This paper examines Avery Dulles's five models of revelation: revelation as doctrine, as history, as inner experience, as dialectical presence, and as new consciousness. Beginning with the objectivist stance of neo-scholastic Christianity, the paper traces how successive models have progressively emphasized subjective experience over objective truth, shaped by historical forces including Deism, Kantian philosophy, and Schleiermacher's sentimentalism. Each model is explained in its theological and historical context, illustrating how the evolution of Western thought since the sixteenth century has transformed understanding of how God communicates with humanity and what that communication requires of the believer.
Revelation is the removing of a veil so that a thing is seen. In terms of Scripture, revelation is the Word of God given to humanity through the intermediaries — the writers of Scripture — over the centuries. Other religions, such as Judaism and Islam, also have a similar understanding of revelation, though they view their own texts as God-given and exclusive. For people who have not come to Jesus, the question remains: how is God revealed to them? Prayer, worship, belief, and self-denial are some of the ways people come to revelation.
Avery Dulles proposed five models of revelation: revelation as doctrine, revelation as history, revelation as inner experience, revelation as dialectical presence, and revelation as new consciousness. Each of these models reflects some aspect or period in the evolution of thought regarding revelation — from revelation being regarded as a direct action of God, to revelation being regarded as an objective deposit of truth, apologetically delivered by both Catholics and Protestants from the sixteenth century onward to combat the arguments of Deists. The Deists posited that all essential truths of religion were knowable by reason alone, and that no supernatural revelation offered any real assistance.
By the nineteenth century, revelation was caught in the midst of a battle between agnostics and philosophical skeptics on one side, and orthodox believers and Christians (both Protestant and Catholic) on the other. Kant and Schleiermacher were at the forefront of the skeptical movement: the former argued that human knowledge was confined to phenomenology and that transcendence, since it could not be directly experienced, could not be known even through revelation; the latter argued that faith understood as sentiment was more important than revelation, effectively marginalizing objective truth in a world that stressed subjective experience.
Coming out of this evolution of thought, Dulles proposes the five models of revelation. The first — revelation as doctrine — reflects the beliefs of sixteenth-century Christians who opposed the Deist diminishment of revelation's significance. The final model — revelation as new consciousness — reflects the essential thrust of Schleiermacher: that religious experience is ultimately a matter of sentiment, so doctrinal disputes become secondary.
Revelation as doctrine, understood as objective truth, is associated with neo-scholasticism. Catholics assert that both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are sources of revelation, whereas Protestants tend to view Scripture alone as the deposit of revelation. Christian theology is approached differently by these two groups, but essentially both hold that revelation was an act of God and that what has been revealed is now to be respected as truth.
In the Protestant tradition, Scripture is interpreted by the individual but is nonetheless recognized as the source of revealed truth. In the Catholic tradition, doctrinal statements from the teaching Church aid in the interpretation of Scripture, and oral tradition also expresses revealed truths that were not committed to writing.
Not everyone accepts either view. George Lindbeck argued that it is wrong to assume one can definitively state anything objective about God. Medieval theologians were also somewhat circumspect, regarding their work as a perception of divine truth and acknowledging that propositional revelation is not exclusive — one can adhere to the model of revelation as doctrine while also adhering to other models. Modern theologians such as Karl Barth complicated this model further by arguing that Scripture is not to be taken as revelation itself, but rather as a witness to the revelation of the Word of God in Christ, which the Church proclaims in its mission.
In the model of revelation as history, there are two forms: salvation history and universal history. In salvation history, Scripture emphasizes the role of Israel and the God who made covenants with His people, covenants fulfilled through Christ and the Church. Universal history, by contrast, applies to the whole of humanity.
The view of revelation as the history of inspired events — with the text of Scripture serving as a record of those events rather than as revelation itself — is held by John Baillie, James Barr, and others. Archaeological evidence is often used to support this view. In treating Scripture as the record of revelation rather than revelation itself, this model distances itself from the insistence on objective truth (doctrine and dogma) that characterizes the first model, and it sets the stage for understanding revelation as inner experience.
"Personal feeling and sentiment as revelation"
"Transformative encounter between person and Scripture"
"Revelation as transcendence across cultures and epochs"
The models of revelation can thus be seen as a series of evolutions that have transpired since the sixteenth century. The evolution of thought and philosophy, the rise of secularism, the rise of skepticism and agnosticism, and the rise of Deism all played a part in that evolution. Current perspectives on revelation tend to emphasize subjective experience over any objective truth or reality.
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