Blake Oster: Cocreative Participation Model of Revelation

When individuals attempt to verbalize their experience, they further interpret by using a conceptual framework of language. Concepts affect how we perceive, however, even before we interpret and explain. The way we conceptualize the world influences how we will perceive it. Further, language is not merely a more or less systematic inventory of various items of experience, it also contains a creative, symbolic organization which not only refers to experiences already acquired but actually defines experience. Language constitutes a logic, a general framework within which we categorize reality (Bishin and Stone 1972, 159). Anyone who has learned to think in another language knows that there are expressions and nuances of thought that cannot be translated into English, for the cultural frame of reference necessary to understand the concept is missing. As Michael Polanyi (1962) noted, culture and language entail a tacit knowledge which  impacts upon how we conceptualize experience. We assume a structure of reality in the act of attempting to communicate about our experience.

These observations about experience are crucial to understanding revelation, but they are not the total explanation of revelation. If they were, nothing new could be learned in revelation; revelation would be a mere restatement of cultural and preconceptual presuppositions. Revelation is not experienced from God's viewpoint, free of cultural biases and conceptual limitations, but neither is God limited to adopting existing world views or paradigms to convey his message. Revelation is also a revolution in human thought, a real breakthrough that makes new understanding possible. In Mormon theology, revelation is necessarily experienced within a divine-human relationship that respects the dignity of human freedom. God does not coerce us to see him as God; that is left to the freedom of human faith. Revelation cannot coerce us because the divine influence is, of metaphysical and moral necessity, persuasive and participative rather than controlling. We exercise an eternal and inherent freedom even in relation to God. Revelation becomes a new creation, emerging from the synthesis of divine and human interaction. Revelation is part human experience, part divine disclosure, part novelty. It requires human thought and creativity in response to the divine lure and message (Cobb and Griffin 1976,101-5).

The ultimate reality in Mormon thought is not an omnipotent God coercing passive and powerless prophets to see his point of view. God acts upon the individual and imparts his will and message, but receiving the message and internalizing it is partly up to the individual. In this view, revelation is not an intrusion of the supernatural into the natural order. It is human participation with God in creating human experience itself. Revelation is not the filling of a mental void with divine content. It is the synthesis of a human and divine event. The prophet is an active participant in revelation, conceptualizing and verbalizing God's message in a framework of thought meaningful to the people. Human freedom is as essential to revelation as God's disclosure.

Blake Ostler - "The Book of Mormon as a Modern Expansion of an Ancient Source"