“A theologically rich, spiritually edifying exploration of all that the Bible says about an awe-striking reality.” —Dennis Johnson Each time God appears to his people throughout the Bible—in the form of a thunderstorm, a man, a warrior, a chariot, etc.—he comes to a specific person for a specific purpose. And each of these temporary appearances— called theophanies—helps us to better understand who he is, anticipating his climactic, permanent self-revelation in the incarnation of Christ. Describing the various accounts of God’s visible presence from Genesis to Revelation, theologian Vern S. Poythress helps us consider more deeply what they reveal about who God is and how he dwells with us today.

The work of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite stands at a cusp in the history of thought: it is at once Hellenic and Christian, classical and medieval, philosophical and theological. Unlike the predominantly theological or text-historical studies which constitute much of the scholarly literature on Dionysius, Theophany is completely philosophical in nature, placing Dionysius within the tradition of ancient Greek philosophy and emphasizing, in a positive light, his continuity with the non-Christian Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus. Eric D. Perl offers clear expositions of the reasoning that underlies Neoplatonic philosophy and explains the argumentation that leads to and supports Neoplatonic doctrines. He includes extensive accounts of fundamental ideas in Plotinus and Proclus, as well as Dionysius himself, and provides an excellent philosophical defense of Neoplatonism in general.

Hilary Anne-Marie Mooney investigates the notion of theophany in the writings of the early medieval thinker Johannes Scottus Eriugena. She focuses on the creative impulses which he draws from the Scripture and she investigates the influence of theological and philosophical thinkers of the first six Christian centuries on Eriugena. The author considers those passages of Eriugena's writings in which the precise term 'theophany' is used as well as other passages in which the term does not occur but which are nonetheless imbued with the 'notion' of a theophanic appearing of God. These traces of theophanic understanding of the revealing of God are considered within Eriugena's oeuvre as a whole, including his biblical commentaries. In her study, the author maintains that a theophanic structure characterized by four recurring facets may be unearthed in Eriugena's theology of the revealing of God. In the various contexts within which he writes about this divine revealing (in his theology of creation, his anthropology, his account of the relationship between human beings and God as seen from the perspective of a Christian spirituality), it is the notion of theophany which he uses to illuminate the relationship between that which is created and its creator. In doing so, he bequeaths a rich theological analysis of the appearing of God to subsequent generations of theologians and shows himself to be both a coherent and creative thinker.

Theophanies, or manifestations of God, occur throughout the Old Testament. In this in-depth look at God's self-manifestations, Niehaus reveals their unity and how they relate to and differ from ancient Near Eastern myths and legends. *Lightning Print On Demand Title

Using light as fil rouge reuniting theology and ritual with the architecture, decoration, and iconography of cultic spaces, the present study argues that the mise-en-scène of fifth-century baptism and sixth-century episcopal liturgy was meant to reproduce the luminous atmosphere of heaven. Analysing the material culture of the two sacraments against common ritual expectations and Christian theology, we evince the manner in which the luminous effect was reached through a combination of constructive techniques and perceptual manipulation. One nocturnal and one diurnal, the two ceremonials represented different scenarios, testifying to the capacity of church builders and willingness of Late Antique bishops to stage the ritual experience in order to offer God to the senses.

The appearances of the Lord Jesus in Genesis and other parts of the Old Testament.

Early Christians interpreted the biblical theophany narratives as manifestations of Christ, yet Augustine challenged and reconfigured this view. Developing over centuries into two major exegetical strands, the transformation of theophany interpretation reveals the critical and adaptive capacity of patristic exegesis.