The concept of revelation
Although other religions have ideas of revelation, none of them bears a close resemblance to the idea of revelation found in the Bible and in Christianity. Roman Catholic theologians distinguish between revelation in a broad sense, which means knowledge of God deduced from facts about the natural world and man’s existence, and revelation in the strict formal sense, which
means the utterances of God. This latter idea can be conceived only by analogy with the utterances of man, and its precise definition involves difficulties.The earliest idea of revelation is the one found in the Hebrew Scriptures, in which the speech of God is addressed to Moses and the Prophets. They in turn are described as quoting the words of God rather than interpreting them. Jesus, the fulfillment of the Prophets, does not merely speak the word of God; he is the word of God. This phrase, which occurs only in the opening verse of both the Gospel and the First Letter of John, has become a technical term in theology; Jesus is the incarnate Word. As such he is both the revealer and the revealed.