Hmmm...I suspect this of being a very good point

Kenny

The visiting pastor at La Casa today had a very interesting take on God's revelation to us. To sum up the points that struck me the most forcibly:

• He distinguished between "private" (or "particular") and "general" revelations. Thus when Jesus talks with the Samaritan woman, "I who speak to you am he" is a general revelation, whereas, "You've had five husbands and the man you're 'having' now is not your husband," is a private/particular revelation. That's pretty straightforward. But then interestingly he maintained...
• ...that our "general" revelations have no power unless they are undergirded by "particular" revelations.

In other words, if I may put it this way, theology about what "God always does" is just theology and words until it is infused with our joy and wonder over what "God did for me."

Lewis, in one of his poems, meditates on the limitations of apologetics and muses,

"Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
Of Thee, their time-worn image of Thy head."

I wonder how true it is that even the coin of theological truth is tin and brass until transmuted into gold by its incarnation into our own lives -- and to what extent this is what we try to capture by the word "unction" (one of those theological words that fortunately for my Sunday morning edification is the same in Spanish as in English). I wonder to what extent the pastor is right that the General Revelation of God goes out in power only, or at least ordinarily, when it passes through, when it is as it were focused like a laser by, a Particular Revelation that impels one person to share.

For the pattern in John 4 is the pattern this morning's pastor sees in all witnessing in power: Jesus speaks to the woman and breaks through to her wonder and awe and joy by means of a particular revelation. She goes back to the people and shares a general revelation ("Can this be the Messiah?") driven and empowered by the conviction of her particular revelation ("He told me everything I ever did.") Then those who hear her come to speak to Jesus themselves, and find Him speaking directly into each one's own soul, and finally tell the woman, "At first we believed because of what you said, but now we believe because we have heard him for ourselves."

I'm not sure that the pastor is right; but thoughts have been provoked, and I'll be turning this one over in my mind for a while.