Quotes About Revelation

for no veil clothes a star.

when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them.

I know the gods exist. . . .—from having felt their power, over and ove

Indeed, for Christians, the unending conversation about Jesus is the most important conversation there is. He is for us the decisive revelation of God—of what can be seen of God's character and passion in a human life. There are other important conversations. But for followers of Jesus, the unending conversation about Jesus is the conversation that matters most.

Christians also speak of the Bible as the revelation of God, indeed as the "Word of God." Yet orthodox Christian theology from ancient times has affirmed that the decisive revelation of God is Jesus. The Bible is "the Word" become words, God's revelation in human words; Jesus is "the Word" become flesh, God's revelation in a human life. Thus Jesus is more decisive than the Bible.

Jesus is, for us as Christians, the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like. Radically centered in God and filled with the Spirit, he is the decisive disclosure and epiphany of what can be seen of God embodied in a human life. As the Word and Wisdom and Spirit of God become flesh, his life incarnates the character of God, indeed, the passion of God. In him we see God's passion.

To affirm that Jesus is the decisive revelation of God does not require affirming that he is the only, or only adequate, revelation of God. Christians have sometimes thought so.

But the claim does mean that for us, as Christians, Jesus is the decisive revelation of God, and of what a life full of God is like. Indeed, I see this as the defining characteristic that makes us Christian rather than something else.

If we found the decisive revelation of God in the Torah or in the Koran, then we would be Jews or Muslims. But to be Christian is to affirm, "Here, in Jesus, I see more clearly than anywhere else what God is like.

the story of Jesus is thus a story of God and us. This does not mean, of course, that the historical Jesus was God. But because the completed story affirms that God was present in and through Jesus, the story of Jesus becomes a disclosure of God, the revelation and epiphany of God. As a

But did Jesus himself see his own purpose this way? According to the gospels in their present form, yes.

To see Jesus as "the Wisdom of God" and "Son of God" and "messiah" means to take very seriously what we see in him as a disclosure of God.

the classic and traditional Christian affirmation about Jesus, namely, that Jesus is for us as Christians the decisive revelation of what a life full of God is like.

Jewish mystic and Christian messiah describe how I see Jesus before and after Easter. To use language from my previous chapter, I see the pre-Easter Jesus as the former and the post-Easter Jesus as the latter.

He points beyond himself to God—to God's character and passion. This is the meaning of our christological language and our credal affirmations about Jesus: in this person we see the revelation of God, the heart of God. He is both metaphor and sacrament of God.

The foundation of this way of seeing the Bible begins with the conviction that it is not the inerrant and infallible revelation of God, but the product of our religious ancestors in two ancient communities. The Old Testament comes to us from our ancestors in biblical Israel. The New Testament comes to us from our ancestors in early Christian communities. As such, the Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things.

The result: the monarchical model of biblical authority is replaced by a dialogical model of biblical authority. In other words, the biblical canon names the primary collection of ancient documents with which Christians are to be in a continuing dialogue.

Marcus J. Borg

Jesus was telling his contemporaries that the kingdom was indeed breaking into history, but that it did not look like what they had expected.

As she crossed the street, a rumor of sunshine stood behind the clouds.

Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made.

The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.

Now that I am dead, I know everything.

The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.