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Revelation
Revelation is the disclosure of God, his message and his purposes.
The English word ‘revelation’ is derived from the Latin revelare,
meaning ‘to remove a veil’. In the New Testament the Greek word for
revelation is apocalypsis, which also means ‘unveiling’.
In the Old Testament God reveals himself through miraculous events
(such as the burning bush) and through the words of the prophets. In the New
Testament, Jesus himself is the most perfect revelation of God, but God also
discloses himself in other ways: in visions to Paul and the Apostles, through
the agency of angels, and through the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the
early Church.
In post-biblical times Christians have believed that God reveals himself
supremely in the Scriptures. This does not rule out the possibility that God
can reveal himself in the life of the Church, through the use of human reason,
and through the events of human history. But Scripture, as the direct word of
God, is generally used as the test of the veracity of other forms of revelation.
Theologians distinguish between different kinds of revelation theology.
The term ‘revealed theology’ is used to describe the revelation of God’s word
in Scripture. Scripture is taken to contain the revelation of the truths necessary
for salvation. Martin Luther emphasised the primacy of revealed theology in
Scripture, as did Karl Barth.
The term ‘natural theology’ (see separate entry) is used to describe the
revelation of God in the processes of the world, including the exercise of
human reason. This means that God can reveal himself to anyone, not only to
Christian readers of the Bible. Thus Augustine believed that God had revealed
himself in the philosophy of Plato, and Aquinas believed that God had
revealed himself through the philosophy of Aristotle.
From the early nineteenth century, with the rise of historical
consciousness (an awareness that we all exist in history), theologians started
to think more about God’s revelation through the events of human history. For
example, Hegel argued that the whole of human history was the working out
of the mind or spirit of God. Hegelian ideas were strongly resisted by Karl
Barth (and his successors), whose ‘dialectical’ theology argued that God’s
word enters human history, rather than being an internal part of history.
THINKERS
Emil Brunner (1889–1966) argued that revelation is not just a list of
doctrines handed down from heaven, but a ‘personal correspondence’ or
‘encounter’ between God and humanity: ‘God does not reveal this and that –
he reveals himself by communicating himself.’
The Cambridge Platonists (seventeenth century): a group of theologians,
based in Cambridge, who argued that God reveals himself inwardly to the
human mind and soul: ‘The spirit in man is the candle of the Lord.’
Avery Dulles (1918– ): an orthodox Roman Catholic theologian who set
out, in his Models of Revelation, five types of Christian revelation: Doctrine
(the teaching of the Church as God’s communication of truth); History (the
events of history as the disclosure of God’s purposes); Inner Experience
(mystical or other inward encounters with God); Dialectical Presence (God
revealed in the relationship between the reader and Scripture); and New
Awareness (where God is revealed in the raised consciousness of the
believer).
H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962 ) argued in The Meaning of Revelation
(1941) that God reveals himself in a dimension between the inner spiritual
experience of God (internal history) and the outward events of world affairs
(external history): ‘External history is the medium in which internal history
exists and comes to life.’ Thus the absolute revelation of God appears within
the contingent and relative processes of human history.
IDEAS
Epiphany: a Greek word meaning a ‘showing’, which is used to describe
a special moment of revelation.
General revelation: rather like ‘natural theology’, this is a term used to
describe the universal revelation of God in the world. This revelation is
accessible to everyone, of every religion and none, simply by being human
and experiencing the wonder and beauty of the cosmos. Liberal theologians
(see separate entry) tend to emphasise the importance of general revelation as
a way of including all faiths, indeed all humanity, in the understanding of
God.
The hiddenness of God: the idea that God can only reveal himself by not
revealing himself. We find the concept powerfully expressed in the Old
Testament: as the book of Isaiah says, ‘truly you are a God who hides
himself’ (Isa. 45:25). According to the doctrine of hiddenness, God must
always remain hidden from our understanding even as he reveals himself,
because we could not possibly comprehend the reality of God.
Kenosis: the idea that God ‘emptied himself’ in order to become human
in Jesus Christ.
Offenbarsein: the concept of ‘revealedness’ used by Karl Barth to
describe the process by which God’s self-revelation becomes apparent to us
through the mediation of the Holy Spirit.
Special revelation refers to the particular revelation of God through
culturally and historically specific people and occasions: for example,
Scriptures, religious teachers and historical events. Conservative theologians
argue that God has made a special revelation to Christians and that this
revelation is the ultimate and saving truth. (See ‘General revelation’ above.)
BOOKS
Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation (Orbis Books, 1992)
Gerhard Sauter and John Barton (eds.), Revelation and Story (Ashgate,
2000)
Paul Avis (ed.), Divine Revelation (Eerdmans, 1997)
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