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Author
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Topic: The Man Jesus--God Speaking in Human Form
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lotusheartone
Knowflake Posts: 2820
From: piopolis, quebec canada
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted November 20, 2005 08:00 PM
 
Revelation and Theology
by E. Schillebeeckx, O.P.
what a name, hehe
 Christ among us was, in and through his historically situated and conditioned humanity, the revelation of God. He was thus God's word--God himself, the Son, addressing us personally in the man Jesus. God the Son was a personal fellow man who dealt with us as man to man, at the personal level. Every truly human act on Christ's part was therefore, even more strongly than in the history of the Old Testament, a word spoken by God to man. Moreover, here the dialogue in the proper sense acquired its fullest significance. If Jesus' humanity was the medium of divine revelation, then this implies that Jesus' human word literally acquired a constisutive significance in this revelation.
It is clear from the study of anthropology, and in particular from the study of the various phenomena associated with aphasia, that speech is an essential part of a person's incarnation in this world. The human word is the human reality itself as this is manifested in outward expression. It is a mode of human existence. "venir au monde, c'est prendre la parole" ("to come into the world is to acquire words, a language"). The word is one of the most characteristic modes of human encounter. What man is is expressed in language, and it is in language that man turns to others. Language is essentially man's self disclosure to others, revelation. If language is essential to man's "incarnation," then we can expect the human word of Christ to have a constitutive significance in the incarnation of God as redemptive revelation. ALL anthropomorphism in God's speaking ceases here--God himself personally speaks in the man Jesus, in Jesus human word. The revelation in reality, which is the person of Christ himself in the totally human form in which he appeared, allowed its meaning and content to emerge clearly in the human word that this man addressed to us. The word, as an essential element of dialogue, is the means by which the inner world of two persons is opened to each other. It is an expression of the freedom which aims to communicate its concealed value to others and thereby surrender itself.
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lotusheartone
Knowflake Posts: 2820
From: piopolis, quebec canada
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted November 22, 2005 01:39 PM
continued...three principal aspects can be distinguished in human dialogue.
(1) The Content: something is said. the speaker communicates something, explains something, testifies to something, and so on.
(2) The Invitation: somebody is addressed. Speaking is an act directed towards a fellow person. Speaking is addressing someone. The thing with which the speaker is concerned is the matter with which he appeals to or questions his partner in the dialogue. When he speaks, he expects a reaction. Speaking itself is a call to this reaction, an invitation to a definite response. The reaction can take as many different forms as the address itself. The minimum response required is attentive listening. If however, I express command when I speak, then what I say is at the same time an appeal to obedience. If I speak suppliantly, the I appeal to my partner's goodwill and expect a favourable response. Among the many other forms of address and response is speaking which bears witness. If I testify to something that the person to whom I am speaking knows nothing or can know nothing about, then my address is an appeal to surrender in faith to my testimony, an invitation directed to my partner in the dialogue, so that he will have faith in me and take me on trust. Speaking which testifies or bears witness therefore contains an invitation to believe. Finaaly, dialogue also contains a third aspect:
(3) Self-Unveiling--speaking is not only a speaking about something, it is also an expression of oneself, a revelation of oneself and a giving of oneself.
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