Revelation (...not the book...)

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” – St. Paul

“In as much as the known thing of God is manifest in them, for God has brought them to light. For his invisible things, from the creation of the cosmos, the marking works, [are] being perceived, both His everlasting power and divinity, in the ‘to be,’ they without excuse.” – My translation

Revelation I define as the cognition of truth. What is meant by cognition will be explored. The question of revelation begins, for many, with the presupposition of the divine – God is truth. If the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures is assumed (which it isn’t, but play along), then the first revelation appears to be God (Gen. 1.1), but it is, in fact, Scripture itself, for before one can know the God who is truth one must assume that the thing that testifies of God (i.e. Scripture) is trustworthy and true. Scripture, at that point, is equated to truth itself, and so knowledge of Scripture is knowledge of the divine, which is revelation.

Of course, this is operating under the assumption that “revelation” is equated to knowledge. To assume Scripture as revelation before assuming the God of those Scriptures is backwards at best, since man’s first assumption in this case would be a book – an object, a collection, scribbles on parchment – rather than a transcendence of some kind, which is a better type of existence than corrupt and dying man and his reason, not to mention crumbling paper. Revelation cannot be equated with the knowledge of Scripture without first assuming the God of that Scripture, but how is that God to be revealed that He might be within man’s ability to assume? A type of divinity could be assumed a priori, without any type of revelation, but, shy of complete chance, this a priori assumption would be no different than a tribal deity who is assumed out of the desire for explanations. Indeed, the Abrahamic God cannot be assumed without experiencing him in the Bible.

If knowledge of the Scriptures is not revelation (i.e. the Bible is not a revelation of God), or if it is at least not the first revelation, then what is man’s a priori knowledge of God? Can one assume God? Is there any other revelation that exists outside the Scriptures that is valid to assume as the initial source of truth? Paul’s answer is that revelation exists in creation (nature) – that the invisible qualities of God (the unrevealed) are perceived in the “to be” (that is, in the things that exist, creation). The infinite, unknowable God is perceived, not known, in the things he has created. This is, more or less, the teleological argument: order, purpose, and therefore divinity and providence, are perceivable in nature: in the water cycle, the circulatory system, the passing of seasons, bees carrying pollen, etc. All creation testifies to what otherwise remains invisible.

“But Paul,” says I, “what about the calamity of the universe? What of its chaos, vanity, and corruption? Surely this indicates that nature is a poor, poor a priori revelator of truth; the Abrahamic God can be no more assumed by one who observes creation as He can be by observing a dusted house before guests arrive: they are both indicative of organization and purpose, but neither reveals the existence of an organizer. Should they indicate anything at all, it would be that the organizer existed in the past. Further than this, there is nothing to be known.” Paul’s argument is nothing more than the admission that creation only allows for the a priori assumption that an organized transcendence existed.

Of course, the key notion is that of perception rather than knowledge. Paul says that God is perceived in creation, and so it is not necessary for his argument to prove that the Abrahamic God is knowable via the revelation of creation. So then, what is perception? Perception, in this instance, is cognition without comprehension: creation is recognized as having the infusion of teleological, transcendent properties, though none of the teleology or the transcendent is categorically understood. This is the divine darkness, the perception of a reality outside the empirical, sensory world.

Thus, we cannot in any sense assume that revelation may be equated to knowledge, unless we say that we know only that we do not know, and we are aware only of our state of blindness. God’s revelation in Romans 1 is the reality of His being hidden.

The paradox of this whole discourse has been the use of Scripture, which I’ve noted is not to be assumed as a form of revelation, to justify the nature of creation as a revelation-unto-blindness. In order to argue properly, this type of argumentation must be rejected, lest the reasoning be circular. We must back up once more, and ask whether a “dusted house” is even observable. Is even the prior existence of a transcendent reality assumable via the medium of creation? If creation tells us nothing, not even a base teleology, without first assuming the authority of Paul’s argument in Romans 1, then does any revelation exist?

My answer is no, there is no revelation that may be assumed a priori. Because Paul’s argument cannot be assumed, and because the authority of the Bible may not be assumed, there is no manner by which one may even become aware of the existence – past or present – of any teleology or transcendence. The answer, then, is the evidence-less leap of faith in assuming a priori the revelation of Jesus Christ… but is Jesus only knowable through Scripture?