Religious Education from a Critical Realist Perspective by Johnny C. Go

Author:Johnny C. Go [Go, Johnny C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351016612
Google: 7Xt_DwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-14T02:50:43+00:00

Spiritual reception

The reception that actualizes revelation refers primarily to the church’s response of faith to God’s offer of salvific revelation.4 ‘Revelation always and only becomes a reality where there is faith’ (Ratzinger, 2008, p. 52). The Christian response of faith can be understood properly only in relation to the Catholic notion of revelation as fundamentally relational: God’s primary purpose for revelation is to establish a personal relationship with humanity. Faith is the response to God’s invitation to a relationship, entailing a free commitment of one’s self, ‘offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals’ (DV §5).

However, aside from being God’s act of self-communication, revelation also includes the content of that communication. Given its cognitive dimension, faith entails not only a commitment to a relationship, but also an assent to beliefs. Faith cannot be considered an exclusively affective relationship stripped of propositional truths just as it cannot be reduced to a purely intellectual response. A disproportionate focus on its cognitive dimension reduces revelation into mere beliefs and the believer’s faith response into mere intellectual assent. Albeit valid, such an extrinsic conception of revelation with its separation of the action of revelation from its content is incomplete and loses sight of revelation as primarily an invitation to a personal relationship (Latourelle, 1994).

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