Revelation
- Created by: Sarah
- Created on: 14-04-15 17:46
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Natural Theology / General Revelation
Information that is available about God to all people at all times
- Available to all people at all times
- E.g. Beauty of Creation, 'still small voice' of conscience
- Emil Brunner - can be used as an example of God's existence
- Karl Barth - Argues against this - can only gain true knowledge of God from revelation
- Implications of Barth's thinking:
- Knowledge of God can only be found in Christianity
- The Old Testament is open to testing to see how far it meets the revelation of God in Christ
- New Testament is superior to the Old Testament
- Other Points:
- God reveals to humans when he wants, not when man wants
- Divine Revelation is not the same as human insight
- Ordinary language is inadequate to convey revelation
- Revelation is a personal disclosure of God's being and nature
- Revelation is conveyed through the witness of the Bible
- Revelation is only given in Jesus Christ
Revealed Theology / Special Revelation
Religious Truth is derived from God's revelation to humans
- E.g. sacred writings, revelation of the Torah to Moses
- Divides into propositional or non-propositional revelation
- Issues in general:
- How did scripture come to humanity
- Can God give it directly or is it of human origin?
- What can we actually learn about God from this text via its inspiration?
- It is false to present propositional and non-propositional revelation as either/or - non-propositional revelation is always ambiguous without propositional revelation to interpret it. If God is personal he needs to communicate using words
Propositional Revelation
God directly reveals truths about his nature
- Traditional Interpretation
- Scripture can contain no errors - it is inerrant
- Supported by Aquinas: faith can be described as 'belief that'
- Henry Morris: God can be trusted to say exactly, and only, what he means
- Francis Schaeffer: A personal God who created humans in his image would logicate be able to communicate with his creation
- J.I. Packer: The Word of God is mysteriously human and divine - like Christ
- Evangelical Fundamentalists believe that text comes directly from God
- Moses is believed by some to have experienced a theophany (God revealing God's self) and literally been given a physical copy of…
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