What do you understand by the term 'revelation'?

Revelation, while seemingly easy to define, has become a major if not the major concern of Post-Enlightenment theology. The definition given by E. Jüngel that revelation is the belief that we 'need to be told what God is [truly] like' seems to contextualize many of the issues surrounding the doctrine and notion. In the first instance, it allows a variance in the degree of any revelation. Revelation may be obscured, partial, and allowing 'mystery' but it is always the disclosure of God by God. The movement in revelation is always from God to humankind, never from humankind to God. Second, it allows a variance in the kind of revelation from that of personal knowledge of salvation or grace to information on ultimate things. The issue here concerns the nature of analogy, how revelation is knowable to human persons, made in the act of revelation. For some the ground of analogy is a common ground intrinsic to human nature (and nature itself) due to its createdness by God (analogia entis (p 253)). For others, such as Barth, the ground for this analogy is Jesus Christ, God's self-election to redeem in Christ (p 470-471), and thereby God's determined relation towards us as the ground for all talk of God (analogia fidei). In this case, the more modern and theological definition of revelation as 'divine self-disclosure' begins to operate across the spectrum of the kind of revelation. In general, and particularly in the 'death of God' movement (pp 279-280), of recent years, a shift in focus on the doctrine of revelation has occurred from the Post-Enlightenment's emphasis on knowability or the possibility of revelation to concerns with the identifiability of God in revelation or from prolegomena to description.

Many theologians argue that theology is fundamentally an exposition of the revealed truths found in the Bible. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this position?

The 'revelation as doctrine' model most clearly aligns with the above statement. This position argues that revelation takes the form of a series of 'informational propositions' that are mediated through the bible and which have a directly referential aspect either to God or to ultimate and objective reality. Conservative evangelicals and Roman Catholics both share this understanding of revelation (the prepositional doctrine model) although Roman Catholics, seen especially in Vatican I, include an oral component in their understanding of the teaching magisterium. The magisterium is not equated directly to tradition per se but functions as an interpretive guide to understanding Scripture in a manner seen in the single source theory of tradition (Vatican II and p 185). What is common to the conservative evangelical approach is the stress that the bible articulates revelation primarily (but not exclusively) in terms of propositions that are later organized or systematized as doctrine(s).

The obvious strength of this position is its adherence to the bible as the 'norm of norms' for Christian theology. Its weaknesses are also equally clear. First, it can confuse the object or subject of theology with the content of the bible, giving rise to a form of biblicism wherein revelation resides in text rather than God (p177-178). Karl Barth in particular addressed this propensity, common throughout Protestant history, with his emphasis that the bible is not itself revelation but a witness to revelation which is Jesus Christ (p 204). Second, it can lead away from faith in that it can present Christianity as a series of intellectual assents to which the believer consents. In this instance, at the very least, one sees a serious challenge to the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith as it seems to raise intellectual consent to the level of grace. In a like manner, it tends, as in the criticism of Lindbeck, to make Christianity literalist and overly intellectual. This is usually thought of as manifesting the dry and dogmatic faith. Finally, the model is one-sided, almost exclusively concerned with the human cognitive understanding component of theology rather than balancing the human-divine complex as found in both 'revelation as presence' and 'revelation as experience'.

Why does Emil Brunner place such an emphasis upon truth as a personal notion? What points does he aim to make in this way? What criticisms might be directed against this position?

Emil Brunner is an example of the model of 'revelation as presence' but the motif is very common in many contemporary theologies. Brunner's proposal that encounter with God (revelation) is more than just information, that it is indeed, the impartation of God's person, is a reaction to the previous centuries preoccupation with the grounds for revelation. 'Revelation as presence', borrowing heavily from M. Buber's dialogical personalism (p 270-272) and Brunner's own reading of Luther and Calvin, argues that revelation is teleological not informational: the establishing of a relationship between God and the human person. Revelation is not concerned in the first instance with information ('I-It') that reduces God to an object. Instead, revelation is concerned with imparting the person of God ('I-Thou') whose identity is co-equal with divine purpose in salvation and fellowship and whose presence demands reciprocity in the hearer. In this last claim, Brunner is able to overcome the objective-subjective preoccupation of revelation as information by articulating the fact that a subjective response - truth as a personal notion - is demanded by the presence of the objective presence of God.

The major theological implications of this fall into three categories. First, Brunner's adoption of personalism incorporates Buber's larger notion that God as a 'Thou' or subject means that God can never be reduced to a series of propositions or predications. In short, theology is dealing with mystery and must be accordingly humble. Second, presence as a motif needs to be further grounded to avoid being purely subjective. This means that theology must look to Scripture (as a source of others experience of God), tradition, and worship as places to affirm one's personal revelation. This allows Christian theology to look to classical locations in its continuing affirmation of God in its midst. In addition, the fact that God is self-revealing means that no treatment of God as an 'It' or cultural reflection can serve as an adequate definition of God. The stress is on God's initiative and willingness to be known. Third, personalism need not exclude prepositional truth claims but can subsume the notion in its definition that revelation of God means knowledge about God.

Paradoxically, the major weakness of the model lay in its strengths. There are three weaknesses. First, although Brunner is at pains to avoid this, the stress on an existential location of revelation becomes problematic when dealing with the historical revelation of Jesus Christ. Brunner is clear that revelation is historical, but by this he means something that happens in space and time by the act of God into the life of the other. Brunner's historicity is not necessarily tied to the historicity of the incarnation. Whether this affects his Christology remains disputed. Second, the verification of presence is ultimately private or 'personal'. The logical egress of his postulate is that revelation is a subjective experience (see Pannenberg pp 207-208, 402-404), despite pains to argue that content is dictated by God's act. It is, for its critics, never rescued from the revelation as experience model and its 'false universals' or anthropological experience of the self (p 205-207). It seems to fall prey to the Feuerbachian challenge of projectionism. Finally, Brunner's borrowing of Buber's notion of God as an absolute subject ('Thou') poses problems related to Trinity and subsequently Christology and pneumatology. In revealing, is God differentiated (and Triune), or is God a revealing monad? Contemporary theologians have challenged this monadic Trinitarian concept on the grounds that it removes some needed distinctions, especially in regard to pneumatology and some aspects of Christology which want to stress the continued ministry of Jesus Christ on behalf of the redeemed. In this case, the preoccupation of Brunner was to answer the question of revelation's epistemological foundation rather than to answer how relevant revelation is for today. Brunner's project remains, for some, a preoccupation with the grounds of revelation and not his stated intent of a preoccupation with salvation.

What impact does the idea of the 'two books' of divine revelation have for the relation of Christian theology and the natural sciences?

Clearly the concept of there being 'two books' in 'nature and the bible' of divine revelation has a positive and negative effect on the relation of Christian theology and the natural sciences. On the positive side, the complementarity of the two books, due to their common origin in God, means that a conversation or dialogue between theology and science is possible. Some have argued that this complementarity was, at least, one factor if not the major factor in the growth of modern science in the Western world, especially in the Protestant west where Calvinism was strong (S. Jaki). On the negative side, the issue of priority is paramount. What discipline assumes a prescriptive role in the conversation, especially since Christian tradition seemed to argue that the 'book of nature' needed to be interpreted through revelation. This, of course, leads to another problem, namely what is 'it' that resembles God in nature.

The usual answers of 'humanity' in the form of reason, the order of the creation itself (deontology) and the beauty of the world (aesthetics) have all been challenged as inadequate forms of analogy to God. For example, many think the category of 'reason' is merely an arbitrary metaphysical abstraction. Others see the transposition of deontology into structures such as family, church or state as culturally based ideologies that are exclusive, securing established power over those outside the precepts of 'normality'. Finally, the sense of aesthetics, aside from being a loaded term for personal preference, is decisively refuted by the real presence of natural evil. Here one is hard pressed to describe the Christian God from the experience of evil. In each case, the argument is that 'nature' (itself a construct) is simply too fickle analogically to reflect any notion of the Christian God and therefore cannot be used as a 'book of revelation'.

Give a critical assessment of Karl Barth's critique of natural theology.

Barth's objection to natural theology stems from his commitment to a theology in which God is absolutely free, before (in se) and after creation. His criticism against Brunner plays out this theological maxim as he rejects Brunner's contention of an Anknüpfungspunkt within human nature for revelation. Such a 'point of contact' would permit the possibility that humanity could know God independent of revelation and thereby rob God of divine freedom in revelation. In essence, God would be confined in self-revelation, in Barth's opinion, to the constraints of human essence, constitution or abilities. This, for Barth, plays into the hands of Feuerbach's criticism that theology is naught but anthropology. Of course this, as Barth himself argues in his Nein!, was the very problem associated with nineteenth-century theology as a whole.

Specific criticisms by Barth to Brunner's theology of contact include the following. First, Brunner's theology effectively splits theology into two 'revelations', that of nature via creation and that of Christology. For Barth, there is only one revelation of God which is coterminous with God's identity-in-Christ (his doctrine of the Trinity and its notion of perichoresis pp 325-326). To speak of creation outside of that determinative and unique revelation, for him, is to introduce the problem of 'two' revelations and the subsequent ranking of them. Second, Barth argues rather technically, that Calvin never allowed for a natural theology. This point remains contentious even to the present. Third, Barth felt that Brunner's appeal to the Lutheran 'doctrine of orders of creation', a spin-off of natural theology, was dangerous in that it left little room for protest by the church against unjust political or civil structures 'set up by God.' The issue in this regard is how does the Christian church resist evil political systems if they are instituted, in theory, by God? Barth clearly has in mind his own situation in the Germany between the two world wars.

The difficulty with Barth's position can be understood by looking at two theologians whose work attempt to either work out from Barth's hypothesis or to work around it. T. F. Torrance is an example of one who works in sympathy with Barth but tries to meliorate the logic of Barth's claim that theology and revelation are 'laws unto themselves.' Torrance is clear to agree with Barth that the danger in a natural theology is the introduction of an independent (from Christology) power inherent in the human that can discern God. This splits theology into 'nature' and 'grace' so that, in essence, grace simply adds to what can be deduced or inferred from nature. This, Torrance thinks, is a form of foundationism (see Plantinga pp 217-219) and runs parallel to what the Bible calls idolatry - the attempt of the human self to establish self-knowledge of God. This leads to deistical dualism, the breaking of knowledge into the realm of God and the realm of the material world. Instead, Torrance argues that what natural theology does is to posit a logical bridge between concept and experience, or thought and experience, so that the apparent gap between a perfect God and an imperfect world can be overcome. This, Torrance thinks, is due to the supremacy of the medieval confidence in geometry, or a logico-causative mechanistic understanding of the universe. In this case, experience is given an a priori framing which then explains the grounds of the experience. From cause and effect, in short, one can deduce or infer the nature of all reality. This Euclidian mindset was overthrown in post-Einsteinian physics and must therefore also be overthrown in theology. Torrance argues that revelation must constitute a real knowledge of God and not a ground for the possibility of theology or revelation. Natural theology is not a separate theology but instead functions within a theology of nature, given its shape and content by revelation and not within itself.

Pannenberg, as already examined, thinks Barth's theological isolationism makes theology unaccountable to other human sciences and therefore irrelevant or at the very least unaccountable. In this latter instance, he shares Barth's concern that theology might be hijacked by cultural values and thereby become oppressive ideologically. The difference between the two theologians is that Pannenberg sees the corrective for this propensity in establishing dialogue with other human sciences while for Barth, the corrective lies in an adherence to Scripture and the church itself. Pannenberg's specific objection to Barth's theology is that Barth is too imbued with nineteenth century personalism or subjectivity. For Pannenberg, Barth's theology is a sophist circle of the self wherein revelation is unaccountable to any objective criterion or scrutiny.

Therefore the objection to Barth's rejection of natural theology falls into two main camps. The first, seen in Torrance, is that Barth's position is basically correct, meaning that revelation itself constitutes an adequate ground for experience, but needs to be softened somewhat so as to bring theology into a dialogue with other human sciences. In fact, he argues, the recent revolution in those sciences seem to indicate that the problem of natural theology is a problem of misguided maxims (in Euclidian metaphysics) and not necessarily a problem of theology. The second camp, seen in Pannenberg, is that Barth is too isolated in his rejection of any natural theology. In this case, the severance of dialogue is the doom of theology as a relevant voice in human culture. In addition, Pannenberg also sees Barth's rejection as based on an outdated mode of thinking: namely, Barth's uncritical acceptance of nineteenth-century theories of personalism. What is common in both camps is Brunner's contention: theology has an eristic task, namely to find a common ground from which to dialogue with other human sciences and structures.