Doug Van Dorn- They Knew:The Church Never Lost the Angel

Right, yeah.

Yeah, so that's actually an area that I think, and I think you and I agree on this, I think the church fathers did at times slightly overstate things, right? Or they took John's statement in John 1 that no one has ever seen God as a reference to the Father.

But almost beginning to say there's an ontological difference between the Father and the Son.

We're like...

The father cannot be seen and the son can be seen.

And that's not exactly accurate.

Here's what people

always bring up.

It's John 1.

No one has ever seen the father.

And that's why John says, but God, the only God who's at the father's side, has made him known to us.

You know, the way that we take this in that appendix in the paper is that yet the father, he actually can be seen.

But how do you make sense of that? And maybe maybe there's two parts of this.

First is, can we show that the father has can be seen? And second part is, then what in the world is John trying to say there?

Well, let me get real concrete, practical with it.

You have a passage like Daniel 7, the vision that Daniel sees of the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days.

And in the vision, the Ancient of Days takes his seat among the council.

And then the Son of Man comes and is presented to the Ancient of Days.

Well, well, there's a vision where certainly something of the Father is being seen in the supernatural realm.

And then the Son is coming into the council and being given this forever kingdom as a decree in the supernatural realm.

And so there's at least one passage where in the Old Testament, we're not given any description of it, but there was some vision of the Father there.

And so, you know, I think you've got to be careful using, you know, verses like whom no eye has seen or can see or no one has seen God to say that, well, the son is seeable, but the father is not in the Old Testament.

Because I think that becomes theologically dangerous to say there's a ontological difference between between the father and the son.

I think some of those invisibility passages are more trying to say that there's a mystery and that ultimately the essence of God is unseeable, but there's a kind of a gradient revelation of God, even in his persons that is possible at the prerogative of God.

And the Father at times, there's something of the Father that is seen as active.