I sent
a few emails today to family members with summary thoughts on
revelation, mystic and gnostic experience, scripture, and so on. My
words were necessarily overly brief, as I was writing on my iPad’s
virtual keyboard. Now I attempt a little fuller and more careful
explanation. It is a brief statement, and by no means the last word on
anything addressed here.
Various meanings to the symbol “revelation” and equivalent terms have emerged in history. Fundamentalists concentrate on one meaning: verbal inspiration from God to some man or woman, with the understanding that the actual words spoken or written by a prophet or apostle are “revelation.” The approach is overly simplistic, and partially misleading, as I shall explain.
Drawing on my study of the Apostle Paul--who did indeed know much about “revelation”--what is primarily meant by the symbol “revelation” (in Greek, apocalypsis; in Latin, revelatio) is “unveiling.” That is the literal meaning of the word. What is unveiled? When the Apostle Paul writes, he says (in Galatians 1), “God was pleased to reveal his son in me.” That is literal from the Greek, and that is all. He never claims that words were whispered in his mind. Now the usual translations are fundamentalistic-friendly: “God...revealed his son to me,” as if Paul saw the Christ external to himself. His Greek says, “God revealed his son in me,” as I quoted above. What is “revealed,” however, is simply the presence of God as Christ in Paul’s consciousness. Note, though, that the Apostle explicitly avoids collapsing the divine into his experience, and his language preserves “layers” of revealed / unrevealed. The “God” who does the “revealing” is not directly revealed. This unrevealed depth of divinity, if we can use this term, is called “Father” by early Christians. It is not “a person,” but a symbolic expression communicating that there is ever more to the divine than what is “revealed.” The God of the Apostles was no “revealed God.” “The Father” is not a distinct hypostasis or “person,” but divine reality beyond what can be experienced. Divinity as experienced by early Christians is called “Christ” when it is personal (as in “I living in you, you living in me” or “Come to me...”), and it is called “Spirit” when not personal, but impersonal, as in “forgiveness,” “love, joy, peace,” and so on. What is important to keep in mind is that Paul and the early Christians emphasize both that the unknown God lets himself be known in experiences of the resurrected Christ and of the impersonal Spirit, but at the same time remains utterly beyond human understanding, using the symbol “Father.” This, in short, is the experiential basis of the Christian symbol “Trinity,” using the term introduced several hundred years later by the early father, Tertullian. We are speaking here of experiences of divine presence, and not of doctrines or dogmas, and surely not of “3 persons” floating around in space. What is at stake is the symbolization of divine Presence in the human soul. What is at stake is the truth of existence: that divine Presence constitutes and forms our humanity through our cooperation.The Apostle Paul’s main terms for this human cooperation are “faith, hope, charity,” with simple trust or the opening of the soul to Presence as the meaning of “faith.” “Hope” is the expectation of full union beyond death. “Charity” or “love” is the mutual penetration of the divine and human, with divinity working in and through human cooperation to bring good to others.
Second point: In addition to experiences of divine presence as “revelation,” the long Christian tradition has used the symbol “revelation” in several other senses. It can be applied to the words of the prophets and apostles, who articulated their experiences of God in words. This meaning of “revelation” came to the fore only in the Reformation of the 16th century. When the Fathers used the symbol “revelation” from the earliest centuries of the Christian era through St. Bonaventure (1200’s), it primarily applied to the process of “unveiling” of divine Presence in the psyche (soul) of the hearer. In other words, “revelation” is personal and subjective, not objective and external. This usage is strong in the New Testament, and is especially clear in the so-called Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (a composite of perhaps 4 letters, scholars have shown). Here we find explicit discussion of having “the veil removed from the heart” when “Christ is proclaimed.” One hears in faith, and the veil is “removed,” making one aware that “the LORD” or “the Spirit” is present and active in one’s soul (consciousness), “transforming” one’s life, “from one degree of glory to another.” In other words, the divine divinizes the human through revelatory action in the soul.
It was mainly during the Reformation that “revelation” got hardened into a book, the “holy Bible,” although I am sure that plenty of church documents and theologians were already moving in this direction as the truth of experience withered from awareness. For external, “objective” revelation is easier to understand, and in effect reduces the truth of experience to the letter of a text. (As St. Paul says, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”) That process of the hardening of original experience into objective “revelations” is one of the constants in the history of “religions.” And in the history of philosophy as well, as anyone who studies Plato comes to understand: the search for truth becomes objective “teachings.” What matters, though, is that someone experienced the truth of God’s presence, and that experience gets buried beneath “revealed words” or “texts,” such as the Bible, the Koran, and so on.
Disclaimer: Admittedly, my approach to matters of faith is philosophical-historical and experiential, and not dogmatic or theological. The theologians have their place, as do scriptures and dogmas. In Plato’s words, “Every myth has its truth.” “Sacred texts” often record and preserve within them records of genuine spiritual experiences over the ages. The Divine is generous, and many have been genuine experiences of divinity over the ages. On a fundamentalistic level, the texts and doctrines are the “revelation,” as I have noted, and this claim can be a serious derailment, for it suggests that one must be a “Bible believer” or accept all the church dogmas, and so on, rather than simply open up to the Presence of the living God.
Conclusion: The God (Elohim) who said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM” (ehyeh asher ehyeh) is as close as one can get to the verbal content of revelation. The Gospel of John builds on this awareness in the many “I AM” sayings in Jesus, as in “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” Or again, in the words of the Greek philosopher Parmenides, “IS!” That is all. The rest of the elaborations often detract from the stark truth of divine presence as that which is in the midst of consciousness, and at the same time, forming the whole of reality. That which is by tradition called “God” can be symbolized as both the beginning or “First Cause” (Aristotle), and the beyond (Plato, epikeina). What we are speaking about here is, simply put, the truth of reality, or divine reality as it presents itself in history.
Various meanings to the symbol “revelation” and equivalent terms have emerged in history. Fundamentalists concentrate on one meaning: verbal inspiration from God to some man or woman, with the understanding that the actual words spoken or written by a prophet or apostle are “revelation.” The approach is overly simplistic, and partially misleading, as I shall explain.
Drawing on my study of the Apostle Paul--who did indeed know much about “revelation”--what is primarily meant by the symbol “revelation” (in Greek, apocalypsis; in Latin, revelatio) is “unveiling.” That is the literal meaning of the word. What is unveiled? When the Apostle Paul writes, he says (in Galatians 1), “God was pleased to reveal his son in me.” That is literal from the Greek, and that is all. He never claims that words were whispered in his mind. Now the usual translations are fundamentalistic-friendly: “God...revealed his son to me,” as if Paul saw the Christ external to himself. His Greek says, “God revealed his son in me,” as I quoted above. What is “revealed,” however, is simply the presence of God as Christ in Paul’s consciousness. Note, though, that the Apostle explicitly avoids collapsing the divine into his experience, and his language preserves “layers” of revealed / unrevealed. The “God” who does the “revealing” is not directly revealed. This unrevealed depth of divinity, if we can use this term, is called “Father” by early Christians. It is not “a person,” but a symbolic expression communicating that there is ever more to the divine than what is “revealed.” The God of the Apostles was no “revealed God.” “The Father” is not a distinct hypostasis or “person,” but divine reality beyond what can be experienced. Divinity as experienced by early Christians is called “Christ” when it is personal (as in “I living in you, you living in me” or “Come to me...”), and it is called “Spirit” when not personal, but impersonal, as in “forgiveness,” “love, joy, peace,” and so on. What is important to keep in mind is that Paul and the early Christians emphasize both that the unknown God lets himself be known in experiences of the resurrected Christ and of the impersonal Spirit, but at the same time remains utterly beyond human understanding, using the symbol “Father.” This, in short, is the experiential basis of the Christian symbol “Trinity,” using the term introduced several hundred years later by the early father, Tertullian. We are speaking here of experiences of divine presence, and not of doctrines or dogmas, and surely not of “3 persons” floating around in space. What is at stake is the symbolization of divine Presence in the human soul. What is at stake is the truth of existence: that divine Presence constitutes and forms our humanity through our cooperation.The Apostle Paul’s main terms for this human cooperation are “faith, hope, charity,” with simple trust or the opening of the soul to Presence as the meaning of “faith.” “Hope” is the expectation of full union beyond death. “Charity” or “love” is the mutual penetration of the divine and human, with divinity working in and through human cooperation to bring good to others.
Second point: In addition to experiences of divine presence as “revelation,” the long Christian tradition has used the symbol “revelation” in several other senses. It can be applied to the words of the prophets and apostles, who articulated their experiences of God in words. This meaning of “revelation” came to the fore only in the Reformation of the 16th century. When the Fathers used the symbol “revelation” from the earliest centuries of the Christian era through St. Bonaventure (1200’s), it primarily applied to the process of “unveiling” of divine Presence in the psyche (soul) of the hearer. In other words, “revelation” is personal and subjective, not objective and external. This usage is strong in the New Testament, and is especially clear in the so-called Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (a composite of perhaps 4 letters, scholars have shown). Here we find explicit discussion of having “the veil removed from the heart” when “Christ is proclaimed.” One hears in faith, and the veil is “removed,” making one aware that “the LORD” or “the Spirit” is present and active in one’s soul (consciousness), “transforming” one’s life, “from one degree of glory to another.” In other words, the divine divinizes the human through revelatory action in the soul.
It was mainly during the Reformation that “revelation” got hardened into a book, the “holy Bible,” although I am sure that plenty of church documents and theologians were already moving in this direction as the truth of experience withered from awareness. For external, “objective” revelation is easier to understand, and in effect reduces the truth of experience to the letter of a text. (As St. Paul says, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”) That process of the hardening of original experience into objective “revelations” is one of the constants in the history of “religions.” And in the history of philosophy as well, as anyone who studies Plato comes to understand: the search for truth becomes objective “teachings.” What matters, though, is that someone experienced the truth of God’s presence, and that experience gets buried beneath “revealed words” or “texts,” such as the Bible, the Koran, and so on.
Disclaimer: Admittedly, my approach to matters of faith is philosophical-historical and experiential, and not dogmatic or theological. The theologians have their place, as do scriptures and dogmas. In Plato’s words, “Every myth has its truth.” “Sacred texts” often record and preserve within them records of genuine spiritual experiences over the ages. The Divine is generous, and many have been genuine experiences of divinity over the ages. On a fundamentalistic level, the texts and doctrines are the “revelation,” as I have noted, and this claim can be a serious derailment, for it suggests that one must be a “Bible believer” or accept all the church dogmas, and so on, rather than simply open up to the Presence of the living God.
Conclusion: The God (Elohim) who said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM” (ehyeh asher ehyeh) is as close as one can get to the verbal content of revelation. The Gospel of John builds on this awareness in the many “I AM” sayings in Jesus, as in “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” Or again, in the words of the Greek philosopher Parmenides, “IS!” That is all. The rest of the elaborations often detract from the stark truth of divine presence as that which is in the midst of consciousness, and at the same time, forming the whole of reality. That which is by tradition called “God” can be symbolized as both the beginning or “First Cause” (Aristotle), and the beyond (Plato, epikeina). What we are speaking about here is, simply put, the truth of reality, or divine reality as it presents itself in history.
