Gift, Display, Sign

If my argument in an earlier post about the angel of Jesus in Revelation 1:1 works, then we have a fully Trinitarian structure to the revelation given to John. The Father gives apocalypse to the Son; the Son shows/displays this unveiling to the slaves; the Son signifies this through His Angel/Spirit.

Here, the Father gives, the Son displays, the Spirit signifies (or, the Son signifies by the Spirit). All revelation has the same structure: It begins in the gift of the Father to the Son, is shown in the Son’s self-unveiling and His simultaneous unveiling of the Father (“He who has seen Me . . . .”), and is signified by the Son through the Spirit.

Let me try that another way. The Father gives to the Son. What does the Son do with what the Father gives? He displays it, shows it. And how does He show what He has received from the Father? He displays it by sending and signifying through His Angel/Spirit to a slave to teach to slaves.

That economic order mimics, as it must, the ontological order: The Father is Light, and gives light to the Son; what does the Son do with the fullness of Light He receives from the Father? He radiates, for He is the radiance of the Father’s glory. And He radiates the Light He receives by signifying it through His Angel-Spirit. To whom? In the ontological Trinity, it must circle back to the Father. Father gives, the Son shows off the Father’s gift by articulating it as Word and signifying it in His Angel/Spirit, so that it returns glorified to the Father.