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2 - Divine Visibility

from Part I - God and Visibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2025

Luke Irwin
Affiliation:
Covenant College, Georgia
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Summary

Recognizing God in Jesus may be the goal of belief, but one must ask whether God himself is available for recognition. Chapter 2, ‘Divine Visibility’, argues that John’s Christology affirms the visibility of God by reconciling the notion of an ‘unseen’ God to the visibility of the Father that Jesus presents. It proposes that John 1:18a is best read as ‘no one has ever [fully] seen God [yet]’. Three pieces of evidence support this claim, chief among them a survey of Early Jewish, biblical, and Rabbinic literature revealing that one may not assume that all – or, perhaps, even many – Hellenized Jews embraced Platonist notions of invisibility. If one reads John’s God as ‘unseen’, rather than as ‘invisible’, the visibility of God in Jesus becomes possible and the tension between the seeing and not seeing God passages can be resolved.

Type
Chapter
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Jesus and the Visibility of God
Sight and Belief in the Fourth Gospel
, pp. 68 - 88
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Divine Visibility
  • Luke Irwin, Covenant College, Georgia
  • Book: Jesus and the Visibility of God
  • Online publication: 18 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009477055.005
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  • Divine Visibility
  • Luke Irwin, Covenant College, Georgia
  • Book: Jesus and the Visibility of God
  • Online publication: 18 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009477055.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Divine Visibility
  • Luke Irwin, Covenant College, Georgia
  • Book: Jesus and the Visibility of God
  • Online publication: 18 January 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009477055.005
Available formats
×