The earliest idea of revelation is the one found in the Hebrew Scriptures, in which the speech of God is addressed to Moses and the Prophets. They in turn are described as quoting the words of God rather than interpreting them. Jesus, as the fulfillment of the Prophets, does not merely speak the word of God: he is the word of God. This phrase, which occurs only in the opening verse of both the Gospel and the First Letter of John, has become a technical term in theology; Jesus is the incarnate Word. As such he is both the revealer and the revealed. The content of revelation
The proper content of revelation is designated in Roman Catholic teaching as mystery; this theme was important in the documents of Vatican I. The theme of mystery was developed in response to the intellectual movements of the 18th and 19th centuries known as the Enlightenment, scientism, and historicism. The Roman Catholic Church perceived these movements as threats to the idea of a sacred revelation, because they appeared to claim that human reason had no frontiers or that human reason had demonstrated that revelation was historically false or unfounded or that the content of revelation was irrational. The affirmation of mystery meant that the reality of God was unattainable to unaided human reason (theologians had long used the word incomprehensible, which says more than modern theologians wish to say). Mystery refers both to the divine reality and to the divine operations of the world. These operations can be observed only in their effects; the operation itself is not seen, nor is its motivation seen. The plan of God, which is realized in history, is mysterious. Vatican I insisted that the existence of God and of a moral order is attainable to reason, and some of the fathers of the council wished to state that these truths were imposed upon reason by the evidence, a step that the council did not choose to take. Mystery does not mean the incomprehensible or the unintelligible. It means, in popular language, that humankind cannot know who God is or what God is doing or why God is doing it unless God reveals it. Mystery also means that even when revelation is made the reality of God and his works escapes human comprehension.
The term supernatural has been used in Roman Catholic theology since the 17th century to designate not only revelation but other aspects of divine work in the world. The term’s inescapable ambiguity, however, has led many modern theologians to avoid it. The “natural” that the supernatural presupposes is the world of human experience; the quality of this experience is not altered by technological and social changes, as long as they are fulfillments of the potentialities of nature. Indeed, it is the spectacular growth in the knowledge of these potentialities in modern times that leads to doubt as to whether there can be a supernatural at all. The supernatural reality is identified with God in his reality and in his operations. This is a reality that humans cannot create or control. The supernatural in cognition is this reality as it is perceptible to humankind; it is, for human beings, simply unknown as far as unaided reason can attain. Vatican I affirmed that without revelation human reason cannot reach anything but a distorted idea of the divine and an imperfect idea of the moral order. This means also that without revelation human beings are unaware of their destiny, either individually or collectively, and are unable to achieve it without the entrance of the supernatural into the world of history and experience.
Contemporary theologians of revelation are aware that historical and literary criticism have rendered untenable the primitive idea of revelation as the direct utterance of God to man. Although Roman Catholic theologians have not found a satisfactory way of describing revelation, they do not agree that the destruction of a naive idea of revelation entails the destruction of any possible idea. Theologians also recognize that the older idea of a “revelation of propositions” as a collection of timeless and changeless verities, almost like a string of pearls, is no longer tenable. Every utterance that is called a revelation was formed in a definite time and place and bears the marks of its history. There is no revealed proposition that cannot be restated in another cultural situation. Indeed, contemporary theologians are aware that these propositions must be restated if the Roman Catholic Church is to speak meaningfully in the modern world. Roman Catholicism does not accept the possibility of a new revelation; it believes that reason can never completely penetrate the “mystery” and that it must continue the exploration of the mystery that has already been revealed. Tradition and Scripture
In Roman Catholic theology, tradition is understood both as channel and as content. As channel, it is identical with the living teaching authority of the Catholic church. As content, it is “the deposit of faith,” the revealed truth concerning faith and morals. In Roman Catholic belief, revelation ends with the death of the Apostles; the deposit was transmitted to the college of bishops, which succeeded the Apostles.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes that the Bible is the word of God and that tradition is the word of the church. In one sense, therefore, tradition yields to the Scriptures in dignity and authority. But against the Protestant slogan of sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”), itself subject to misinterpretation, the Roman Catholic Church advanced the argument that the church existed before the New Testament. In fact, the church both produced and authenticated the New Testament as the word of God. For this belief, at least, tradition is the exclusive source. This belief also furnished a warrant for the Catholic affirmation of the body of truth that is transmitted to the church through the college of bishops and preserved by oral tradition (meaning that it was not written in the Scriptures). The Roman church therefore affirmed its right to determine what it believed by consulting its own beliefs as well as the Scriptures. The Council of Trent affirmed that the deposit of faith was preserved in the Scriptures and in unwritten traditions and that the Catholic church accepts these two with equal reverence. The council studiously avoided the statement that they meant these “two” as two sources of the deposit, but most Catholic theologians after the council understood the statement as meaning two sources. Some Protestants thought it meant that the Roman Catholic Church had written a second Bible.
“St. Matthew,” page from the Ada Codex, c. 890; in the Stadtbibliothek Trier, Germany (MS. 22, fol. 15r).Courtesy of the Stadtbibliothek Trier, Ger.
In contemporary Catholic theology this question has been raised again, and a number of theologians now believe that Scripture and tradition must be viewed as one source. They are, however, faced with the problem of nonbiblical articles of faith. To this problem several remarks are pertinent. The first is that no Protestant church preaches “pure” gospel; all of them have developed dogmatic traditions, concerning which they have differed vigorously. It is true, however, that they do not treat these traditions “with equal devotion and reverence” with the Bible. The second remark is that, through the first eight ecumenical councils (before the Schism of 1054), the Christian church arrived at nonbiblical formulas to profess its faith. Protestants respond that this is at least a matter of degree and that the consubstantiality of the Son (i.e., his being of the same substance as the Father), defined by the Council of Nicaea (325), is more faithful to the Scriptures than the Assumption of Mary, which was defined as dogma by Pius XII in 1950.
Roman Catholics and Protestants should be able to reach some consensus that tradition and Scripture mean the reading of the Bible in church. Protestants never claimed that a person with a Bible is a self-sufficient Christian church. The New Testament itself demands that the word be proclaimed and heard in a church, and the community is formed on a common understanding of the word proclaimed. This suggests a way toward a Christian consensus on the necessity and function of tradition. No church pretends to treat its own history as nonexistent or unimportant. By reading the Scriptures in the light of its own beliefs, the church is able to address itself to new problems of faith and morals that did not exist or were not attended to in earlier times.