Professional Documents
Culture Documents
RS Christians Notes #1
RS Christians Notes #1
"It pleased God, in his goodness and where I went to school, how old I am, whether I
wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known play hockey or basketball, and any number of
the mystery of his will. His will was that men other trivial factors. But I really only reveal
should have access to the Father, through myself to you when I disclose (either by words
Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, or by the way I act) what kind of person I am,
and thus become sharers in the divine nature." what are my true human qualities. Thus, am I
(CCC 51; Dei verbum 2) kind and considerate? truthful? just? forgiving?
caring? hardworking? generous? loving? Or,
After this quote, which opens the on the other hand, am I mean? prone to
section on Revelation, the Catechism anger? hypercritical? untrustworthy? and so
continues, "God, who 'dwells in on. In a relationship between two people, the
unapproachable light,' wants to communicate relationship grows deeper, more personal and
his own divine life to the men [and women] he more intense as each person penetrates the
freely created, in order to adopt them as his human qualities of the other.
sons [and daughters] in his only-begotten Son"
(CCC 52). God, indeed, "dwells in And so it is with God. God does not
unapproachable light." God is a mystery. simply reveal facts and information: that is not
Nevertheless our faith tells us that God has the major focus of revelation. It is true that God
entered our lives, God calls to us, God reaches reveals several things about himself and his
out to us. The only way we can come into activity in the world that we could never have
contact with this mystery is if God initiates that known but for his revelation. Nevertheless, such
contact. God must communicate with us in facts and information as God reveals come to
some way and make himself available to us. us concomitantly with God's self-revelation.
God's communication with us we call Principally, God reveals what is: loving, caring,
revelation. This word comes from the Latin concerned and compassionate, forgiving, just
re-velare, which means to lift the veil, to but merciful, a saving God. because It is these
disclose, to uncover. God discloses himself, personal qualities that are important, they are
partially uncovers the mystery. the basis of our personal relationship to which
God calls each one of us.
What Is Revealed?
What God reveals is nothing less than Why does God reveal? Because God
himself. God reveals himself as personal, as has created us for himself, God loves us and
possessing personal qualities, after the analogy begs for our love in return. By revealing himself
of human personal qualities. In order to better God wishes to make [us] capable of
understand God's revelation, it is helpful for us responding to him, and of knowing him, and of
to take a look at how human persons reveal loving him beyond [our] own natural capacity"
themselves to one another. For example, I can (CCC.52).
tell you a lot of facts about myself. can give
- We experience God’s revelation ourselves, or God made into our own image.
in diff ways, time But experience is not purely subjective. for we
are always confronted with something real
Experience and Revelation and objective, something that exists
How, we may well ask, does God independently of our appreciation of it. In the
communicate with us? The story is told of a course of the experience we assimilate the
certain rabbi in Cracow who dreamt three object we perceive into our consciousness
times that an angel told him to go to Livovna, according to our personal perceptual
where he would find a certain treasure. "In apparatus.
front of the palace there,' the angel said, "you
will learn where a treasure is hidden." The rabbi Our language. our culture, our personal
went to Livovna and when he arrived at the history, our mindset. our prejudices and
palace he found a guard near the bridge, so preferences. and in the case of religion, most
he told him the dream. The guard replied, "It is importantly our faith. shape the way we
strange, but I too have had a dream. The perceive things and integrate them into our
angel told me to go to a rabbi's house in consciousness. We forge, and mold, and
Cracow, where a treasure is buried in front of configure the object of perception according
the fireplace." Upon hearing this, the rabbi, all to our mental "baggage" as it is being
excited, returned home and dug in front of his integrated into our consciousness. Thus, any
fireplace. There he found the treasure. experience is both objective and subjective; it
is not wholly determined and shaped by the
God, who is our treasure, is to be found person who experiences, nor is it fully
within us, in our own home, in the depth of our determined by the object. In the words of John
personal consciousness. That immediately Welch, "The experience of God occurs within
leads us to the question of how we experience ordinary human experience. God is so intimate
God's presence. That question of experience to the experience that God is not a third thing,
will constantly crop up in our discussions and is so we do not have the self, a sunset, and then
at the root of the theological enterprise. Many God. In the interactive experience of the self
have pointed out that theology is a journey of and the sunset, God is co-experienced,
reflecting on our experiences, a search to co-present, co-known”
discover God. It is, as St. Anselm says, faith
seeking understanding. Perhaps an example may help LO make
it clearer. We believe that God is revealed to
Once we speak of experience, we must avoid us in Scripture. When we read Scripture, the
certain pitfalls. We must avoid inking of objective aspect of revelation is God's act of
experience as something purely subjective, self-communication recorded there. As we
created entirely by a person experiencing, read, and pray over our reading, that act of
equivalent to feeling. If this is so, then our self-communication is then filtered through our
experience of God is entirely created by perceptual apparatus (of which faith is an
important part). Thus emerges the experience Dermot A. Lane makes the helpful distinction
through which God's self- communication is between ordinary experiences, depth
integrated into our consciousness. Therefore, experiences and religious experiences.
the presence of God, the grace of God, Ordinary experiences are concerned
shapes and molds our experience in such with the visible empirical world of objects "out
fashion that we come to appreciate it as a there." Depth experiences bring us into the
revelation from God. invisible but real world mediated by meaning:
truth, beauty, love. Religious experiences are
Robert: How do you mean voices? those moments in life when we perceive the
Joan: I hear voices telling me what to do. They world of meaning as grounded in that
come from God. immanent and transcendent reality we call
Robert: They come from your imagination. God.
Joan: Of course. That is how the messages of
God come to us. As we have already pointed out, for the
believer, faith forms an intrinsic part of the
We must in no way imagine that revelation is perceptual apparatus. To perceive the world
like some sort of divine dictation. Joan could of meaning as grounded in God requires faith:
only hear her “voices” through what she called the ability to "see beyond" the merely human,
her “imagination” as St. Joan did. It is faith that makes us see, for
example, that this particular human
To repeat, revelation takes place in and manifestation of truth or goodness or love or
through human experience, in which God is forgiveness is in fact the reality of God
known and experienced simultaneously with reaching out to us. Without faith, we cannot
something else. This point is of capital come into contact with God in the depth of
importance and we shall have occasion to our experience. At the same time, faith is a
return to it in other places. Theologians express grace and a gift from God. Consequently, we
this by saying that all experience of God is should be able to see that a fundamental unity
mediated: we apprehend God through the exists between revelation and faith; the two go
created universe, persons, places. events, hand in hand. We do not really receive a
nature, but most especially through the revelation from God until we respond in faith: a
humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There Is no faith that is active, a faith that is a believing,
direct divine dictation. God does not hit us with trusting and doing faith, working itself into daily
some sort of supernatural “zap” life.
Earlier we asked if revelation had been 2. Not All of Revelation Is Contained in the Bible
completed. As we pointed out, the answer is God, as we have pointed out above,
partly "No." Revelation, we said, is ongoing, a does communicate with us in other ways.
continuing conversation, as it were, between Nevertheless - and this is important - since the
God and ourselves. But principally, the answer Bible is certainly the most Significant place
must be "Yes." Jesus Christ, or what we might where revelation is to be found, and since it is
call the Christ-event," is God's final and the inspired word of God, the Bible, and
definitive word to us, there will be no other particularly the Christian Scriptures, is normative
(CCC 65, 66). The authentic source of the life for understanding and interpreting all of
and message of Jesus, that definitive word, is revelation. Normative? What does that mean?
the Bible. True enough, that message may It means that no subsequent revelation of God
undergo further explanation and adaptation can contradict the biblical revelation. The Bible
to changing circumstances in human life, but is the norm, the rule and the measure by which
its authentic heart, its core, is the Bible. we assess and interpret all revelation. In the
Christian scheme of things, the Bible has pride
Let us now make two statements about of place in our efforts to develop a personal
revelation and the Bible. relationship of faith with God.
Abraham's son, Isaac has two sons God gives them leaders but eventually
Jacob and Esau. Jacob is blessed by God and the people want a king to be like the other
his name has eventually changed to Israel. nations. God is their true king but God permits
Israel has 12 sons and these sons have many them to have a human king as they wish. Saul
children. Each son becomes the head of a is the first King, the next king is David.
tribe and we have the 12 tribes of Israel. This
forms the Jewish nation. Eventually because of
David is the son of Jesse who was from son of man. This Savior would suffer and die,
a town called Bethlehem. He was a shepherd but he would destroy sin, death and Satan.
and was good and righteous. David was a Through the promised Messiah, God would
man after God's own heart. To help keep God form a new and everlasting covenant with all
at the center of their lives as King, David puts people. Then in the fullness of time because of
the Ark of the Covenant which was God's God's love, God sends his only Son Jesus. In the
dwelling place on earth in the capital city beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, we are
Jerusalem to emphasize to the people God's given a genealogy.
importance. Because of love, God makes a
covenant with David and promises that David's
descendants will have an everlasting Kingdom
and he will have a son who will be a king
forever.
But out of love God sent them prophets Jesus is the son of Abraham who blesses
to remind the people of God's love and to give the whole world when he dies on the cross
them hope that God will end the Exile soon. making grace and heaven possible to all men.
The prophets also call God's people to
repentance God's prophets also tell the Jewish Jesus is the son of the woman who has
people that the Messiah, the Saviour they have conquered sin, death and Satan, by dying on
been waiting for, that God promised in the the cross and then rising from the dead three
beginning in Genesis 3:15, would soon come. days later.
The Messiah would be the son of God and the
Salvation history shows us that God
loves us and has been working throughout
history to help us. God continues to work in our
own lives today, offering us his gift of grace
and grace enables us to have faith, be
obedient to God and to love and it is through
grace we can enter Heaven be saved and be
with God forever.