Article 1
THE REVELATION OF GOD
I. God Reveals His "Plan of Loving
Goodness"
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"It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make
known the mystery of his will. His will was that men should have access to the
Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus
become sharers in the divine nature."2
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God, who "dwells in unapproachable light", wants to communicate his
own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his
sons in his only-begotten Son.3 By revealing himself God wishes to make
them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far
beyond their own natural capacity.
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The divine plan of Revelation is realized simultaneously "by deeds and
words which are intrinsically bound up with each other"4 and shed
light on each another. It involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates
himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural
Revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate
Word, Jesus Christ.
St. Irenaeus of Lyons repeatedly speaks
of this divine pedagogy using the image of God and man becoming accustomed to
one another: the Word of God dwelt in man and became the Son of man in order to
accustom man to perceive God and to accustom God to dwell in man, according to
the Father's pleasure.5
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