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.)