Chris In Scripture Essay

As much as the revelation in Jesus is unveiling, it is also concealing, and this is so for three reasons (see Nichols 38). First, as an artist both conceals and reveals himself in his art, so too, by analogy, is the trinity both concealed and revealed in Christ (see Nichols 38). Second, the contingency of creation reveals the free creator, but is always incapable of showing the infinite freedom of the creator; where the expression of finite freedom lived in obedience reveals God’s freedom, the infinite freedom is concealed as it is not under obedience (Nichols 39-40). Third, because the revelation of God is in the human, it is paradoxically the revelation of God’s supreme otherness in a total emptying. The Word is expressed in silence, the Divine in the human, but most especially (and here we come to the centre of Balthazar’s theological aesthetics) God’s glory is manifest in the ugliness of the Cross. Concealment thus plays a role in the revelation and the tension between concealment and revelation is resolved in the Cross (see Nichols 42). In this way, Balthasar shows …show more content…
Because of the variety in which the Scriptures can be interrupted, the magisterium’s task, for Balthasar, is to safeguard the primal form against distortions (see Nichols 51). However, Balthasar is also careful that the notion of development in interpretation of Scripture not be taken to mean “‘that successive generations attained to a more complete understanding and an increasingly better grasp of it. Rather, for eyes that have been illuminated by faith, the image in its totality is simple and visible at a glance, . . . and the super-abundant fulness is not a threat but rather the description of this simplicity’” (Nichols