Jesus was an Angel?

[goldenchild17]

Okay yeah wierd question. But I never thought about it.


In a discussion on Mary(yeah we're off on angels right now but anyways...) This is what was said:

[quote]Ok. i did a little research. The Angel that Zecheriah is speaking of I believe is Jesus. "Angel" is capitalized. Why would this Angel be capitalized if He wasn't Jesus? Here are some more references to the Angel of the Lord:

Genesis 16:7
Genesis 16:9
Genesis 16:10
Genesis 16:11
Genesis 22:11
Genesis 22:15
Exodus 3:2
Numbers 22:22
Numbers 22:23
Numbers 22:24
Numbers 22:25
Numbers 22:26
Numbers 22:27
Numbers 22:31
Numbers 22:32
Numbers 22:34
Numbers 22:35
Judges 2:1
Judges 2:4
Judges 5:23
Judges 6:11
Judges 6:12
Judges 6:21
Judges 6:22
Judges 13:3
Judges 13:13
Judges 13:15
Judges 13:16
Judges 13:17
Judges 13:18
Judges 13:20
Judges 13:21
2 Samuel 24:16
1 Kings 19:35
2 Kings 1:3
2 Kings 1:15
2 Kings 19:35
1 Chronicles 21:12
1 Chronicles 21:15
1 Chronicles 21:16
1 Chronicles 21:18
1 Chronicles 21:30
Psalm 34:7
Psalm 35:5
Psalm 35:6
Isaiah 37:36
Zechariah 1:11
Zechariah 1:12
Zechariah 3:1
Zechariah 3:5
Zechariah 3:6
Zechariah 12:8

Almost everytime that Angel is not capitalized there is a side note that says "or Angel." Why would an Angel be capitalized unless this Angel is held in higher regards than the other angels. Only God is higher than the angels, correct?[/quote]

First is it correct to believe that some of these passages do indeed have Jesus as an angel? I don't know how to read some of the passages. But I still think the passage in Zechariah 1:12-17 refers to an angel other than God. Here's the thread I'm in for background so you can see what I'm talking about. [url="http://christianguitar.org/forums/showthread.php?t=106894"]http://christianguitar.org/forums/showthread.php?t=106894[/url]

Other than this little catch everything is going really well.

[phatcatholic]

i'll have to do more research, but, according to [b][url="http://bible1.crosswalk.com/Dictionaries/BakersEvangelicalDictionary/bed.cgi?number=T33"]Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Theology[/url][/b], your opponent might be on to something:[list][b]Angel of the Lord[/b]

(Heb. [i]mal'ak yehwah[/i]). Supernatural being who bears a message on behalf of God. In many passages in the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord is identified with God, while in other instances a distinction is made between the Lord and the angel. In general, however, the terms "the angel of the Lord, " "the Lord, " and "God" are interchangeable.

The angel of the Lord is the messenger of both good and evil. He comes to Hagar after she has fled from the abusive Sarai (Gen 16:7-14) to assure her that God has heard about her misery and that her descendants will be too numerous to count. She names him "You are the God who sees me" (v. 13). The angel of the Lord pronounces a curse on the people of Meroz, because they refused to come to the help of the Lord (Jud 5:23).

The angel of the Lord executes judgment on behalf of the Lord. He puts to death 185, 000 Assyrian soldiers in their camp, thereby saving Jerusalem from decimation (2 Ki 19:35).

The angel of the Lord both commissions and commends God's servants. The commander of the Lord's army commissions Joshua to undertake the Lord's battles for Canaan, just as Moses had been commissioned to confront Pharaoh (Joshua 5:13-15; cf. Exod 3:5). The angel of the Lord appears to Abraham. He stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac and commends him because he has not withheld his only son from God (Gen 22:11-18). Abraham identifies the angel as God, calling the place "The Lord Will Provide."

The angel of the Lord carries out a ministry of reconciliation. He asks how long God will withhold mercy from Jerusalem and Judah (Zec 1:12).

The connection between the angel of the Lord and the preincarnate appearance of the Messiah cannot be denied. Manoah meets the angel of the Lord, and declares that he has seen God. The angel accepts worship from Manoah and his wife as no mere angel, and refers to himself as "Wonderful, " the same term applied to the coming deliverer in Isaiah 9:6 (Jud 13:9-22). The functions of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament prefigure the reconciling ministry of Jesus. In the New Testament, there is no mention of the angel of the Lord; the Messiah himself is this person.

Louis Goldberg

See also [b][url="http://bible1.crosswalk.com/Dictionaries/BakersEvangelicalDictionary/bed.cgi?number=T690"]Theophany[/url][/b]
[/list]see also this, from [b][url="http://bible1.crosswalk.com/Dictionaries/SmithsBibleDictionary/smt.cgi?number=T315"]Smith's Bible Dictionary[/url][/b]:[list][b]Angel of the Lord[/b]

(Genesis 16:7) etc. (The special form in which God manifested himself to man, and hence Christ’s visible form before the incarnation. Compare (Acts 7:30-38) with the corresponding Old-Testament history; and (Genesis 18:1,13,14,33) and Genesis 19:1 )
[/list]i'll keep looking

pax christi,
phatcatholic

Edited July 26, 2005 by phatcatholic

[phatcatholic]

the following section, from the New Advent entry on [url="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01476d.htm"][b]Angels[/b][/url] is amazingly enlightening. [i][b]read the whole thing[/b][/i]:[list][b]The Term "Angel" In The Septuagint [/b]

We have had occasion to mention the Septuagint version more than once, and it may not be amiss to indicate a few passages where it is our only source of information regarding the angels. The best known passage is Is., ix, 6, where the Septuagint gives the name of the Messias, as "the Angel of great Counsel". We have already drawn attention to Job, xx, 15, where the Septuagint reads "Angel" instead of "God", and to xxxvi, 14, where there seems to be question of evil angels. In ix 7, Septuagint (B) adds: "He is the Hebrew (v, 19) say of "Behemoth": "He is the beginning of the ways of God, he that made him shall make his sword to approach him:, the Septuagint reads: "He is the beginning of God's creation, made for His Angels to mock at", and exactly the same remark is made about "Leviathan", xli, 24. We have already seen that the Septuagint generally renders the term "sons of God" by "angels", but in Deut., xxxii, 43, the Septuagint has an addition in which both terms appear: "Rejoice in Him all ye heavens, and adore Him all ye angels of God; rejoice ye nations with His people, and magnify Him all ye Sons of God." Nor does the Septuagint merely give us these additional references to angels; it sometimes enables us to correct difficult passages concerning them in the Vulgate and Massoretic text. Thus the difficult Elim of MT in Job, xli, 17, which the Vulgate renders by "angels", becomes "wild beasts" in the Septuagint version. The early ideas as to the personality of the various angelic appearances are, as we have seen, remarkably vague. At first the angels are regarded in quite an impersonal way (Gen., xvi, 7). They are God's vice-regents and are often identified with the Author of their message (Gen., xlviii, 15-16). But while we read of "the Angels of God" meeting Jacob (Gen., xxxii, 1) we at other times read of one who is termed "the Angel of God" par excellence, e.g. Gen., xxxi, 11. It is true that, owing to the Hebrew idiom, this may mean no more than "an angel of God", and the Septuagint renders it with or without the article at will; yet the three visitors at Mambre seem to have been of different ranks, though St. Paul (Heb., xiii, 2) regarded them all as equally angels; as the story in Ge., xiii, develops, the speaker is always "the Lord". Thus in the account of the Angel of the Lord who visited Gideon (Judges, vi), the visitor is alternately spoken of as "the Angel of the Lord" and as "the Lord". Similarly, in Judges, xiii, the Angel of the Lord appears, and both Manue and his wife exclaim: "We shall certainly die because we have seen God." This want of clearness is particularly apparent in the various accounts of the Angel of Exodus. In Judges, vi, just now referred to, the Septuagint is very careful to render the Hebrew "Lord" by "the Angel of the Lord"; but in the story of the Exodus it is the Lord who goes before them in the pillar of a cloud (Exod., xiii 21), and the Septuagint makes no change (cf. also Num., xiv, 14, and Neh., ix, 7-20. Yet in Exod., xiv, 19, their guide is termed "the Angel of God". When we turn to Exod., xxxiii, where God is angry with His people for worshipping the golden calf, it is hard not to feel that it is God Himself who has hitherto been their guide, but who now refuses to accompany them any longer. God offers an angel instead, but at Moses's petition He says (14) "My face shall go before thee", which the Septuagint reads by autos though the following verse shows that this rendering is clearly impossible, for Moses objects: "If Thou Thyself dost not go before us, bring us not out of this place." But what does God mean by "my face"? Is it possible that some angel of specially high rank is intended, as in Is., lxiii, 9 (cf. Tobias, xii, 15)? May not this be what is meant by "the angel of God" (cf. Num., xx, 16)?

That a process of evolution in theological thought accompanied the gradual unfolding of God's revelation need hardly be said, but it is especially marked in the various views entertained regarding the person of the Giver of the Law. The Massoretic text as well as the Vulgate of Exod., iii and xix-xx clearly represent the Supreme Being as appearing to Moses in the bush and on Mount Sinai; but the Septuagint version, while agreeing that it was God Himself who gave the Law, yet makes it "the angel of the Lord" who appeared in the bush. By New Testament times the Septuagint view has prevailed, and it is now not merely in the bush that the angel of the Lord, and not God Himself appears, but the angel is also the Giver of the Law (cf. Gal., iii, 19; Heb., ii, 2; Acts, vii, 30). The person of "the angel of the Lord" finds a counterpart in the personification of Wisdom in the Sapiential books and in at least one passage (Zach., iii, 1) it seems to stand for that "Son of Man" whom Daniel (vii, 13) saw brought before "the Ancient of Days". Zacharias says: "And the Lord showed me Jesus the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan stood on His right hand to be His adversary". Tertullian regards many of these passages as preludes to the Incarnation; as the Word of God adumbrating the sublime character in which He is one day to reveal Himself to men (cf. adv, Prax., xvi; adv. Marc., II, 27; III, 9: I, 10, 21, 22). It is possible, then, that in these confused views we can trace vague gropings after certain dogmatic truths regarding the Trinity, reminiscences perhaps of the early revelation of which the Protevangelium in Ge., iii is but a relic. The earlier Fathers, going by the letter of the text, maintained that it was actually God Himself who appeared. he who appeared was called God and acted as God. It was not unnatural then for Tertullian, as we have already seen, to regard such manifestations in the light of preludes to the Incarnation, and most of the Eastern Fathers followed the same line of thought. It was held as recently as 1851 by Vandenbroeck, "Dissertatio Theologica de Theophaniis sub Veteri Testamento" (Louvain).

[color=red][b]But the great Latins, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory the Great, held the opposite view, and the Scholastics as a body followed them[/b][/color]. St. Augustine (Sermo vii, de Scripturis, P. G. V) when treating of the burning bush (Exod., iii) says: "That the same person who spoke to Moses should be deemed both the Lord and an angel of the Lord, is very hard to understand. It is a question which forbids any rash assertions but rather demands careful investigation . . . Some maintain that he is called both the Lord and the angel of the Lord because he was Christ, indeed the prophet (Is., ix, 6, Septuagint Version) clearly styles Christ the 'Angel of great Counsel.'" The saint proceeds to show that such a view is tenable though we must be careful not to fall into Arianism in stating it. He points out, however, that if we hold that it was an angel who appeared, we must explain how he came to be called "the Lord," and he proceeds to show how this might be: "Elsewhere in the Bible when a prophet speaks it is yet said to be the Lord who speaks, not of course because the prophet is the Lord but because the Lord is in the prophet; and so in the same way when the Lord condescends to speak through the mouth of a prophet or an angel, it is the same as when he speaks by a prophet or apostle, and the angel is correctly termed an angel if we consider him himself, but equally correctly is he termed 'the Lord' because God dwells in him." He concludes: "It is the name of the indweller, not of the temple." And a little further on: "It seems to me that we shall most correctly say that our forefathers recognized the Lord in the angel," and he adduces the authority of the New Testament writers who clearly so understood it and yet sometimes allowed the same confusion of terms (cf. Heb., ii, 2, and Acts, vii, 31-33). The saint discusses the same question even more elaborately, "In Heptateuchum," lib. vii, 54, P. G. III, 558. As an instance of how convinced some of the Fathers were in holding the opposite view, we may note Theodoret's words (In Exod.): "The whole passage (Exod., iii) shows that it was God who appeared to him. But (Moses) called Him an angel in order to let us know that it was not God the Father whom he saw -- for whose angel could the Father be? -- but the Only-begotten Son, the Angel of great Counsel" (cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., I, ii, 7; St. Irenaeus, Haer., iii, 6). But the view propounded by the Latin Fathers was destined to live in the Church, and the Scholastics reduced it to a system (cf. St. Thomas, Quaest., Disp., De Potentia, vi, 8, ad 3am); and for a very good exposition of both sides of the question, cf. "Revue biblique," 1894, 232-247.
[/list]it looks from this that you could argue either way, either for or against the "Angel of the Lord" being the Second Person of the Trinity. if you are adamant about using the verse, then let Augustine be your guide. or you could just let him have that one verse and base your argument on the remaining ones.

your call

pax christi,
phatcatholic

Edited July 26, 2005 by phatcatholic

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='phatcatholic' date='Jul 26 2005, 02:35 AM']The angel of the Lord carries out a ministry of reconciliation. He asks how long God will withhold mercy from Jerusalem and Judah (Zec 1:12).
[/quote]

That was all very interesting. But it was centered on this passage. How is the angel Jesus in this passage?

Zechariah 1:12-17

[color=blue]"Then the angel of the Lord spoke out and said, 'O LORD of hosts, how long will you be without mercy for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah that have felt your anger these seventy years?' To the angel who spoke with me, the LORD replied with comforting words. And the angel who spoke with me said to me, Proclaim: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I am deeply moved for the sake of Jerusalem and Zion, and I am exceedingly angry with the complacent nations; whereas I was but a little angry, they added to the harm. Therefore, says the LORD: I will turn to Jerusalem in mercy; my house shall be built in it, says the LORD of hosts, and a measuring line shall be stretched over Jerusalem. Proclaim further: Thus says the LORD of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the LORD will again comfort Zion, and again choose Jerusalem."[/color]

Here it seems that the angel of the Lord is speaking to the LORD, and the angel gives the message of what the LORD OF HOSTS said(isn't Jesus the Lord of Hosts?).

I understand now that Jesus could be manifest as an angel or whatever, but I don't see how in this passage, not to mention it wouldn't be good for my discussion, but yeah .

[phatcatholic]

well.........just thinking out loud here........the Angel of the Lord could talk to the Lord and still be the Son, if we consider this similar to when Jesus prayed to the Father (for example, "that they be one as you and I are one").

[Apotheoun]

In the Eastern Christian tradition the references to the "angel of the Lord" are always understood to be references to the appearance of the pre-incarnate Logos, and as such they are true theophanies. Now it is important to remember that the word "angel" (Hebrew, [i]mal'ak[/i]; and Greek, [i]aggelos[/i]) does not necessarily refer to a species of beings, and this is true especially in the case of the pre-incarnate appearances of the eternal Logos, where the word simply means "messenger," because He is the one who reveals the invisible Father.

As far as the text from Zechariah is concerned, it simply shows the eternal Son, styled as the Angel of the Lord, speaking with His Father, the Lord of Hosts. It is similar to the Christian interpretation of Psalm 110, which says "The Lord (YHWH) said to my Lord," and which has been interpreted as a conversation between the Father and the Son.

In reference to the question, "Isn't Jesus the Lord of Hosts?" The answer to that is, yes, He is the Lord of Hosts; but then so is the Father, and so is the Holy Spirit. It is important not to take literary conventions in the Old Testament, or even in the New Testament, as necessarily exhausting the ontological reality of God.

In both scripture and tradition, the three divine hypostases are often described as having specific roles within the divine economy, but this is never to be taken in an exclusionary sense. For example the Son is often described as the Savior, but it certainly does not follow from that description, that the Father and the Holy Spirit are not the Savior as well, because clearly they too are the Savior of mankind; and this truth is made explicit in one of the prayers during the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom which says, "We have seen the true Light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith, and we worship the undivided Trinity; [i]for the Trinity has saved us[/i]."

The thing to remember in all of this is that the divine energy is both one and many. It is one because there is one divine energy corresponding to the one divine essence. While it is many because the one divine essence is enacted by the three divine hypostases and flows out from them personally (enhypostatically) and is manifested in the world in a variety of ways.

[jezic]

what is "Logos"?

[StColette]

[quote name='jezic' date='Jul 26 2005, 08:51 AM']what is "Logos"?
[right][snapback]659387[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

Logos is the Greek word given to the Word of God or Second Person of the Holy Trinity

[goldenchild17]

alright thanks. I guess I'll give him this one.

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='goldenchild17' date='Jul 26 2005, 03:11 PM']alright thanks.  I guess I'll give him this one.
[right][snapback]659998[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]
don't worry man, it will be good for the debate for him to see that you are willing to admit when someone else is right.

[goldenchild17]

Yup, it just would've been huge for my case if I could prove that angels prayed for us to God. Does anything else come to mind?