Resumo: idéias principais do texto

PEDAGOGIA DIVINA

A necessidade da própria revelação é um atributo divino colocado em cada ser humano.
Essa necessidade é facilmente constatada no processo e na formação das amizades.
É preciso conhecer o outro de maneira profunda e forte, com a necessidade de ser conhecido por ele.
Há um risco na revelação completa para o outro, sem saber se o outro é confiável e isto pode provocar reações de vergonha, por exemplo.
Nenhuma amizade foi construída sem a dolorosa experiência da traição.
As pessoas continuam vivendo suas vidas, construindo amizades.
Na política humana (arte de dar e receber)= o dar na maneira de se revelar e a espera pela resposta, num sinal de que o presente duelo foi aceito. É necessário um tempo para a amizade se aprofundar.
– Se Deus queria estabelecer um diálogo com as pessoas, a necessidade de procurá-lo precisa ser plantada em cada um.
– O ser chamado Deus, aparentemente tem a mesma necessidade de ser conhecido pelas pessoas, as quais criou e já conhecia intimamente.
– Entendemos a linguagem de Deus, mas de maneira limitada e imperfeita.
Como pode ser realizada tal comunicação?
– A revelação é para ser trabalhada em melhoria da humanidade( assembléia dos Bispos). A Teologia revela pedagogias diversas e efetivas. ( Com.Vaticano II)
– Os diferentes livros apresentam experiências vivas do sentimento de Deus.
– O A.T mostra o que foi revelado e o que foi entendido. Deus usou o menor, o fraco, o mais pobre com o significado de ensinar aos ricos e poderosos…
— Há uma prática de justiça implicando em uma nova mentalidade, uma lenta gestação do futuro, conversão.
– Os 10 mandamentos são a carta magna: relação da nação para com Deus e com o próximo.
– O exemplo da Pedagogia divina é percebido na criação.
Continuam as falhas e dimensões de escravidão e obsessão. Pessoas buscam o poder e falham quando precisam ajudar aos outros.
– Toda a estrutura má continua ainda hoje. Diferenças pessoais podem também separar.
Pessoas falham quando matam, marginalizam e oprimem.

– Toda civilização manifesta uma crença em seres superiores.
No A.T os autores tentaram ilustrar o seu entendimento das maneiras que Deus se comunicava com eles, construindo uma sociedade na Fé.
Deus é mostrado falando com o líder e até com alguns conquistadores que se tornaram instrumentos DELE.
A História religiosa está contida no A.T
A Bíblia foi traduzida em centenas de idiomas e continua a inspirar esperança nos homens e mulheres no mundo.
Deus é visto como um ser constante e de fé para a salvação de todos.
Esse ciclo de ensino e aprendizagem e sabedoria achados no A.T são ingredientes da divina pedagogia para a salvação de todas as pessoas , tribos e nações…
(Tradução por Caureb)

Divine Pedagogy

The need or drive of self revelation appears to be one of the divine attributes God placed in each human being from the beginning. This need is readily seen in the formation process of friendships. It is the engine which makes bonding a reality. This need to know others in a broader and deeper way is equally as strong as the need to be known by them.
There is a risk involved in all self revelation concerning the degree the other can be trusted with the information. Present is the haunting question: Will that knowledge, will the secrets be revealed to a third party to one’s disadvantage or shame? Probably no friendships have been made without also having suffered the painful experience of betrayal. That people continue throughout their lives to develop friendships is an indication of how deep is this need or instinct. If any truly human encounter can only take place in the presence of revelation and faith, how much deeper these must be for humans with God.

Human politics, the art of giving and taking, can be seen in infants and is learned by experimentation. This art is used in the deepening of friendships or bonding–one gives in the form of self revelation, and waits for a response, as sign that the gift is accepted. If the second responds with a “gift,” the interchange can continue. This back and forth, give and take, usually demands time and willing effort for a friendship to deepen. If God wanted to establish a relationship with people then the need to search for God must have been planted in each person.

The being called God apparently has this same need to be known by people, whom he created and already knows intimately. Many people believe that God knows all of the details of their lives, even the future. God knows what decisions or choices they will have to make, why they made them, and what the consequences of them will be. If God speaks to people, it has to be in a manner that they can understand, i.e., in the vernacular of the hearers. Understanding has to be limited and imperfect, for human words and concepts are inadequate to express the infinite. Understanding is further restricted by the influence social and cultural pressures on the hearers.

It should be obvious that any attempt by God to reveal self has to be through a pedagogy that communicates at the level of the hearers and at a pace that they can maintain. If God wants to be known as much as possible by people, however, how this has been done ought to be found in the written details of civilizations throughout history, especially, in the prophetic traditions of Israel. In this regard, Schillebeckx wrote: “By virtue of the critical function of Israel’s prophets, who spoke in the name of the God of salvation but also had their roots in Israel’s faith, this word brought divine revelation into the history of Israel in an unambiguous manner.

“God so manifested himself through words and deeds as the one true and living God that Israel came to know by experience the ways of God with man, and with God himself speaking to them through the mouth of the prophets, Israel daily gained a deeper and clearer understanding of his ways and made them more widely known among the nations”. The assembled Catholic bishops agreed that this revelation was and is taking place, and they affirm that all revelation was intended to work to the good of all humanity . In an effort to show their understanding of God’s intentions, they declared that God revealed both himself and the eternal decisions regarding human salvation, notions that completely transcend the realm of human understanding .

The Vatican Council affirmed that the Old Testament reveals effective divine pedagogy and describes what academics call “course content.” The different books give “expression to a lively sense of God, contain a store of sublime teachings about God, sound wisdom about human life, and a wonderful treasury of prayers, and in them the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way”. The Old Testament attempts to show what was revealed and how it was understood.
God often is found using the smallest, the weakest, and the poorest as a means of teaching the rich and powerful. Second Isaiah, for example, describes in great detail the mission of the suffering people as educators in the plan of salvation. He helped those exiled in Babylon to change their image of God from one who had abandoned them to one who offered hope. He inspired “a conscious practice of justice (Is 45:8; 61:11). A new praxis, a new mentality! It was the beginning of a new creation (65:17), a time of the slow gestation of the future!”.

One can hardly expect to sound the depths of God’s purposes, but one thing is certain: according to the Bible everyone needs to undergo repeated conversion. In Second Isaiah, the poor and suffering people should touch the hearts of the rich and powerful and help move them to conversion. In human society the rich and powerful are those who are able to make changes in social, economic, political, and religious structures. Only with their conversion can a change be realized in the structures that marginalize and oppress masses of people.
Part of pedagogy is the techniques used in teaching. In a conference in Kansas City, July 7, 1977, Rev. Bob Mumford explained how Scripture revealed the way God often worked with the Israelites. He called this method the Four-P¿s: promise, proviso, proof, and provision. God made a promise to the people and stated the proviso or conditions by which the promise would be realized. God then tested the Israelites’ faith in his faithfulness. If they passed the test, they would receive the promise; if they failed, God stated another proviso and again looked for proof with a different test. God’s hope was to fulfill his promises by teaching the Israelites the necessity of faith and trust.

Mumford found the Four-P’s illustrated, for example, in the Exodus. The promise was to form a specially chosen people, liberated from slavery in Egypt to a land of their own. The first test came at the shores of the sea and the people failed by complaining to Moses: “Was it for lack of graves in Egypt, that you had to lead us out to die in the desert? … We prefer to work for the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Ex 14:11-12). God opened the sea for the Israelites to pass to safety and prepared an different test. They failed the thirst test by complaining about the lack of drinking water (15:24). The next test was through their hunger and they failed again. Each failure meant “another trip around the mountain,” that is, another chance to take a retest. They wandered in the desert for forty years.

The pedagogy of the Four-P’s is found in the different covenants. The Abrahamic Covenant, found in the Torah, was a promise made through Abraham and Sarah to all their descendants. The Mosaic Covenant was a promise in Deuteronomy and the deuteronomic histories through law. The Royal Covenant, found in the Psalter and the chronicle histories, was a promise made to David and his house or descendants. The promises to Abraham–nation, land, people of God–were realized under David, but were lost when they continually failed new tests of faithfulness and were taken into exile in Babylon. Individually and together the covenants proposed to solve the problem of evil in the world. Each was found wanting, each was unsuccessful because the people repeatedly failed to pass the tests .
The Ten Commandments are a good example of the proviso in the Mosaic Covenant. They were the “Magna Carta” for the nation. They were to be the foundation of their national constitution. Their purpose was to promote the relationship of the nation to God in the first three commandments, internally to each other in commandments four to eight, and externally of the nation to foreign nations in commandments nine and ten.

An example of divine pedagogy can seen in the priestly description of creation (Gen 1:28-30). This describes the divine plan to create the human race, all men and women, to be managers of creation by dominating and reigning over it. People continue to fail this test by becoming slaves to something, by addiction or by obsession. For example, people collect material goods, wealth, or power–all good things in themselves, but fail the test when they deprive others from acquiring what they need to live decently and raise their families in dignity and security.
In a second example, by creating the couple, man and woman, in the divine image and likeness, the people were to be equals in dignity and importance, though they would have both similar and different functions. Cain failed his test here by killing his brother (Gen 4:8), Shechem failed by raping Dinah, daughter of Jacob (34:2), and Amnon failed by raping his sister (2 Sam 13:14). Jezebel failed by engineering the death of Naboth and theft of his land (1 Kg 21:8-16).
It has taken the human family several millennia since Abraham to begin to appreciate what this equality among the races, religions, sexes, cultures, and classes might really mean to the Creator God. In all that time the structural evils continue to thrive. Differences in capacities, talents, and functions of anyone ought to promote the mutual need for others. While personal differences can draw people together, they make the whole richer than the sum of its parts when shared in community.

In the Yahwist version of creation, a third example shows that the people were to be submissive and obedient to the will of their God and creator as seen in the command not to eat certain fruit (Gen 2:16-17). Adam and Eve failed their test. They were created to be like God and failed by wanting to be like gods (3:5-6). The human family has failed this continually by acting like God¿s equals, as if there was no longer a need for the help of God. As gods, people can make their own rules and break their own laws; they put themselves above others by denying to them the human rights defined for all. God is the creator of and lord over life and death; people fail the test when they assume this right for themselves by killing others actually or effectively by marginalization or oppression. They fail when egoism makes them feel and act like the world revolves around them alone, and all else is secondary. They fail when they act as if there is no God.

Every known civilization has manifested belief in one or more superior beings. People have burnt sacrifice in thanksgiving, as did Cain and Abel (Gen 4:3-4) and Noah (8:20), or by erecting an altar as an act of worship like Abraham (12:8) and Jacob at Bethel (35:14). Different from other peoples, however, the Hebrews believed God had chosen them as recipients of a more personal and intimate revelation.
Throughout the Old Testament the authors tried to illustrate their understanding of the ways God communicated with them to build a new society grounded on faith. God is shown speaking to individual leaders such as Moses and the prophets about the divine project of salvation. Through them God spoke to the unfaithful leaders–kings, priests, and prophets. God also spoke to the nations through the suffering people, personified in the Suffering Servant. Even some conquerors were portrayed as instruments of God who meted out punishments for unfaithfulness and faithlessness.

Religious history, as contained in the Old Testament, has been written and rewritten, revised and edited over the centuries as the sages continued to ponder, compare, and fine-tune the writings as their understanding of God’s will and message deepened and grew. These writers, of different tribal traditions, did not always agree with the understandings and interpretations of earlier writers. They found it necessary to add texts and rearrange them to conform better to their own theologies. This whole process both enlarged the scope of the wisdom contained in the writings, making God’s project clearer, and disclosed the writers’ own prejudices and biases. The Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages and still, after thousands of years, the pedagogy of God continues to inspire hope in men and women around the world. Today, as then, and throughout developing history, God is seen to be constant and faithful to the project initiated in pre-history for the salvation of all people of all times.