The God who comes to us: Hermeneutic-theological reflections of revelation from above and from below

Abstract

The present article aims to discuss the revelation from the perspective of the reception. In this sense, it starts from the assumption that the metaphysical matrix is the place from which the traditional understanding of revelation arises, but also the perspective from which it must be criticized. This theoretical horizon generated the expectation of accessing the God-in-himself, infinite and necessary, considered from the perspective of his immutability, estranged from history, whose revelation is always understood from above, in other words, from his absolute character. Therefore, the reception is proposed as the hermeneutic-theological criterion, from which we intend a revelation’s approach considered from the perspective of how we are touched, as we are challenged, from the way it transforms into human experience and conforms to our language. In this sense, we seek a support for an approach from below through Joseph Moingt's understanding of revelation, an approach in which God ceases to be the one who is, understood from the perspective of necessity, and becomes the one who comes, conceived in perspective of gratuity.