Revelation...

So we've started! The first main part that we are reading is entitled "The Self-Disclosure of God". This is a fancy of way of saying that God makes himself known (God discloses himself). This will take us all the way through to near the end of February.

The section we first read is on the theological concept of 'revelation'. This simply means to reveal, to make known what was previously unknown, etc. This concept is extremely important because on our own, we have no way of naturally knowing God, God's nature, God's works, etc. This is not because God is unknowable per se, but more because "we, the way we are, are opposed to the truth (Rom. 1:25; 3:4; Eph. 4:25)." (Weber, 169) When we seek out to 'find' God, we really only end up finding a human projection of something like a god, or we find a god that we have defined, and thus, we can control. Weber states that,

Christian discussion of God always implies him who is in no sense identical with man. Therefore, when we talk about revelation in a Christian sense, we are always talking about the self-disclosure of the One who is utterly and completely Other, outside us and confronting us.

Weber, 170. My emphasis.

Important to this concept is the idea that revelation is God's doing. God makes himself known to us, and it is a wonderful gift: a gift because God freely gives himself to be known to us in revelation, a gift because in God making himself known to us, God breaks through our opposition to the truth, our insularity, our inward-focused direction. This is the only way that we know ourselves, but God saves us from ourselves, frees us, and sets us in the right direction.

The final point that Weber discusses, is that God doesn't first reveal to us ideas, rules, morals, lessons, or information about him, but God reveals himself - personally. In revealing himself, God then also reveals his will, nature, behavior, relationship to us and to the world, etc. Thus, God reveals himself as a specific God - not some vague and/or abstract notion of God - as the God who is for us when He reveals himself in Jesus Christ.

A point that I think is important to recognize, and which Weber hints at and will certainly come back to later in greater detail, is that God's revelation of himself to us is always a call to follow, know, and serve him. It is not primarily something mental, intellectual, informational, etc. God does not simply convey to us an idea of who he is for the sake of our own knowledge or interest or even well-being. God reveals himself in order to set us free from our self-captivity so that we may follow him: revelation is for discipleship.

This all leads to the question which will be dealt with in the next section: how does God make himself known? We will see that God makes himself known in his "Word".