Patterns & Metaphors
Revelation
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Principally the New Testament for Protestants; the Holy Bible (both Testaments) but also, in an important way, the traditions of the Church as seen in Council and Papal teachings, for Catholics. For Jews it is Mt Sinai and the Tablets of the La, but as well, the Talmud and the guidance of the Rabbis. For Muslims also, revelation is ascribed to a combination of scripture (Koran) and tradition. Almost every religion past and present transmit and present a reveated teaching. Individual revelation has been claimed from ancient times and brought forth as confirming or extending, or annulling and contradicting, group wisdom as found in older strata. The revelator or reformer has been always the prophet or ser in mystical communion with his or her god, sometimes acclaimed by others, sometimes denounced. Modern philosophies or revelation have thought in less personal terms. The divine does not necessarily communicate exclusively through a messianic or prophetic single figure or an apostolic line. Revelation may occur through the instrumentality of history, sacred and secular. Nations, movements, and other groups of men, each succeeding the other, may weave out the tapestry of a reveated pattern. Theocentrically conceived finality is what is anticipated in each disclosure. Those that are wise, it is thought, may be able to discern in these revelations the signs, or the forms of what was, what is, and what will be, the alpha and amerga. From a systems point of view. Revelation is a control mechanism with positive feedback. It's appearance is evoked by a societal need for dramatic change, change with such are impact that it effects a discontinuity in local history, or according to THorn, a 'catastrophe'. In this sense revelation is revolution and it is no accident that liberation theology came, although by another ronte, to the same effectual truth.
