The Concept of Revelation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Georges Tamer

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783110474794
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

The idea that God reveals himself to human beings is central in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but differs in regard of content and conceptualization. The first volume of the new series Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses points out similarities and differences of "revelation". KCID aims to establish an archeology of religious knowledge in order to create a new conceptual platform of mutual understanding among religious communities.

Erratum: Wenzel Maximilian Widenka is co-author of the epilogue (pp. 195-206).

The Concept of Revelation in Christianity

Christoph Schwöbel

1 Introduction: Contentious Foundations – the Debates on Revelation

The notion of revelation, the idea of God disclosing essential aspects of God’s being, will and work to human beings, is of fundamental significance in the monotheistic religions. Everything in the practice and theoretical reflection of religion, in its life of worship and in the ethical orientation it offers, depends on God communicating with human creatures and granting them insight into God’s identity and nature, into God’s purpose and will for creation and specifically for human creatures. Revelation is the condition for being granted insight into the dynamic and faithfulness of God’s actions in the world through which the creator actualizes the divine purpose for creation as it is grounded in God’s own being. This is the presupposition for trusting in God, for doing God’s will and so to be drawn into acting according to God’s purposes. In this sense, every dimension of religious life in the monotheistic religions, their form, their content and the mode of their performance can be traced back to God’s communication with the creatures.

One way to describe religions is to see them as multi-dimensional wholes in which every dimension is connected to the others.¹ By distinguishing these dimensions and by exploring their interrelationship, such an approach offers a way of grasping the particularities as well the holistic character of religions. The significance of the idea of revelation becomes immediately clear when one relates the different dimensions of religions to their foundational event, which in theistic religions is seen as a communicative disclosure event establishing a relation between God, humanity and the world which provides the basic orientation for humans who trust in the God who in this way relates to them.

For all monotheistic religions the dimension of worship is central. In all acts of worship, in turning to God in prayer, in thanksgiving, petition and praise, in listening to God’s word as promise and guidance, it is presupposed that God has disclosed himself as the one who alone is to be worshipped because God is the creator, sustainer, judge and savior of creation. Monotheistic religions are characterized in different ways by a narrative dimension, principally in their sacred scriptures, in which God is identified and predicated through narratives, recounting God as relating to humans in different modes of address and through God’s mighty actions. The monotheistic religions are characterized by an experiential dimension where the whole of human experience is shaped and oriented to the revelation of the Divine in various ways. Although the modes of experience may vary from historical to mystical experience, it is always clear that the experience of God relating to humans and to the whole world is the framework for all other human experiences, for determining their significance and for judging their value by relating them to the foundational experience of the address of God in words and events. The way in which God relates to humans is seen in the monotheistic religions as the establishment of a community, as shaping its structures of sociality and prescribing its way of life. This community is understood as the exemplary form of sociality that displays the features of human being in relation on the basis of their communal and individual relationship to God. This community is characterized by a specific ethos that is grounded in God’s relationship to humans. This ethos defines the orientation of human life, by determining the possibilities of action for created agents in relation to the creator and to other creatures, in setting goals that should be strived for, by defining goods which support that orientation, by displaying virtues, conforming to God’s will for humans, and identifying vices that deviate from it, and by setting up norms for a human life lived in accordance with revelation. In the monotheistic religions, revelation shapes the aesthetics of religion, the way reality is perceived and aesthetically shaped to make its meaning apparent. The specific aesthetics that characterize Judaism, Christianity and Islam respectively trace their particularities back to the understanding of God that is disclosed in revelation and the understanding of what it means to be human that is implied in this disclosure. Every dimension of religious life is rooted in revelation and the specific constellations of these dimensions of religious life can be followed back to the specific content and mode of revelation. Looking at the way revelation is interwoven with the fabric of religion illustrates how revelation shapes the entire religious life and forms the basis for the way believers understand the whole of reality. In monotheistic religions revelation determines the whole understanding of reality. Since the author of revelation is believed as the ground, the meaning and the goal of all reality, so that everything has to be understood in its relation to God, the scope of revelation cannot be limited. Everything can become the means and vehicle of God’s revelation.

In view of the foundational role of revelation it is not surprising that the Swiss Reformed theologian Emil Brunner states: “Wherever there is religion, there is the claim to revelation.”² This should, however, not obscure the fact that there are characteristic differences between theistic, monotheistic and mystical religions, and also between the different monotheistic religions. In the Eastern religions, paradigmatically in Buddhism, the emphasis is on illumination, the granting of insight, satori as it is called in Japanese Zen Buddhism, an inexplicable, indescribable moment of Enlightenment, comparable to the intuitive experience of Gautama Buddha under the Bo-Tree, which cannot be grasped by ordinary logic, but constitutes a new ordering of the relationship to the whole of the universe of the one who undergoes this experience. This experience is not mediated by the senses. In fact, it occurs when the senses no longer affect the experience of the one who seeks illumination. In theistic religions this emphasis on the inner experience is characteristically combined with an emphasis on manifestation in the world of experience, mediated by the senses. In monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this underlines that the God who discloses God’s being, will and work is also the creator, the source of salvation and the ultimate judge of everything there is. Revelation, creation, salvation and consummation have the same author. The inner illumination of the recipient of revelation and the manifestation of God in external reality have the same ground and object, and so they are correlated in particular ways.

Because of its foundational character there have been extensive inner-religious discussions in the history of the monotheistic religions on the nature, form, content and effect of revelation.³ Is revelation to be characterized as immediate or mediated disclosure of God? Should it be understood as direct or indirect communication? Does it occur primarily in the human person, in nature, or in history? Does revelation have the form of communicative actions in history and/or the effective communication of the divine word? What is the primary effect of revelation: Does it primarily grant insight or does it consist in offering guidance? Raising these questions already illustrates that the “or” in formulating these questions does not refer to an exclusive alternative, a complete disjunction, but rather to complementary aspects of revelation.

One of the most significant questions concerns the relationship between revelation and the witness to revelation, between the initial disclosure event and its appropriation in a history of interpretations. Is revelation an event in the past that needs to be appropriated in our respective present by interpretation and application? Does revelation refer to a present reality of experience that incorporates the past and opens up a particular view of the future? Or is revelation in the strict sense an eschatological event at the end of times so that what we have now are partial and fragmentary experiences of anticipatory disclosures? Even such a brief sketch illustrates the scope and the significance of the debates on the understanding of revelation. The foundational role of revelation in the religions is not only illustrated but also shaped by the way one responds to these questions.

In Judaism, Christianity and Islam an important cluster of questions focuses on the relationship between revelation and the sacred scriptures. Are the sacred scriptures themselves revelation? How is the relationship between the author, the medium and the effect of revelation to be assessed theologically, and how is scripture to be placed in that relationship? Is scripture to be seen as the divinely authorized witness to revelation or does scripture by itself carry divine authority? How is the relationship between scripture and tradition to be interpreted? Can the tradition of interpretation be regarded as being part of revelation? Or does scripture alone have divine authority? This question has considerable weight in all three monotheistic religions. While the view of the divine authority of scripture is mostly associated with Islam, Karaite Judaism also claims that the Tanakh alone has supreme authority. In Christianity, the Reformation and its principle “Scripture alone” and the subsequent development of a doctrine of verbal inspiration has been at the center of debates within the churches of the Reformation and with other Christian churches. The “inerrancy of scripture”, in its variations of absolute, full or limited inerrancy, is one of the questions where the relationship between the understanding of revelation and scripture is passionately discussed. This question which is mostly discussed in Protestant churches, has a counterpart in the question of the infallibility of the teaching office of the church, mainly discussed in the Roman Catholic church. It is closely connected to the question of who has authority in interpreting scripture which presupposes a view on the understanding of who has the authority of interpreting revelation. Is that the prerogative of particular ministries or of all believers or must God himself be seen as the ultimate interpreter of revelation and so as the final authority in interpreting revelation?

In modern times the question of the relationship of revelation and scripture or tradition is hotly debated in connection with the question of “fundamentalism”. This term has its origin as the self-description of Christian groups in the United States who claimed at the beginning of the 20^th century that belief in the inerrancy of scripture is the first of “five fundamentals” that characterize true Christian faith.⁴ In recent years the term has been used not only to characterize Christian groups but also, and predominantly so, strands within Islam and, to a lesser degree, in Judaism. The relationship between revelation and scripture which is at the center of these inner-religious debates and needs to be discussed theologically within each of the three monotheistic religions. Do the positions characterized as “fundamentalist” offer an authentic understanding of revelation or should they be seen as a case of “displaced foundations” since they invest scripture with an authority which only God can have as the only author, content and effect of revelation? Should the authority of Scripture be seen as strictly relative to the authority of revelation, a relation which then needs to be clarified theologically?

While these questions are at the center of inner-religious debates, interreligious conversations on revelation between Jews, Christians and Muslims have to take into account that in an important sense the scriptural traditions of the other form part of what is understood as revelation in one’s own religion. How should Jews view the fact that the traditions of Tanakh are viewed by Christians, albeit in slightly different canonical form, as the Old Testament? How do they understand the written Tora, also claimed by Christians as an indispensable part of what constitutes the witness to revelation, in relation to the oral Torah which played a constitutive role in shaping rabbinical Judaism? And how should Christians deal with the fact that Jews see the Tanakh as their Hebrew Bible? How can both understand theologically that the Bible of Israel has two different and often conflicting histories of reception and of the use of Israel’s Bible as scripture? Does this have significance for the understanding of revelation? Furthermore, how can Muslims deal with the fact that persons, events and traditions which are recorded in the Tanakh and in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament are part of the Qurʾān, although, according to the testimony of the Qurʾān, in a form that is shaped by the sending down of the Qurʾān to the prophet Muḥammad as the ultimate revelation? Again, how should Jews and Christians relate to the fact that what they see as normative and, in a sense, ultimate revelation is seen as leading on to the ultimate revelation of the Qurʾān to Muḥammad? The interrelationships between the texts being claimed as a constitutive part of revelation for each of the three monotheistic religions complicates the view of revelation in the respective inner-religious debates.

It is important to note that we do not confront the situation of the interrelationship between the Bible of Israel, the Christian Bible and the Qurʾān as a new challenge. It has formed part of the critical, often polemical, but also constructive relationships between the three monotheistic religions over centuries. In medieval times, philosophy, whether of a Jewish, Muslim or Christian pedigree, was a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• The Concept of Revelation in Judaism
• The Concept of Revelation in Christianity
• The Concept of Revelation in Islam
• Epilogue
• List of Contributors
• Index of Persons
• Index of Subjects