Baillie - The Idea Of Revelation In Recent Thought

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John Baillie

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Scottish theologian and Church of Scotland minister.

Raised in calvinist tradition. Studied at Edinburgh, Jena, and Marburg and taught at Edinburgh for 20 years.

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Thesis

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Revelation through the dialectical relationship between God self-human disclosure and humans trust in that disclosure challenges preceding theories of revelation that give authority to humanity in revelation (e.g., rationalism [mind] and romanticism [feelings]).

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Chapter 1: Historical Reminder

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Up to the 17th and 18th Cs. revelation was defined as knowledge that came either from reason through assent (Aquinas) or from above. However, "what was distrubed afte the break-up of the Middle Ages was not the terms of the distinction, but the balance of emphasis as between them" (5). Two different emphases emerged.

The 17th and 18th C. rationalists rejected the distinction choosing to emphasize reason (or collapsing revelation into reason). Spinoza is the radical proponent of this view.

The Reformers emphasized the revelation from above, seeing that depravity had compromised reason so as to make it unusable. Luther is the main proponent, but others (like Calvin) offered similar positions.

Kant, the Romantic (!), rejected reason without its proper foundation being set in faith. But ultimately, reason remained dominant over revelation from above. Kant, Hegel, and Schleiermacher found little use of revelation when construed apart from reason or feeling.

In the 19th C. Schleiermacher departed from the reason/revelation distinction and found a via media--revelation is the knowledge of religious self-consciousness, that is, the feeling of complete dependance on God.

Hegel, in the vein of Spinoza, challenged Schl. on the grounds that Christian content (perceived rationally) preceded understanding its philosophy

Ritschl rejects the dichotomization too and finds a different via media--the "value-judgments of faith." "We know the nature of God and Christ inly in their value for us."

By the end of the 19th C. "revelation" was abandoned b/c of its connection with divinely communicated truth. Since they rejected that, they rejected the term "revelation."

19th C. Britain--the Oxford Movement revived the term in accordance with the Medieval understanding. Yet, Kant and Schleiermacher's ultimate rejection of natural and revealed knowledge took hold. John Caird rejected the distinction by resting knowledge on faith, however, his concept of faith was "implied reason, reason working intuitively and unconsciously, without reflection or criticism of its own operations" (in the vein of Hegel).

Summary: loss of distinction between reason and revelation. Baillie criticizes the pre-Reformation view as naively relying on rational speculation about God and then moving from there to other doctrines.

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Chapter 2: The Divine Self-Disclosure

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Revelation is the disclosure of knowledge, truth

"All true knowledge is knowledge which is determined not by the subject but by the object [or other subject]." What Baillie pushes back against is the Rationalists and Romanticist who give authority of revelation to the subject ("receiver") not the object ("sender"/God).

POINT: Revelation is what discloses, not what humans discover, control, or create. Baillie sees the distinction as applying not only to knowledge from above, but knowledge gained through reason.

Biblical revelation is knowledge from and of divine subject to and of human subject.

Baillie rejects that the Bible is propositional truth. Instead they are witnesses to God's actions in history (neo-orthodox) (36). Propositional truth contains human elements, and thus can contain errors. Instead, God reveals in forms and images, which contain no possibility for error.

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Chapter 3: Aspects of Revealed Content

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"It is not enough to think of God as giving us information by communication, but that we must rather think o f HIm as giving Himself to us in communion" (49).

1) What is revealed is God, not propositions about God.
2) God reveals himself in action (50), both in the past and the future (56).

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Chapter 4: The Mighty Acts of God

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Summary so far: "all revelation is given, not in the form of directly communicated knowledge but through events occurring in the historical experience of mankind, events which are apprehended by faith as the "mighty acts" of God, and which therefore engender in the mind of man such reflective knowledge of God as it is given him to possess" (62).

Not all actions of God in history is revelation, but only those actions that God intends as revelation (64). How would we know that God intends an act to be revelation?

INSPIRATION: "God as guiding, not only the process of events, but also the minds of men in interpreting these events so as to appreciate their revelatory character" (65). This is the inspiration as illumination view.

Because revelation is God's acts in history, humans play a reactionary role in the dialectic between God's first response and humans counter-response.

Contra to Dr. Temple, all history is not revelation. Only those MIGHTy acts of God are--miracles. Yet, these miracles are only interpreted as revelation under the inspiration of the Spirit.

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Chapter 5: The Response to Revelation

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The proper response to revelation is acceptance of it as a gift (84). Trust, faith, assent.

Trust over knowledge (e.g., doctrinal formulation). Baillie rejects formless faith, however, he wants to preserve the primacy of trust. God acts, redemption comes by trust in the act, not in a doctrinal formulation of act.

Baillie uses the creeds to prove this--"I believe in" rather than "I believe that" (101).

NB: THE SUCCESS OF GOD'S REVELATION IS CONTINGENT ON HUMANS UNDERSTANDING WHAT GOD INTENDED TO COMMUNICATE (105). In order for God to be successful in revealing, he must do so in my present experience. "Through the past God reveals Himself to me in the present" (105).

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Chapter 6: Scripture and Covenant

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The Spirit illumined the prophets and apostles to interpret God's acts as revelation.

Baillie: "The Bible is the written witness to that intercourse of mind and event which is the essence of revelation" (110). NEO-ORTHODOX.

Rejects verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible, for it is a witness to God's mighty acts.

The Bible is not revelation, but a witness to it.

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Epilogue: The Challenge of Revelation

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The challenge of revelation is to "listen" and "obey." Baillie sides with many who look for a sign but find nothing because they are not looking for what God has already revealed of himself.

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Views of Revelation

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Orthodoxy before Reformation (Aquinas): Knowledge comes from reason and revelation.

Rationalists (Spinoza, Hegel): Revelation is collapsed into reason so that only reason exists.

Reformers (Luther/Calvin): Reason is corrupt by virtue of depravity, thus revelation is primary.

Romantics (Schleiermacher): Neither reason nor revelation exists, but intuition of God is primary.

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Take Away

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1. Revelation is from divine subject to human subject, which contradicts the rationalist and romantics contention that revelation is grounded in the receiving subject.
2. Revelation is (1) God's mighty acts in history, (2) must be intended to be revelation by God, (3) must be received in faith as revelation by God.
3. Inspiration as illumination: "God as guiding, not only the process of events, but also the minds of men in interpreting these events so as to appreciate their revelatory character" (65).
4. The Bible is not revelation, but prophets's and apostles's witness to God's mighty acts in history, which were illuminated as revelation by the Spirit.