Tuesday, 8 March 2016

Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity's Sacred Obligation,
Ed. Mary C. Boys, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002
Chapter 14, "Covenant and Conversion" (pp. 163-174), page 165

The next step in Joann Spillman's argument addresses revelation:

Christians affim that G-d has acted to reveal who G-d is and what G-d wills.

While admitting that even the concept or means of revelation is not uniformly agreed between the various denominations, she continues:

Christians, however, generally agree that revelation happens at G-d's own initiative. Revelation is analogous to interpersonal communication: G-d meets us person too person. G-d is a someone, not a something. Furthermore, revelation of G-d is always revelation of mystery; even as G-d communicates, G-d remains mystery to us.

This is an important point because:

We must be careful not to describe revelation in away that suggests the Christians have a clearer way of knowing G-d that we actually have.

In other words, we cannot pretend to have or to know more that we do. Our understanding, being finite, of the infinite in necessarily limited - if in no other respect - to essentially a finite 'slice' of G-d.