by MOK Wing Kee, Alex (莫荣基)
A Historical Review of the Concept of Revelation
1. Introduction
Revelation has traditionally been a central idea in Christian faith. Christians believe that revelation is the means by which they know about God and it has provided the epistemological basis for theology. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the primary meaning of revelation is “the disclosure or communication of knowledge to man by a divine or supernatural agency.” This simple idea of revelation, however, has become difficult and theologians today still seek to clarify what revelation means or how it offers us the knowledge of God.
It should first be noted that the general interpretation of revelation has some formal features1. Firstly, revelation means an unveiling or a disclosure2. When revelation occurs, a veil is dropped and what was masked or hidden from sight is now disclosed. Secondly, this incident of disclosure cannot be initiated by any human witness, who is solely the receiver of a mystery, but is totally initiated by the mediator revealed in the incident. Thirdly, revelation always exceeds the grasp of human inquiry and therefore can be understood only by means of grace. The doctrine of revelation is actually concerned with the grace of God. Although most interpretations of revelation contain more or less some of these formal features, there are important differences between the classical understanding of revelation and various contemporary descriptions of the doctrine. One major problem is that there are disagreements about what revelation means and how it provides theology with an adequate foundation for the knowledge of God.
In fact, the theological controversies among different Christian traditions as well as other religions in both ancient and modern times are inevitably related to their ideas of revelation. As Avery Dulles comments, “the great theological disputes turn out, upon reflection, to rest on different understandings of revelation, often simply taken for granted.”3 The task of this paper is to investigate various concepts of revelation in different periods of Christian history4.
1. George Stroup, “Revelation,” in Hodgson, P. et al. eds. Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 114-140, pp. 114-115.
2. The Latin word, revelatio, means to remove a veil. It is translated from the Greek apokalypsis.
3. Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation, 2nd ed. (New York: Orbis, 1992), p. xix.
4. We will focus on the Catholic tradition.
2. Biblical Concepts of Revelation
For the writers of the Old Testament, "apart from some quite limited concessions, there is no stage at which God is not known."5 The writers of the Hebrew Scriptures plainly presuppose the knowledge of God and their main concern is how the Israelites as the chosen people of God should accept and respond to the divine messages. In the revelation through creation (Ps. 19:1, 8:3-4), the response is one of wonder and humbleness, as echoed by Paul in Rom 1:19-20 with the emphasis that God has made Himself known through the cosmos whose very existence requires an explanation outside of itself. God's character and God's purpose for creation have been made obvious through the creation of the cosmos and all living entities including humankind. Linked to the revelation through creation is the revelation through providence. God's providential care for His creation, particularly human beings, clearly demonstrates the goodness of the Sustainer (Lev 26:4, Ps 147:9, Jer 5:24). In the New Testament, the narratives of "the birds of the air" and "the lilies of the field" (Mt 6:25-32) are gratifying illustrations of God's character and God's provision for human needs. The revelation through history is a particular form of God's care for human beings. The classic example is the liberation of the Israelites from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. In this significant religious event of the ancient Hebrews, God participates in human history simply because He is concerned about them (Ex 3:7). For Paul, Jesus' death and resurrection is the new exodus that liberates the whole humankind from the bondage of sin (Rom 8:1-3, Eph 1:7).
In addition to the laws governing the workings of the cosmos, there are moral laws given to human beings. The revelation through moral laws is emphasized throughout the Old Testament. The laws of God are written in the heart of every person (Deut 30:11-14) and the observation of these laws constitutes the basic element for the covenant between God and His people (Jer 31:33). Paul also speaks of the importance and the true meaning of the laws in great detail (Rom 2:12-27, 7: 1-13, 13: 8-10, Gal 3:10-24; cf. Jas 2:8-12). In fact, the laws can also be seen as the expression of the wisdom from God.
Literature reflects the enthusiastic search for divine wisdom6 and Paul stresses that human wisdom is unable to comprehend divine wisdom (1 Cor 1:17-25), which can nevertheless be revealed to us through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:6-13). For the Hebrews, one way of revelation of the divine wisdom is through the inspired words of the prophets7. In addition, the Israelites and early Christians also received divine messages through dreams and visions8. Although the word revelation is not used in the Old Testament, its concep, which leads to the apocalyptic literature, is clear and deeply diffused in the mind of the biblical writers.
It should be noted that the different types of revelation in the Old Testament have certain characteristics. Firstly, God is always the initiator of revelation and human beings could be called at any time and place chosen by God. Secondly, revelation is an interpersonal event and it is signified by the covenant between God and His people in the Old Testament. Thirdly, the word of God is usually emphasized in revelation, and the Israelites have to listen to it with their heart. Fourthly, the promise of revelation is God's salvation as well as the fullness of life. All of these Jewish concepts of revelation are in harmony with those ideas in the New Testaments that focus on the person of Jesus Christ. For the early Christians, Jesus Christ is the climax of all revelation as well as the key to understanding all forms of revelation.
The New Testament authors make it clear that Jesus fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament (Lk 4:16-23, Jn 19:24, 28, 36-37), particularly as the Messiah who carries out his saving mission through his own suffering (Mk 8:31, Acts 17:3, 1 Pet 1:11). In addition, Paul also identifies Jesus with the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:18-25) and the Creator of all creation (Col 1:15-21). In the Apocalypse of John, Jesus is the central figure in the course of cosmic history and is vividly depicted as "the Alpha and Omega who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty" (Rev 1:8). The traditional Jewish conception of revelation is therefore consistent with the early Christian conception. Both of them acknowledge the revelation of God in creation, in providence, in the laws and in the traditions of wisdom and prophecy. In other words, the Christian idea of revelation is embedded in and evolved from the Jewish Scripture. Nevertheless, for the Christians, Jesus is the continuation and summit of revelation, removing the veil and making what is revealed more lucid and definitive (2 Cor 3:14).
5. James Barr, Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 89.
6. For example, Job 28:12-21.
7. For example, Num 23-24, 1 Sam 10:5-6, 19:20-24, and 1 Cor 14:6, 30.
8. For example, Gen 28:10-22, Dan 2, 4, Acts 9:10-12, 10:1-4, 16:9-10, and 2 Cor 12:1.
3. Revelation in the Patristic Period
The biblical ideas of revelation continued into the patristic era. During this period the main task of the early Church was to proclaim God's salvation, Jesus had brought into the world through his death and resurrection. The Christians generally recognized that the revelation in Jesus Christ was the hermeneutical key to understanding and judging history and society. A form of contextual theology was then developed by the Church Fathers, who sought to cultivate inculturation in the light of revelation in Jesus Christ. In opposition to Gnosticism and other heresies9, the understanding of revelation in the patristic period exhibits certain weights, particularly on the theology of the Logos.
In the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel, John10 commemorates Jesus as the Logos, or the Word of God, accentuating the hearing tradition of the Jewish community as well as that of the Johannine community: what we hear, see and experience now is the revelation of God. The Word that made the heavens and the earth is the foundation of all creation, as Paul has also proclaimed: "All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together" (Col 1:16-17). With a richer and deeper meaning than Genesis, John declares that Jesus not only is the source of all creation, but also is the underlying rational principle of all existing things. In Greek, the term Logos also means the logic or the rational principle underlying the fundamental reality of the universe. In terms of the Greek language, therefore, the rational principle of the universe was a self-expression of God, who now reveals Himself as the Word.
The integration of the dual meanings of the term Logos clearly connects the Jewish creation ideas to the Greek philosophical conceptions about the ultimate operational rules of the universe at the time of the Johannine community. Moreover, it is significant that John identifies the Logos with God:"the Word was God' and personalizes the Logos with Jesus, as witnessed by John the Baptist and the Johannine community. The use of this special word Logos in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel conveyed to the early Fathers the idea that Jesus is the mediator who now reveals the economy of salvation to creation. Accordingly, the New Testament is the continuity and enhancement of the Old Testament and the integration between the two testaments becomes evident. Opposed to Gnosticism, Irenaeus stressed the historical Christ over the spiritual Christ and he considered that the incarnation is the climax of salvation launched in the Old Testament. In this perspective, revelation is God's plan for salvation and is highly Christocentric. Athanasius of Alexandria also gave emphasis to the concept that revelation is the same as incarnation, which is the manifestation of Christ as a divine person and the communication by Christ of the doctrine of salvation.
The Church Fathers also pointed out the inaccessibility of God and of the knowledge about God. Referred to as "God's darkness", this divine inaccessibility can only be overcome through Christ. As a result, spirituality as the recognizing of the working of the Spirit becomes very important. In his commentary on the Fourth Gospel, St. Augustine identified Jesus Christ as the light of the world, which illuminates the darkness of the human intellect, evokes faith and makes understanding possible. St. Augustine went further to identify the two dimensions of this idea of illumination. On the one hand, the external dimension refers to the life and the teachings of Jesus Christ, as the Evangelists proclaim. On the other hand, the internal dimension encompasses the inner working of the Spirit and the grace of God to believe and to understand. This concept of revelation is clearly contradictory to Gnosticism, which simply equates salvation with the possession of knowledge of the mysteries of the universe.
9. The most influential anti-Gnostic work is St. Irenaeus, Elegchos kai anatrope tes psudonymou gnoseos, usually called "Adversus Haereses".
10. Although there is uncertainty about the identity of the author of the Fourth Gospel, we will simply name him as John, following the tradition of Irenaeus (130-200 C.E.).
4. The Middle Ages
It should be noted that St. Augustine established a paradigm which would serve as a structure for medieval theology. His view of the relation between faith and understanding had such a strong influence on Western theological method that the Augustinian synthesis, as it has been called, became normative. It provided the context within which most theological discussions were carried on. Anselm's famous saying in the prologue to his Proslogion, "I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand",11 clearly demonstrated the Scholastic methodological principle within the Augustinian tradition.
As the Doctor Angelicus12, Thomas Aquinas was indisputably the greatest medieval synthesist, who ambitiously embarked on a systematic account of the totality of all knowledge pertaining to God. His Summa Theologiae was the first real attempt to present theology as a science (scientia), that is, to investigate rationally what faith professes on the basis of the authority of divine revelation in the Scriptures13. In the first question of his Summa Theologiae, Thomas employs the Aristotelian distinction of sciences and distinguishes between two kinds of sciences: one proceeds from principles known in themselves by the natural intelligence, such as geometry and arithmetic. The other proceeds from principles known by the light of a higher science in which they stand as demonstrated conclusions. Thomas Aquinas modified Augustine's idea of divine illumination by expressing the human intellect in terms of two faculties: the passive intellect and the agent intellect. The latter originates from the divine light but is not the light itself. For Thomas, faith is an act of accent by the intellect to what has been revealed by God. But the intellect cannot perform this spontaneously unless it is lightened up from within by the grace of God. Thomas then typifies theology, or what he calls sacred doctrine (sacra doctrina), as a science of the latter type (a subalternate science), which "proceeds from principles known by the light of a superior science - the science of God and the blessed"14. This is important because it renders the principles of theology beyond the powers of natural reason to grasp, in themselves or demonstrate them from the principles of any other science. The knowledge proper to sacra doctrina can be known only as given to us by revelation. Therefore, theology is distinctly set apart from the strictly philosophical sciences, whose conclusions are ultimately grounded in principles accessible to natural reason15. In addition to philosophy, revelation is necessary because some of the truths of faith cannot be acquired through human reason. Moreover, revelation guarantees some of the knowledge of God that could be reached by human reasoning and makes it more comprehensible. More importantly, human beings can only attain ultimate happiness by revelation. The content of revelation is actually the goal of human life as divine creation. According to Thomas, this goal, in the end, is God Himself.
There is also a dynamic element in Thomas' idea of revelation in the sense that revelation can take on different forms and human understanding can grow over time. Revelation as the salvation plan of God has its own history and therefore human beings actually know more and more about the intimate life of God. In the Old Testament, the Word of God illuminates the prophets, who are then able to judge what is revealed and what to proclaim. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the summit of revelation and his apostles and Church continue to pass on the sacred doctrine of salvation to the people of the whole world.
Although the word revelation is not used as a technical term in the patristic period or in the Middle Ages, the idea of revelation is clear and simple: God has revealed Himself in nature and in human history. The Constitutions of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 well illustrate this idea:
"This holy Trinity, which is undivided according to its common essence but distinct according to the properties of its persons, gave the teaching of salvation to the human race through Moses and the holy prophets and his other servants, according to the most appropriate disposition of the times. Finally, the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, who became incarnate by the action of the whole Trinity in common and was conceived from the ever virgin Mary through the cooperation of the holy Spirit, having become true man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh, one person in two natures, showed more clearly the way of life."16
One important feature of revelation, which originates in the communal life of God Himself, is its dynamic and historical evolutionary process. However, revelation is perceived primarily as a doctrine or teaching of salvation, which is a way of life as is demonstrated in the life of Jesus Christ. During the Reformation, as the protestants stress the principle of "sola scriptura" and the concept of personal illumination by the Holy Spirit, the issue of revelation becomes increasingly complicated and difficult. Revelation is then understood not from the perspective of history and incarnation but rather from the standpoint of its origin, of faith and of objective revelation.
11. Anselm of Canterbury Proslogion, Edited and translated from the Latin by Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson. Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1974, 1976, Prologue.
12. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris declared Thomas Aquinas to be the leading Scholastic theologian.
13. In Scholastic theology, the term authority has various meanings, but largely associated with a practice of teaching and arguing. M.D. Chenu, “’Authentica’ et ‘Magistralia’,” Divus Thomas (Piacenza) 28 (1928): pp. 3-31.
14. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae I, q. i. a. 2.
15. This separation, however, is not complete. Obviously there can be no intersection of the principles of each science. Nevertheless, since sciences are not differentiated by what they study but by the formality under which they consider their objects, Thomas does allow that some of what is proposed to us in revelation can be demonstrated in philosophy. Examples include the existence of God, that God is one, and that God is good. Such truths, which Thomas called the preambles of faith, constitute an intermediate class of truths lying between those which are inaccessible to natural reason alone, such as truths concerning the Incarnation and the Trinity, and those which are accessible but do not pertain to salvation, such as that the earth moves around the sun.
16. Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils I (1990), 230.
5. The Reformation and the Council of Trent
Both Martin Luther and John Calvin agreed that there is knowledge of God apart from revelation such as the knowledge drawn from the divine creation. Nevertheless, this kind of knowledge is practically not beneficial to our salvation. What is crucial to our salvation is the revelation from God that can only be known through Jesus Christ. For Luther, the Word of God is Jesus Christ as is indicated in the Fourth Gospel but this Word can never be separated from the Spirit. The Word is the sole content, centre, and unity of scripture but the Spirit is "required for the understanding of scripture, both as a whole and in any part of it." 17 Luther made his interpretation of revelation mainly from the Pauline epistles, particularly from the Letters to the Romans and Galatians. Making use of the Pauline distinction between the "righteousness of faith" and the "righteousness of the law" (Rom 4, Gal 3), he argued that the center of scripture and the true meaning of revelation is the gospel of Jesus Christ, as constituted by the Word and the Spirit, and everything else must be understood in connection with the gospel. For Calvin, scripture is the only means for the attaining proper knowledge of God. The words of scripture remain external to the listeners and will not become revelatory and salvific unless they receive the Spirit's inward testimony that confirms the authority of scripture. From this viewpoint, the Church is not a sound testimony to revelation as it pretends to be.
At the Council of Trent (1542-1563), the Church declared that saving truth and moral discipline "are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand." 18 Accordingly, the Church has the sole authority to interpret scripture:
“No one, relying on his own skill, shall, -- in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, -- wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, -- whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures, -- hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never (intended) to be at any time published.”19
The emphasis on tradition and its relation to scripture in the divinely inspired Church is obviously contrary to the protestant viewpoint that God is the author of scripture and that everything necessary for faith and life can be found in scripture or deduced from it. Despite this major difference, both Catholic and protestant models of revelation hold that the content of revelation is truths about God, Who is transcendent and related to the world externally. God is outside the created cosmos, whose order and very existence are contingent upon God. Yet all statements about God have the same cognitive status as human statements about other empirical realities. During the Enlightenment period, the metaphysical view concerning the relation of God to the world and the epistemological view concerning the attributes of God became problematic and received many attacks.
17. Martin Luther, On the Bondage of the Will, LCC 17:112 (Mich.: Grand Rapids, 1971).
18. Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils II, 663.
19. Ibid, 664.
6. The Enlightenment and the First Vatican Council
The emergence of the new science in the seventeenth century stirred up a real crisis for the Christian theology of revelation. Isaac Newton's success in describing nature as a world-machine governed by fundamental physical laws gave rise to an wareness of the power of reason. The new view of nature was deterministic and reductionistic. The ideal of rationality manifest in science became the norm for interpreting reality and experience. Deistic views of God were common, and some thinkers rejected all truths about God and defended atheistic and materialistic philosophies, while some denied any connection between revealed truths about God and empirical reality. The awareness of the historical character of human reason, knowledge and understanding further threatened the universality and uniqueness of revealed religion. Gabriel Daly gives a nice summary of the real crisis in terms of the views of the philosophers:
"Descartes had prepared the way with his methodical doubt and his emphasis on clear and distinct ideas. Hume's radical empiricism awoke Immanuel Kant from his dogmatic slumbers. The result was Kant's "Copernican revolution", with its turn to the subject and its conception of religion as limited by the bounds of human reason."20
To meet the challenges of atheism, deism and rationalism, the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius asserts the First Vatican Council's teaching on revelation. God's existence and some of His attributes "could be known with certainty from the consideration of the created things, by the natural power of human reason"21 Nevertheless, revelation is necessary because "God directed human beings to a supernatural end, that is a sharing in the good things of God that utterly surpasses the understanding of the human mind."22 The goal of revelation is to raise human beings to a supernatural level so that they can"conceive what things God has prepared for those who love him."23 This supernatural revelation is contained objectively in the written scripture as well as in the unwritten traditions "which were received by the apostles from the lips of Christ himself, or came to the apostles by the dictation of the holy Spirit, and were passed on as it were from hand to hand until they reached us." 24 The Church thus has the authority to judge the true meaning and the interpretation of scripture. In the fourth chapter of Dei Filius, it is claimed that there are mysteries hidden in God that can only be known by revelation and accepted by faith. Reason, when used properly, can achieve some understanding of God's mysteries "whether by analogy from what it knows naturally, or from the connection of these mysteries with one another and with the final end of humanity." 25 Although faith is above reason, there can never be any real disagreement between them because they come from the same God. In addition, they mutually support each other because right reason establishes the foundations of faith whereas faith in turns delivers reason from errors.
The First Vatican Council made a clear distinction between the natural knowledge identified by human reason and the supernatural knowledge attained by revelation. Revelation is then regarded as a closed issue, becoming a doctrine that must be kept intact and interpreted in loyalty. This static and propositional notion places emphasis on the objective dimension of revelation, explicitly as something given to humankind in an impersonal way.
20. Gabriel Daly, Revelation in the Theology of the Roman Catholic Church, in Paul Avis (ed.), Divine Revelation (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1997), 23-44, p. 26.
21. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 806.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid, 808-809.
7. The Second Vatican Council
The Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation issued by the second Vatican Council noticeably incorporates significant changes in the conception of revelation. The first draft of the document, entitled "On the Sources of Revelation" and completed in 1962, preserved the scholastic trait that revelation is contained objectively in the written scripture and in the unwritten traditions. Nevertheless, the proper relation between scripture and tradition is uncertain and unconcerned. In fact, more weight is put on the latter due to the new insights on it since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the first draft stressed on the verbal inspiration of scripture and a very strict interpretation of inerrancy. It espoused a naive historical view that the gospels reproduce the actual words and acts of Jesus Christ. This preparatory document unsurprisingly received a lot of criticism and after several hard discussions a final draft was presented and received the acceptance of an overwhelming majority of the council fathers in 1965. This final document gives full recognition to the rights of scientific exegesis and a broad understanding of inspiration and inerrancy. It reflects on revelation as the self-disclosure of God in the context of human history, reaching its climax in God's definitive self-manifestation in Jesus Christ.
Human beings are called upon to enter into an interpersonal relationship with God:"By this revealing of himself of God, who is invisible, in his great love speaks to humankind as friends and enters into their life, so as to invite and receive them into relationship with himself."26 Vatican II actually revitalized the idea of illumination from the Augustinian tradition, thus advancing a dynamical on-going perception of revelation. This way of thinking underlines God's work in every moment of the Church's history. In addition, the vital role of scripture is restated in Dei Verbum in the sense that
"Tradition and scripture together form a single sacred deposit of the word of God, entrusted to the Church."27
26. Ibid, 972
27. Ibid, 975.
8. Contemporary Developments
In the twentieth century, the doctrine of revelation became an important topic in theological discussions. In fact, many of the theological discussions in the last century are more or less related to the interpretations of revelation. For the neo-Reformation theologians, emphasis is placed on the objectivity of Christian faith as God's self-disclosure in the Word of God. Karl Barth, for example, considers that Jesus Christ as the Logos is the foundation for Christian knowledge and language about God. For Rudolf Bultmann, revelation is not only the communication of divine knowledge but also an event in which a Christian is addressed by the truths of faith and is called to respond in obedience. Human existence thus also plays a crucial role in revelation. Dermot Lane maintains that human beings can only understand revelation through their experiences.
"The primary point of contact between God and man in history is human experience. The medium of revelation, therefore, is human experience. The revelation of God to man takes place in human experience. The search for God outside human experience has been rightly described as a search for idols. This particular emphasis on experience is a reaction against abstract and overly intellectualistic approaches in the past to revelation. It also highlights the need for some degree of active awareness and self-consciousness in the recipient who appropriates God's revelation." 28
Karl Rahner's Hearers of the Word presents an interpretation of revelation in the Thomist tradition, yet incorporating ideas from Martin Heidegger's existential philosophy as well as from Immanuel Kant's transcendental method. According to Kant, God is not an empirical object and "all attempts to employ reason in theology in any merely speculative manner are altogether fruitless."29 Rahner thus tried to relate "the universal transcendental features of human openness and response to God"s revelation, on the one hand, to the categorical and particularized revelation embodied in Jesus Christ, on the other."30 Starting with humankind and its constitutive experiences, Rahner insists that God desires everyone to be saved and therefore there is a universal transcendental revelation for all human beings. Nevertheless, this revelation remains purely transcendental and never becomes categorical for those who have by no means encountered the historical revelation embodied in Jesus Christ. In addition, the openness of humanity to being31 is essential in revelation because it makes revelation possible if not actual. In the midst of their openness to being, or their transcendence, human beings may experience God's Word. Accordingly, Rahner regards that, resembling the particular revelation in Jesus Christ, transcendental revelation also has its history. In fact, as Hans K?ng points out, the development of the doctrine of revelation in relation to the category of history is one of the important traits of the Second Vatican Council. In Dei Verbum, one can actually observe the conception that revelation is expressed in both word and event:
"The pattern of this revelation unfolds through deeds and words bound together by an inner dynamism, in such a way that God's works, effected during the course of the history of salvation, show forth and confirm the doctrine and the realities signified by the words, while the words in turn proclaim the works and throw light on the meaning hidden in them."32
However, history is vulnerable to hermeneutical questions because all historical events are based on interpreted experience. For Edward Schillebeeckx, experience is vital for revelation and "we experience in the act of interpreting, without being able to draw a neat distinction between the element of experience and the element of interpretation."33 Therefore, in addition to the objective content of revelation, the subjective dimension of revelation such as the language, texts and life of the Christian community should also be taken into account for theological reflection on revelation. In narrative theology, emphasis is placed on how the faith of the Christian community is appropriated by individuals whose personal identities are reinterpreted and transformed by means of narratives in the community. The hermeneutical nature of revelation has been generally accepted by Roman Catholic theologians nowadays.
Modern science shows that nature is a long dynamic evolutionary process governed by law and chance. Many theologians today hold that this evolutionary worldview should also be integrated with our concept of revelation because the universe is a creation of God and what we find in nature should reveal the wisdom and beauty of the same God who also communicates with us as a person in the incarnated Logos. St. Paul says plainly, "Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse." (Rom 1:20) In the incarnation of the Logos, we can discern the nature of the divine creation and the meaning of human existence. The Creation is a long evolutionary process in the light of contemporary cosmology and the historical Jesus is "the continuation and fulfillment of a long cosmic evolution"34. Being the heart of creation, Jesus reveals to us the full meaning of creation. As a man, he shares our cosmic evolutionary history that started from the Big Bang, continued in the creation of heavy elements in the stars and supernovae, and evolved from the early life forms to Homo sapiens. As the Logos, Jesus is the self-expression and the self-revelation of God. He is the origin of all beings in the cosmos as well as the ultimate meaning of the evolving conscious cosmos. The goal of evolution may be perceived as the preparation for the revelation in Jesus Christ who would bring the whole creation into union with God. Teilhard de Chardin even refers to this cosmic dimension of Christ as the third nature of Christ35, demonstrating the significance of this theological idea of cosmic revelation that has grown from modern cosmology. In fact, the cosmic character of the Logos is prominent in Paul's Letter to the Colossians, in which Jesus Christ is presented as the creator, the preserver and the saviour for the entire cosmic creation.
"He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities - all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." (Col 1: 15-20)
28. Dermot Lane, The Nature of Revelation, The Clergy Review 66 (1981),
p. 93.
29. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), p. 528.
30. Gabriel Daly, Revelation in the Theology of the Roman Catholic Church, in Paul Avis (ed.), Divine Revelation (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1997), 23-44, p. 38.
31. Rahner refers being to all possibilities of reality and also to God.
32. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 972.
33. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern Word (London: Seabury Press, 1980), p. 33.
34. Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p. 248.
35. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of Matter (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 93.
9. Conclusion
The historical understanding of revelation shows a spectrum with the static view of a set of propositions or truths of faith about God given to the humankind at one end and the dynamic view of the self-expression of God in human history and experience at the other. The interpretation of revelation is not only composed of the foundation for the knowledge of God but also the hermeneutical description of how revelation takes place. The historicity of human understanding becomes more significant, although scripture and tradition still play the central role in the theology of revelation. Moreover, future discussions of revelation should be brought into dialogue with science and other religions. Although contemporary theologians have not arrived at a common interpretation of revelation and many questions about revelation are still unresolved, it seems that any progress for the understanding of revelation is itself part of revelation. In fact, revelation is not only a process of experience and interpretation, but also a process of learning as Christian history has clearly shown.
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