REV ELATION - Part 2.

The role of the church in determining whether or not a particular experience of revelation is valid also has to be raised. Through the centuries Christian church authorities have been somewhat rigid in allowing solo voices to depart from the creeds established by church councils. Creeds have been used as a means of controlling what is a true and what is a false revelation. The church has often denied that particular individuals have received a prophetic revelation.

For instance, since the 4th century CE the Christian church has insisted that God is to be understood as a Trinity of three personae but one divine being. Anyone who disagreed with this doctrine has been pushed to the fringes, expelled from the church as heretics, or at times cruelly executed. On a number of occasions in church history these people have created new movements that became sects or denominations that prospered as competing rivals. Unfortunately, this divisive process is still going on.

Not all revelation occurs in a religious context. The discovery that energy is the basis of all life is a scientific revelation. So is the discovery that all animal species have remarkably common genomes. For instance, fruit flies and humans share 60% of the same genes. Another revelation states that all living things have a common descent stretching back over the 3.5 billion years that there has been life on the planet Earth. The religious person interprets such discoveries as experiences of God’s unfolding purposes.

A children’s book I read to my children many years ago had these words: “God speaks to me in my mind and says, ‘Be good; be kind.’” Those words and the influence of people of faith in their lives helped to shape their character and their faith. Many other parents have had similar experiences. This is both a mental, moral and religious process. Physiological and neurological research is beginning to discover the means by which this takes place within our neurological system.

“The mind is the locus of revelation,” wrote Bruce Chilton in his latest book, The Way of Jesus to Repair and Renew the World. (Abingdon, 2010.) “What if whole communities, formed by people inclined to Mindful discipline, treated prophecy as a human gift, conveyed by the Spirit, rather than an unusual and random occurrence? St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Pursue love, be zealous for spiritual things, and above all that you prophesy.” (1 Corinthians 14:1). To him it seemed obvious that an awareness of God active among us should bring prophecy to the leading role in the guidance of communities. What is obvious to see, of course, is not always easy to do. To move from possibility to action will be the achievement of Mindful practice.” (Capital letters for Mindful were Chilton’s.)

In 2010 the Tony Blair Faith Foundation launched the Religion and Globalization initiative at the Centre of Research on Religion (CREOR) at the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University, Montreal, Canada. This year a series of leectures on "Religion and the Brain." These lectures will likely be published at a later date. I wait with anticipation to read them.

I am convinced that further research will bring to light how God uses the basic elements of our bodies and minds to reveal to us the nature of faith. Whatever the technical details may be, it is not likely to take us beyond the biblical revelation that the true nature of God is love, a love that embraces all humanity and wills that all humanity embrace each other.

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REVELATION - Part 1

The story of the call of Moses to lead the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to freedom and a home in Canaan is a story about revelation. It reveals in that it makes something known. It discloses a kind of knowledge that the Israelites interpreted as re-establishing their God-given promise of a homeland and their mission in a world of much hostility. According to the biblical record that promise and mission were first given to Abraham (Genesis 17:2-9).

These days we are flooded with information, with new knowledge about ourselves, the world and the universe we live in. Conflicting religious traditions and cultures tend to blur or blot out entirely our understanding of what revelation is. In theological terms, revelation is transcendental. It exists apart from, beyond, and not subject to the limitations of the physical universe. The late Prof. Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, a prominent Christian scholar of comparative religious history, used the word Transcendent to refer to our human experience of the divine in all religious traditions.

In the biblical sense revelation is not about us or our material universe at all, but about God. The God who is Spirit beyond our sight and other senses, but whose presence can yet be experienced by ordinary human beings. That is why the familiar story of Moses and the burning bush is so important to the Christian and Jewish traditions alike.

There are several kinds of divine revelation in this narrative. There is mediated revelation. There is direct revelation. There is spiritual revelation interpreted by faith. There is revelation of God’s own nature. There is revelation of divine purpose and mission. There is revelation in a historical context. Above all, there is revelation of the real presence of God in human life and history.

Throughout the Bible these several kinds of revelation can be found again and again. This is particularly true in the experience of Israel’s prophets of whom Moses was the first and perhaps the greatest. The prophets of Israel appeared to have a special sense of what God was about. This was often couched in words that came directly from God to the prophets who the declared, “Thus says the Lord ….”

We must not infer this to mean that the actual words of scripture are in and of themselves the literal revelation. Some people do believe that; I do not. Instead it means that God uses the words of scripture to show people of faith what God is like, what God is doing, and how that matters to us in our historical context. Revelation through the words of scripture is a religious experience. That is true even in this atheistic age when reason is so emotionally espoused as the only acceptable alternative.

To Christians the supreme revelation of God is a person, Jesus of Nazareth. He has been revealed to us the Messiah/Christ, Son of God, since the first writings of the New Testament were composed in the 1st century CE. In Jesus the essence of all that is divine and all that humans may become has now been disclosed. This revelation brings people of faith into a personal relationship with God and with each other.

The danger of this revelation is that we can turn it around to believe in God as anthropomorphic – very much like humans, made in our image. Psychologists and psychiatrists following Sigmund Freud and others have consistently made that claim. But does this really affect our understanding of revelation?

It is true that many passages in the Bible also give this same impression. Numerous texts cite God speaking, as in the story of Moses receiving his call to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Through the ages, numerous people of faith have heard God speaking. Have they all been deceived?

The history of our Christian tradition tells us that they have not. Rather, they perceived a revelation, experienced and interpreted through faith, and formed a personal relationship with God and with Jesus Christ. God had become a real presence in their lives and consequently they have acted accordingly. We call this the work of the Spirit of God within them. They have been given prophetic powers that shape their lives in unique ways and help us discern the will and purposes of God in the context of everyday life. These prophetic gifts are not exclusive to a few but available to all people of faith.

(More of this note on Revelation will follow in Part 2.)