In his chapter on the way God speaks in the Bible, Michael Horton quotes Gabriel Fackre to argue that God’s speech comes to us through a unified series of prophetic utterances that God commands that we hear and believe. Fackre posits,
The Bible is a book that tells an “overarching story.” While imaginatively portrayed, it is no fictive account, having to do with turning points that have “taken place” and will take place, a news story traced by canonical hand. Its “good news” is about events in meaningful sequence, unrepeatable occasions with a cumulative significance internal to their narration (in contrast to “myth” that dissolves uniqueness, expressing what is always and everywhere the case) (Covenant and Eschatology: A Divine Drama [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002], 145).
Horton goes on to commend us to hear God’s unified Word instead of attempting to see God,
A theology of vision corresponds to a theologia gloriae [a theology of glory], while a theology of promise [i.e. one that comes by hearing, cf. Rom. 10:17] corresponds to the theologia crucis [a theology of the cross]. The former craves an unmediated encounter with the sacred in a realized eschatology, while the latter patiently and joyfully receives the mediated encounter with a personal God in the ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ tension that belongs to faith rather than sight (145).
May we come to the storyline of Scripture not to vainly see God in some sort of mystical/magical way, but rather to hear the words of our Christ, and walk by faith anticipating the day when we will see him face to face.
Sola Deo Gloria, dss
Via Emmaus 