Rozpoznawanie Objawienia Bożego. Część I

Abstract

Although at the present moment it is impossible to study thoroughly the question of the ways in which God reveals himself in all the religions, an attempt has been undertaken to form some hypotheses about it on the basis of the known stages of that Revelation, as well as by taking into consideration ontological-existential conditionings of human nature. The author numbers God’s revealing himself in creation and through creatures among the various types of Revelation. Owing to his rationality man discovers in himself and in the world a reflection of the Prime Rationality, in this way forming the notion of Personal God. In the epiphanic signs he transcends his material-biological reality to discover its new transcendental dimension. Hence not only the world, but man as well becomes the revelator of God. Experiencing a sound conscience and human love raises questions about their roots and meaning. In man who is so endowed God looks for an answer, specifying the Revelation in the act of historic speech. God’s speech was expressed in inner inspirations of prophets, charismatic people, priests and leaders, ancestors of families (primitive people’s religions) or the first people (theory of primeval revelation), to whom God legitimised his identity by means of theophanic signs. Apart from words God is revealed in acts testifying to his transcendent-immanent involvement in history. Like the regularity of the forces of nature induces us to think of the rationality of the Primeval Cause, the events that do not fit the frame of human understanding of this regularity make us understand history as the history of Revelation. Understand – as all forms of God’s Revelation may be reduced to the sign that by its nature is inner and outer, visible and invisible. The visible element suggests a different reality that is connected to it but it is invisible. However, understanding the sign does not determine one to passively accept the presented contents. The author also discusses another way of recognising God’s Revelation: the religious experience understood in various ways, expressed in the feeling of sacrum – numinosunv, misterium thremendum et fascinosum. This experience, more than the previously mentioned ways, depends on the disposition of the subject: contemplative, intuitionist, mystic and others. The author puts forward the hypothesis concerning the recognition of God’s Revelation first by individuals within small social groups, which led to different understandings of the revealed contents in the ethnical-cultural context. Revelation done by specific legates left less interpretative freedom and became clearer. No matter how one treats the process of recognising God’s Revelation, it remains a fact that it has been understood in different ways, which resulted in the existence of various religions.