* Indication
of biography about this matter for personal deepening:
CONSENTINO,
Francesco. Immaginare Dio. Assisi:
Cittadella Editrice, 2010.
DALLARE, Carlo. Quando dici Dio. Bologna: Centro Editoriale
Dehoniano, 2004.
DOS SANTOS BOAVENTURA,
Josuel. O Deus único
nas distintas formas de revelação. Porto Alegre.
Disponível em: http://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/teo/article/viewFile/1730/1263. Acesso em
24 de junho de 2017.
FORTE, Bruno. Parola e silenzio
nella riflessione teologica. Disponível em:
http://www.nostreradici.it/parola_silenzio.htm. Acesso em 10 de
setembro de 2017.
__________. Per dire Dio ai cercatori di Dio. Disponível em: https://it.zenit.org/articles/arcivescovo-bruno-forte-per-dire-dio-ai-cercatori-di-dio/ Acesso em 11 de
setembro de 2017.
__________. Teologia fra parola di Dio e parola degli
uomini. Disponível em: http://www.ceam.chiesacattolica.it/2017/03/17/prolusione-di-bruno-forte-ai-corsi-di-teologia-della-cattolicaragazzi-siate-mendincanti-del-cielo/ Acesso em 11 de
setembro de 2017.
GOMES, C. F. A Revelação divina. REB vol. 26, fasc.4,
1966, p. 816 –837.
CONCÍLIO ECUMÊNICO VATICANO II, 1962-1965, Cidade
do Vaticano. Gaudium et Spes. In:
VIER, Frederico (Coord. Geral). Compêndio
do Concílio Vaticano II. 22. ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1991, p. 141-256.
__________. Dei Verbum. In: VIER, Frederico (Coord. Geral).
Compêndio do Concílio Vaticano II. 22.
ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1991, p. 119-139.
KASPER, Walter. Der Gott Jesu Christi, Mainz, 1982,
trad. Esp.,
El Dios de Jesucristo, Salamanca,
1985.
LATOURELLE, Renê. Teologia da Revelação. 3. ed. São Paulo:
Paulinas, 1985.
LIBANIO, João
Batista. Teologia da Revelação a partir
da modernidade. São Paulo: Loyola, 1992.
TORRES QUEIRUGA, Andrés. Autocompreensão cristã.
São Paulo: Paulinas, 2007.
__________. Repensar o pluralismo: da
inculturação à inreligionação. Concilium, Petrópolis-RJ, n.319, p.110-113, jan. 2007.
__________. El Dios
de Jesús: aproximacion en quatro metáforas., p. 4s. disponivel em http://www.servicioskoinonia.org/biblioteca/teologica/queirugadiosparahoy. Acesso em 06 de junho de 2012.
__________. Repensar a
revelação. São Paulo: Paulinas, 2010.
SUSIN, Luiz Carlos. A
criação de Deus. 2. ed., São Paulo: Paulinas; Valência, ESP: Siquem, 2010
(Coleção Livros Básicos de Teologia 5).
We have
seen how the sense of the sacred is central to cultures and how, through the religious
dimension, the human being finds reason and meaning to live. This is possible
because the cultures are “theological place”, that is, where one can recognize
that God reveals Himself in generosity and, in His free and unconditional love,
wants to give Himself fully. It is from the bosom “of the culture itself, with
its concerns and its contributions, with its successes and its suspicions, from
where we try to understand this humble and magnificent mystery that we
interpret as revelation of God.”[1] According to author Bruno Forte, there are two words that talk about
this subject: apokalypsis and re-velatio. One comes from Greek and the
other from Latin. When we say Re-veil it means “taking the veil”. But this
Latin word is composed of two meanings: one is to draw and the other is to
intensify.[2] There is something to talk about, but there are also spaces for
silence, for a constant and ever deeper search, because “words are always the
beginning, which requires a process of going beyond words in themselves to the
depths of God.”[3] We can say that the revelation of God intensified even more the search
of the human being for Him.
Revelation
is a dynamic process through which God manifests Himself in the bosom of
cultures and religions, impelling the human being to capture His presence. God
loves everyone equally, and if He loves, He is revealing himself. It does not
rob our turn, but acts with us to make history happen: the more He is present,
the more He makes us to be; the more we welcome His action, the more we realize
ourselves. He does not annul our being, but leads it to its full affirmation in
Jesus Christ, in whom the best of us is accomplished. The God announced by
Jesus Christ takes the initiative, both to lead us to the dimension of existing
and to assist us in its fulfilment.[4] In the face of this, it is up to all of us to welcome His initiative,
that is, to let ourselves existing and saving by Him, accepting His grace and
collaborating with His action in us and in all other cultures and religions.
It is about
recognizing that God intervenes in the history, facilitating the access of the
human being to Himself. There is an emigration, a leaving of Himself in order
to establish a meeting of freedoms, in which it is the human being himself who is
benefited because he finds an adequate answer to the question about the meaning
of everything especially the meaning of his life. His question is already a
talk of God, for revelation is something so intersubjective that it is
difficult to understand where one begins and where the other ends.[5] However, it must be borne in mind that God takes initiative in
revealing Himself because He is infinite love and freedom. He does everything
in His own way and all he does is in the favour of the human being. He does not
feel forced to do so, and the human being does not deserves it. It is,
therefore, by his intrinsic goodness that revelation happens,[6] as emphasized in the Constitution Dei
Verbum of the Second Vatican Council:
In his
goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal himself and to make known the mystery
of his will (cf. Eph 1: 9). Through this Revelation, therefore, the invisible
God (cf. Cl 1,15; 1Tm
1.15),
out of the abundance of his love, speaks to human beings as friends (cf. Ex 33,11,
Jn 15, 14-15) and lives among them (Br 3, 38), in order to invite and admit
them to participate in his communion (DV 2).
In the
immense universe that surrounds us, we can contemplate the action of a God Creator,
who spent efforts in giving beauty contours to everything that exists.[7] Then, the human being can discover a speech of God,[8] because all nature is His revelation. “Insofar as something is, it is
being manifestation of God: just as in the physical traits of a face we read
directly the presence of the spirit that animates it, so also our ‘senses’ are
reading in the created realities the fundante
presence of the Creator.”[9] That some call it “natural revelation” or “cosmic manifestation of God”,
the creation – even with its limitations - is a theological place, that is, a
place where God gives a constant witness of Himself. The Afro-descendants call
it “Sanctuary of God.”
In addition
to this aspect of nature, the author Andrés Torres Queiruga affirms that
history is also creation of God, because all energy that the human being spend
to realize it stems constantly from the love of the Creator. If history has to
do with human freedom and it is sustained by the loving action of God,[10] then history becomes the result of a joint action: that of the human
being and that of God, who acts in and through human freedom. It is, therefore,
in the authentic exercise of this freedom, that God makes Himself transparent
as energy that sustains and as love that attracts,[11] in view of the realization of the human being himself. Thus, “divine
revelation happens in human fulfilment,”[12] for once it appears in history, revelation also becomes history.[13]
However, it
is necessary to point out that the revelation of God, although it happens in
the world, never identifies with it.[14] One cannot limit divine revelation to reality or mere human abstraction
so limited. The God we are talking about is not the creation of human reason or
a projection of its needs. “The God of revelation is the Other one, who is not
reducible to human measure.”[15] Any attempt to demonstrate Him will always be insufficient, for nothing
can contain Him and no human representation will be appropriate.[16] The revelation of God to the human being happens continually and “always
to the maximum measure that it is ‘possible’ for him; so that the limits of
historical revelation are not due to a divine reservation, but rather to a
human incapacity: the constitutive incapacity of his finite being.”[17]
God is
infinitely greater than the capacity of human intelligence can grasp, and when
the human being can perceive something of His presence, it is because God, from
His active and generous love, is ‘always there’, doing all He can to be
perceived. And He does it for everyone, in the same measure. Therefore, the total
transparency of revelation is impeded by the finitude of reality. However, we
discover all reality as manifestation of God. In the midst of obscurity, there
is ‘evidence’ of revelation in the real.[18] From this idea, God makes Himself known in its totality, but He cannot
be known at all. But there are authors who say that in the revealing process,
God does not make Himself fully known. One of these authors is Bruno Forte. To
explain this dynamic he uses the expression ‘revealed and hidden God’:
Thus, the
advent of God could be thought of as an unreserved display (…) But in the
beginning it was not so: being revealed, the Eternal not only pronounced
himself, but also, and highly was silent. God revealed and hidden, ‘absconditus in revelatione - revelatus in
absconditate’, the God of the advent is the God of promise, Exodus and
Kingdom. Therefore, his revelation is not a total vision, but a Word that comes
from Silence and opens to it.[19]
In total or
in reserve, the great exodus which God accomplished and accomplishes causes
another exodus, making us to recognize that revelation is first and foremost a
movement of God to us and only in this way our movement to Him is possible.
About this, the author Carlo Dallare states that “one day we may be given the
grace to discover that it is not we who have reached God to know Him, but that
He has preceded us in the meeting and put us on walking.[20] St. Augustine himself even put these words in the ‘mouth’ of God: “You
would not seek me if you had not already met me.”[21] This is the dynamic character that we spoke at the beginning and that
the author Andrés Torres Queiruga calls ‘always there’, which indicates the
sustaining presence and the radical union between God and man as the root that
nourishes and makes possible His arrival ever again, alive and historical. Thus
all reality is seen as an active and voluntary gesture of God, through which He
constantly manifests and reveals Himself to the human being,[22] ‘pressing’ with love to be welcomed freely by his creature.[23]
The evolution
of the world, the process of history, individual growth are radically His
manifestation. When one is able to discover in all this the creative action of
God that sustains it so that it may be accomplished; when one perceives divine
freedom there, which lovingly pushes him/her to authenticity and fullness; when
one hears there the word of love that calls him/her, then revelation is
happening.[24]
The human
being makes the discovery of God present in his life and reality, because God
continually comes to meet him. Revelation is only really authentic when the
human being understands that God is the one who takes the initiative and makes
this discovery possible. “Then God comes to meet him to enhance and guide him,
so that the rest should be completed in this experience, which involves Him as
a ‘sacred canopy’, giving its ultimate meaning to the whole project of cultural
and social fulfilment.”[25] God is ‘always there’, that is, all the time He stands out in His
provident and supportive love, demanding a free response from the human being.
The divine presence is transcendent, but at the same time it is there for all.
He does not come from outside and does not impose Himself, but simply offers Himself
to be discovered and welcomed.
Author: Josuel
dos Santos Boaventura PSDP - Fr Ndega
Theological review: ThD Fr Luis Carlos Susin
English review: EdM Mary Kung'u
[1] TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. Repensar
a revelação. p. 19s.
[2] Cf. FORTE B. Parola e silenzio nella riflessione teologica. p. 9. This author says in another article that “The
revelation of the God who comes to take away the veil that hides, but is also a
stronger hiding, it is communication of himself that inseparably offers him as
a ‘cover’ again” (Id. Teologia fra parola di Dio… p. 5).
[3] Id. Per
dire Dio ai cercatori di Dio. p. 2.
[4] Cf. TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. El Dios de Jesús. p. 4s.
[5] Cf. PIAZZA, W. O. Teologia fundamental para leigos. p. 139 apud DOS SANTOS BOAVENTURA,
J. Op. cit. p. 385.
[6] Cf. TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. Repensar
a revelação. p. 447.
[7]Even if there is a modern tendency to conceive
the creation as a human process, historical and creative, which leads to belief
only in the ‘progress’. Nature is, in this sense, considered an object of
manipulation, exploitation and domination. In the name of progress, a very
utilitarian relationship is established, in which one is subject and another is
object. (cf. SUSIN, L. C. Op. cit.,
p. 11-13).
[8]“For without the Creator the
creature does not subsist. In addition, all believers of any religion have
always known to hear his voice and manifestation in the language of creatures”(GS
36).
[9] TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. Repensar
a revelação, p. 449. “Not
being moved by need and lack, God creates solely by love: He creates men and
women, as sons and daughters, not ‘for his own glory and service’, but for them
to attain the maximum achievement possible. Therefore, his decisive interest is
to manifest himself to them and to help them, to reveal himself to them and to
save them. Is there a decent father or mother who does not seek the same for
their children? A human mother could forget them, but God never do so (Is 49,
95)” (Id. Repensar o pluralismo, p.
111).
[10]This is what happens, for
example, with the biblical story, whose intention is to “evidence the action of
God in the very history of human action” (ibid., 188). "(...) it is even
when he is not aware of it, as being led by the hand of God, who sustains all
things and makes them to be what they are”(GS 36).
[11] Cf. TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. Repensar
a revelação, p. 186.
[12]Ibid., p. 163.
[13] Cf. Ibid.,
p. 190.
[14] Cf. Ibid., p. 181. The author Fernando Consentino agree with this idea
when says, “(…) a God who reveals himself in the fragments of history, without never
transforming himself in a pure scientific and objective knowledge (CONSENTINO,
F. Op. cit. p. 14).”
[15] FORTE, B. A teologiafra parole di Dio e parole degliuomini. p. 6.
[16] CONSENTINO, F. Op. cit. p. 13s. See
here the complete idea of this author: “Christianity itself in its essence,
therefore, has its fervour where the human being understands his life as a
movement of constant overcoming to the encounter of a God that appears and will
always appear as unknown and strange and who can never be reduced neither to
the satisfaction of one’s own needs nor human representation.”
[17] TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. Repensar a
revelação, p. 445. In this regard, he also writes in his book Autocompreensão cristã, p. 20. This idea
is reinforced by Walter Kasper who says: “The divine mystery manifests itself
within our world. We can find it in nature, which as God’s creation sends us
back to the Creator; in the mystery revealed in man himself; and in the history,
who lives from a hope that means something more than history” (KASPER, Walter.
apud TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. Repensar a
revelação, p. 173).
[18] Cf. TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. Repensar
a revelação, p. 449. “The original of Karl Rahner was to emphasize the
implication of transcendental subjectivity in the process of revelation. According
to him, every human being - and the entire human being - is impregnated by the
presence of revelation. It is constitutive of man’s vocation to be a ‘hearer of
the Word’; the very movement of his existence, while seeking to fulfil itself
in its decisive truth, is already ‘transcendental revelation’. The history of
religions and, above all, the biblical history as definitively determined by
Christ are its reflexive and concrete expression: they are the revelation itself,
the ‘categorical revelation (Ibid., p. 95).’”
[19] FORTE, B. Teologia fra parola di Dio e parola degli uomini. p. 5
[20] DALLARE, C. Op. cit., p. 13
[21] HIPONA, St. A. apud DALLARE, C. Op.
cit. p. 13.
[22] Cf. TORRES QUEIRUGA, A. Repensar
a revelação. p. 210.
[23] Cf. Id. Autocompreensão cristã,
p. 75.
[24] Id. Repensar a revelação,
p. 210.
[25]Ibid., p. 231.
