DEI FILIUS,

DE FONTIBUS REVELATIONIS,

DEI VERBUM

BRETT FAWCETT

THEOLOGY OF REVELATION

FATHER DAVID J. NORMAN

STD 401i
 The notes recount the history of the Church’s teaching on revelation, from Dei Filius at

Vatican I to the original draft of the Vatican II’s Constitution on Divine Revelation, De fontibus

revelationis, and finaly to the finished edition, Dei Verbum, a title which suggests continuity with

Dei Filius but also, in some ways, a broadening from it. It also discusses Ratzinger’s comments

on these developments.1 In De fontibus revelationis, we see an understanding of tradition as

something very similar to the neo-Scholastic understanding of grace: a kind of substance or power

which flows through different conduits. Jesus, like the prophets before Him, is a channel (albeit

the definitive one) for knowledge about God, and He commissions His Apostles to pass it along.

Not only does this validate the authority of the hierarchy by virtue of their apostolic succession,

but it also stresses the idea, prominent in this document, that there are “sources” of Revelation,

pre-eminently Scripture and Tradition conceived of as two different conduits (both needing the

Magisterium to be properly understood). The idea of “sources” kind of demotes Christ, because

they do not understand Jesus Himself to be Revelation (much like grace at the time was not fully

appreciated as being God’s self-disclosure rather than essentially a substance He gives us, like

fuel). This idea of a series of conduits from Jesus also makes Revelation an event firmly planted

in the past, about which we gain information from the Church through her Apostolic preaching.

The document also curiously says that the Apostles, like Jesus, also preached that the Kingdom of

God was at hand; yet they were preaching after Jesus, the Autobasilea; they were proclaiming that

the Kingdom had already come.2

1
Ratzinger’s dialogue with his German theological compatriots can be seen in the fact that he complains that Dei
Verbum’s recounting of salvation history does not talk about Law and how God’s wrath against sin is revealed, but
only about the Gospel. Anyone who has been around Lutherans knows that they see Law and Gospel are an inseparable
pair, the one preparing for the other like John the Baptist for Jesus. Paul does talk about God revealing His wrath
against sin in Romans 1:18 as part of Gospel preaching.
2
It must be acknowledged—and the notes do so—that this has precedence in Irenaeus, who, in the face of Gnostic
claims about Jesus, asserted that Apostolic tradition gave us a better insight into what Jesus said and did, and this was
found most safely in the episcopal successors to the Apostles. Irenaeus also had a robustly historical understanding
 The revised document, emerging out of so much controversy, has a different attitude: the

whole point of revelation is that those who have heard the Good News have fellowship with Christ,

and with one another (the ecclesial component which is often missed). Now Christ is understood

as the revelation, in both His words and His deeds (Revelation is both visual and auditory) and the

sole mediator of Revelation (rather than the Apostles as mediators for Christ who mediates truth):

His form, His beauty that is revealed, calls us to obedience and assent. (JPII’s encyclical Fides et

Ratio rarely links truth to love.) This new emphasis on how Christ reveals brings out a new

emphasis in how faith is understood: saying yes to the beauty of God’s revealed love. It is both

intellectual (submission of the mind) and emotional (submission of the heart). Christ’s own faith,

His loving trust in the Father, is the source of our faith.3

This is different from Dei Filius, which understands faith more extrinsically.4 It argues

that we should believe in the dogmas of the Faith because God has revealed them, an argument

from authority, and because Jesus has proved His veracity using miracles. Yet the New Testament

is clear that the miracles were not sufficient proof; to some people standing by who heard the

Father’s voice from heaven, it sounded like thunder. The Holy Spirit needs to be active in an

interior way for the believer to recognize Christ; only in love can we recognize love, as Dei Verbum

recognized. This is the present revelation or dialogue which actualizes the event of divine

revelation, although it adds nothing to the fullness that was revealed in Jesus’ historical life.

of the revelation of Jesus, which suggests that, in his “undifferentiated consciousness” (Lonergan), some of the ideas
that seem to be in tension between the two Vatican Councils safely co-existed within his thought.
3
Although “obedience of faith” is a Biblical term (Rom. 1:5, 16:26) Dei Verbum is where it first appears in these
texts.
4
Despite its title, Dei Filius does not see Jesus as being what is revealed; instead it is God and the decrees of His will.
This is changed into God and the mystery or sacrament of His will in Dei Verbum. Revelation goes from being legal
and juridical to historical and sacramental, even though the sacraments themselves do not play an important enough
role in Dei Verbum; in 1 John 1, the sacraments are seen as a kind of living witness of Christ.