Christ vs. Pannenberg vs. the Hermeneutic Death Spiral, pt 4:
He begins by noting that the patristic fathers never thought it a need to define the concept of revelation, and I mentioned that this was in accord with Jesus and the apostles before them.
The Shepherd of Hermas, however, showed signs through semantics that the Greek conception of revelation was beginning to influence the biblical one. The writer speaks of revelation both as future and apocalyptic and the disclosure of the prophetic content of scripture, he also speaks of revelation as manifesting or manifestation. Quoting Pannenberg, this was used as in “the manifestation of the Lord,” “the manifestation of the order of the Cosmos,” and the “future judgment that is now hidden.” “Epiphany” was used to cover revelation in the end-time discussions and in respect to the incarnation, perhaps to soften the difficulties presented by the paradox of proleptic revelation.
In the Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians chapter 8, the self-revelation of God, the epiphany, was said to be Jesus who revealed the Father, brought in to clarify the meaning of the incarnation, “that only the Son could reveal the Father (Mat 11:27) with the manifestation of the Son in the flesh.” Then, Iranaeus in Against Heresies on Mat 11:27 could say that “the Son reveals the father by his own manifestation to us. Then, with Justin Martyr, “the preexistent son revealed the father,” making him visible because the Father is impossible to be known otherwise. In 2 Clement, “In Him (Jesus) the one invisible God sent us the Savior and the Author of immortality through whom he has revealed truth to us and heavenly life. Also in Athanasius: “the Logos appeared in the flesh in order that we might attain the knowledge of the invisible God.”
It is not the point if these phrases are theologically right or wrong.
Pannenberg says that because the revelatory function of the revelation of Jesus is only implied, the Hellenistic idea is peeking through of deity in human form. By misuse of the common concept of the Logos found in John but also in Greek philosophy, where John strictly presents it literally, as Christ as the (prophetic) Word of God, we see the mere philosophical divine ordering principle of the cosmos is modifying and erasing the biblical one by transferring it to theological ideas. Revelation and the apocalyptic vision of the outworking of the divine plan of history in Jesus and his informational entity, the prophetic word, is retreating. Its to be replaced by an idiomatic one that applies to the individual, where reflection on the revelatory function of the logos is taking its place. As Pannenberg says:
“Once the Logos came to be seen as the Mediator of knowledge of the invisible father, it was obvious what form he had to take to make himself intelligible to us. Thus, the concept of revelation and that of the incarnation merged.”
What happened, which is not stated explicitly by Pannenberg, is that the revelation of the Christ of history in “the prophetic word of demonstration” was replaced by a pagan philosophical concept to explain the incarnation paradox. This done regardless of the fact that “Logos” means, literally, “Word,” or Word of God, the prophetic Word put as Jesus Christ himself. Here, messianic prophecy as revelation, and the sole source of illumination and the knowledge that leads to salvation is being replaced by un-attestable, insular, personal ruminations.
Origen related the theological function of revelation to the Holy Spirit, which mediated the Son by the inspiration of the prophetic writings. This is quite true. Although a good expression and Origen also taught that only the proof of Jesus Christ appearance and fulfillments proved this revelation, there are consequences to saying that the prophetic scriptures which predicted Jesus Christ were inspired by the Spirit without carefully qualifying it repeatedly, it or it will come to mean that inspiration essentially means revelation, and the concept will break off its attachment to the Prophetic Word and be joined only to a revelation to a philosophical concept, which may be true but an isolated theological proposition without an indispensable hard link to a supernatural prophetic phenomenon. Therefore propositions become the epistemic conduit through which the divine is seen, not the equivalent of the divine himself.
Pannenberg says that, for Christian doctrine, “the concept of revelation never had for the fathers any basic function in its systematic presentation.” There was no attempt to break off “Revelation” as having its own theological power than its attachment to the Prophets or Christ which were taken for granted. But speaking of “revelation” as only the equivalent of Christ, which was common in all the Patristic writings, has severe consequences, since even that separates a grounding and essential qualification, the proof of revelation, from its object, and will make it subject instead to a “Person” idea as Christ.
Then we have another predictable change:
“Only in the Middle Ages, and especially under older Protestantism, did the emphasis in the understanding of revelation, or at least in its theological function, shift to “inspiration”.
In the Middle Ages, after the Church became the essential definition of a present, sensible authority, the source of “authority” then became an important theological football. Although the sense of “authority” was pre-apostolic always tied to Christ and the prophetic revelation of Him, not an idea, the importance of the authority of the scriptural revelational demonstration was spoken of connected to the emerging, independent (in the way I have described) religious ideas of revelation and inspiration.
Pannenberg does not go there, perhaps because he is greatly involved in the ecumenical movement and is averse to antagonizing Catholicism, but Catholicism’s hardening as the locus of authority meant that, although revelational authority is still found in the Scriptures, the Scripture’s distillation went in Church dogma (theological conclusions), and then in the Pope and his priests by the authority of their exclusive sacramental application of the means of Grace. Therefore, salvation was mediated by authorities that were further independently un-attestable and man-made in comparison to what was once thought a proven and divine, prophetic one. Protestantism objected to this, and rightly so, and the link of biblical revelation to authority was debated by them as given to scripture alone, but through any biblical exposition that could be mustered to contradict the Catholic error of man-centered authority, not necessarily to the apostolic and patristic prophetic revelation alone. Sola scriptura as the authority is rightly singular, but it’s not sola if the scriptures are conceived as one of a whole authority marshaled to fight ill-conceived dogma and one a particular being minimized as only an apologetic for a faith taken for granted. Its duo scriptura. The cultural controversies of the age were the main focus of theology as with emerging science. They involve the investigation and resolution of immanent concerns, not transcendent ones.
When Authority is argued from the easily assailable and general conception of biblical exposition while not identifying it necessarily as the prophetic scriptures, and the “Bible” is not captured by its only means of showing and resolving God, the “Bible” concept, with “authority,” follows the sump and is flattened. Then pick anything you want from that grab-bag from which you can use to fulfill your personal needs, which are paramount. Then, the prophetic scriptures become progressively under attack by being left as an ancient and disposable curiosity to theology as prosaic concepts become the new epistemic contact with Christ.
It is no wonder then why in the Enlightenment the shift was made from a focus on the Church as the authority of revelation and transferred to a debate on the verbal inspiration of the Bible as a whole, and “this became a starting point of the discussion of revelation in modern theology.” It will now be argued, and rightly so, that there is no verbal inspiration possible, or inspiration of any kind if argued on the basis of the human experience of revelation, but if revelation becomes only a divine idea or revelation as a human authority, revelation now is no indispensable fact or means. The subject could now progress and be taken up of a revelation “by word and revelation by deed,” by Pfaff and Fichte, rather than the older idea and slightly better notion of inspired communication still held by Kant, Lessing, and Semler. Revelation, having been questioned possible on the basis of the straw men of the church and through biblical exposition could now only be spoken of as general ideational categories which further place the Prophetic Word distant from it.
“Revelation” was then suggested as being bound biblically if at all to only the inner, private version toward “inspiration,” initiated by Fichte and Carl Ludwig Nitzsch. As with Kant, both dismissed the prophetic writings for the bible’s moral teachings. Nitzsch did so by distinguishing the matter from the form of the promulgation of revelation, who allowed the miracles and prophecies in the Redeemer story, while Fitche would not accept them because, astonishingly, they could not be verified! Still, they pointed to God as a “moral” lawgiver.
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