What person(s) of the Trinity were the people of the Old Testament interacting with?

Question

When a someone or groups of people were interacting with God, as recorded in the Old Testament, in general were they simply interacting with person of 'God the Father' within the Trinity? Or were they interacting with the 3 in one at the same time? Or where they sometimes speaking with the 3 in one, and sometimes God the father?

Perhaps I have a fundamental misunderstanding what the Trinity is, but the reason I am asking I because I am wondering if the second and third person of the Trinity ever interacted with humanity prior to the incarnation of Christ?

Answer 1

John 6:46 οὐχ ὅτι τὸν πατέρα τις ἑώρακέν εἰ μὴ ὁ ὢν παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ οὗτος ἑώρακεν τὸν πατέρα

Not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; this [one] has seen the Father.

Nobody has ever seen the Father.

If they saw God in the Tanakh (and, they did), then it was not the Father.

Conundrum?

No. I can quote many Early Church Fathers who insist that they saw pre-incarnate Christ. But, hey, let's dig a little deeper, shall we?

John 12:41 Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory and spoke about him.

Isaiah 6:1 In the year that king Uzziah died, I also saw Adonai sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

So, they saw the pre-incarnate Son of God. If you read the targumim (Aramaic translation/ interpretation of the Hebrew Tanakh), you will see that in many places where it says that YHVH is interacting with His creation, the targumim say that it is the Meimra d'YHVH (Word of YHVH) interacting with the creation.

Quite phenomenal if you ask me. =)

Answer 2

It's usually unwise to try to separate out the persons of the Trinity from one another, unless two of them are clearly interacting. The nature of the Trinity means that if you are interacting with one, for most purposes you may as well be interacting with all.

When Jesus talks of "The Father" it's certainly clear to those listening to him that he means "God"; i.e. YHWH. Jesus also identifies himself with YHWH, yet the scriptures also draw a distinction between Jesus and the Father - it is part of these complexities that led to the doctrine of the Trinity. It is clear from other parts of scripture that God is not divided into three - the whole of God exists in three persons.

The Old Testament also clearly speaks of occasions when the Spirit of God interacted with people, by which we have to understand the Holy Spirit.

In short, the simplest way to approach this is to assume that all interactions in the Old Testament were with God as a whole - unless the Spirit is clearly named. Attempting to make any finer distinction is fairly meaningless, and to insist that the interaction be with only one is to misunderstand the nature of the Trinity.