As the only source of life and being, God is in a constant state of giving to his creation. Because he wills it, humanity, the earth, and the cosmos are. In this very abstract sense, all things “visible and invisible” are a revelation of the God who creates and sustains them. The enterally triune God, however, is not chiefly a god of the abstract. He is a god of the particular.
From the beginning, God created a humanity gifted with the grace of true relationship with him. The narratives shared in the Old Testament are a recording of the Hebrew people’s relationship and interaction with God. In the particulars of specific people, in specific situations, in specific places, God over time revealed himself to the Hebrews. In the prophetic writings we see the revelation of God to humanity as he worked through specific people to declare his eternal holiness and mercy. The poetic writings, too, share glimpses of God’s self-revelation to holy people, deep in relationship with him. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the hands of faithful people, to the glory of God the Father the narratives and visions of God experienced by humanity where safeguarded in the text of Holy Scripture to be a tool for God’s continual self-revelation.
God’s preeminent revelation, however, is not the collation of fragmentary self-revelations into the pages of the Bible. God completely revealed himself by being born of the Virgin Mary and living among the death and suffering of humanity. In the Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection Jesus Christ, God the Son, fully revealed the character and nature of the triune God to humanity. As St. Paul records in his letter to the Philippians — Phil 2:5-11 — Jesus reveals the kenotic, self-gifting nature of God. In Jesus, God redefines what it means to be divine and opens his eternal love shared within himself, to humanity.
Further, through the establishment of his Holy Church and institution of the Holy Sacraments of Communion and Baptism God, too, has provided mechanisms for his self-revelation. Through his church the Good News of Jesus Christ is shared through the New Testament and his dealings with the Hebrew people are retold through the Old Testament; God’s nature revealed again and again to each new generation. As his church constitutes his Living Body in the sacraments, God is revealed through them in the world as they through him reveal his love in very specific situations with specific suffering people.
From the abstract to the specific, God reveals himself through his continual giving of life and relationship of love to his creation.
