Can Numbers 12:6–8 help us to interpret 1 Corinthians 13:8–10?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1996.

I agree wholeheartedly with the principle you lay down, that we should let Scripture explain Scripture. Regarding the statement, 'For now we see in a mirror, in a riddle [en ainigmati], but then face to face', thank you for calling my attention to Numbers 12:6–8 as a possible clue to the meaning of the statement in 1 Corinthians 13:12. I had not thought of that before, and I am grateful to you for extending my field of view. I will now put down my observations and conclusions.

In Numbers 12:8, the phrase is, strictly, not 'face to face', but 'mouth to mouth' (Hebrew = peh el peh). The phrase face to face (Hebrew = pānim el pānim) occurs in Deuteronomy 34:10 and Exodus 33:11.

The full phrases are:

1. Exodus 33:11: 'The Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks with his friend.'

2. Deuteronomy 34:10: 'Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.'

3. Numbers 12:8: 'With him I speak mouth to mouth clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.'

In Numbers 12, it is a question of the mode—the how, in what way—of God making himself known a) to the prophets: in a vision, in a dream; and b) to Moses: mouth to mouth, clearly and not in riddles.

And then, in addition to the mode of God's self-disclosure, there is the amount of that self-disclosure. Moses was given not only to hear God's words direct from God's mouth, but also to see God's form. Notice, however, that Moses did not see God's face (Exodus 33:20–23).

To sum up, then, the contrast between Moses and the Prophets:

God's Revelation to Man

	Verbally
To Moses:	Direct: Mouth to mouth, face to face, not in riddles
To Prophets	Indirect: In visions, in dreams
	Visually
To Moses:	A direct beholding of God’s form
To Prophets	No such direct beholding of God’s form

The question arises: how does this contrast help us to understand the contrast in 1 Corinthians 13? The first difficulty is with what Paul actually says in 1 Corinthians 13:12. He does not say: 'For now you see in a mirror darkly, but then face to face', but 'For now we see . . . but then face to face'. He also does not say: 'For now you prophets and church-members see through a glass in a riddle, but I as an apostle already see face to face'. For him, apparently, as for the rest of his fellow believers, the 'seeing face to face' was still future: 'but then face to face'. And it makes no difference whether the 'seeing face to face' is thought of as something that would happen when the Bible/God's revelation was complete, or when the Lord came again. Whenever it happened, that happening was for Paul, when he wrote 1 Corinthians, still in the future.

This raises very important questions about the nature and quality of God's self-revelation to Paul:

1. When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, he had already written 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Galatians. Did God communicate this material in a less direct mode to Paul than how he had communicated, say, Leviticus to Moses?

2. Does not Paul say: 'Have I not seen the Lord?' (1 Corinthians 9:1)? Or is seeing the risen Lord Jesus a somewhat less direct vision of God than what Moses was given when he saw God's form?

3. Did not the risen Lord appear to Paul on the Damascus road and speak 'mouth to mouth' with him?

Acts 18:9 records the fact that, years after the Damascus Road episode, the Lord spoke to Paul by night in a vision. In light of Numbers 12:6–8, does this imply that initially, or sometimes, the Lord spoke to Paul directly mouth to mouth, but at other times he treated him like a prophet and spoke to him indirectly through visions?

And incidentally, does Numbers 12:6–8 imply that, because Isaiah was a prophet, God spoke to him indirectly, and that God's self-revelation to Isaiah was only partial and less complete than God's face-to-face revelation to Moses? Or shall we admit that there were different grades of prophets in the Old Testament; that there was an enormous difference between the men who prophesied in the camp (see Numbers 11:26) and prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah? And was not Moses a prophet? And our Lord (see Acts 7:37)?

In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul claims that his ministry is superior to that of Moses. I should find it difficult to think that God's revelation to Paul was any less direct than his mouth to mouth, face to face revelation to Moses.

Now, if I am right in my thinking, two more questions arise:

1. When God inspired Paul to write, say, Thessalonians, if God's self-revelation was of the direct mouth to mouth, face to face kind, how can Paul join himself with his fellow believers and say that it is only when God's self-revelation is complete and the whole Bible is written that we shall see face to face?
2. Similarly, with the early believers. If every single book of the New Testament is a face to face revelation of God, how was it that they could see nothing face to face until the New Testament was completed, or until all the face to face revelations had been made?

Let's look again at Numbers 12:6–8. If we are to avoid confusing ourselves, we must make an effort to see what these verses say, and what they do not say. One commentator you quote writes:

There had been an outburst of prophesying (Numbers 11:24–27). But it had been partial, fleeting and obscure . . . the contrast was between two types of revelation, both infallible, but one far more complete and clear than the other.

Earlier you yourself say that you believe 'that which is perfect' refers to the perfection/completion of revelation: the completed body of doctrine upon which the church is founded, as referred to by Jude in his epistle, verse 3; and that the completed Bible supersedes 'bit by bit' prophecy (see 1 Corinthians 13:9–10).

But Numbers 12:6–8 is not talking about the amount of God's self-revelation; rather the mode and medium of it. God does not say, 'to the prophets, I reveal only a little; and to Moses, I give a complete revelation'. What God says is, 'to the prophets I will make myself known, not directly but in a vision: I will speak with them in a dream'. On the amount God revealed to the prophets through the medium of vision and dream, God does not here comment; but think of the enormous amount God revealed to Ezekiel through the medium of visions (see, for example, Ezekiel 40:2).

The contrast with Moses is a) direct mouth to mouth speech without any intervening medium; and b) clear speech, not riddles.

Nothing is said about the amount of God's self-revelation to Moses. God's revelation to Moses was in fact partial, incomplete; or to use your term, 'bit by bit':

1. God did not say everything he had to say to Moses all at once, but over a period of forty years.
2. God revealed a great deal more to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, etc., than he did to Moses.
3. Hebrews 1:1 explicitly says that God's Old Testament revelation was in different portions and in different manners.

Numbers 12:6–8 is talking about the mode of God's self-revelation to Moses; it is not talking of Israel's perception and understanding of that revelation. Moses saw the form of God; Israel did not, as Deuteronomy 4:12 explicitly reminds them. God's objective revelation to and through Moses was one thing; God's subjective revelation to Israel was another. Every generation needed to pray, 'Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law' (Psalm 119:18).

If then we use Numbers 12:6–8 analogically to help us interpret 1 Corinthians 13:8–12, we should notice that 13:12, 'now we see in a mirror in a riddle [en ainigmati]', is talking about our perception, what we see. It is saying that God, in revealing himself to us, has used a medium. He has not spoken to us mouth to mouth: we have not seen the Lord's form. Even the complete Scriptures are a medium: they are written with ink and pen, not spoken mouth to mouth. Third John is, in my belief, part of God's complete revelation. But John, its inspired writer, distinguishes between face to face speaking and written Scripture (see 3 John 13–14). In Numbers 12:6–8, God speaking face to face with Moses is contrasted with speaking to the prophets through visions.

God's complete revelation to us, the completed Bible, contains Christ's personal revelation to John on the Isle of Patmos. But that revelation was given in the form of a vision—see this explicitly stated in Revelation 9:17—and through the medium of an angel (see Revelation 17:1, 7; 19:10; 21:9; 22:8–9). If John himself was spoken to, not face to face, but through the medium of visions and angels, how can it possibly be said of us that, because the Bible is now complete, we see God's truth, even in the Book of the Revelation, face to face?

You write in your letter that the completed Bible superseded 'bit by bit' prophecy (see 1 Corinthians 13:9–10). To back home this interpretation, you cite Numbers 12:6–8, where God's self-revelation through the prophets, though infallible, was partial, fleeting, and somewhat obscure, as distinct from God's revelation to Moses that was face to face, not in any ainigma.

Perhaps I am here combining your words in a way which you never intended, but this worries me a little, and I will tell you why. Our Lord himself, in his revelation of the Father when he was here on earth, used paroimiai, which he contrasts with speaking parrhesia—that is, openly, clearly; cf. God speaking to Moses openly.

He promised his disciples that the hour would come when he would no longer speak in paroimiai, but would speak openly to them of the Father. That hour has surely long since come. We have that full, open revelation of the Father in the completed Bible.

However, our Lord, then used the bit by bit method of communication. He did not communicate everything at once, nor the initial revelations with the same clarity as the subsequent revelations. The initial revelations were partial. Would you really wish to say that now God's revelation to us is perfect—that is, completed, the completed Bible supersedes the revelations which our Lord expressed bit by bit in paroimiais? Paul and the other apostles also used the bit by bit method; he did not teach the Thessalonians all that they subsequently taught the Ephesians. Do you therefore deduce:

1. that God revealed 1 and 2 Thessalonians to Paul, not face to face, but partially; Ephesians, on the other hand, was communicated to him face to face? Or,

2. that God's revelations to the apostles, right from the start—Galatians to Thessalonians, right up to Ephesians and Revelation—were all face to face? But if the Corinthians had read 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Galatians—or even had listened to Paul preaching by word of mouth the doctrines contained in those epistles—would it have seemed to them like looking in a mirror in a riddle? Then, when the Bible was complete, as they read 1 Thessalonians would they see its message face to face?

My own understanding is this:

1. I believe in the progress of revelation.
2. I believe that the Bible is God's completed revelation until the Lord comes.
3. I believe that Christ is God's final message to the world, as distinct from the partial messages in the Prophets (see Hebrews 1:1–2).
4. I believe we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
5. I believe that for God's revelation, the Bible, to be complete, it needs to include and retain all the bit by bit revelations that God has seen fit to record in written form by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Christ's teachings on earth, for example, are not superseded—if that means supplanted and done away with—by 'that which is perfect'.

6. God's revelations through Ezekiel, obscure as some of them are, partial and 'through a mirror, in ainigmata', are not done away with, put out of operation or rendered obsolete by the completed Bible. They are an essential part of the completed revelation.

7. I believe that some of God's disciplines with Israel, e.g. 'under the law', belonged to Israel's spiritual childhood, and have given way to disciplines more suited to adulthood. But all such things are specified in the New Testament.

8. I believe that a great deal of the full and complete revelation that we now have in the Bible is unambiguously clear and direct. But the completed New Testament itself contains revelations that are to some extent through visions—for example, the Apocalypse—not direct, but in a mirror in ainigmati.

9. And it is part of the completed Bible, the perfect revelation of God's truth for the moment until the Lord comes. We do not yet see the Lord face to face, but we know 'in part'. We know that we shall one day be like the Lord, but we do not know what we shall be; and that is because we do not see him as he is.

10. I also believe that the vast majority of what are claimed as tongues today are not the biblical gift of tongues at all; and that 1 Corinthians 13 and 14 discourage the use of even biblical tongues, and absolutely forbid it in church if there is no translator.

If you have persevered all through this, your patience is phenomenal. Bear with the fact that one man, at least, still sees some things through a glass darkly.

Affectionately in Christ,