3. Revelation in the Patristic Period

The biblical ideas of revelation continued into the patristic era. During this period the main task of the early Church was to proclaim God's salvation, Jesus had brought into the world through his death and resurrection. The Christians generally recognized that the revelation in Jesus Christ was the hermeneutical key to understanding and judging history and society. A form of contextual theology was then developed by the Church Fathers, who sought to cultivate inculturation in the light of revelation in Jesus Christ. In opposition to Gnosticism and other heresies9, the understanding of revelation in the patristic period exhibits certain weights, particularly on the theology of the Logos.

In the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel, John10 commemorates Jesus as the Logos, or the Word of God, accentuating the hearing tradition of the Jewish community as well as that of the Johannine community: what we hear, see and experience now is the revelation of God. The Word that made the heavens and the earth is the foundation of all creation, as Paul has also proclaimed: "All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together" (Col 1:16-17). With a richer and deeper meaning than Genesis, John declares that Jesus not only is the source of all creation, but also is the underlying rational principle of all existing things. In Greek, the term Logos also means the logic or the rational principle underlying the fundamental reality of the universe. In terms of the Greek language, therefore, the rational principle of the universe was a self-expression of God, who now reveals Himself as the Word.

The integration of the dual meanings of the term Logos clearly connects the Jewish creation ideas to the Greek philosophical conceptions about the ultimate operational rules of the universe at the time of the Johannine community. Moreover, it is significant that John identifies the Logos with God:"the Word was God' and personalizes the Logos with Jesus, as witnessed by John the Baptist and the Johannine community. The use of this special word Logos in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel conveyed to the early Fathers the idea that Jesus is the mediator who now reveals the economy of salvation to creation. Accordingly, the New Testament is the continuity and enhancement of the Old Testament and the integration between the two testaments becomes evident. Opposed to Gnosticism, Irenaeus stressed the historical Christ over the spiritual Christ and he considered that the incarnation is the climax of salvation launched in the Old Testament. In this perspective, revelation is God's plan for salvation and is highly Christocentric. Athanasius of Alexandria also gave emphasis to the concept that revelation is the same as incarnation, which is the manifestation of Christ as a divine person and the communication by Christ of the doctrine of salvation.

The Church Fathers also pointed out the inaccessibility of God and of the knowledge about God. Referred to as "God's darkness", this divine inaccessibility can only be overcome through Christ. As a result, spirituality as the recognizing of the working of the Spirit becomes very important. In his commentary on the Fourth Gospel, St. Augustine identified Jesus Christ as the light of the world, which illuminates the darkness of the human intellect, evokes faith and makes understanding possible. St. Augustine went further to identify the two dimensions of this idea of illumination. On the one hand, the external dimension refers to the life and the teachings of Jesus Christ, as the Evangelists proclaim. On the other hand, the internal dimension encompasses the inner working of the Spirit and the grace of God to believe and to understand. This concept of revelation is clearly contradictory to Gnosticism, which simply equates salvation with the possession of knowledge of the mysteries of the universe.