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Essays on revelation
Revelation Theology
Essays on christian revelation
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Karl Barth, the 19th century Protestant theologian, sets up an understanding of Christianity that has hallmarks of the incarnation; entirely a work of God’s grace. While Barth is right in how he thinks humanity and Christians should relate to their religion, he falls short in his thinking concerning how revelation relates to religion other than Christianity. Barth’s understanding of religion is contingent on his understanding of revelation; it is the revelation of God’s grace in the incarnate Jesus Christ which distinguished Christianity from its previous position of a false religion.
Prior to articulating what true religion is, and why it can be called true, Barth first characterizes what all religion is: a human invention limited by the
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The earth is the same everywhere, while the sun lights up only a portion of it; this result occurs only because of the sun’s actions, not the earth’s. He uses this analogy to emphasize the sun’s agency in contrast to the passive nature of earth as the recipient. In doing so, he underscores his point that revelation is an entirely God-centered activity, completely dependent on God’s action with no cause or prompting from the created order. Barth is explicit in stating that God’s revelatory actions are only a result of God’s agency: “the possibility of this event [revelation] are the being and action only of God, and especially of God the Holy Spirit”. However, the analogy also conveys that while the portion of earth is indeed truly ‘illuminated’, it is not because of the earth but because of the sun. In the same way, it is only the revelation from God which makes Christianity a true religion; without God’s revelation, Christianity shares the same status as the rest of the ‘earth’.
The crucial link between religion and revelation, the unique way which God transforms Christianity into the true religion, is through the name of Jesus Christ.
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The many seeming contradictions in the Christian faith, such as the three-in-one nature of the Triune God or Jesus being fully God and fully man, are represented here in the paradoxical understanding of how Christianity is strongest when it is weakest. Barth declares that Christianity’s power comes from “the power of religious self-consciousness which is the gift of grace in the midst of weakness” which will not operate “unless Christianity has first humbled instead of exalting itself”. It is in the understanding and conscientiousness of Christianity’s base state of unbelief and error, a state which revelation lifts it out of, which allows for Christianity to have any security or strength. Forgetting this base state results in false praise directed at human hands, rather than the true
Each man trying to correct from within were pushed further and outward away from the goal of unity. We would have a different story if it were only one man who rejected the idea of the Church being one with the world. The individual would have been marked as the antichrist. Instead, we see a few men take a stand for what they felt was the truth, which we had strayed. Noted, Campbell has seen the destruction with takes place when man messes with God’s desire for gathering of the Church. Campbell states, “What awful and distressing effects have those sad divisions produced! What aversions, what reproaches, what backbitings, what evil surmisings, what angry contentions, what enmities, what excommunications, even persecution!!!” (Campbell and Thomas) Campbell’s biggest fight was pulling back the reigns of the world. Campbell extends ejecting all human creeds that cause divisions among Christians. He states, “… for their faith must not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power and veracity of God. Therefore, no such deductions can be made terms of communion, but do properly belong to the after and progressive edification of the Church. Hence, it is evident that no such deductions or inferential truths ought to have a place in the Church’s confession.” (Campbell and Thomas) Reaching out to across all divisions, Campbell has to be unprejudiced. “That although the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are inseparably connected, making together but one perfect and entire revelation of the Divine will, for the edification and salvation of the Church, and therefore in that respect cannot be separated.” “From the nature and construction of these propositions, it will evidently appear, that they are laid in a designed subserviency to the declared end of our association; and are exhibited for the express purpose of performing a duty of pervious necessity, a duty loudly called for in
It is clearly evident that the five principal beliefs in Christianity, the divinity and humanity of Jesus, the death and resurrection of Jesus, the nature of God and the trinity, the revelation and salvation all deeply impact on and influence the lives of its adherents.
It would be naïve at best and blasphemous at worse to say that any theological construct could fully capture the full purpose and workings of God, especially concerning His redemptive plan for humanity. Clearly, there is eschatological construct that is without flaws. However, the further one goes away from the plain sense of the Scriptures the more error it accrues. Since no human can know the purposes of God apart from divine revelation, it is essential to center all endeavors of understanding God’s Word, the Bible. By allowing the Bible to speak for itself and thereby constructing a theological schema according to it, one can reduce the risk of misinterpretation. Likewise, Progressive Dispensationalism is not without flaws and imperfections, but it allows the Scriptures to speak for itself.
Edwards reaffirms for his audience G-d’s Spiritual and Divine Light. This light imparted to the soul by G-d, is of a different nature from any that is obtained by natural means (Edwards, 214). Edwards spells out that his sermon was not intended to address the men who believe solely in life’s natural condition and the anger of G-d. Spiritual light is also something that cannot be witnessed by eye, only by “due apprehension of those things that are taught in the word of G-d.” It is at this juncture that Nietzsche wholeheartedly agrees, affirming that the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ is a condition of the heart and is not something that emanates from death or comes ‘upon the earth’ (Nietzsche, Sec. 34).
Barth’s opening thesis is a view that everything that can be known with confidence about God or divine things is known only or primarily by faith, as opposed to a coherent or cognitive. In addition, existential, in the sense that Barth affirms that scripture has an objective significance, even before considering it through faith and reason. According to Barth, “This circumstance is the simple fact that in the congregation of Jesus Christ, the Bible has specific authority and significance” (p. 56) and without the congregation it becomes only historical. It becomes important to uphold and defend the Bible’s authority and the power does not come from any simple measure employed by us individually. It is up to the congregation to openly confess the analytical propositions without fear and become actively engaged in the faith and obedience of which it asks (p. 56).
... of the Christian faith front and center by uniting two camps of believers in one reading; a starting point. As illustrated by the authors, “Though we have not, of course, reached agreement, we are satisfied that we have eliminated misunderstandings, that is, that neither of us has misrepresented the other. We offer the result to the reader as a celebration of shared friendship, faith, and scholarship” (xi).
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.
religious truth derived from Catholic traditions as well as from the Bible” (Davies 497). Although the
Walls, Andrew F. 1997. 'Christianity'. In A New Handbook Of Living Religions, 1st ed., 59-92. London: Penguin.
“Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems, is the fraud of the age. It serves to detach the species from the natural world, likewise, each other. It supports blind submission to authority[control of the masses].”(Zeitgeist 2007) In this essay, we will explore the different roots of religion and the plagiarism that Christianity and a number of different religions have committed.
Hugo Meynell's book is a clear example of the growing interest in apologetics. Meynell considers four common objections to Christian doctrine, the belief in God is morally irrelevant; that there is no reason to believe in the special claims of Christianity over those of non-Christian religions. Meynell, also says no sense can be made of the doctrines of Incarnation, Atonement, and the Trinity and that Christian doctrine about life after death is based upon an indefensible view of the nature of human persons-and shows to his own views that these remarks can be met. It should be noted that Meynell on the prior assumption that God exists. This is not because Meynell takes that assumption to be indefensible or incapable of demonstration; it is rather that the existence of God is not his topic in this book.
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.
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.
No other book of the Bible and its interpretation is more controversial than the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation, written by John, is the last book in the New Testament and perhaps the most important book of the Bible. Revelation enforces the importance of faith and obedience to the concept of Christianity by describing God’s plan for the world and his final judgment of the people. Revelation answers the question of what the future holds for this planet and its inhabitants. While it is a sobering reality for those who have fallen astray, it can be a great comfort for believers. The book of Revelation is somewhat troubling to read because it is a forecast of God’s wrath upon humanity, and it is filled with warnings to the church to remain loyal and obedient so that they may avoid eternal damnation. Most other books in the Bible are concerned with teaching the church how to live in such a way that we will be at home in the New Jerusalem. The book of Revelation, however, tells the church why it is important to live according to God’s will in hopes that the church will be on the favorable side of God’s judgment.
This paper is a general theological descriptive research on salvation. Also, is how an individual may get to salvation plus some of the diverse Christian beliefs on the redemption order. This author attempts to show the reader a tiny sample, of a far-reaching subject, salvation, but God, the Rock, loves the world, and he is beyond it all, and he sent his son Jesus to save, reveal and restore the world. The paper 's base ideas are coming from the volume "The Mosaic of Christian Belief" by Roger Olsen.