Queering Revelation: Relating God’s Self-Communication to Liberating Praxis and Traditions

Theology, I often tell my students, is a verb. It is an ongoing process that seeks to understand the life of Jesus and his practical and pastoral relevance across time. This perspective on theology resonates well with the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on November 18, 1965. Dei Verbum reflects continuity with Roman Catholic claims that were elaborated by the Council of Trent in response to the Reformation (e.g. the revelatory nature of Scripture and Tradition) and later by Vatican I in response to the Enlightenment (e.g. the revelatory nature of doctrinal and intellectual components of faith). But even as Dei Verbum follows in the footsteps of these councils (DV 1), this conciliar document offers a fresh hermeneutical approach that disrupts conventional understandings of revelation. Dei Verbum invites us to overcome binary oppositions between personal/dynamic and propositional/static understandings of revelation. In this sense, Dei Verbum situates the Incarnation as the cornerstone of revelation. In other words, the words and deeds of Jesus Christ are the revelatory referent point for all words proclaimed and enacted by the Church and its members. Thus, Dei Verbum affirms:

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In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Pet 1:4). Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col. 1:15, 1 Tim. 1:17) out of abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself. This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them. By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation (DV 2).

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In this article, I will highlight and briefly discuss three key shifts related to Vatican II’s notion of revelation affirmed in the above paragraph: 1) the shift from a propositional to an incarnational and personal understanding of revelation, 2) the shift from understanding revelation in theoretical terms to understanding revelation as God’s transformative action in history, and 3) the shift that moves us from understanding revelation as simply something that belongs to a historical event in the past (as recorded in Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testaments) to revelation as the ongoing action of God in history that requires historical and personal discernment. I will conclude by offering some reflections on how these shifts in Dei Verbum can be “queered” and read through this theological perspective.

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Shifting to an incarnational and personal nature of revelation

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There is little doubt, as several commentators of Dei Verbum have observed, that there is a fundamental shift from the question “what is revelation?” to the question “who is revealed?”. This shift away from a propositional stance associated with both Trent and Vatican I to an understanding of revelation as God’s self-communication carries enormous implications. As the citation above underscores, Jesus, the Word made flesh—who in the power of the Spirit enables us to receive the salvific fruits of God’s words and actions in history—draws us to participate in divine life. Dei Verbum’s incarnational vision of revelation moves away from understanding revelation as a collection of truths, religious practices, and traditions, to one that understands revelation as a dynamic and personal presence of the triune mystery of God in history. This focus on how God has manifested Godself in the humanity of Christ and continues to be manifested in the lives of concrete human persons had no greater proponent at the council than Karl Rahner. 

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Within Rahner’s transcendental Christology, God’s revelatory, universal, and life-giving manifestation finds its source and ultimate fulfillment in the Incarnation. As Rahner beautifully reminds us, reflecting on John 1:14, human persons are “the grammar of God’s possible self-expression.” Jesus is the ultimate cause (ontologically speaking) who originates, perfectly expresses, and fully realizes that grammar. From this Rahnerian perspective, we can say that revelation boils down to this basic affirmation: The incarnate Logos reveals the abbreviated Word of God and because of this revelation, human persons are also intrinsically ordered to become ciphers of God. 

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The Incarnation, as Dei Verbum maintains, brings us into friendship with God, participation in divine life (e.g. deification), and offers the pedagogy for the ongoing personal and revelatory potential of human words and deeds. Or to put it in Rahnerian terms that reflect this conciliar teaching, “Revelation is essentially a revelation-event, a deed of God, because it does not consist merely in human discourse but conveys the very reality of what is revealed.” The Incarnation also makes clear that both the referent and recipient of revelation are personal: God, the source of revelation and the human person as its primary recipient. 

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Shifting to revelation as divine and transformative action

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Liberation theologian Juan Luis Sobrino argues that “according to the Council, the intent of God’s revelation is not that we know something that otherwise would be impossible or difficult for us to know, but rather that we be different, and act better…Thus, Christians do not possess, not even by understanding it, the truth that God communicates to them until they succeed in transforming it into a humanizing difference within history.” While Dei Verbum does not set aside the revelatory importance of words (as recorded in Sacred Scripture and Christian traditions), it “did bring forth, however, a thoroughly personal understanding of revelation and, in this light, showed the fundamental role of deed alongside the importance of word…Deeds no longer just confirm the revelatory words, as in the work of Vatican I. Rather, they express a personal God who brings salvation in and through Jesus Christ.” 

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Liberation theologies deepen Dei Verbum’s focus on revelation as orthopraxis by localizing the preferential recipients of Jesus’ liberative actions in persons and communities that suffer marginalization, silence, death, and oppression. What Jesus’ signs and miracles manifest is that “God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal” (DV 4). But this liberation and life that Jesus manifests takes place in history (past, present, future), and more specifically in the “crucified of history.” And this liberation is salvific because it includes Jesus’ life-giving responses to various life-threatening experiences. Thus, revelation is neither concerned with affirming the “inner-unity” of Christ’s words and deeds as some other-worldly/“spiritual” reality or as that which simply belongs to Jesus’ actions in the past. The life-giving and transformative actions of Christ carry a life-giving impact on concrete human lives. This is the case for those living at the time of Jesus, and now as the Spirit continues to carry out God’s work in history.

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Shifting to revelation as an ongoing verbal noun

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The critical process of handing down, translating, and appropriating Christian belief responds to Vatican II’s call to wrestle theologically with concrete worldly realities that include the struggles and yearnings of diverse persons and communities. In a nutshell, it calls us in the words of this council to read “the signs of the times” and to interpret them considering the Gospel (Gaudium et Spes, 3). This critical task presumes that the handing down of revelation is “a living tradition” (DV 8). As Brian E. Daley rightly affirms, ‘From its opening chapters, Dei Verbum treats revelation as a verbal noun, an activity of the ever-mysterious and ever-present God in human history, rather than as a body of information to be studied.” His affirmation brings us full circle to where I began my reflections, namely, that Dei Verbum understands revelation in incarnational and personal terms related to Christian belief in the mystery of the triune God. 

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Elsewhere, I have reflected in more detail on the process of handing down the Christian faith as it relates to the Dei Verbum’s teaching on revelation. As a way to transition into my final reflections, let me summarize my thinking and propose a question that follows from Dei Verbum’s shift to a personal and deed-driven understanding of revelation. The focus on the personal referent and addressee of revelation together with the focus on revelation as divine deed rather than divine proposition means that, “The things handed over (the traditia that include words, stories, actions, doctrines, institutions, and so on) remain important human elements in the handing over of Christian faith. But the shift from a ‘what’ question to a ‘who’ question naturally leads to raising questions of transmission in light of personal contexts: whose words, stories, and actions are handed over, and to whom?” 

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Why “queer” Dei Verbum’s understanding of revelation, isn’t it obvious that it is already very disruptive?

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I want to offer a few reflections to clarify the title of my article and what I mean by proposing a “queering” of Dei Verbum. I believe that using this critical lens is a valuable tool for localizing the revelatory presence of God in historical and embodied marginalization. Taking seriously that revelation is about God’s personal self-communication, particularly in human peripheries, translates into an ethical obligation to discern the persons, experiences, and places associated with those peripheries within the Church and society.

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As is well known, the use of the term “queer” has a history of being weaponized against LGBTQ+ persons in derogatory, abusive, and homophobic ways. In the twentieth century, the term was turned on its head and acquired a liberating connotation. It is often now deployed pridefully as a communal affirmation highlighting human dignity. Within critical theoretical perspectives Teresa de Lauretis has been associated with first proposing the concept of ‘queer theory’ in a 1991 special edition of the feminist cultural journal titled Differences. Drawing on the writings of queer theorists, Christian queer theologies emerged as a distinct contribution that has helped expand the field of liberation theologies.

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Like any philosophical or theological approach, queer theological approaches vary significantly, making it difficult to provide an exhaustive list of characteristics. That said, I agree that when scholars use the term “queer,” there are some associations that most readily come to mind: 1) resisting categorization, 2) challenging essentialism and reified notions of identity, 3) questioning what has come to be accepted as “normal,” 4) removing binary thinking, presupposition, and interpretations of human experiences, texts, and traditions, and 5) exposing and disrupting power relations and unjust hierarchal arrangements. Note the use of verb tenses in each of these descriptions. While the term “queer” can be used as an adjective, as a noun, and as a verb, it is its verbal use, (e.g., as in “to queer” something) that I want to focus on as I take some initial steps in queering Dei Verbum. 

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In my recent publication on the triune mystery of God, I queered the Christian understanding of God drawing on the work of the sixteenth century Spanish mystic, Saint John of the Cross. The book makes certain claims regarding the personal revelation or self-communication of God and its recipients, arguing in favor of expanding our theological imagination to include sources, persons, and experiences not often considered by, or marginalized within, Christian theological perspectives. This brings me to the reason why I believe that it is fitting to associate the key insights of queer theology listed above with Vatican II’s teaching on revelation. Seen from a queer critical lens, Dei Verbum shifts perspectives on revelation to queer, that is, to disrupt, the “what” and “who” of revelation. 

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As stated above, shifting from the “what” of revelation (e.g., revelation as propositional) to the “who” of revelation (e.g. revelation as personal), Dei Verbum places a personal and self-communicating God as the referent of revelation. Furthermore, because of its incarnational focus on the Word that has been radically communicated in the flesh, human persons become the recipients of that revelation. On the one hand, Dei Verbum presents a triune, personal, and ecstatic God—a God who resists any categorization and essentialization—as the font of revelation, and on the other hand, because of the Incarnation human persons become intrinsically related to God as the primary addressees of that revelation. 

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To affirm with Dei Verbum that the plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words that derive from the “inner unity” of Christ’s historical reality, invites the queering of revelation with respect to both referent and addressee. This queering not only rejects binary constructions of divine and human life (e.g., Jesus is both human and divine), it also taps into the Catholic both/and hermeneutics that removes binary ways of thinking relative to biblical texts, other theological sources, and the manifold other manifestations of embodied revelatory “texts.” Most importantly, from this queer approach is the affirmation (noted above) that the revelatory body of Christ exists as a non-binary “verbal noun.” And this affirmation carries enormous implications related to the revelatory potential of LGBTQ+ bodies, their experiences, their religious sources, and their religious practices. 

 

I have highlighted that central to Vatican II’s teaching is its shift and emphasis on the ongoing personal and potential of personal bodies to become agents of revelation. Relying upon and contextualizing this perspective in accordance with unaddressed pressing issues of our times can lead, among other things, to mining the revelatory presence of God in LGBTQ+ persons. Doing so would also lead us to consider the perennial and revelatory wisdom that the indigenous ancestors left inscribed on Cave 18 on Mona Island in Puerto Rico. They affirmed not only that “Verbum caro factum est” (e.g. that the Word became Flesh) but also, that “Plura fecit deus” (e.g., that “God made many things”). Continuous with this wisdom that reflects the “verbal-noun” approach to revelation, we might consider queering St. Paul to affirm that in Christ, there are no bodies that can be essentialized as documented or undocumented, gay or straight, cis or trans, black or white, female or male, abled or dis-abled; for all these persons in their array of embodied gendered and sexual ways of being human, carry the revelatory potential to refer to and manifest the divine mystery made flesh in Jesus Christ. Thus, reading Dei Verbum in tandem with Galatians 3:28 invites us to reject binary understandings associated with our religious texts, traditions, and practices that pass as “revelatory.” We must be ever mindful that religious traditions do not just describe actions that are revelatory with respect to God. To mirror the arguments of Judith Butler, they also create and perpetuate oppressive human embodiments (“performative” utterances) that have little to do with God’s life. Queering revelation entails disrupting these religious constructions and opening ourselves to receive God’s self-communication where we least might expect its embodiment. 

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Conclusion

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This queering of revelation aligns with liberating interpretations of revelation that underscore the effects of revelation as a transformative grace that leads us to exist in a new way—over an understanding of revelation as a body of understanding that leads us to know new things about God. Such a queer reading of Dei Verbum underscores the life-giving and inclusive accomplishment of Jesus, his denunciation of injustice, and the misuse of personal and structural power, his practices contrary to established norms, and his prophetic actions against all that stood in the way of God and failed to express God’s salvific plan for all human beings. In the face of religious and secular idolatry, queering Dei Verbum entails accompanying this Jesus and affirming, like Vatican II does, that in matters of Christian faith, truth, and revelation, we owe our obedience of mind and will to God alone, who by the power of the Holy Spirit, enables “an ever deeper understanding of revelation” and brings our faith into completion (DV 5).