And the second part of each chapter will discuss the meaning of revelation in terms of the analysis given in the first part. In our own time, this question of the meaning of history has reached a height of urgency. Or is the timeless religious sense of the mysterious destined for shipwreck on the rocks of a totally secularist interpretation of the world.
Although it inevitably bears the mark of peculiarity, a feature inseparable from the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the idea of God's revelation in history.
The Revelation of God in History by John F. Haught
The Cosmos and Revelation
The absolute solitude of the universe is the basis from which all life and reflection must depart. The breaking of this word in the seeming silence of the universe is what is called "revelation". When viewed in the context of an evolutionary universe, revelation is the full unfolding and flowering of the universe itself.
We can only have a fragmentary and opaque insight into the ultimate meaning of the universe.
History and Revelation
The search for a possible understanding of history has been one of the most frustrating, if fascinating, enterprises undertaken since we became aware that we do not live in nature in the same way as other species. The "fall" of the human species from the predictability of nature to the turmoil of history has been a very adventurous development in the total unfolding of the universe. The emergence of the Jewish religion at that time was a very disturbing phenomenon and we are still reeling from its appearance.
It pointed us to a future that is more than just a return to the sameness of the past. Gnostic movements of the body, the mind, and the spirit are inevitable temptations when history is stripped of its promise, the expectation of fulfillment that brought it about in the first place. The meaning of history that concerns us at this moment consists in the promise it holds of ultimate justice and freedom, of a fulfillment beyond our expectations.
As such, history is constituted by God's gift of the future, which draws us from the security of nature into a mysterious openness. Our traditions and scriptures contain accounts of instances in which God's faithfulness to covenants appears again and again in the face of our own unfaithfulness. Similarly, the revelation of the meaning of the promised events in the life of Israel and the Church will not be evident from the point of view of a purely external reckoning.
The theophanies (manifestations of God) in the Bible are mostly auspicious appearances of God, pointing to a dimension of what is yet to come. The Christ who comes to Christians in the celebration of the Eucharist in memory of his death and resurrection is one yet to come.
Society and Revelation
In the biblical tradition, such hope and promise are especially embodied in the symbolism of the "Kingdom of God." In the Bible, the theme of the "Kingdom of God" is the one that stands out most clearly as the goal of our social search. It is clear from this brief summary of the biblical vision that Justice is a revelatory aspect of our social relationships and that without it the God of revelation remains hidden from us.
The biblical ideal of justice only requires that we avoid planning that does not care for the poor and forgets the sufferings of the past. Jesus' proclamation of the Good News of freedom and justice was intended for such people. Just as God's creation of the universe is not opposed to our own creativity, but requires it, so too does the establishment of the Kingdom of God require our own active complicity.
A sense of God's promised revelation has entered our history through the poor, the weak, the The world is as ripe for the proclamation of the good news of God's kingdom as it has ever been. It can rely on the promise of redemption of human history even in the face of the threat of nuclear catastrophe.
The content of the revelation of the Kingdom of God includes the conviction that suffering and death have no legitimate place in the divine plan for human social existence. At least the image of the Kingdom of God can claim a comprehensiveness and breadth that political, social, and economic planning usually does not possess.
Chapter: 5: Religion and Revelation
In its most general sense, "revelation" means the breakthrough of the dimension of mystery into our ordinary consciousness. For the religious view, however, it is primarily through symbols (and their unfolding in myth and ritual) that the ultimate, transcendent mystery of the universe becomes transparent. Instead, they draw us into the mystery they represent, but in doing so they still leave us in the darkness of obscurity.
For the Christian faith Jesus is the decisive symbolic revelation of the ultimate mystery of the universe and history. But in Jesus, the Christian faith perceives what has been called a decisive, final and universal revelation of the mystery of the universe. Especially in the history of the important liberation event called Exodus, the Jewish people felt the revelation of God's mystery.
The total Christ event is symbolically revealing of the ultimately mysterious horizon of our existence. We have barely begun this enterprise in Christian theology, even though it is one of the most pressing theological requirements of our time. What could the Christian belief in "special revelation" possibly mean when couched in terms of the penumbra of mystery which.
Can we face the mystery of the universe in other traditions openly and honestly without being willing to give up the claim of the universal significance of Christ? Think, for example, how difficult it is for most of us Westerners to be deeply moved by images of the Buddha unless we are trained to do so.
Chapter: 6: The Self and Revelation
Very early in life we feel the devastating effects of our physical existence, and understandably so. From childhood, we immortalize our parents in a special way, we place an aura of invincibility around them, which can seemingly overcome the threat of death and the feeling of our own helplessness. The horror of death and finitude is normal, and it is no wonder that we seek some kind of security from the constant threat of emptiness to our existence.
Most social scientists are aware that each of us has an aspect of our personality that does not fit easily into the social environment in which we find ourselves. can live up to the demands of social heroics.It is the search for a word that does not condemn us for undertaking the seemingly self-centered quest for acceptance, but reminds us of the false promises offered by some of our normal means of relieve our loneliness.
The very term "Abba" means that each person is cared for in a way that should inspire childlike confidence, as well as awareness of the futility of our attempts to secure our existence through heroism. According to Jesus' teaching, this should also be our response to the good news about our permanent and essential importance. If indeed we could accept with confidence his idea of God and our identity as a "friend" in the mind of that God, our response would be such gratitude that it would actually lead us to strengthen others' sense of their own intrinsic significance. and about the fact that they similarly became friends.
And this would lead us to confront an injustice that has its roots in the deceptions of social heroism. Seen from our fifth circle, the circle of privacy of our own personality, "revelation" is the revelation that our domestic longing for meaning has an unprecedented fulfillment in the divine friendship that has already given our lives eternal validity. .
Chapter: 7 Reason and Revelation
Encountering Revelation
Such stories give the members of the community a sense of their origin and destiny, a sense of what is important, a sense of. The particular face that the mystery will assume for us will inevitably be shaped by the narrative traditions that shape the character of the community in which we live. So meaningful are the stories of God's faithfulness told by members of the community in Scripture.
In this community, with its scriptures, traditions and rituals, Christians find a further extension of the liberating mystery revealed above all in Christ, and they are aware that a close relationship with the community facilitates the encounter with God incarnate , which is mediated by The Lives of Others. At the very least, they cannot stop telling of the miracles that have happened to them, nor can they stop sharing with others their own sense of the grace of the mystery as they experienced it in Christ. For those outside the Christian tradition, the story of Jesus of Nazareth may have little or no meaning (just as for most Christians today, while certainly not laudable, the story of Muhammad's life has relatively little religious importance).
When you listen to the healed man's gratefully enthusiastic account of the incident of his recovery of sight, you will note how strikingly it differs from the medical report of the doctors who performed the operation. In other words, it is doubtful whether we could speak seriously of the encounter with revelation without first opening ourselves to it in the truly prayerful attitude of shared trust and hope. It would be naive of us to deny the weaknesses and faults of society based on the promise of revelation.
For this reason, we can decide that criticism of abuses within the Church is essential for the very sake of manifesting our faith in the promise of revelation. Criticism of the Church by its members is not always a sign of a lack of faith on the part of disgruntled Christians.
A bibliography
