According to Peter Eicher’s standard monograph on this topic, the concept of self-revelation is to be rated as the ‘Principle of modern theology’. Despite far-reaching differences in terms of approach and development, this basic concept is shared by the most heterogeneous modern theologians, such as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Rudolf Bultmann, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Richard Niebuhr, Jürgen Moltmann, Eberhard Jüngel, and Wolfhart Pannenberg. A more or less balanced composite of their different approaches is part of every undergraduate introduction to contemporary theology, as articulated, for example, in Alasdair McGrath’s Christian theology: “God has taken the initiative through a process of self-disclosure, which reaches its climax and fulfilment in the history of Jesus of Nazareth.“ However, despite the modern inclination to project the concept of self-revelation onto de-contextualized Bible verses such as John 14:9, self-revelation is anything but biblical in origin. In spite of this, only a few scholars are aware of how modern theology came to adopt this concept; it is adopted somewhat unreflectively. This is ironic, particularly in the context of modern biblical studies.
Eicher’s 1977 monograph on this topic identifies two basic features of self-revelation which characterized the more or less unreflective appropriation of this concept in the last century:
1. The unity of the revealing subject and the revealed content of revelation: Self-revelation is not concerned with a revealed book, as in Islam, nor with a deposit of revealed sentences about “objects of faith” (e.g. the Trinity, the Incarnation, the sacraments), as in neo-Scholasticism. Rather it is based on God’s “self-disclosure” in the “personal enc...
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...pistemological break between premodernity and modernity as follows: Seen from the premodern viewpoint of Cusa, Descartes' proceeding provokes the suspicion of idolatry. Modern rationalism ascribes to a definable (and consequently finite) theological concept, “what befits only the reality itself.” Seen from the rationalist Cartesian point of view, Cusa’s proceeding provokes the suspicion of irrationalism: His wisdom of unknowing allows for an “excess” of worship, that is to say the adoration of a reality which offends and exceeds the principles of human rationality in promoting an insatiable, erotic desire for the infinite.
It is possible to demonstrate that Descartes’ narrow concept of rationality is logically flawed, but this is not relevant here. Rather I will focus on the impact of this concept of rationality on the rise of the modern theology of revelation.
To read Damasio's critique alongside Stephen Gaukroger's remarkably rich intellectual biography of Descartes, however, is to realize that Damasio could just as aptly have titled his book "Descartes' Vision." As Gaukroger points out, Descartes was reviled during his lifetime and for a century after his death not for his dualism but for his materialism. Only when the history of philosophy was rewritten in the nineteenth century as the story of epistemology did Descartes come to bear the double designation of being both the "father" of modern philosophy and the ranking nativist who visited upon us the catastrophic separation of mind from body and of reason from emotion. These labels are essentially caricatures that distort the actual complexity of what Descartes struggled to work out in his cognitive theory. Gaukroger reconstructs this struggle for us, sometimes on a month-by-month basis, showing how Descartes shuttled back and forth between an account of the body and the pursuit of the mind.
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.
N.T Wright (2008) stated that “When we read the scriptures as Christians, we read it precisely as people of the new covenant and of the new creation” (p.281). In this statement, the author reveals a paradigm of scriptural interpretation that exists for him as a Christian, theologian, and profession and Bishop. When one surveys the entirety of modern Christendom, one finds a variety of methods and perspectives on biblical interpretation, and indeed on the how one defines the meaning in the parables of Jesus. Capon (2002) and Snodgrass (2008) offer differing perspectives on how one should approach the scriptures and how the true sense of meaning should be extracted. This paper will serve as a brief examination of the methodologies presented by these two authors. Let us begin, with an
This paper is written to discuss the many different ideas that have been discussed over the first half of Theology 104. This class went over many topics which gave me a much better understanding of Christianity, Jesus, and the Bible. I will be addressing two topics of which I feel are very important to Christianity. First, I will be focusing on the question did Jesus claim to be God? This is one of the biggest challenges of the Bibles that come up quite often. Secondly, I will focus on character development.
4. Descartes, Rene, and Roger Ariew. Meditations, objections, and replies. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 2006. Print.
"EXPLORING THEOLOGY 1 & 2." EXPLORING THEOLOGY 1 2. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
Although philosophy rarely alters its direction and mood with sudden swings, there are times when its new concerns and emphases clearly separate it from its immediate past. Such was the case with seventeenth-century Continental rationalism, whose founder was Rene Descartes and whose new program initiated what is called modern philosophy. In a sense, much of what the Continental rationalists set out to do had already been attempted by the medieval philosophers and by Bacon and Hobbes. But Descartes and Leibniz fashioned a new ideal for philosophy. Influenced by the progress and success of science and mathematics, their new program was an attempt to provide philosophy with the exactness of mathematics. They set out to formulate clear and rational principles that could be organized into a system of truths from which accurate information about the world could be deduced. Their emphasis was upon the rational ability of the human mind, which they now considered the source of truth both about man and about the world. Even though they did not reject the claims of religion, they did consider philosophical reasoning something different than supernatural revelation. They saw little value in feeling and enthusiasm as means for discovering truth, but they did believe that the mind of an individual is structured in such a way that simply by operating according to the appropriate method it can discover the nature of the universe. The rationalists assumed that what they could think clearly with their minds did in fact exist in the world outside their minds. Descartes and Leibniz even argued that certain ideas are innate in the human mind, that, given the proper occasion, experience would cause...
world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember (22).
The first two parts of the book discuss the kind of theological-historical perspective and ecclesial situation that determines the form-content configuration of Revelation. The first section attempts to assess the theological commonality to and differences from Jewish apocalypticism. Fiorenza focuses of the problem that although Revelation claims to be a genuinely Christian book and has found its way into the Christian canon, it is often judged to be more Jewish than Christian and not to have achieved the “heights” of genuinely early Christian theology. In the second part of the book, Fiorenza seeks to assess whether and how much Revelation shares in the theological structure of the Fourth Gospel. Fiorenza proposes that a careful analysis of Revelation would suggest that Pauline, Johannine, and Christian apocalyptic-prophetic traditions and circles interacted with each other at the end of the first century C.E in Asia Minor. She charts in the book the structural-theological similarities and differences between the response of Paul and that of Revelation to the “realized eschatology”. She argues that the author of Revelation attempts to correct the “realized eschatology” implications of the early Christian tradition with an emphasis on a futuristic apocalyptic understanding of salvation. Fiorenza draws the conclusion that Revelation and its author belong neither to the Johannine nor to the Pauline school, but point to prophetic-apocalyptic traditions in Asia Minor.
A Christian apologetic method is a verbal defense of the biblical worldview. A proof is giving a reason for why we believe. This paper will address the philosophical question of God’s existence from the moral argument. The presuppositional apologetic method of Reformed thinkers Cornelius Van Til and John Frame will be the framework. Topics covered here could undoubtedly be developed in more depth, but that would be getting ahead, here is the big picture.
For centuries now Christians have claimed to possess the special revelation of an omnipotent, loving Deity who is sovereign over all of His creation. This special revelation is in written form and is what has come to be known as The Bible which consists of two books. The first book is the Hebrew Scriptures, written by prophets in a time that was before Christ, and the second book is the New Testament, which was written by Apostles and disciples of the risen Lord after His ascension. It is well documented that Christians in the context of the early first century were used to viewing a set of writings as being not only authoritative, but divinely inspired. The fact that there were certain books out in the public that were written by followers of Jesus and recognized as being just as authoritative as the Hebrew Scriptures was never under debate. The disagreement between some groups of Christians and Gnostics centered on which exact group of books were divinely inspired and which were not. The debate also took place over the way we can know for sure what God would have us include in a book of divinely inspired writings. This ultimately led to the formation of the Biblical canon in the next centuries. Some may ask, “Isn’t Jesus really the only thing that we can and should call God’s Word?” and “Isn’t the Bible just a man made collection of writings all centered on the same thing, Jesus Christ?” This paper summarizes some of the evidences for the Old and New Testament canon’s accuracy in choosing God breathed, authoritative writings and then reflects on the wide ranging
Is the language in the New Testament problematic for the modern world view? Rudolf Bultmann’s argument in the article, “The Task of Demythologizing,” in Philosophy and Faith: A Philosophy and Religion Reader, believes it is. He challenges the theologian to strip away the elements in the language of the mythical world image and the event of redemption, and then, suggests theology needs to examine the truths in the New Testament. Theology must discover whether the New Testament offers people a better understanding of themselves leading them to a genuine existential decision. Keeping in mind, the New Testament was written for humankind’s comprehension of the world view during the pre-scientific age, Bultmann stipulates theologians may want to
Intellectual thought since Nietzsche has found itself one way or another addressing the death of God. Most of this thinking, however, has taken place from an atheistic starting point and has not considered its own presuppositions. It strives to find consistent outworking from these presuppositions and to eradicate the shadow of God carried over from the Enlightenment tradition because of its grounding in a theistic worldview. However, the outcome and implications of thinking after the death of God has been found hideous and many attempts have been made to transcend the absurdity there.
... also argued that there are two forms of reality, formal reality and spiritual reality. ”The idea that mind and matter were indeed too different to interact, and therefore did not do so, but only seemed to from the viewpoint from our finite and inadequate understandings”(Grayling 165). He argued that God was in fact a part of this spiritual reality, this is known as Cartesian Dualism. Although he had these reasonings defending the truth in God, Descartes’s works were place on the index of prohibited books by Pope Leo because he believed Descartes’s ideas were influencing people and going against fundamental Christian teachings. Pope Leo feared that his works advocated the questioning of the church because religion is purely faith and not fact, therefore it would inspire others to think in rationalistic ways especially towards the infallibility of the pope and clergy.
Corley, Lemke and Lovejoy (2002) agree with the importance of the two contexts defining theological hermeneutics as, the process of thinking about God, thinking after the event of revelation in the...