What is Revelation?
What is revelation? My definition broadens almost by the day. Sometimes I hear measures of a song so searingly truthful or beautiful they seem like prayer. Or I see a swallow swooping across a dawn-lit sky and the moment of perfection professes to me more than any sacred text. Other times, I read a passage in a book—maybe by George Eliot or Toni Morrison or Henry David Thoreau—that seems as laden with insight as any scripture, and I see the author must surely tune in to God as they write.
Though growing up in a conservative environment I heard the Bible was the sole vessel through which God revealed Godself, I now find revelation almost anywhere if I keep myself open.
So how do we receive revelation in a theological sense, with revelation meaning “divine disclosure”? We receive it through our senses (including “gut sense”) and experience. And we receive it subjectively, meaning it is subject to the lenses each of us brings to experience, lenses shaped by our culture and worldview and by other subjective lenses, like language…. {Read remainder of column on Patheos HERE.}