Saturday, December 10, 2022

Robin M. Jensen (RC) on the Bible and the Question of God being Invisible

  

A number of biblical passages complicate assertions of the divine Being’s imperceptibility and indicate some ambiguity about God’s absolute and consistent invisibility. Consequently, they also raise the question of whether divine representations are truly impossible. Significantly, the only Hebrew scripture texts that seem to imply God’s invisibility is a passage in Deuteronomy in which Moses reminds the Israelites that they saw no form when the Lord spoke to them at Horeb and heard only a voice speaking from the midst of the fire (Deut 4:12-13). Yet even this passage does not say that God is invisible—only that the Israelites could not see the divine form. Furthermore, Hebrew scripture stores in which individuals encounter God as a physical presence imply that God can be seen as well as heard.

 

The New Testament contains passages, however, that firmly assert God’s essential invisibility and the human inability to see God. The prologue to the fourth gospel proclaims that no one has ever seen God (John 1:18)—which, however, once again does not precisely say that God is invisible. The Epistle to the Hebrews states that Moses persevered against Pharaoh’s anger as though he had seen the One who is invisible (Heb 11:27). The clearest assertion of God’s invisibility comes from the First Epistle to Timothy, which describes God as dwelling in unapproachable light and says no one has ever seen or can see God (1 Tim 1:17, 6:16). (Robin M. Jensen, From Idols to Icons: The Rise of the Devotional Image in Early Christianity [Oakland, Calif.: University of California Press, 2022], 53)

 

Further Reading:


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