CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

 Douglas Van Dorn has written a companion Q & A to Michael Heiser's The Unseen Realm. In it is an attempt to show that Christ appears throughout the Old Testament under the name "The Angel of the LORD" or "The Name of the LORD." Concerning the latter designation, Van Dorn totally skips over the name of God the Father revealed to Moses (YAHWEH) and jump to his own definition of the Name as both “God” and the angel-name of God which is also the pre-incarnate Christ. If Van Dorn is attempting here to clarify some more complicated teaching found in Heiser's book, I won't even attempt to wade through Heiser's original treatment of this subject.

“The angel of the Lord, sometimes 'the angel of God' or 'my (or 'his') angel', is represented as a heavenly being sent by God to deal with men as His personal agent and spokesman. In many passages he is virtually identified with God as an extension of the divine personality, and speaks not merely in the name of God but as God in the first person singular...Sometimes, however, he is distinguished from God, as in 2 Samuel 24:16; Zechariah 1:12-13.” This position is parallel to the many OT prophetic passages in which the prophets alternate back and forth between (a) speaking in their own name and referring to God in the third person and (b) speaking God's words directly to the people in the first person. And obviously none of those passages implies in the least that the prophets are actually God Himself.

Most of his references are to passages in the OT in which someone called the Angel of the Lord appears. The historical evangelical position on this personage is well summarized in The New Bible Dictionary, pp. 38-39:

“The angel of the Lord, sometimes 'the angel of God' or 'my (or 'his') angel', is represented as a heavenly being sent by God to deal with men as His personal agent and spokesman. In many passages he is virtually identified with God as an extension of the divine personality, and speaks not merely in the name of God but as God in the first person singular...Sometimes, however, he is distinguished from God, as in 2 Samuel 24:16; Zechariah 1:12-13.” This position is parallel to the many OT prophetic passages in which the prophets alternate back and forth between (a) speaking in their own name and referring to God in the third person and (b) speaking God's words directly to the people in the first person. And obviously none of those passages implies in the least that the prophets are actually God Himself.

A variation of this position sometimes encountered in evangelical circles, and obviously espoused in Van Dorn's book, is that the Angel of the Lord is perhaps the pre-incarnate Christ. This was actually the position of the early Church Fathers until Augustine, in light of the current Arian controversy, recognized the potential problem it caused in implying that perhaps Christ was a created being. He therefore arrived at the more nuanced understanding that the angel in the various OT passages was only representing the Son and speaking in his name. (Brevard Childs, The Book of Exodus, pp. 84-85).

However, continuing with the New Bible Dictionary article:

“In the New Testament, there is no suggestion of identity, the angel of the Lord being personalized as Gabriel in Luke 1:19. But from Acts 8:26, 29 identification with the Holy Spirit could [also] be inferred.”

Exodus 23:20-21 Note that this passage does not say the Angel of the Lord, only “an angel.” So by attempting to find Christ everywhere in the OT, the author has in actuality relegated him to only one of several entities of equal status. The Jehovah Witnesses at least have the decency to grant him the status of an archangel. In addition, if this angel is Christ then there is a contradiction between Christ leading the people during the Exodus and the statement in I Corinthians 10:4 (an admittedly rather obscure verse) which says that Christ followed the people instead.

 As far as the references to the “name of the LORD” are concerned, there is a whole developed theology around that concept in OT thought. The New Bible Dictionary summarizes it in three sections: (1) The name is the person, (2) The name is the person revealed, and (3) The name is the person actively present. So basically, “name of the LORD” is just a circumlocution for God the Father himself. A comparison of Jeremiah 1:4 and 1:9, which Van Dorn quotes, is ample demonstration of that fact and does not even hint that the Second Person of the Trinity is also mentioned. 

The only reference that might possibly be misconstrued in that manner is I Samuel 3:21, which he also quotes, that says the LORD revealed Himself through the name of the LORD. This can be explained rather easily: The obvious meaning is that the LORD revealed Himself through His word. As to why the phrase “word of the LORD” is inserted rather awkwardly (to our mind) to state that fact is in order to form an inclusio with its appearance in 3:1. An inclusio is a set of bookends identified by a phrase or word being repeated in a text so as to indicate where the passage begins and ends. Through my study of the literary structure of the Bible over the last 30 years or so, I have located hundreds of examples of this technique used in the OT and NT. They are invaluable in discerning where the proper paragraph divisions in a text should be placed.

Van Dorn also throws in a few of the hundreds of mentions of the “word of the LORD” found in the OT. It is universally accepted that this refers to the ways God revealed His will to the people through visions and speaking to His prophets. I guess Van Dorn is importing into that concept without justification the verses in John 1 where Jesus is personified as “the Word.” Why not also treat every occurrence of “way,” “truth,” “life,” “door,” etc. in the OT as a reference to Christ as well? That idea is actually not so far-fetched as it might sound. 

There was a Bible teacher in town who came to our home Bible study to present his version of Walk Through the Bible. At one point, he got really excited about an insight he had gotten from his study of the Bible. He explained that John 1 states that Christ was the light of the world. Then he coupled that with Genesis 1:3 which has God creating light on the first day. He said that this obviously refers to Christ. I took him aside later and gently pointed out that teaching this doctrine would probably get him kicked out of every evangelical church in the world. Happily, he recanted his idea, but that just shows what can happen when one begins to see the Second Person of the Trinity everywhere in the OT without sound justification.