Part X · The Appearing
ἐπιφάνεια
Epiphaneia ep-i-FAN-ay-a
an appearing, a manifestation
“Between Two Appearings”
The rest of the New Testament, when it speaks of Christ’s return, mostly says parousia — arrival, presence, the coming. The Pastorals say epiphaneia.
That is a preference, not an accident, and it repays attention. But the more interesting thing about the word in these letters is not that it is preferred. It is that it is used twice over — of the appearing that has already happened and of the appearing still to come. Second Timothy 1:10 says that God’s grace has now been revealed through the epiphaneia of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death. Second Timothy 4:8 says that a crown is laid up for all who have loved his epiphaneia. Same word. One backward, one forward.
Which means the Christian, in the vocabulary of these letters, lives between two appearings. Something has already been shown. Something remains to be shown. The whole span of the church’s life falls in the gap.
And a gap between a departure and a return is precisely the interval across which a deposit is guarded. The book began with a man leaving goods with his neighbor and ends with the same shape from the other side. Second Timothy 1:12 said it already: he is able to guard what has been entrusted, until that day.
The Word
The Greek word is ἐπιφάνεια (epiphaneia), pronounced in the Erasmian convention as ep-i-FAN-ay-a, with the accent on the third syllable. It is a first-declension feminine noun.
The compound is epi (ἐπί), upon or toward, plus the root of phainō (φαίνω), to shine, to appear, to become visible. An epiphaneia is a shining-forth, a becoming-visible upon a scene. English epiphany comes directly from it, and the church’s feast of the Epiphany names the same idea: God made visible.
Six New Testament occurrences. Five are in these letters — 1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 1:10; 4:1; 4:8; Titus 2:13 — and the sixth is 2 Thessalonians 2:8.
The word family:
Epiphainō (ἐπιφαίνω) — the verb, to appear, to show oneself. Titus 2:11, the grace of God appeared; Titus 3:4, the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared. Also Luke 1:79, of light dawning on those in darkness, and Acts 27:20, of stars not appearing during the storm. The verb’s two Titus occurrences are the hinge of Sessions Six and Ten alike: both times, an appearing is what changes the situation, and both times the subject is God.
Phaneroō (φανερόω) — to make manifest. 1 Timothy 3:16, ephanerōthē en sarki, revealed in flesh. A different verb doing the same work at the hymn’s opening line.
Parousia (παρουσία) — presence, arrival. The New Testament’s more common word for the return, and absent from the Pastorals.
Apokalypsis (ἀποκάλυψις) — unveiling, revelation. The third member of the New Testament’s vocabulary for the same event, favored by Peter and used by Paul elsewhere.
Background, and why the word choice matters. Epiphaneia had two settled uses in the Hellenistic world, and both are audible here.
The first is religious: the visible intervention of a god, especially a rescue — a deity showing up in a crisis. Inscriptions record such epiphaneiai with gratitude.
The second is political: the ceremonial arrival of a king or emperor in a city, the adventus, an event of enormous public significance with its own protocols of welcome. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV took Epiphanēs as a title, meaning the manifest one — the god made visible — which is why the books of Maccabees are worth having read before this word.
So when the Pastorals speak of the epiphaneia of our great God and Savior, they are using a word that a first-century reader associated with divine rescue and with imperial arrival, and applying it to a Galilean who was executed by the empire. The word choice is a claim.
Range of Meaning
The first appearing — the incarnation. 2 Timothy 1:10. The only place in the New Testament where this noun is used of Christ’s first coming, and it should not be passed over: the word usually reserved for the end is applied to what has already happened.
The second appearing — the return. 1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 4:1, 8; Titus 2:13; 2 Thessalonians 2:8. The dominant use.
The object of Christian love. 2 Timothy 4:8 does something unusual with it. The crown is for those who have loved his appearing — not merely awaited or believed in. The perfect participle ēgapēkosi describes a settled affection for an event that has not occurred.
Where You’ll Meet It
2 Timothy 1:10. “…but now made visible through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has broken the power of death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” The backward-facing use. Note the two verbs of visibility stacked — made visible, brought to light — and note what is said to have been done to death: katargēsantos, rendered inoperative, put out of commission. The first appearing did not postpone death. It decommissioned it.
Titus 2:11–13. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people. It trains us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, as we wait for the happy fulfillment of our hope in the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
The whole shape of the Christian life in three verses, and the shape is bounded at both ends by an appearing. Grace appeared — past. We wait for the appearing — future. Everything in between is described as training. The Christian present is not a holding pattern; it is a school, and it is located.
A grammatical note worth having. Tou megalou theou kai sōtēros hēmōn Iēsou Christou follows a construction sometimes called the Granville Sharp rule: when a single article governs two singular, personal, non-proper nouns joined by kai, the two nouns refer to the same person. Here one article governs God and Savior, and Jesus Christ stands in apposition. On that reading — which is how most modern translations render it — the verse calls Jesus our great God and Savior outright.
The identical construction appears at 2 Peter 1:1, and the two verses should be studied together; see The Knowledge of Him. Older translations sometimes rendered Titus 2:13 as two persons (“the great God, and our Savior Jesus Christ”), and readers with a King James in hand will find it that way. The construction is the argument, and it is a strong one, but a study should say that the older rendering existed rather than pretending the question never arose.
2 Timothy 4:1. “I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom.” A charge sworn on the appearing. The language is courtroom language, and the phrase the living and the dead passed into the Creed.
2 Timothy 4:6–8. “For I am already being poured out as an offering, and the time for me to depart is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. Finally the crown of righteousness is reserved for me. The Lord, the righteous Judge, will award it to me in that day — and not to me only, but also to all who have set their affection on his appearing.”
The closing paragraph of Paul’s last letter, and the closing text of this study. Three images: agōn, the contest; dromos, the race course; stephanos, the victor’s wreath. Then two things that keep the passage from being a boast. The crown is reserved — laid up, stored by someone else — and the Lord will award it. Paul does not describe himself as having earned a wage. He describes a gift already in safekeeping, waiting for a day.
The verb in “I have kept the faith” is tetērēka. And the noun that has been kept, in the same letter, was called a parathēkē. The book closes where it opened: a man at the end of the interval, handing back what he was given.
What Confessional Lutherans Hear
Epiphaneia — an appearing, a manifestation
Three emphases.
The blessed hope is a promise, not a forecast. Titus 2:13’s makaria elpis — happy or blessed hope — is not confidence about a schedule. The Pastorals show no interest in sequence, timing, or signs, which is striking given how much of popular eschatology is built on those questions. What these letters say about the future is that Christ will appear, that he will judge, and that a crown is laid up. That is a promise attached to a person.
Confessional Lutheran eschatology is correspondingly thin on architecture and heavy on the promise. The Augsburg Confession’s article on Christ’s return is a few lines: he will return to judge, to raise the dead, to give the godly eternal life. Article XVII goes on to reject the expectation of a golden age on earth before the resurrection. What the Confessions decline to do is build a timetable, and the Pastorals’ vocabulary is one reason why.
The crown is a gift in the passive voice. Second Timothy 4:8 is the New Testament verse most available for misuse, and the grammar is the guard. The crown is apokeitai — laid up, stored, by someone unnamed who is obviously God. The Lord will give it, apodōsei. Paul is the recipient of both verbs.
The Formula of Concord’s care about good works applies exactly here. Paul has fought, finished, kept — three active verbs, real works, genuinely his. And the crown is given. The Lutheran Confessions insist on holding both without letting the first become the ground of the second, and 2 Timothy 4:7–8 is the passage where holding both is hardest and most necessary. Paul’s works are named. They are not the reason.
And the crown is not his alone: it is for all who have loved the appearing. Whatever distinguished Paul’s course, the promise is not restricted to people who ran one like it.
Loving the appearing is the test of the whole book. The verb in 4:8 is agapaō, and it is an odd thing to say about a future event. But it makes sense of everything the letters have been driving at.
A man who has treated the faith as a possession to defend will not love the appearing; he will find in it, at best, a vindication. A man who has treated godliness as a means of gain has no reason to want the accounts opened. A conscience that has been cauterized cannot want the light. But a man who received something he did not generate, kept it as well as he could, and is now near the end of the interval has every reason to love the moment when the owner comes back.
That is what the study has been about from Session One. Not a treasure defended, but a deposit returned — to someone who is coming, and who will be glad to see it.
The full treatment of epiphaneia appears in Guard the Deposit, Session Ten, which continues with “Where People Get It Wrong,” “So What,” and “If You Want to Go Deeper.”