From the beginning of time and the start of all creation, God has desired to make himself known to man, who was made in God’s image. This is known as revelation. Revelation in a sense, is the entrance of God’s loving wisdom and invitation to relationship, into the reality of our world in the form of Sacred Scripture and its historical divine acts recorded, as well as the Sacred Tradition continually working to make sense of the mysteries God has revealed to humankind throughout our history. Revelation is understood by the Council Fathers as “a speaking and an answering of a profoundly unique kind: it is a friendship and a dialogue. [1]
Through God’s revelation to his children over the course of human history, up to his ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection, we come to understand more of the mystery behind our world, our self, and our God. We see how Pope Paul VI relays this in his Dei Verbum, “This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having an inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them.”[2]
This revelation is to be passed on to all. The transmission of the divine revelation begins with God’s loving desire to make himself known to his people. He does this firstly through revelation to the Prophets, who record their divine experiences up until the New Testament, when the ultimate revelation is fulfilled by God, the Word, made Incarnate in the birth of Jesus Christ. Much of what Jesus says and does is seen and written by the first Apostles and by the Holy Spirit recorded into sacred Scripture. Jesus grants the authority to the Apostles to continue passing down this to further generations with the succession of new Apostles as time goes on and we elect new Popes, Bishops, etc. [3] We are expected to respond to this revelation by faith and worship of the one true Trinitarian God.
[1] Francis Martin, “Revelation and its Transmission,” in Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering, Eds., Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2008), 57
[2] SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL, DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON DIVINE REVELATION DEI VERBUM at https://www.vatican.va/ , 2
[3] SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL, DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON DIVINE REVELATION DEI VERBUM, 7 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, Q. 12, a. 5
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