Revelation

From Neoredemptive

God's gracious self-disclosure to humanity.

God's holiness -- His utter "otherness" with respect to us -- makes Him unknowable through the mechanisms of human perception, reason, and intuition. We can guess, but we cannot know, apart from Him telling us.

The word "Revelation" and its greek form, "Apocalypse", are often thought of as referring to the end of the world. This is a wrong-headed oversimplification; while God does reveal to us some things about the end of the world in several books of the Bible (including the book of Revelation), every line of Scripture can rightly be understood as an "apocalypse" in that it reveals God to us.

General Revelation

The psalms repeatedly sing of the visible universe as testimony to the geatness of its maker. Paul develops a similar theme in Romans, referring to the law which all men know by instinct and the evidence of the master.

All of these are forms of general revelation, where God has seen fit to leave evidence and artifacts of His work and intentions for us. Creation remains "hot from the creator's touch", and the image of God which we bear teaches us of God and of our desperate need for Him.

Special Revelation

The particular, deliberate disclosure by God of Himself through distinct acts.

The incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the penultimate act of special revelation, for "he who has seen me has seen the father".

The inspiration of the Christian scriptures was also an act of special revelation on God's part. (If not, then scripture is untrustworthy, etc...)

Prophetic Revelation

/TODO: add synopsis/

See prophecy for a more thorough discussion of present-day prophetic revelation.