The fourth part of my ten part treatment of the Transfiguration and Christian reading of Scripture went online earlier today on Reformation21.

The claim in John 1:18–‘no one has seen God at any time’–is a statement that needs to be qualified (cf. Exodus 24:10-11, which explicitly says that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel ‘saw’ the God of Israel). Exodus 33:20 helps us to clear up what might be meant here. No one can see God’s ‘face’ and live, while Moses could see God’s back. Ezekiel saw the figure of a ‘likeness with the appearance of a man’ (the accumulation of phenomenological terms is important here, serving as linguistic veils at points beyond which direct expression dare not tread) in Ezekiel 1:26-28. However, while the body is described both above and below the waist, no description of the face is given. Moses saw the pre-existent Son, but not as we see him. The face is the focal point of the person’s identity–their countenance. By contrast with the theophanies of the OT, Jesus’ face is central at the Transfiguration (this is also the case in Revelation 1, which shares with Matthew 17:2 the description of Jesus’ face shining like the sun in its glory). In Jesus, God’s face is finally seen.

Read the rest here.