Revelation

Edward Kim

October 24, 2012

Revelation

Revelation is the disclosure of a veiled God from outside of human experience or history. It is independent of our ideas or experiences; that is to say that Docetic and Ebionite Christologies, which in fact begin with them are misinformed ways of approaching God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Though we often refer to revelations as goals humans have worked towards, revelation given to us by God is simply that: a gift that disturbed our way of thinking, a shocking event that potentially could change how we perceive the world. That initial shock from God’s revelation that shakes us to our core is often resisted simply because of the realization of just how wrong we were throughout life, but to those who struggled to accept them, revelation was the gift that allowed them to understand both God and the world to a fuller extent.

The Scripture reveals that the role and process of revelation differed from Old to New Testament. Through self-revelation, God, who is by nature veiled, chose to unveil himself yet keep himself hidden to His people. Moses, Elijah, and Isiah witness how God was able to keep Himself a mystery and beyond human comprehension and also able to reveal Himself without ever ceasing to be hidden in revelation. However, this changes in the New Testament with the birth of Jesus Christ, the Word incarnate. He represents the revelation of God, and as such completely reestablishes God’s relationship with humanity and vice-versa. As the revelation of God, Jesus offended those He met. Many rejected that He was able to cleanse people of sin, able to perform miracles through God, and was the Son of God and the Word incarnate. But to those who chose to believe, accepted that God’s word was embodied in this human body. Yet simply because Jesus redefined that relationship between God and humans, didn’t mean that the nature of revelation, that is hidden, changed. The revelation of God was instead hidden in both the...