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Introduction
The Way God Reveals Himself
Freedom
Forever
a pilgrim
What is
Revealed
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Freedom
The Christian understanding
of revelation, which I have already described in certain of its aspects,
implies that God through his method of revelation re-affirms his creation
of the human being as a free being. Cooperation requires freedom. That in
turn affirms that freedom is at the heart of any relationship between God
and human beings; and morality to be morality must be free. When God
inspired Paul or Amos, he did not empty their mind and displace their
normal faculties to infuse something of which they were both unaware and
unable to control. The prophecy of Amos and the letters of Paul are as much
theirs as God’s, theirs by their free choice and awareness.
“The Islamic Scripture is nowhere
autobiographical. This is one of the sharpest points of contrast with psalmists and prophets in the Old
Testament who conversed boldly with God about their travail and perplexity.
Such autobiography is quite inconsistent with Quranic views, where the
divine address must be awaited, as it were, in personal ‘neutrality’ (K.
Cragg. Ibid. p.27)
The role of freedom is
intrinsic to the Christian notion of God’s dealings with humankind. How God
communicates his revelation is himself. Actio sequitur esse. How God
is, his creatures should be. Cooperation implies community. God reveals
himself as Three Persons in One substance. The Godhead is a community. Each
of the three Persons is equal. The Godhead is a community of equals.
Autocracy in government is the logical consequence of a religion which
negates human imput into or human cooperation. Similarly democracy is a
logical consequence of a religion which understands revelation to be a
cooperative effort between God and humanity. A society that endeavours to
express in its civil or political relationships the principles of
cooperation on which its religion is based will strive for democracy,
equality and cooperation in all human relationships –political, family,
employment, male and female. This ideal, being of God and from God, is
binding equally upon the Church, the recipient and guardian of revelation,
as on civil society.
God’s revelation is God’s
Word. The Word became flesh. Revelation is incarnation. Revelation consists
in a dynamic interaction between God and human writers with their own
languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek), their civilisations, schools of
religious theology, their personal or individual outlooks and their
collective or social outlooks. It is a dynamic intercourse between the human
and the divine. It is incarnational. The Incarnation was the divine
affirmation of the value of humanity, so revelation is the divine
affirmation of human expression in all its different forms. God did not
repudiate but embraced the thoughts, the ideas, emotions, prejudices,
values of the writers of the many books of the Bible. Revelation and the
Incarnation are inseparable.
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