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Revelation, Disagreement and Obscurity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Extract

‘Revelation’ has not appeared at all frequently in the titles of contributions to this journal (nor, from memory, has it at all often been their unannounced subject matter). On the other hand, neither does it seem to have been formally banished. The term is occasionally used, still, without any obvious sign of unease. Perhaps the majority of contributors have tacitly abandoned it, as incompatible with a broadly phenomenological approach to religions. It is possible to describe expressions of religion (including claims to ‘revelation’) and analyse their doctrinal statements (including assertions that they contain a given knowledge of deity); but to use the term in description or analysis might seem to concede too much. If there is a revealed religion, the others might hardly seem worth describing or dissecting.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

page 219 note 1 Articles by P. Helm, J.R. Horne, S.T. Katz, J.J. Shepherd and K. Surin, referred to below

page 219 note 2 Compare Smart, N., The Religious Experience of Mankind (Scribner's, New York 1969), pp. 12 ff.;Google Scholar he includes Jews, Christians and Muslims, and some Hindus.

page 219 note 3 Avery, Dulles S.J., Models of Revelation (Doubleday, New York; Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1983);Google Scholar Dulles refers to and quotes from a more extensive treatment of the topic, and of my own earlier study (n.5), by O'Collins, Gerald, Foundations of Theology (Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1991).Google Scholar

page 219 note 4 Helm, P., The Divine Revelation (Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1982).Google Scholar

page 219 note 5 Downing, F. Gerald, Has Christianity a Revelation?, Library of Philosophy and Theology (SCM, London, 1964).Google Scholar

page 219 note 6 Similar points had been made by John McIntyre, John Knox and James Barr not long before my book was published: see Has Christianity a Revelation?, pp. 16 ff., and my very brief concluding comments, here.

page 222 note 1 Helm, P., The Divine Revelation, op.cit. pp. 3 ff. and 21 f.; and truths', Religious Studies VIII, 2 (06 1972), 127–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 222 note 2 Compare also Katz, S.T., ‘Dialogue and revelation in the thought of Martin Buber’, Religious Studies XIV, 1 (03 1978), especially pp. 62Google Scholar to the end. Katz's difficulties with Buber are similar to those I found, Has Christianity…, pp. 197 f.Google Scholar Compare also my (not unsympathetic) notes on Packer, J.I., Fundamentalism and the Word of God (Inter Varsity Press, 1958), my pp. 220–4.Google Scholar

page 222 note 3 Has Christianity…, pp. 229–37.Google Scholar

page 223 note 1 Pace Dulles, , pp. 12 f.Google Scholar, and O'Collins, , pp. 143–5Google Scholar, the point is fully allowed for already in my Has Christianity…, pp. 225–9.

page 223 note 2 Nicholls, W., Revelation in Christ (SCM 1958), p. 44Google Scholar, cited in my Has Christianity…, p. IIGoogle Scholar, where I also quote Barth, Karl, ‘…a complete lucidity, openness, comprehension… the greatest clarity…’, CD I, I, p. 188;Google Scholar and offer other instances. Perhaps I should add that I have gathered from a third party that Professor Nicholls would no longer advance such claims on behalf of his fellow Christians.

page 224 note 1 Dulles, , op.cit. p. 12Google Scholar, following O'Collins; and compare the latter, op.cit. p. 144: ‘no one is willing to say God has revealed himself in that sense’. Compare also Helm, P., op.cit. p. 20Google Scholar, ‘Downing may very well be correct…’; but see below.

page 224 note 2 Dulles, , op.cit. p. 13;Google ScholarO'Collins, , op.cit. p. 145.Google Scholar

page 224 note 3 Has Christianity, pp. 225–37, again.

page 225 note 1 O'Collins, , op.cit. pp. 142 f.Google Scholar, picking up an example I suggested.

page 226 note 1 Very similar sentiments about virtues and human caring and unity can be found in first-century Cynic, Stoic and Platonic writing, and in Hellenistic Judaism, for example; as well as in other traditions and at other times.

page 226 note 2 Surin, K., ‘Revelation, eschatology, the uniqueness of Christ and other religions’, Religious Studies XIX, 3 (1983), 338.Google Scholar

page 226 note 3 O'Collins, , op.cit. p. 145.Google Scholar

page 227 note 1 Compare Nasr, Sayyed Hossein, Ideals and Realities of Islam (Allen & Unwin, 1966), pp. 21 if.Google Scholar (of Islam; but it is truer of traditional Christian understanding of man now than he supposes).

page 228 note 1 The Eastern tradition can be more consistently ‘negative’, unwilling to allow the ‘know as known’, as I pointed out, Has Christianity, pp. 145–55. Be it noted that when Paul in II Corinthians 3 has us approach God with unveiled faces, he does not seem to be expressing a change of mind from I Corinthians 13:12; we approach God unencumbered, unembarrassed, so he can freely change us ‘from glory to glory’; see my Reflections on the first century’, Exp. T. (03 1984) p. 176.Google Scholar Despite his employing ‘reveal’ in a way I think misleading, I approve of Shepherd's, J.J.forward fumbling of call and partial response’, ‘The Concept of Revelation’, Religious Studies XVI, (1980), 433.Google Scholar

page 228 note 2 E.g. Barr, J., Old and New in Interpretation (SCM 1966), pp. 83 f.;Google ScholarMcIntyre, J., The Shape of Christology (SCM 1966), pp. 145 ff., 170;Google Scholar and Dulles, , op.cit. p. 12Google Scholar

page 228 note 3 Against which I note that ‘reveal’, ‘revealer’, ‘revelation’ (in this sense) appear nowhere in the indices or headings of either Professor Dunn's, J.D.G. very painstaking studies, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, (SCM 1977);Google Scholar or Christology in the Making, (SCM 1980)Google Scholar (nor, as I recall, as important conceptual terms in the text).

page 229 note 1 If this does not seem self–evident, I refer for instance to Bowlby, J., Child Care and the Growth of Love (Penguin 1965 2).Google Scholar