Gnosis and Revelation in the Bible and in Contemporary Thought

Abstract

The nineteenth-century revolution in historical method and its application to the study of the Bible rendered necessary a complete re-statement of the doctrine of revelation. No longer was it possible to hold a doctrine of revelation as given in propositional form at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. The object of this paper is to ask what is the biblical conception of revelation and how it can best be expressed and understood in the light of modern thought. We will begin with a very brief and necessarily inadequate summary of what the Bible means by ‘revelation’.