Divine Revelation & Salvation History Divine revelation has been pedagogical, meaning: God has revealed himself and his way of salvation slowly and gradually over time, according to people’s abilities to comprehend it. The Old Testament is the incomplete revelation of God to his immature peoples, and the New Testament is God’s complete revelation to his mature peoples. The New Testament completes the Old Testament. The New Covenant supersedes the Old Covenant, which has passed away. The New Testament shows us the way of salvation God has provided for all peoples and shows us the way of life God desires all peoples to live, which is to imitate the life of Jesus. “The teaching of Christ, the Word, must be upheld. Held up though one would think that it is completely beyond us—out of our reach, impossible to follow. I believe Christ is our Truth and is with us always.” ~ Dorothy Day Jesus, High Priest of a Better Covenant “Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts,and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” (Hebrews 8) VIDEO - Fr Robert Barron and Dr Scott Hahn on Biblical Interpretation and The Liturgy - youtu.be/bX-kLBRVGs8 Dei Verbum and Christian Morals | Fr. Benedict Ashley, O.P. | Ignatius Insight “Christian morality must always be seen as an imitation of Christ. Christian morality is not an abstract ideal, nor is it a mere set of rules, nor is it even just a well-organized systematic moral and spiritual theology. It is discipleship, the following of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, not only outwardly but under the transforming power of his Holy Spirit sent upon all the baptized. It is not so easy to understand how this is possible. How are sinners to live like the all-holy Christ? How are mere human beings to imitate the Son of God? How are women to imitate a man? How are children or the aged to imitate this man in the prime of life? How are the rich to imitate this poor man? How are the poor, ignorant, and powerless to imitate one who is “the wisdom and power of God”(1 Cor 1:24)? How are intellectuals to imitate this carpenter? How are we moderns of various races to imitate a Jew of the first century? Yet by the power of his Holy Spirit we are called to be his Body and to live in Him. In fact our many differences are precisely the ways in which his fullness of grace is to be made manifest to the world in a way that in his short life on earth in a single place and time it could not be manifested. “This why Dei Verbum takes special care to vindicate the authenticity of the portrayal of the historic Jesus of Nazareth in the Four Gospels. It emphatically declares that the Church has "firmly and with absolute constancy maintained and continues to maintain, that the four Gospels, whose historicity the [Church] unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among us, really did and taught for their salvation, until the day when he was taken up... “When we look to Jesus as revealed in the Gospels and the whole of the Bible as the supreme model of what it is to be truly moral, we cannot help but focus on the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew. Whether we have it in the form that Jesus gave it, or whether, as many scholars hypothesize, as a synthesis provided by tradition, or even by the author of Matthew, from the earliest days of the Church it has been accepted as the best summary of Jesus’ teaching on the Christian life. The Gospels then show us how in fact this is how Jesus himself lived, so that his life, death, and resurrection are the most profound commentary on this Sermon. In it we see that Jesus based his life and his moral teaching firmly on the Old Testament that the Sermon quotes and interprets. “There is a tendency today to attempt to construct a moral theology on the sometimes rather general ethical statements of the New Testament, while treating the more specific moral guidance of the Old Testament as pertaining to the ancient Jews but not to modern Christians. It is very true, as Dei Verbum itself notes, that the Old Testament “contains matters imperfect and provisional.” But the Council goes on to say that, "These books [of the Old Testament] nevertheless show us authentic divine teaching. Christians should accept with veneration these writings which give expression to a lively sense of God, which are a storehouse of sublime teaching on God and of sound wisdom on human life, as well as a wonderful treasury of prayers; in them, too, the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way" (15). “In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus himself, with an authority that astonished his hearers, indicates this imperfect character of the Old Testament revelation, “You have heard it said — but I say to you.” Yet he by no means repudiates it, but rather, following the Old Testament prophets, he corrects a misunderstanding of the Law as principally a matter of external ritual and of regulations for the Jewish community alone. Instead he highlights that what is permanent and universal in it is its moral teaching and above all its call for faith, hope, and love that is its interior spirit. It was for St. Peter and St. Paul along with the Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem guided by the Holy Spirit to apply this to the Gentiles, freeing them from the particularities of the Jewish ritual and judicial law, and calling them to observe its moral precepts not merely in the letter but the spirit.” Dei Verbum and Christian Morals | Fr. Benedict Ashley, O.P. | Ignatius Insight - ignatiusinsight/features2008/bashley_dvmorals_feb08.asp DEI VERBUM - Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation CHAPTER I REVELATION ITSELF In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4). Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col. 1;15, 1 Tim. 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself. This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having in inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them. By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation. (2) God, who through the Word creates all things (see John 1:3) and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities (see Rom. 1:19-20). Planning to make known the way of heavenly salvation, He went further and from the start manifested Himself to our first parents. Then after their fall His promise of redemption aroused in them the hope of being saved (see Gen. 3:15) and from that time on He ceaselessly kept the human race in His care, to give eternal life to those who perseveringly do good in search of salvation (see Rom. 2:6-7). Then, at the time He had appointed He called Abraham in order to make of him a great nation (see Gen. 12:2). Through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets, He taught this people to acknowledge Himself the one living and true God, provident father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by Him, and in this manner prepared the way for the Gospel down through the centuries. Then, after speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, "now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2). For He sent His Son, the eternal Word, who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the innermost being of God (see John 1:1-18). Jesus Christ, therefore, the Word made flesh, was sent as "a man to men." (3) He "speaks the words of God" (John 3;34), and completes the work of salvation which His Father gave Him to do (see John 5:36; Divine Revelation 17:4). To see Jesus is to see His Father (John 14:9). For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Moreover He confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed, that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal. The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (see 1 Tim. 6:14 and Tit. 2:13). "The obedience of faith" (Rom. 13:26; see 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6) "is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals," (4) and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him. To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving "joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it." (5) To bring about an ever deeper understanding of revelation the same Holy Spirit constantly brings faith to completion by His gifts. Through divine revelation, God chose to show forth and communicate Himself and the eternal decisions of His will regarding the salvation of men. That is to say, He chose to share with them those divine treasures which totally transcend the understanding of the human mind. (6) As a sacred synod has affirmed, God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty from created reality by the light of human reason (see Rom. 1:20); but teaches that it is through His revelation that those religious truths which are by their nature accessible to human reason can be known by all men with ease, with solid certitude and with no trace of error, even in this present state of the human race. (7) Source: DEI VERBUM - Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation - ewtn/library/COUNCILS/v2revel.htm
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 20:11:40 +0000
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