Comparing Revelation in the role of scripture as portrayed in Dei Filius and Dei Verbum
Randy Nguyen Introduction to Theology Father Michael Bruno 12/15/17
Nguyen 1 Revelation has always been linked with God and his people. God is the one that made his will known to us. Through
…show more content…
However from this you see that revelation is all united in harmony.
The Dei Verbum reveals that revelation as the self-disclosure of the trinity. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit show that there is faith and love. Faith and love is important in revelation. God was prominent from the divine mystery, spoke with human beings, and made them commit their lives with obedience to the life of faith. However we are graced with the word of god, and the Dei Verbum tells us how his word has come to reach us and how we are supposed to live by his words. Revelation can be best defined as the communication of some truth by God.
Revelation is understood as the person of Jesus, and the second person of the Holy Trinity. He was incarnated for eternal life to live with the Father in the Holy Spirit. This allows us to be encountered by God, and allows us to know more about him than we did before. Christ being crucified and risen is the main focus of the Sacred Scriptures. To appreciate what the Dei Verbum taught us about the past and the present nature of revelation from blessed John Paul
…show more content…
Revelation continues to be passed on to us by the apostles, through the unwritten Nguyen 3 form known as tradition. Sacred scripture also passes Revelation onto us. It can be best described as the “speech of God”, that is written under the process of the Holy Spirit. The apostles did the process of sacred scripture in three different ways, through preaching, the examples they gave, and by the institutions that were created. Through the Scared Tradition and Sacred Scripture, revelation is transmitted to the Church. That is why revelation is also linked with Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium. Our obedience and faith should be our only response to revelation. Through this faith we give ourselves to God, so that we can have a strong relationship with him. He was the one who first gave himself and loves us. We must do the same to him, but by the grace of God and through the Holy
Much of Revelation is the source of debate. Many passages are symbolic in nature, and the exact meaning of the symbols can be difficult to determine. Some passages can be interpreted in various ways. The identity of the Four Horsemen, the 144,000, and Babylon the Great in particular are points of contention. Nevertheless, proper hermeneutics and careful study can illuminate these difficult passages.
Kenneth Gentry begins with a quote, “The closer we get to the year 2000, the farther we get from the events of Revelation.” This sentence summarizes the Preterist view nicely. The Preterist places weight on the historical aspect of Revelation by relating it to its original author and audience. The author was mainly concerned with the seven churches of Asia Minor who were facing difficulties during that time. John’s target audience was neither churches nor the 21st century. As most evangelical scholars would affirm, Revelation contains prophecies which were fulfilled in John’s near future. Their manifestation might not have been as graphic or literal as one might imagine, because John uses “poetic hyperbole,” yet these events were actually fulfilled in history. He argues that the use of highly figurative speech and symbolism is “not a denial of historicity but a matter of literary genre.” These were events that were to take place soon because the time was near. Then Gentry uses study of Greek language to support this. He argues that lexicons and modern translators agree that these terms indicate temporal proximity indicating that they expected to see the events in their lifetime. As much as a word study can be helpful, it can also be limiting. One certainly cannot base interpretation of the whole book on a loosely used term. Similarly, while the Apostle Paul spoke to the Thessalonians with urgency in plain language, we know that the Second Advent is yet to happen.
After Paine states how he feels about the church, he soon begins to discuss his views on the word revelation. Paine says that “it is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing (Timmerman and Hettinga 96). One example of a revelation in the Bible that Paine gives is whenever Moses receives the ten commandments from God. Paine believes that the children of Israel had every right not to take these commandments seriously since only Moses receive...
It was deemed that the books of the New Testament that are authentically apostolic in nature were included in the Bible. This strict appraisal process used by the church fathers to determine the legitimacy of certain books in the bible is the reason why scripture, once it becomes part of church canon it is incorruptible. Furthermore, because tradition stems from scriptural interpretation that it can be corruptible as it relies on the judgment of human beings, whose interpretations may be driven by internal
However, in the end it is questionable if these are true revelations, and if the
Revelations of Divine Love is a 14th century masterpiece written by Julian of Norwich. This book is an account of St. Julian’s sixteen different mystical revelations in which she had encountered at a time of great suffering and illness. St. Julian focussed on the many “mysteries of Christianity.” Through her many revelations she encountered God’s vast love, the existence of evil, God’s heart for creation, the father and mother-heart of God, and the need to obey her Father in Heaven. Amongst these revelations the most powerful was the revelation of God’s love and character. Revelations of Divine Love is a wonderful source of revelation to connect a reader to the Father.
The book of Revelation gives us our greatest insight to the use of God's name in the New Testament. The imagery of the book of Revelation is very similar to the prophetic books of the Old Testament where the name was used frequently. But even more, the book of Revelation can be used to disprove most theories as to why the divine name was not used in the NT. The book uses many references to God's name. These are not just some kind of reference to God's character, since we are told this name is written on something on a number of occasions. You can not write someone's character on a forehead. These must be references to a literal name.
Before beginning this essay proper, it is important to first comprehend some of what is meant by the term eschatology, and how it is understood in the Book of Revelation. Eschatology broadly defined is that part of theology which deals with conceptions of the ‘end times’ and of the final things of the world and humanity. Within it sit many concepts, such as heaven and hell, divine judgment, the second coming, the defeat of evil and the new creation, among others things. As such, it encapsulates any discussion about the ‘end times’. This is certainly an apt title for much of the Book of Revelation then, with so much discussion of divine judgment on the first earth, the second coming of Christ and the coming of the New Creation. Within the pages of this text, however, a more complex eschatology is portrayed. While in the grander literary scheme of the text we see the ultimate destruction of death and hades and their throwing into the lake of fire...
No part of the Bible and its interpretation is more controversial than the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation is the last profound book in the New Testament. It conveys the significant purpose of Christianity by describing God’s plan for the world and his final judgment of the people by reinforcing the importance of faith and the concept of Christianity as a whole. This book was written by John in 95 or 96 AD. What is, what has been, and what is to come is the central focus of the content in Revelation.
According to the American Heritage dictionary, revelation is “an act of revealing” or “a dramatic disclosure “(American Heritage dictionary). The current definition given does not provide any real information, if the word reveal is not
As defined by Migliore, Revelation means an “unveiling,” uncovering,” or “disclosure” of something previously hidden. Today, Community of Christ affirms the Living God is ever self-revealing to the world through the testimony of Israel and Jesus Christ. Revelation provides important decisions about who God is and how we are to understand the world and ourselves. In seeking to understand, as a member of Community of Christ, we must explore the historical and contextual response of the leaderships to revelation within the setting of the Restoration and the Reorganization era.
“The Mosaic Revelation, as compared with the cosmic revelation, represents a great advance in the knowledge of the true God; but it represents, nevertheless, nothing more than a stage” (Danielou, 121). This revelation reveals to us the term Trinity of Persons. The trinity of Persons is the mystery of God. The trinity is composed of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The three elements of the trinity are also seen as one. The oneness in three opens the door for the mystery in Christianity.
Revelation identifies itself as “both an “apocalypse”…and as prophecy”, making it distinctly different from the rest of the New Testament. “Jewish apocalyptic literature flourished in the centuries following the completion of the OT canon”, and it is scattered throughout the Old Testaments in books such as Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. Apocalyptic literature is full of “visions that dramatize the prophet’s admission to God’s heavenly council”, and convey their meaning primarily through symbolism. John brings a “balanced message of comfort, warning, and rebuke” in Revelation, testifying to the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Apart from the OT literature, Revelation shows a distinct optimism toward the end of days, for “Christ’s death has already won the decisive victory over evil”, with the Kingdom of God already among believers. This book was written in “approximately A.D. 95 on the island of Patmos”, which is still standing to this day. It was written under the emperor Domitian, with Roman authorities exiling John “to the island of Patmos (off the coast of Asia)”. The events in Revelation are also “ordered
The prophets themselves declared that they are not the instigator of the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit is the divine source of the truth they accept. It is written all over the Bible the prophets’ acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit agency. Human agents are acquainted as well as the Holy Spirit operation is asserted. God knows when is the time human needs to be given instruction and can receive and understand the message. That is when the Holy Spirit reveals the message.
Scripture and Tradition are related in Catholic Theology. They are connected to one another, ?Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single deposit of the Word of God? (CCC 97). ?Both the living Tradition and the written Scripture have their common source in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ? (CCC 75-82). Catholics view Scripture and Tradition as two sources of revelation. Revelation is the way in which God reveals his divine plan to all mankind, it is ?God?s communication of himself, by which he makes known the mystery of his divine plan? (CCC 50). God reveals himself through Sacred Scripture and Catholic Tradition. God revealed himself most fully through the Son (The Word), Jesus Christ, and there will be no further Revelation after him. However, through Scripture and Tradition, the mystery of God has been passed down through the ages.