Progressive revelation is the doctrine in

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

that the sections of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

that were written later contain a fuller

revelation In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Background Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on the ...

of God than the earlier sections. Proponents believe that God didn't tell people his entire plan all at once, as they wouldn't be able to handle it. "Progressive revelation does not mean to say that the Old Testament is somehow less true than the New Testament. The progress was not from untruth to truth - it was from less information to more full information."Don Stewar
What Is Progressive Revelation?
/ref> For instance, the theologian Charles Hodge wrote: The ultimate revelation of God is understood to be found in

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

as revealed in the

Gospels Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

. So there is a more complete disclosure of who God is in the person of Jesus. For example, the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

is to be used to understand and interpret the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

better. Likewise, all sections of the Bible are believed accurate in

Evangelicalism Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual exper ...

. One example would be the doctrine of the

Trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the F ...

. The belief in Jesus of Nazareth and his person and resurrection from the dead pressed the

Jewish Christians Jewish Christians ( he, יהודים נוצרים, yehudim notzrim) were the followers of a Jewish religious sect that emerged in Judea during the late Second Temple period (first century AD). The Nazarene Jews integrated the belief of Jesus ...

to reassess the nature of God in a fundamental way and to understand that God is tri-personal not unitarian. There is not just a single person that is God; there are three – the Father, the Son, and the

Holy Spirit In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the Universe or over his creatures. In Nicene Christianity, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity. In Islam, the Holy Spirit acts as ...

. Another example would be in particular ethical standards like the distinction between clean and unclean foods, which was done away with. It was valid prior to Christ, but following the arrival of Christ there is no longer any obligation to maintain this distinction between clean and unclean foods.

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What is Progressive Revelation
Christian theology of the Bible Christian terminology Revelation {{christian-theology-stub

See also

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