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How Does God Reveal Himself?

How Does God Reveal Himself?

Last updated on: October 7, 2026 at 2:36 pm by William Hemsworth

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How Does God Reveal Himself? 2026-10-07T14:36:54-07:00 William Hemsworth

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For many years as a Protestant, one topic that I was incredibly passionate about was how God reveals Himself to mankind. For me, the answer seemed straightforward: Scripture. Sola Scriptura, or Scripture alone, was my battle cry. If something could not be demonstrated from the Bible, I was skeptical of it. Scripture was the final authority, and I believed that everything necessary for Christian doctrine had to be found within its pages.

Then I started reading the early Church Fathers, and something happened that I was not expecting. As I read the writings of Christians who lived in the earliest centuries of the Church, I kept encountering beliefs that sounded remarkably Catholic. These were Christians living much closer to the time of the Apostles than we are, yet they spoke about bishops, the Eucharist, Baptism, apostolic authority, and the Church in ways that challenged many of my assumptions.

Eventually, I had to ask myself a difficult question: Had I misunderstood how God chose to reveal Himself? That question became an important part of my journey into the Catholic Church. One document that helped me tremendously was Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. Rather than diminishing Scripture, Dei Verbum helped me appreciate Scripture even more because it showed me where the Bible fits within the much larger story of God’s revelation to humanity.

What Is Divine Revelation?

Divine revelation begins with God. Christianity is not primarily the story of humanity searching for God; it is the story of God reaching out to humanity. God, in His mercy, chose to make Himself and His will known to us so that we could come to the Father through the Son and, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, participate in the divine life.

This is important because God does not simply reveal information about Himself. He reveals Himself. God is not giving humanity a theological textbook and saying, “Here is everything you need to know.” Instead, He enters human history. He acts, speaks, establishes covenants, and calls people into a relationship with Him. Throughout salvation history, God’s words and deeds work together. His actions demonstrate the truth of His words, while His words help us understand the meaning of His actions.

We can also see God’s fingerprints throughout creation itself. The beauty, order, and existence of creation point beyond themselves toward a Creator. However, God did not stop with creation. When Adam and Eve fell, God did not abandon humanity. Humanity rebelled against Him, yet His response was not simply destruction. Instead, God began unfolding His plan of redemption. When we really stop and think about that, it is an incredible demonstration of God’s love and mercy toward us.

God’s Plan Unfolds Through Salvation History

God’s plan of salvation gradually unfolds throughout Scripture. He called Abraham and promised that through him a great nation would arise. That promise continued through Isaac and Jacob and eventually through the people of Israel. God worked through Moses and the prophets to teach His people that He was not merely one god among many, but the one living and true God.

Through covenants, commandments, prophets, worship, sacrifice, and even Israel’s failures, God was preparing His people for something greater. He was preparing them for Christ. Generation after generation waited for the Messiah until, as St. John tells us, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The God who had spoken through the prophets entered His own creation.

Jesus Christ is therefore not simply another messenger bringing revelation from God. He is the fullness of God’s revelation because He is God the Son made flesh. Everything that came before Christ was preparing humanity for Him. In Christ, God’s plan that had been unfolding throughout salvation history reached its fulfillment.

Our Response to God’s Revelation

If God has truly revealed Himself to us, then we have to respond. The proper response to revelation is faith, but biblical faith involves much more than intellectually agreeing that God exists. Faith means trusting God, submitting ourselves to Him, and entering into a relationship with Him. We love Him because He first loved us and gave Himself for us.

Christ gave Himself for us when we could never save ourselves. I have always loved the saying that He paid a debt He did not owe because we owed a debt we could never pay. That is grace. Even our ability to respond to God is assisted by His grace and the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit strengthens us and helps us understand more deeply what God has revealed.

This is also why the Christian life cannot simply be about collecting biblical or theological knowledge. I love studying Scripture and theology, but knowing facts about God is not the same thing as knowing God. Theology should ultimately lead us into a deeper relationship with the One we are studying. The goal of revelation is not merely information; it is communion with God.

God Reveals Himself Through Creation

God’s revelation is not limited to the written word. Creation itself points toward Him. The heavens, the earth, the complexity of life, and the order of the universe all point beyond themselves. Human reason is capable of recognizing that creation has a cause greater than itself and that the world around us did not simply come from nothing without explanation.

This does not mean that reason tells us everything about God. Reason alone will not reveal the Trinity or fully explain the Incarnation, the Eucharist, or the mysteries of salvation. Those truths required God to reveal them to us. Reason can bring us to the threshold, but revelation takes us somewhere that reason alone cannot go.

Faith and reason are therefore not enemies. Christianity does not require us to turn off our brains in order to believe. God gave us the ability to reason, and that ability can help lead us toward Him. Faith builds upon reason and allows us to receive truths about God that we could never discover completely on our own.

Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition

This was where things became particularly challenging for me as a Protestant. I had always believed strongly in the authority of Scripture, and I still do. The Catholic Church does not ask us to have a lower view of Scripture. Quite the opposite. Scripture is the inspired Word of God and must be treated with the greatest reverence.

The question I eventually had to wrestle with was whether Scripture was ever intended to exist by itself. The earliest Christians did not possess a completed New Testament that they could carry around with them. The Gospel was being preached before the New Testament was completed. Christ taught the Apostles, and the Apostles went out and taught others. Some of those teachings were eventually written down, while the apostolic faith was also handed on through the preaching, worship, and life of the Church.

This is what Catholics mean when we speak about Sacred Tradition. Tradition is not simply a collection of customs Catholics accumulated over the centuries. Sacred Tradition refers to the apostolic faith handed down from Christ through the Apostles. Scripture and Tradition therefore do not compete against each other. They belong together because they flow from the same divine source.

Where Did the Bible Come From?

This realization led me to another question that I had not seriously considered before: Where did the Bible come from? The Bible did not fall out of Heaven already bound in leather with a table of contents. There was a process by which the Church recognized which writings belonged to the canon of Scripture, and that history matters when discussing the relationship between the Bible and the Church.

Before Christians could open a completed New Testament, Christians were already worshiping together, baptizing, celebrating the Eucharist, preaching the Gospel, and handing on the teachings of Christ. Christianity existed before all twenty-seven books of the New Testament were gathered together into one recognized collection.

This was significant for me because it forced me to rethink the relationship between Scripture and the Church. The Catholic position was not asking me to abandon Scripture. Instead, it was asking me to understand Scripture within the apostolic Church that received, preserved, proclaimed, and handed it down.

The Importance of the Old Testament

The Old Testament is an essential part of God’s revelation. The Catholic Old Testament contains forty-six books, including Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Most Protestant Old Testaments do not include these books, and this difference was another issue I had to investigate during my journey toward Catholicism.

Regardless of the canonical differences between Catholics and Protestants, Christians should never treat the Old Testament as though it is secondary or unimportant. The Old Testament tells the beginning of our family story. There we encounter creation, the fall, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, the prophets, God’s covenants, and the repeated promises He made to His people.

We also see something incredibly important about God’s character. His people repeatedly fail, but God remains faithful. Israel turns away, and God continually calls them back. This pattern demonstrates both the seriousness of sin and the incredible mercy of God. It should also give us hope because we serve the same faithful God today.

Christ Is Throughout the Old Testament

One of the greatest mistakes Christians can make is believing that Jesus suddenly appears on the first page of Matthew. Christ is present throughout the story of Scripture. Beginning with Genesis 3:15, God begins preparing humanity for the coming Savior, and as salvation history unfolds, the picture becomes increasingly clear.

We see sacrifice, priests, kings, covenants, the Passover lamb, manna in the wilderness, the temple, and prophets announcing that someone greater is coming. All of these themes prepare us for Christ and help us better understand what He accomplishes in the New Testament.

This is why understanding the Old Testament dramatically enriches our reading of the New Testament. The Letter to the Hebrews is a great example. Hebrews becomes much easier to understand when we know something about the Old Testament priesthood, covenant, and sacrificial system. The same can be said about the Eucharist. Passover, manna, sacrifice, covenant, and priesthood all help us understand more deeply what Christ gives His Church.

The Old and New Testaments belong together. As the ancient Christian saying reminds us, the New Testament is hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New.

Jesus Is the Fullness of Revelation

Everything changes with the Incarnation. The eternal Son of God took on human flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus did not merely speak God’s message; He demonstrated the Kingdom through His words and actions. He healed the sick, forgave sins, cast out demons, taught with authority, and ultimately gave Himself for the salvation of the world.

Christ’s earthly ministry reached its climax in His death and Resurrection. The Cross looked like defeat, but it became the instrument of victory. Through His death, Christ offered Himself for our sins, and through His Resurrection, death itself was defeated. God did not remain distant from human suffering. He entered into it and transformed it.

Before ascending into Heaven, Christ commissioned His Apostles to continue His mission. This became another important point for me during my journey toward Catholicism. Jesus did not personally sit down and write the New Testament. He established a Church and commissioned Apostles to preach, teach, baptize, and make disciples of all nations. He then sent the Holy Spirit to guide them as they carried out that mission.

The Apostles Handed on the Faith

The Apostles carried the Gospel throughout the known world. They preached what Christ had taught them, established local churches, appointed leaders, celebrated the sacraments, and instructed believers in the Christian faith. Eventually, some of their preaching and testimony was committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and those writings became the books of the New Testament.

The twenty-seven books of the New Testament bear witness to Jesus Christ, but the four Gospels hold a special place because they present His life, ministry, death, and Resurrection. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each have their own style and emphasis, yet they proclaim the same Lord. Rather than weakening their testimony, these different perspectives give us a fuller picture of Jesus and His ministry.

The rest of the New Testament gives us an incredible window into how the earliest Christians understood and lived their faith. Acts tells us about the growth of the early Church, while the letters of St. Paul and the other apostolic writings address doctrine, morality, worship, Christian living, Church order, and the meaning of Christ’s saving work.

Christianity Has Always Been Lived in Community

When we read the New Testament carefully, something becomes very clear: Christianity was never intended to be an isolated relationship between an individual and a Bible. The earliest Christians gathered together for worship, prayer, instruction, fellowship, and the breaking of bread. They cared for one another and lived their faith together.

They were the Church.

This communal aspect of Christianity can be difficult for our individualistic culture to understand. Jesus did not merely call isolated individuals who would each determine Christianity for themselves. He formed a people and gave His Apostles authority to continue His mission.

That Church would carry the Gospel from one generation to another, eventually bringing the same message of Jesus Christ to people living thousands of miles away and thousands of years later.

That includes you and me.

Scripture and Tradition Work Together

This brings us back to the question that started my journey: How does God reveal Himself? The Catholic answer is much bigger than the answer I once gave. God reveals Himself through creation and human reason. He revealed Himself throughout salvation history through His covenants, patriarchs, prophets, words, and deeds. Then He revealed Himself fully in Jesus Christ.

Christ entrusted His teaching to the Apostles, and the Apostles handed that faith on to the Church. Some of that apostolic teaching was committed to writing as Sacred Scripture, while the apostolic faith was also transmitted through Sacred Tradition. Scripture and Tradition are therefore not competitors fighting for authority. They work together within the life of the Church.

Understanding this did not make me love the Bible less. It made me love it more. I began seeing Scripture not as something isolated from Christian history, but as something living within the Church Christ established. The Bible became part of an even greater story of how God has continually revealed Himself and called humanity back into communion with Him.

God Was Preparing Humanity All Along

When we step back and look at salvation history, an incredible picture emerges. God was preparing humanity for Christ all along. Human beings often want everything immediately, but God’s revelation unfolded gradually. He taught humanity little by little and prepared His people for what was coming.

God revealed Himself through creation. He called Abraham and formed Israel. He spoke through Moses and sent the prophets. Then, in the fullness of time, the Word became flesh. Christ taught the Apostles, and the Apostles handed on the faith. That same faith has been transmitted from generation to generation until it eventually reached us.

There is something humbling about realizing that. We are part of a story that began long before we were born and, unless Christ returns first, will continue long after we are gone. We have received the faith because countless Christians before us remained faithful enough to pass it on.

Now it is our responsibility to do the same.

Revelation Ultimately Points to Jesus Christ

Divine revelation is not merely a theological subject to study. If God has truly revealed Himself—if the Creator of the universe entered human history, became man, died for us, rose from the dead, and established a Church to carry His Gospel throughout the world—then Christianity cannot simply be one small part of our lives. It changes everything.

When I was a Protestant, I passionately defended the Bible because I believed it was God’s Word. I still do. Becoming Catholic did not require me to abandon that conviction. Instead, Catholicism helped me see Scripture as part of something even larger: God’s great plan of salvation and the apostolic faith Christ entrusted to His Church.

The Bible did not become less important to me when I became Catholic. In many ways, it became more important because I began to understand it within the context in which God intended it to be understood.

Ultimately, divine revelation does not point us merely to a book, a theological system, or an argument that needs to be won. It points us to a Person: Jesus Christ. The Old Testament prepares for Him, the Gospels reveal Him, the Apostles proclaim Him, and the Church continues the mission He entrusted to His followers.

What Will We Do With What God Has Revealed?

That leaves us with an important question. What will we do with what God has revealed?

Knowing about God is not enough. Reading Scripture is not enough if it never changes us. Studying theology is not enough if it never leads us closer to Christ. God has revealed Himself because He desires communion with us, and that reality should leave us humbled, grateful, and willing to respond.

God has gone to extraordinary lengths to bring us back to Himself. He has revealed Himself through creation, covenants, prophets, Scripture, and ultimately through His Son. He has given us Sacred Scripture and the apostolic Tradition of the Church so that we can know Him, love Him, and serve Him.

God has done great things for us. He has pursued humanity throughout salvation history even when humanity continually turned away from Him. He ultimately entered His own creation and gave His life so that we might have eternal life.

Now the question is what we will do with the revelation we have received. God has done great things for us. Now let us do great things for Him.

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