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LO: I will know about the concept of revelation through sacred writings.

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Last lesson was a very important lesson. It was vital to the process of learning and preparation for A-level exams.
Task
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Write a description of what actually happened.
Your target audience
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Parents
Headteacher
Boyfriend/Girlfriend
Do your descriptions reflect the lesson? How similar are they?
How much do they reflect the personality of the writer and the person you were writing to?

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Just as your written accounts in some way reveal what happened in the lesson, despite the variations in description, so Christians might believe that the Bible reveals God.
God is revealed through both scripture and experience according to believers.

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See page 46-47
KEY TERMS
Natural Theology/General Revelation – The process of learning about God from the natural world by using reason.
Revealed Theology/Special Revelation – The teaching that religious truth is derived from God’s revelations to humans

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Barth argued that the only way in which people gain true knowledge of God is through revelation, not natural theology. Barth rejected the ideas of thinkers like Thomas Aquinas who tried to combine faith with reason, because he thought that their views led away from the truth of the Bible. He rather followed the view of Kierkegaard, namely that all efforts to discover truth about God, apart from God’s revelation to us in Jesus Christ, were only likely to lead to error.

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Barth’s concept of revelation, explained in his enormous work Church Dogmatics, included the following points:
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God reveals to humans when he wants, not when man wants.
Divine revelation is not the same as human insight.
Ordinary language is inadequate to convey revelation.
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Revelation is a personal disclosure of God’s being and nature.
Revelation is conveyed through the witness of the Bible.
Revelation is only given in Jesus Christ.

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This activity is designed to develop your ability to peer-teach
In pairs, one of you will be ‘equipped-to-hit’ with a handout, to explain Special
Revelation
At the end, hand the sheet to your partner (the student) so that they can then go off, pair with someone else, and repeat the process.
Questions for students to ask teachers
1. What is propositional revelation?
2. What is non-propositional revelation?
3. What is divine inspiration?
4. Anything else? There’s a lot of writing on that handout.

‘The Qur'an is at the other end of the spectrum, since it is entirely based on pure propositional revelation, rather than rooted in narrative or historical events. It is dictated by Allah to Mohammed. And mysticism is experience without propositions.
So you can set up a spectrum with pure propositional
(Islam) at one end (clear, spoken, revealed but not rooted in history or narrative), pure non-propositional (e.g. modern New Age) at the other end (no clarity at all, lots of mysticism, rooted firmly in human experience). And the
Bible comes right in the middle of the spectrum, it seems to me, since it combines historical events with divine interpretation through divinely-appointed spokespeople.
Steve Walton
(Professor of New Testament)

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‘all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living.’
2 Timothy 3:16
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Look at the quotation above. Are there any difficulties with saying this?

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Scientific challenges to scripture
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The issue of interpretation of scripture
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Critical/historical analysis of the text

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LO: I will know about the concept of revelation through sacred writings.
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3-3-1

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Is it reliable?
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Adrian Holloway (Christian) says yes .