God the Son—who is the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 1:5; 17:14; 19:16; cf. Jude 4).

And what does it mean that the Father is ‘the only One who has immortality’ (1 Tim. 6:16 HCSB)? Have we just denied the immortality of the Son and Spirit? Paul teaches elsewhere that our own mortal bodies look forward to ‘immortality’ and ‘the imperishable’ (1 Cor. 15:53-54), the same terms that belong ‘only’ to the Father according to 1 Timothy (though not always clear in English translations).

Rather, words like ‘only’ must have a relative sense. God is being contrasted with any potential rival and protected from any comparison. Paul ‘affirms four truths about God’s sovereign power, four ways in which he is altogether beyond human control or manipulation’ (John R. W. Stott, The Meaning of 1 Timothy & Titus, BST [Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996], p. 159). In idol-filled Ephesus, where Timothy is ministering, pagans could approach and view their gods at any time. But the true God, by comparison, is unapproachable and invisible. Again we’re dealing with relative language. As in the Old Testament and John’s Gospel, Paul is emphasizing that our God cannot just be tracked down on a human whim. The Old and New Testaments affirm that God can be approached—through Jesus. Relatively speaking, God is unapproachable. Relatively speaking, he is the only one who controls immortality. Relatively speaking, God is not seen. Although it can feel like a subtle distinction, ‘contrasted with the visible’ is not the same as saying ‘never visible’.

And so the notion of the Father’s invisibility—the foundational evidence for Old Testament theophanies being construed as christophanies—continues to evaporate. (Ibid., 61-62, emphasis in bold added; cf. James Stutz, Can a Man See God? 1 Timothy 6:16 in Light of Ancient and Modern Revelation)

To claim that God (the Father) cannot be seen rests on eisegesis, not sound exegesis, of the biblical texts. It is refreshing to see even Trinitarians and others who would be not friendly towards Latter-day Saint theology admit to this.