The God Abraham Saw

Look at what Moses tells us in another place: that “God was seen by Abraham.” And yet the same Moses hears from God, “No one can see God and live.” If God cannot be seen, how was God seen? Or if he was seen, how is it that he cannot be seen? John says as well, “No one has ever seen God,” and the apostle Paul, “whom no one has seen or can see.” But the Scripture certainly does not lie. So God truly was seen. From this it can be understood that the one who was seen was not the Father, since the Father never was seen, but the Son — who has been in the habit of coming down, and of being seen because he has come down. [a]

For he is the image of the invisible God. Imperfect and frail as the human condition was, it was accustomed even then to see God the Father sometimes in the image of God — that is, in the Son of God. Human frailty was to be strengthened by the image, gradually and by degrees, up to the glory of being able one day to see God the Father. Great things are dangerous if they come suddenly. Even the sudden light of the sun after darkness, with too much splendor in it, will not show unaccustomed eyes the daylight; it will strike them blind instead. And to keep that from happening to the damage of human eyes, the darkness is broken up and scattered a little at a time. That luminary climbs by small increases nobody notices, and the gentle swelling of its rays trains our eyes to bear the full disc.

So Christ too — that is, the image of God and the Son of God — is looked at by people to the degree that he could be seen. And in this way the weakness and imperfection of our human lot is fed by him, led up, and educated: so that by getting used to looking at the Son it may one day be able to see God the Father himself as he is, and may not be struck by his sudden and unbearable brightness and so kept from seeing the God the Father it has always wanted. It is the Son, then, who is seen. But the Son of God is the Word of God, and the Word of God was made flesh and lived among us — and this is Christ. What on earth is the reason we should hesitate to call him God, when he is shown to be God in so many ways?

Then there is the angel who meets Hagar, Sarah’s slave, near the spring of water on the road to Shur, after she has been driven from home and turned out. He asks her the reason for her running away and learns it; he then advises her to humble herself. He gives her the hope of being called a mother, and pledges and promises that from her womb a numerous offspring will come, and that Ishmael will be born from her. He goes on to unfold where the boy will live and to describe the kind of life he will lead. And yet Scripture presents this angel as both Lord and God — for he would not have promised the blessing of offspring unless the angel had also been God.

Let the heretics ask themselves what they can make of this passage. Was it the Father who was seen by Hagar, or not? He is declared to be God. But far be it from us to call God the Father an angel; that would put him under someone else, whose messenger he would be. Then they will say it was an angel. But how will he be God, if he was an angel — since that name is nowhere granted to angels? There is no way out except this: from both sides the truth forces us into one opinion, that we ought to understand it to have been God the Son. He is rightly called God because he is of God, since he is the Son of God. But because he is subject to the Father and announces the Father’s will, he is declared to be the Angel of Great Counsel.

So this passage does not fit the person of the Father, since the Father would then be called an angel; and it does not fit the person of an angel, since an angel would then be called God. It does fit the person of Christ, who is both God, because he is the Son of God, and an angel, because he announces the Father’s mind. And the heretics ought to realize that they are setting themselves against the Scriptures when they say they believe Christ was an angel too and yet will not declare that he was also God — when they read in the Old Testament that he came again and again to visit the human race.

To this Moses added the case of God being seen by Abraham at the oak of Mamre, while Abraham was sitting at the opening of his tent at midday. Notice that although he had seen three men, he called one of them Lord. He washed their feet, set out loaves baked in the ashes for them, with curds and plenty of milk, and pressed them to stay as his guests and eat. After that he hears that he is to be a father, and learns that his wife Sarah will bear him a son. He is told about the destruction of the people of Sodom and what they deserve to suffer, and he learns that God had come down because of the outcry from Sodom.

Now if the heretics will have it that it was the Father who was seen at that time and received as a guest in the company of two angels, then they have believed that the Father is visible. But if it was an angel — even though one of the three angels is called Lord — why is an angel called God, which is not the usual thing? There is only one answer. So that the invisibility that properly belongs to the Father may be given back to him, and the inferiority that properly belongs to an angel may be left with the angel, it was God the Son alone, who is also God, who was seen by Abraham and was believed to have been received as a guest.

For he was running ahead, in a sacred sign, of what he was going to become. He was made Abraham’s guest, being about to live among Abraham’s children. And he washed the feet of Abraham’s children, to prove what he was — paying back in the children the hospitality their forefather had once lent him at interest.

And so that there could be no doubt that it was he who had been Abraham’s guest, at the destruction of the people of Sodom it is stated: “Then the Lord rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah fire and sulfur from the Lord out of heaven.” The prophet says the same thing, speaking as God: “I overthrew you, as the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” So the Lord overthrew Sodom — that is, God overthrew Sodom. But in the overthrowing of Sodom, the Lord rained fire from the Lord. And this Lord was the God who was seen by Abraham. And this God was Abraham’s guest, certainly seen, since he was also touched. The Father, being invisible, was assuredly not seen at that time; the one who was seen and received as a guest was the one who was in the habit of being touched and seen. But this one is the Son of God: “The Lord rained from the Lord on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire.” And this is the Word of God, and the Word of God was made flesh and lived among us — and this is Christ. So it was not the Father who was a guest with Abraham, but Christ. It was not the Father who was seen then, but the Son; and Christ was seen. Rightly, then, Christ is both Lord and God, who could not have been seen by Abraham in any other way, except that as God the Word he was begotten of God the Father before Abraham himself.

Moreover, Scripture says, the same Angel and God visits and comforts this same Hagar when she is driven out with her son from Abraham’s household. Out in the desert she had laid the child aside, because the water in the skin had run short; and when the boy cried out and she raised her weeping and wailing, “God heard,” says the Scripture, “the voice of the boy from the place where he was.” Having told us that it was God who heard the child’s voice, it adds: “And the angel of the Lord called to Hagar out of heaven” — calling him an angel whom it had just called God, and pronouncing him Lord whom it had set out as an angel. And this Angel and God promises Hagar greater comfort still, saying, “Do not be afraid, for I have heard the voice of the boy from the place where he is. Get up, take the boy and hold him, for I will make him into a great nation.”

Why does this angel — if he is only an angel — claim for himself the right to say, I will make him into a great nation, when that kind of power surely belongs to God and cannot belong to an angel? This too confirms that he is God, since he is able to do it. And to prove exactly that point, Scripture immediately adds: “And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of running water; and she went and filled the skin from the well and gave it to the boy; and God was with the boy.”

So this God who was with the boy is the one who opened Hagar’s eyes, so that she could see the well of running water and draw from it for the boy’s desperate thirst. And this God who calls her from heaven is called an angel, although a moment before, when he heard the crying boy’s voice, he was rather God. He is understood to be an angel in just the same way as he was also God.

And since this cannot apply or belong to the Father, who is God only, but can apply to Christ, who is declared to be not only God but an angel as well, it plainly appears that it was not the Father who spoke to Hagar in this way, but rather Christ — since he is God, and the name of angel is applied to him too, because he became the “angel of great counsel.” And he is the angel in that he makes the Father’s heart known, as John sets it out. For if John himself says that the very one who makes the Father’s heart known — the Word — became flesh in order to make the Father’s heart known, then Christ is certainly not only man, but angel as well; and not only angel, but the Scriptures show him to be God as well. And this is what we believe. For if we will not agree to grasp that it was Christ who then spoke to Hagar, we must either make an angel God, or reckon God the Father Almighty among the angels.