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\begin{chapter}{Jesus, the Fullness of Revelation}
Jesus is the \emph{full} revelation of God (Jn.~1:18)i, although He Himself only claimed to proclaim God's Kingdom (and not Himself). What can we say about the inner coherence of and historical reasons to support this claim?
\subsubsection*{The Gospels}
The Gospels are largely based on eyewitness accounts, on each other and on an unknown source Q. Matthew, Mark and Luke are similar and called synoptic, while John's Gospel emerged from decades of prayerful, theological contemplation, merging \emph{memory} of Jesus and \emph{experience} of the Risen Christ. Luke also presents the Risen Christ, in the Acts of the apostles. It can be argued that the first three evangelist were no eyewitnesses themselves, while John was: this would explain why the first three Gospels are mainly storytelling rather than interpreting -- Matthew, Mark and Luke would try to remain as close as possible to the eyewitness accounts.
To verify whether sayings ascribed to Jesus, we use the following criteria:
\begin{description}
\item[Embarrassment] of the early Church (e.g. the baptism by John), because if not from Jesus, why would they be included?
\item[Multiple attestation] in \emph{independent} traditions, for obvious reasons.
\item[Discontinuity] from Jewish and early Christian tradition, like Jesus' title `the Son of Man'.
\item[Coherence] with already established knowledge about Jesus.
\item[Deadly opposition] to distinguish Jesus from simply a teacher or some prophet.
\end{description}
After this `stage one' tradition, revelation of Jesus is communicated by word of mouth (`stage two') until they were written down by the evangelists (`stage three'). In any case, the Gospels are historically credible because they are largely based on eyewitness accounts given until far in the first century, for Mark and John mainly Peter.
It is also not realistic that there was a group of early Christians making up stories about Jesus, because then they would have included positions on some debates of the early Church as sayings of Jesus to support their own point of view.
\subsubsection*{The preaching of the Kingdom}
Jesus revealed the Kingdom as a present or future `new age' to liberate sinful men and women from the grip of evil and bless them with salvation. He did this by telling \emph{parables} and performing \emph{miracles}. We don't know for sure what exact impact these two things had on Jesus' contemporaries, but for sure they hint at Jesus being divine Wisdom.
Miracles bring up four tasks for theologians:
\begin{itemize}
\item To \emph{define} them appropriately.
\item To \emph{defend their existence} against people excluding miracles in principle. Some people argue here that it is inherent to a miracle that it can never be supported by enough evidence to support it logically.
\item To \emph{defend their existence} against people claiming miracles are a product of the imagination of the first Christians. This can be done by saying that for example in Mark miracles are strongly intertwined with the rest of the narrative, and can thus be considered true by the principle of \emph{coherence} above. Also, miracles enjoy \emph{multiple attestation}, from among others Mark, Q and Jewish sources.
\item To \emph{establish their significance}: Jesus repeatedly emphasises that to believe in miracles is not the most important. The most important is to believe in `Him Whom the Father has sent'.
\end{itemize}
\subsubsection*{The Kingdom in person}
The coming of Jesus is inseparably connected with the coming of the Kingdom. This becomes clear in all synoptic Gospels. In the Gospels it is only others who directly call Jesus the king of the Jews or the Messiah, but He Himself also obliquely hints at it.
The language of `coming from God' and being `sent by God' is used often in this context, sometimes together. The usage of these words is numerous enough and different enough from Old Testament prophets, to assume that is how Jesus Himself understood His mission.
Jesus, other than the Old Testament prophets, taught with authority:
\begin{itemize}
\item Over the observation of the Sabbath (Mk.~2:23-28; but note that some scholars ascribe verse 28 to Mark or a pre-Markan redactor).
\item Over the regulations of the Torah: the oral law imposed by scribes and Pharisees He showed to be incoherent with the Torah (Mk.~7:10-12), the written law He extended, clarified and changed (most notably Mt.~5:21-48; mainly considering the food laws Mk.~7:15,19). Some scholars don't think it's likely that Jesus abolished all food laws at once, and ascribe the sayings concerning those laws to later editors.
\item Over the Temple (Mk.~11:15-17; 14:57-59) -- the original saying is untraceable, but had something to do with a new relationship with God, for which Jerusalem as central place wasn't needed any more.
\end{itemize}
We also see Jesus' authority in His forgiveness of sins and His new name for God, ``Abba''. While Jesus preached the coming of the Kingdom, the Old Testament language of God as king was abolished in the New Testament and replaced by this ``Father dear''.
Considering the \emph{final} salvation and Kingdom, Jesus clearly shows this is given by Him (Lk.~22:39-40; 12:8-9).
\subsubsection*{The Trinity revealed?}
We don't find direct references to the doctrine of the Trinity in the Gospels; that would be wildly anachronistic.
The baptism of Jesus in Mark is the first hint at the trinity. The story (1) reveals the identity of Jesus, (2) tells of His consecration for His mission, (3) introduces His public activity and (4) indicated the form that activity would take (witnessing to the Father and empowered by the Spirit). Matthew and Luke add to Mark that Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit \emph{and with fire}, which may refer to the Last Judgement (Mt.) or Whit Sunday (Lk.).
For sure Jesus was conscious of God being a Father, but it cannot be said when and how he came to realise that. He was to a lesser extent aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and doesn't refer to it as directly as to the Father with ``Abba''. Also the accounts of Jesus' baptism hint at a Father figure.
It can be argued that Jesus was somehow aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit, but not directly in a different way than Old Testament prophets.
The sonship is more explicitly referred to than the Holy Spirit, in Mt.~11:25-30 = Lk.~10:22 (``all things have been delivered to Me by My Father and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him''). Three times, the synoptic Gospels have Jesus refer to others being sons of God. That is much less use than in the Old Testament, where in several books several different groups are called sons of God. The New Testament uses less `sons of God', more `Son of God' and more 'Father' than the Old Testament.
In Jesus' authority we can see him acting as a Son and talking as a Son.
Of course, the revelation of the Son implies the revelation of the Father.
To summarise: we have to be careful to not be anachronistic and put too much Trinity in the Gospels, but we may say that Jesus lived out in a human way His filial relationship and mission as One sent/coming from the Father and acting in the power of the Holy Spirit.
\subsubsection*{Revelation past, present and future}
God has communicated everything to us, through Jesus and the figures around Him. Both Paul and John the evangelist see the revelation by Jesus as complete -- but then what to do with ideas about the Final Judgement? Paul (e.g. in First Corinthians) and First John mention another, future revelation. Then there are also sources like Revelation that talk about revelation as something living, active. Thus we have past, present \'and future revelation.
If we would see revelation as revelation of truths (plural, like in chap.~4), this is no problem. But we're now talking about revelation of the Truth (singular, with capital). We thus need to distinguish between three different kinds of revelation:
\begin{itemize}
\item Once and for all with Christ and His apostles: \emph{foundational} revelation.
\item Continuing, calling people to faith in a living encounter with God. Some call this \emph{participatory} revelation. Then we need a distinction between the participatory revelation to the apostles, which we may again call \emph{foundational}, and the participatory revelation to others, which is in a sense \emph{dependent} (on the apostolic witness).
\item As in the life to come.
\end{itemize}
The foundational role of the apostles had four functions:
\begin{itemize}
\item The testimony of the apostles gathered the first Christians (those who had not seen and yet believed).
\item The baptism and the Eucharist initiated the liturgical life of the Church.
\item The apostles made the decision to not impose the Mosaic law on Gentile converts.
\item The preserving of a divinely inspired record of the unsurpassable revelation in Christ and its reception in the first decades of church life.
\end{itemize}
Clearly, the only way people nowadays can experience revelation is \emph{dependent} revelation. We could say that the period of apostolic revelation continued till the death of the last eyewitnesses, and that at this point the period of dependent revelation began.
\end{chapter}
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