“As a Human to Humans”: The Second Vatican Council’s Understanding of “Self-Revelation” in Context

1. How to Speak About Revelation?

The basic meaning of the term “revelation” is “to take away a veil,” or even more precisely, “to retrieve a veil.” In other words: something which has not been evident before, because it was covered, becomes visible through a certain action—it is “revealed.” This point of view departs from a potential object of cognition that is hidden from the eyes of an observer; the reason why the observer cannot see the object is grounded in the object itself, in its concealment, its “Verborgenheit”¹ or even “Verdrehung,” as the late Martin Heidegger would say.

The American political philosopher John Rawls casts—probably unintentionally—a different light on the concept of revelation: in his work A Theory of Justice, first published in 1971, he introduces the idea of a “veil of ignorance,” an imaginative state of origin that disables the subject from knowing “his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like.”² Behind this “veil of ignorance,” people are able to choose and to determine principles of justice in a way that is not influenced by personal interests, because they do not know about their position in the society and judge therefore in a “fair” way. For the context of a reflection on the concept of revelation, it is interesting that Rawls in his understanding of a “veil of ignorance” does not attribute the concealment to an object, but to the subject of cognition; it is not that the object is unknowable, but that the subject is not knowledgeable. What sounds trivial at first glance offers an interesting perspective on the sense of revelation: revelation does not only mean that a veil is removed from a concealed object, but it also could signify that a veil is withdrawn from the eyes of a subject to enable the person to see what was already unconcealed in itself, but is still invisible for the subject with the veil in front of his eyes. This provides an interesting understanding of revelation which will serve as a preliminary definition for the reflections to come: revelation is not primarily a supernatural appearance or a visitation of things, but an empowerment of human beings to recognize seemingly ordinary and contingent occurrences as meaningful and disclosing of the question of who God, oneself, and the world is.

2. Revelation in its Conceptual Diversity: The Intellectual Background of Vatican II

Christian faith manifests itself in a visible, concrete, and positive form as a “phenomenon.”³ Cultural phenomena can always be considered from different perspectives: one and the same medieval text, for instance, can be interesting for theologians or philosophers, for historians or sociologists, for law scholars, librarians, or scientists who try to determine its exact age. A similar observation could be made with regard to revelation. One could choose several perspectives: the Existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers asks, for example, whether a revelation destroys what he calls the “philosophical faith”⁴ in God, which has simple assumptions and which, so Jaspers claims, bases itself on reason alone. Together with the Idealistic philosopher Schelling, one could consider whether there are other forms of revelation outside religion, like art or philosophy.⁵ Referring to the enlightenment thinker Lessing, one could investigate the practical consequences of revelation in the form of the “education of mankind,” as he called it.⁶ All these are possible approaches, but they do not fulfil the Council’s primary perspective.

On November 18, 1965, the Fathers of the Council voted to accept a so-called “dogmatic constitution” on the meaning of revelation with a majority of 2,344 affirmative votes, and only 4 votes opposed.⁷ The initial words of the document already offer a vision and gave the name to the entire text, Dei Verbum: “Hearing the word of God with reverence and proclaiming it with faith.”⁸ As these words suggest, the Council attempts to explain what it means exactly when...