The content of revelation characterizes also the form of it: revelation is Trinitarian history, which engages in a different and characteristic way the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is inseparably subject and object of revelation. This is the main idea expressed by the fundamental axiom of Trinitarian theology ("Grundaxiom"), formulated by Karl Rahner: <<The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and vice-versa>>. The revealed God corresponds to the hidden God: "Deus revelatus" and "Deus absconditus" are the only one God.

The word "vice-versa", that Rahner adds to the axiom, can not be understood in the meaning that the economic Trinity should exhaust completely the immanent Trinity. The divine mystery is greater than the horizon of this world, even when God decides to reveal the Trinitarian depth of his life to human beings. That's why by understanding the revelation we need to keep the dialectic of economic and immanent Trinity. Only in such a way God is not reduced to the created world.

This dialectic of openness and concealment is signified by the Latin word "re-velatio" (as well as of the Greek "apokàlypsis"): the prefix "re-"(like "apo" in Greek) has in composed words both the meaning of repetition (as in "re-volutio", intensification of movement) and of the passage to the opposite condition (as in "re-probatio", negation of approval). "Re-velare" expresses then the passage from being hidden to be open, but it never excludes completely a persistence of the veil, indeed a thickening of it through repetition, at the same moment in which it seems to be eliminated.

The "re-velatio" does not remove the difference between worldly and divine being: God remains God and the world remains world, even if God enters our history and offers to us the possibility to share eternal life. This means that beyond the Word of revelation there is and remains a divine Silence. As Ignatius of Antioch says, the Father <<revealed himself through the Son Jesus Christ, who is his Word proceeding from the Silence>> (Ad Magnesios 8,2). The Word comes out from the Silence and resounds in the Silence: as well as there is a provenience of the Word from the Silent Origin, which is the Father, so there is a destination of the Word, like a place of the coming of the Word, which is the Spirit. So, the Trinitarian theology of "re-velatio" catches the Word between two Silences: the "altissima silentia Dei" of the Father and of the Holy Paraclete.

That's why to the Word of revelation corresponds the obedience of faith: "oboedientia" comes from "ob-audio" = "ypakoé", that means to listen to what is under and beyond what is heard. One truly receives the Word only when one "overcomes" the Word, by obeying to it, that means by listening to what is beyond it. Then, to the Trinitarian dialectic of Word and Silence, of openness and concealment, corresponds the obedience of faith, that doesn't stop at the immediate presence of the Word, but overcomes it by longing towards what is beyond the Word and from which the Word proceeds.

Because of this deep reason it is not enough to know the content of revelation in a rationalistic way or in a pure philological manner: to know the Word coming from the divine Silence one needs to listen to it in a welcoming silence. <<The Father pronounced one Word, that was his Son, and he always repeats it in an eternal silence; therefore it must be heard by the soul in silence>> (Saint John of the Cross, Sentences, n. 21). The theological knowledge needs spiritual experience. Hermeneutics of the revelation needs the sharing of the faith in the living community, that adores the Father by listening to the Son in the Spirit.

This Trinitarian structure of revelation has been forgotten especially in the modern age, characterised by the claims of the most pretentious rationalism. The divine self-communication has been mostly conceived as a total exhibition, as the coming to the openness of what was hidden. The revelation has been identified with a full manifestation, according to the meaning of the German term used to translate "re-velatio": "Offenbarung", whose etymology means "pregnancy and birth to openness" ("offen" = "open" + "baeren" = "to bear in the womb", "to be pregnant").

On this way, the revelation was understood not only as the self-communication of God, but much more as the self-realization of the divine Spirit. Starting from Hegel's philosophy of religion the western thought has conceived the human history as the "curriculum vitae Dei", the pilgrimage of God's life to become itself. Modern ideologies are the faithful expression of this pretension: they presume to have the key to interpret the whole reality of human beings and of their history. The crisis of ideological systems has shown to which tragic consequences of violence and totalitarianism such a pretension is able to lead.

That's why we must set ourselves free from the misunderstanding of the idea of revelation, produced by modern western philosophy: aim of these "Jerusalem lectures" is to revisit some of the deciding representatives of modern European thought (Hegel, the late Schelling, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Heidegger) to enlighten their ideas about Christology and revelation. Through this way a correct theological criticism of their hermeneutic presuppositions is made possible with the help of some of the most interesting Christian thinkers of the last two centuries (Kierkegaard, Dostoevskij, Barth, Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, de Lubac, Rahner, etc.), and also of Authors belonging to the Jewish tradition (as Rosenzweig, Lévinas or Neher).

So these lectures will try to show how the faith in christological revelation could contribute to the overcoming of the crisis of the so called "post-modern" or "post-ideological" time, to which we belong. Such a dialogue between theology and philosophy could help - perhaps better than a mere theological reflection - to understand that God's revelation in Jesus Christ is never a total vision (like ideology pretends to be!), but the self-communication of the Word, that opens the abysmal paths of the divine Silence ("re-velatio" and not "Offenbarung"!). One can easily catch the deciding consequences of these understanding not only for the self-understanding of Christian identity, but also for the Christian theology of religions and the interreligious dialogue, a deciding challenge of our time...