Thread: Reactualization vs. Progressive Revelation

A couple of years ago at SWBTS I took an OT class with Roger Maddox. He posed the following view on biblical revelation:

Rather than progressive revelation by God, the interpreter best understands most biblical revelation to be a process of reactualization. Reactualization is the interpretation and reapplication of previously revealed truth. In other words, previously given revelation is reinterpreted and reapplied to a new or contingent (i.e. potential) situation.

If it will help I can provide the examples he gives, but just wanted to see if this was familiar to anyone and get your thoughts. I remember it causing much discussion among the class.

What say ye?

Originally Posted by Houston E.

A couple of years ago at SWBTS I took an OT class with Roger Maddox. He posed the following view on biblical revelation:

Rather than progressive revelation by God, the interpreter best understands most biblical revelation to be a process of reactualization. Reactualization is the interpretation and reapplication of previously revealed truth. In other words, previously given revelation is reinterpreted and reapplied to a new or contingent (i.e. potential) situation.

If it will help I can provide the examples he gives, but just wanted to see if this was familiar to anyone and get your thoughts. I remember it causing much discussion among the class.

What say ye?

Is he saying that we should throw out the idea of 'progressive revelation' altogether?

Not altogether, but a good bit. This was one of his "Key Points in Interpretation of Biblical Texts"

I'll just go ahead and post the examples he gave...maybe that will help to give some clarification.

For example, in Gen 1:22 God blesses creation, in Gen 1:28 He extends his blessing to a specific part of his creation, namely, humans. In Gen 3:14-17 God pronounces his first curse, in which he curses the serpent and the ground. Thus, the dialectic of blessing and cursing is an established paradigm in the opening chapters of the OT. The reapplication of divine blessing and curse is either explicit or implicit in Genesis 4-11, e.g., God extended the curse to Sodom and Gomorrah but extended the blessing to Noah and his family. Later God extended the blessing to Abram and his descendants (Gen 12). As in Gen 1-12, reapplications of the blessing and curse are explicit or implicit in the rest of the Bible. Notice that in Deut 27-31 God elaborates on the blessings and curses and reapplies them to contingent (i.e. potential) situtations.

Let me just add that I never bought into this. The implication kept being that God only spoke one time and everything else was just a restatement of that spoken word. And I could be missing what he actually meant as there was much confusion about this among the class and clarity was not really ever given. My hope is that some of you on the PB have dealt with this and could help explain.

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