Unfolding in friendship: Revelation and the analogy of friendship in Dei verbum

Abstract

This article outlines the use of the analogy of friendship in the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei verbum n. 2, to describe the nature of divine revelation. Motivated by love, God initiates and sustains a relationship with humanity, in which the gift of knowledge of God and of God’s will for creation is continually communicated. This relationship, in which God ‘speaks with humans as with friends and dwells among them’, is fully and personally realized in Jesus Christ. First, I situate n. 2 within the renewed theology of revelation called for in the conciliar debates on the revelation constitution. Then I investigate the theological aptness of the analogy of friendship in describing divine revelation, first in terms of the personalist and dialogical thinking that characterized the ‘majority’ voice in the promulgation and reception of Dei verbum, and second in the Thomistic themes of caritas, friendship and revelation that can be heard in a ‘minority’ voice at the Council. I argue that the use of the analogy of friendship is an example a theological ‘ressourcement for the sake of aggiornamento’ that draws biblical, monastic, scholastic and contemporary perspectives into an enriching theological dialogue.