Why We Start with Revelation

Free Writing

I have had my fair sure of reading books and taking courses about Christianity and a large percentage of them have a spot near the beginning where it discusses the importance of Revelation. Well, now that I am creating an 'Introduction to Christianity' video series for my internship I understand why so many start at with that topic.

Revelation is the key to the Christian faith. We literally can not start teaching what Christianity is without first discussing Revelation. Why is that you ask? I would be happy to explain!

To confess the first line of the Apostle's Creed, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth," is to essentially identify yourself with the God of Jesus, ie: the God of the Bible revealed in Jesus. This means abandoning your own ideas about what God is and submitting yourself to the Scriptures and collective witness of the entire community of Faith. It is to accept the revelation, the self revealing, of God through his Word. His Word is the written Word (Scripture) the incarnate Word (Jesus), and the communal Word (the Church). To confess the first line of the Creed is to recognize and submit to God's Revelation.

The alternative is to either reject or not recognize God's Word as truth. Any time we attempt to add Christian ideas about God into our existing understanding we are already missing the mark. God's Revelation is not something that can just be 'added,' to our understanding, it must be given precedence to reshape our understanding and become the heart and measure of our spiritual knowledge. We can not just pick and choose which parts of different religions we like and then weld them all together to create some sort of personal spirituality.

The Canon of Scripture must be understood to be divinely inspired. It is not enough to think that Moses, Paul, and John all had good ideas or valuable insights about God, as if each of them had a unique personal point of view. No, they all point to the same God because God has given himself to be known and has inspired them to write. There is no difference between the God of Paul or the God of Moses or the God of Jesus or the God of John, or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they are the exact same God. It is true that each one would have understood him differently, Abraham did not know the specifics of God's plan of Redemption, only that he trusted Him, Paul had been given specific knowledge concerning God's plans in Christ, and Jesus is that same God incarnate.

We must furthermore understand that all of God's Revelation is in line with what he has already revealed. The Bible, the community of the Church, and the personal witness of the Holy Spirit all speak as a unity and they must be understood together in unity. It is not enough to just grab this or that verse as support for whatever doctrine or idea you are trying to validate. All of Scripture must be understood as a unity.

Once we understand revelation as the authority by which we can say this or that about God, then and only then can we begin to speak further.