God reveals himself to us (2)

by Fr Ian

(Part I here)

First of all then,

A. the fact of God’s self-revelation.

'Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, 

for the place on which you are standing is holy  ground.’ (Exodus 3: 5) 

Picture: fresco by Raphael Sanzio, 1519.

The root meaning of the word ‘revelation’ is the drawing back of a veil so that we can see something that would otherwise be concealed or obscured. 

'Divine Revelation' refers to the fact that God, at various points in the course of human history, instead of leaving us in the dark about his existence and his character, and the purposes that he has written into human existence, has ‘pulled back the veil’ so that we can see him, know him and enter into relationship with him.

God comes to meet man

The Christian faith has well-defined beliefs about God’s actions in communicating himself to us. In describing them I’m not putting forward original ideas or my own personal views. 

From my specific Catholic perspective I’m following two basic sources: the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, and the first three chapters of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, especially Chapter 2, entitled ‘God comes to meet Man’. 

(It’s worth mentioning in passing that those first three short chapters of the Catechism, about our fundamentally religious nature and our search for God, about God’s communication to us and the response he invites us to make, contain a lot of material which is very valuable for prayerful reflection and meditation.) 

Friendship with God lost

‘Truly,’ says Isaiah, ‘thou art a God who hidest thyself’ (Is 45:15).

Why is God’s existence not clear and obvious to us? Why doesn’t he let us see and hear him and get to know him in the same straightforward way that we can see, hear and get to know other human beings?

The Christian faith follows the account of the authors of the book of Genesis in the Old Testament in maintaining that, in the beginning, relations between God and humankind were far more clear and obvious - and harmonious - than they are now. 

When God first created the universe and the human race there was a natural closeness, an ease of communication, between God and human beings (Adam and Eve). But this harmonious friendship was lost by Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience towards God, and one of the first effects of the rupture was that human beings lost their clear and intimate awareness of God. They became confused in their understanding of God’s nature and of the purposes God had assigned to their existence.

The first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis draw a picture of a humanity which has become separated from God and completely disorientated by the spiralling effects of sin. 

They deceive themselves with images of fictitious deities (polytheism) or by worshipping elements of nature (paganism). Sin also causes human beings to lose sight of God’s moral commandments, and they sink lower and lower into lawlessness, greed and sexual licence.

God makes himself known again

The first chapters of Genesis also draw a picture of God and his reaction to wayward humanity, and that picture is of a God who continues to love his sons and daughters and refuses to abandon them.

This love motivated God to make himself known to them again and to draw them back into friendship with him. Their impaired intellectual and moral vision meant that they couldn’t take in everything about God in a single moment, so God moved slowly and gradually, over the course of centuries, revealing his character and his demands in stages, and remaining patient in the face of slow human progress and frequent back-sliding.

God communicates with Abraham

The first step God took to re-establish harmony between himself and humankind was to communicate with the man Abraham, who, according to Scripture scholars, most probably lived between 2,000 and 1,500 years before the coming of Jesus.

In some mysterious but powerful and overwhelming spiritual experience, God broke into Abraham’s consciousness and summoned him to leave the security of his home country and journey abroad, not understanding precisely what the future would hold, but consecrating himself to God and trusting in the promise God made to him that he would become the originator of a great nation and the first co-operator in God’s master plan of salvation (Gen 12:1ff).

Abraham, despite various doubts, flaws and failures, has become in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions the model of faith and trust and loyal obedience towards God.

God calls Moses

The next great stage of God’s self-revelation took place in the time of Moses.

Offended by the conditions of Abraham’s descendants, who had  been forced into slave labour in Egypt, God resolved to liberate them. He manifested himself to Moses and gave him the task of leading the Hebrew slaves to freedom.

Having effected their rescue, working with and through Moses, God initiated a covenant with them, a solemn treaty or agreement with reciprocal obligations: ‘I will be your God and you will be my people’ (Lev 26:12). 

This covenant defined the People of Israel in terms of one overriding characteristic: they belong to God.

On Mount Sinai God revealed the religious and moral laws by which he expected his people to govern themselves, beginning with the absolute commitment to believe in and worship him alone. So Israel learned who God is and what he’s like both through his activity in the events of their history and through the commandments that he presented to them.

God speaks through the prophets

This knowledge of God unfolded in every aspect of Israel’s long history, but perhaps especially in the preaching of the prophets. The prophets were men who sensed a special vocation, entrusted to them by God, to announce God’s ‘word’ - his teaching, laws and prescriptions - to the Chosen People, especially when they tended to go astray. ‘It is the Lord who speaks’ was the motto and rallying-cry of all prophetic proclamation.

Speaking on God’s behalf, then, the prophets denounced idolatry - the worship of other gods - and rebuked the people of Israel and Judah for combining devotion to the gods of neighbouring countries with their worship of the true God (syncretism).

They castigated their fellow countrymen for failing to keep to the terms of the Covenant, by attempting, for example, to ensure the nation’s welfare through political manoeuvring rather than by trusting in God, or by pursuing personal wealth and neglecting the poor and weak members of society.

The prophets often expressed God’s anger, threatened divine punishment and demanded repentance. But they also articulated God’s loving promises for the future and looked forward to a time of further unfolding of revelation, when God would extend his salvation beyond the confines of a single privileged nation to the whole of humanity.

God reveals himself in his incarnate Son

God’s final and full revelation, and the culmination of his work of salvation, took place of course in the person and mission of Jesus Christ. In Jesus’ public ministry and death and resurrection, in the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and in the mission of the Church, the possibility of reconciliation and eternal life with God was now offered to everyone, ‘Gentile as well as Jew’ (see Rom 1:16).

Jesus Preaching on the Mount by Gustave Dore (1832-1883)

So we now live in the ‘time of grace’ between the fulfilment of God’s rescue plan (Mk 1:15) and the final consummation of the world (Mt 25:1-46), the time when the Gospel must be proclaimed everywhere so that men and women can choose whether to embrace God’s salvation or not.