Thesis
Revelation is the act in which divine self-communication becomes intelligible participation; the knowledge of God is not abstraction from revelation but union within it.
Explicatio
“No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”
— Matthew 11:27
Theology begins and ends in revelation: not in a set of propositions transmitted to reason, but in an event in which God gives Himself to be known. Revelation is not information but self-communication; it is the divine act by which being, language, and Spirit converge. The believer’s knowledge of God arises within this act, as finite intellect is drawn into participation in the divine Word.
Within this structure, revelation possesses both linguistic and ontological dimensions. Linguistically, revelation is speech—the Logos addressing creatures through created media. Ontologically, it is causation—the act by which the divine life constitutes the possibility of such address. Thus revelation is simultaneously eventus loquendi and eventus essendi: the speaking and the being of God toward the world.
To know God, therefore, is not to stand before revelation as an object, but to be taken into its form. Knowledge of God is participatory cognition, a mode of knowing generated by the Spirit’s presence rather than by intellectual inference. Faith (fides) is this cognition’s temporal shape: trust that already knows because it already participates. The believer’s “knowing” is not less than rational; it is reason transformed by grace into communion.
Objectiones
Obiectio I. If revelation is participation, it ceases to be intelligible; union replaces understanding.
Obiectio II. To equate revelation with divine causality leaves no room for Scripture or history as distinct mediations of truth.
Obiectio III. If faith itself is knowledge, then rational inquiry adds nothing; theology becomes devotion.
Obiectio IV. Participatory knowledge risks pantheism, for to know by union seems to erase the distinction between knower and known.
Responsiones
- Ad I. Participation does not abolish understanding but perfects it. In revelation, intellect remains intellect, but illumined by the divine light that makes its act possible. Knowing in God is not less clear but more—clarity joined to communion.
- Ad II. Scripture and history are genuine mediations because they are themselves Spirit-constituted forms of revelation. The Word’s presence in these forms is causal, not competitive; divine agency does not eliminate finite media but enables them to speak truly.
- Ad III. Faith as knowledge does not displace theology but grounds it. Theological reflection is faith’s self-understanding—the attempt of participatory reason to interpret the revelation it already inhabits.
- Ad IV. Union in knowledge is relational, not substantial. The creature remains creature; participation presupposes distinction. The Spirit unites without mixing, rendering finite intellect luminous with divine truth while maintaining its created being.
Nota
Revelation thus unites all prior themes. It is causal, because the Spirit’s act constitutes the possibility of knowing; linguistic, because the divine Word communicates through created speech; and eschatological, because its fullness will be realized only when faith becomes vision. Every true act of knowing God is therefore both gift and response, divine illumination and human participation in one event.
In revelation, theology and sanctification coincide. To know God is to be drawn into the very movement by which God knows Himself: the Son’s eternal knowledge of the Father in the Spirit. The believer’s knowledge mirrors this relation analogically: it is filial knowing, a participation in the Son’s comprehension according to the measure of grace.
Hence revelation is not merely the ground of theology but its content, method, and goal. Theology speaks of revelation only by speaking within it.
Determinatio
From the foregoing it is determined that:
Revelation is self-communication, not external information: God gives Himself to be known in the very act of knowing.
The Spirit’s causality renders this act possible, transforming finite intellect into participatory understanding.
Faith is the epistemic form of participation, knowledge in via that anticipates the eschatological vision.
Scripture and history are sacramental media of this self-communication, genuine because divinely constituted.
Theology is faith’s reflective articulation of revelation: reason within grace, logic within communion.
Participatory knowledge preserves the Creator–creature distinction while grounding genuine cognition.
In revelation, language, causality, and being converge: the Word speaks, the Spirit illumines, and truth becomes participation.
Therefore, to know God is to dwell within God’s own act of knowing; revelation is the event in which divine truth becomes human understanding.
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