[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Gnist

It's a very conventional answer.

It may seem conventional, but the question of revelation is important, it is central to the Christian message. The revelation is a supra-natural occurrence, one of the mysteries of the world, so to say it came about by grace of God is a correct answer, though it may seem "conventional".

Originally Posted by Gnist

That doesn't mean it is wrong, but can you give examples?

Example? The best example is the European culture as such, which ia a synthesis of Christian faith, which came into being as a result of the belief in Redemption, and pre-existent Greco-Roman culture. The Christian code of ethics keeps on determining much of norms of present-day societies of all nations which were once Christian in religion, not always for the good, to be sure. Some originally Christian concepts got diabolically perverted and turned into another extreme.

Originally Posted by Gnist

The material you brought forward suggests to me something like cultural relativism rather than a giant leap by grace.

I do not see any cultural relativism in all of this. In that case Justin the Martyr, Thomas Aquinas, many Catholic missionaries (who saw similarities between some tenets of Confucianism and Christian ethics etc.) and many other Christian thinkers would be "relativists".

There comes the issue of different approches whereto I hinted already.

One of them sees Revelation in absolute terms, as absolutely the only source of faith and dogma, which should be taken at face value, any other arguments in favour of it being not only unnecessary, but potentially also blasphemous. God revealed himself in a totally rotten and perverted world, where huamns are corrupted by the Original Sin so thoruoghly that it prevents them from knowing God even partially, from conceiving anything good in their hearts. Following the tenets of Revelation does not make man better in any sense, but merely gives him God's command that he is to obey blindly, if he wants to attain salvation. It is somehow a fundamentalist approach.

Another one sees humanity after the fall as having still retained ability, albeit imperfect, to know something of the truth. It is especially seen in the moral ability, in ability to tell apart good from evil, which proceeds from the divine consciousness in man. Religious ideas are in this perspective also distant echos of the ultimate truth, just perverted by demonic influence, as Justin the Martyr claims.

I support the second approach, because the first one seems to me as inclining towards some sort of paganism in "Christian" garb.

Some of the fundamentalists, those of the first approach, in modern times degenerated towards Judeo-Christianity. Not to wonder about that, because if they consider Revelation as an event without context, they will also tend to regard the people who received it as especially "sacred", even their carnal descendants (primitivistic tribalism and materialism is here to be scented).

Originally Posted by Gnist

It is of course possible that truth emanated by a process in ways that the bible does not tell us about.

Of course, yes. Traditional Christianity (Roman Catholic and Orthodox) is not Bible worship. The tendency towards the latter started with the Reformation.

Originally Posted by Gnist

But Christian tradition does not put it that way.

Sometimes it has references to it. Justin the Martyr is also part of the Christian tradition. So is Tertullian with his notion of anima naturaliter Christiana.

Originally Posted by Gnist

Dionysus's death has no special meaning in Christianity, but Jesus's death has.

Of course that Dionysus's death has no special meaning in Christianity and it need not have any special meaning in the Christian faith as such, but it can have meaning in putting Christianity into the historical context and explaining it as the ultimate truth, by the means of other parallels and analogies. Christian writers were not reluctant to historical exegesis from the earliest days.

Originally Posted by Gnist

It's some historical sign of the difference between the time before and the time after Jesus's death that I am asking for, not of signs that God had something in the making.

What do you mean by "historical sign of the difference"? Some spiritual sign that manifests itself somehow in history?

Originally Posted by Gnist

My question is a direct follow up to the Christian insistence on the historicity of redemption. I am not saying that redemption must be historical, but Christianity says that it is. You speak about "different approaches" or so, but there is no Christian denomination that I know of that does not have the historicity of redemption as its central creed.

The historicity of redemption is tightly connected with the historicity of persona of Jesus Christ. It may not be sharply divided therefrom. It is also connected with the Old Testament and its annunciations in advance of future Messiah.