What Is a Christophany? Christ Before Bethlehem

Question 2109.

A Christophany is an appearance of the Son of God before His incarnation – the eternal Christ showing Himself to people in the Old Testament, centuries before Bethlehem. The word is built like its cousin “theophany”: Christos, “Christ”, plus phaino, “to appear”. Where a theophany is any visible appearing of God, a Christophany names the One I am persuaded was doing most of the appearing: God the Son.

If that idea is new to you, it may sound like reading the New Testament back into the Old. I want to show you the opposite is true: it is the New Testament itself that insists the Son did not begin at Bethlehem, and it is the Old Testament itself that keeps showing us a divine figure who can be seen, who speaks as God and yet is sent by God. Put the two together and a Christophany is not a clever theory; it is the natural reading.

What Is a Christophany, Exactly?

Let me define it carefully. A Christophany is a temporary, visible manifestation of the pre-incarnate Son of God within creation. Like every theophany – and I would encourage you to read What is a theophany? alongside this article – it is temporary and localised. The Son appeared in a form, accomplished His purpose, and the appearance ended. This is quite different from the incarnation, where the Son took a true and permanent human nature. More on that distinction below, because confusing the two causes real trouble. For now, hold the simple thought: every Christophany is a theophany, but not every theophany names the Son so clearly.

Why expect the Son in particular? Because of how Scripture distributes the work of revelation within the Trinity. “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18). The Father is the unseen fountain; the Son is the One who makes Him known – the Word who expresses, “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), “the radiance of the glory of God” (Hebrews 1:3). Revelation is the Son’s eternal job description, not a role He picked up in the first century. So when God is seen in the Old Testament, the consistent biblical pattern points to a Christophany rather than to an appearance of the Father.

Jesus’ Own Claim About the Old Testament

The strongest warrant comes from Jesus Himself, in a confrontation recorded in John 8. The argument is about Abraham, and Jesus says something no mere rabbi could say:

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” … Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

John 8:56, 58 (ESV)

“Before Abraham was, I am” – present tense, the language of the divine name revealed at the bush, which is why His hearers picked up stones. Jesus places Himself personally in the patriarchal era. Paul does the same for the wilderness years: Israel “drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). And Jude, in one striking reading preserved in the ESV, says it was “Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt” (Jude 5). The New Testament writers had no difficulty finding the Son at work, in person, throughout Israel’s story.

The Clearest Examples of a Christophany

Pride of place belongs to the Angel of the LORD, the mysterious Messenger who appears to Hagar, Abraham, Moses, Gideon and Manoah, who speaks as God in the first person, receives worship and bears the divine name. I have devoted a full article to him – Is the Angel of the LORD the pre-incarnate Christ? – so here I simply note that he is the backbone of the case.

But he is not alone. Joshua, on the eve of Jericho, meets a man with a drawn sword who names himself “the commander of the army of the LORD”. Joshua falls on his face and worships, and far from refusing the worship – as a faithful created angel always does – the commander accepts it and orders, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy” (Joshua 5:14-15). Sandals off, holy ground: the burning bush all over again. I am persuaded Joshua met his true Commander, the Son of God, before the walls fell.

Then there is the furnace in Daniel 3. Nebuchadnezzar throws three men in and sees four, “and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods” (Daniel 3:25). Now, that is a pagan king’s description, and I hold it loosely – it may have been an angel, as Nebuchadnezzar himself later says (3:28). But the picture of one like a son of the gods walking with the faithful in the fire is, at the very least, a portrait of what the Son of God does; and many careful interpreters down the centuries have seen a Christophany in that furnace. I incline that way myself, while flagging it as a place where Scripture allows godly readers to differ.

One further example deserves its place, and it comes with an inspired interpretation attached. In the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6:1), and the seraphim covered their faces before Him. Seven centuries later, John tells us plainly whom the prophet saw: “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him” – and the “him” of the passage is Jesus (John 12:41). The enthroned King whose train filled the temple was the Son. If you want a Christophany certified by the New Testament itself, Isaiah’s vision is the clearest case of all.

A Christophany Is Not the Incarnation

Here is the distinction that keeps the doctrine healthy. In a Christophany, the Son appeared in a created form – usually human – for a season. At Mamre He ate Sarah’s meal and had His feet washed; at Peniel He wrestled in the dust. But He did not become that man; the form was a garment, put on and laid aside. At the incarnation, by contrast, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Became – not simply appeared as. He was conceived, born, grew, hungered, died, rose, and remains man for ever, the one mediator between God and men, “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

So a Christophany is a preview; the incarnation is the performance. The previews tell us the Son was always the God who draws near; the incarnation tells us how near He was willing to come. To collapse the two would cheapen Bethlehem, and to deny the previews would orphan Bethlehem from the whole sweep of the story, in which there is plurality within the one God from the very beginning – something I have traced in Is the Trinity in the Old Testament?

Tests and Cautions

A word of restraint before we finish, because enthusiasm can outrun evidence. Not every angel in the Old Testament is a Christophany. Gabriel is a named, created angel; so is Michael. The “two angels” who entered Sodom were angels, full stop. How do we test a candidate? I look for three marks: the figure speaks as God in the first person rather than carrying a message about God; the figure receives worship without rebuking the worshipper; and the narrative identifies the figure with the LORD Himself. Where those marks are present – Mamre, Peniel, the bush, Joshua’s commander – I am confident. Where they are absent, I leave the question alone. The doctrine does not need padding; the clear cases are glorious enough. Held with those restraints, a Christophany is not a flight of fancy; it is sober exegesis. And remember the purpose: a Christophany is given to reveal the Lord and serve His covenant, never to satisfy curiosity about the mechanics of heaven.

So, now what?

Let the truth of a Christophany do two things for you. First, let it unify your Bible. The Old Testament is not the story of a distant deity who finally sent His Son as a last resort; the Son was there all along – walking with Abraham, wrestling with Jacob, calling Moses, commanding Joshua, standing in the fire. The Jesus you pray to has been personally pursuing His people since Eden. The whole book is about Him, just as He said (Luke 24:27).

Second, let it deepen your confidence in His character. Every Christophany shows the same Lord: He comes to the desperate, He keeps covenant, He shares the furnace. What He did in temporary form then, He does by His Spirit now, and one day you will see Him without any veil at all – “they will see his face” (Revelation 22:4).

So read your Old Testament with new eyes this week. When the LORD shows up in the story, pause and ask: am I looking at my Saviour? More often than not, I believe you are. Does that not make you want to read it again?