In The Meaning of Revelation, H. Richard Niebuhr points out that by “revelation,” we must mean more than just the “historic Jesus” (Barth) or the egocentric “self” (Descartes). We must mean the centrally radiating reality of a revealing, eternal God. Niebuhr wrote, "When we say revelation we point to something in the historic event more fundamental and more certain than Jesus or than self. Revelation means God, God who discloses himself to us through history as our knower, our author, our judge and our only saviour. “All revelation,” Professor Herrman writes, ‘is the self-revelation of God’ (Der Begriff der offenbarung, 1887)…it is the peculiar activity of God, the unveiling of his hiddenness, his giving of himself in communion.”
Eugene Peterson writes that two of the greatest enemies of the Christian faith are (and always have been) moralism: “dishonoring the Son” (or legalism) and gnosticism: “dishonoring the Father” (or “spiritualism”). The third enemy that he identified was sectarianism: “dishonoring the Spirit” in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places he writes, “Gnosticism is a virus in the bloodstream of religion and keeps resurfacing every generation or so advertised as brand new, replete with a new brand name. On examination, though, it turns out to be the same old thing but with a new public relations agency”. And later, “moralism works from a base of human ability and arranges life in such a way that my good behavior will guarantee protection from punishment or disaster. Moralism works from strength, not weakness. Moralism uses God (or the revelation of God) in order not to need God any longer. Moral codes are used as stepping stones to independence from God”
When Susan Wise Bauer wrote her June 16, 1997 Christianity Today review of the two new books on the life of King David by Eugene Peterson (Leap Over A Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians, San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997) and Chuck Swindoll (David: A Man of Passion and Destiny, Waco, TX: Word Books Publishers, 1997), she made note that the major difference between the two books was that Peterson took the story of David seriously as Scriptural narrative, while Swindoll reduced the story (and the Scriptures) to a set of moralisms. She writes, “topology creeps into Swindoll’s stories: David’s life is a series of moral lessons...to flatten story into principle takes away a vital dimension of revelation.”
