1. Revelation
LO: I will know about the concept of revelation through sacred writings and how this might affect our ideas about God.
H:W revision, find examples of revelation in the Bible.

2. Key terms – what do they mean?
Revelation
Special revelation
Divine inspiration
Verbal inspiration
Infallible
Inerrant
Propositional revelation
Non-propositional revelation
Natural Theology

3. Revelation: Key words Divine inspiration: Verbal inspiration:
the act of God revealing himself or knowledge about himself and his will to human beings.
General revelation:
revelation of God available to all people at all times.
Special revelation:
revelation of God to specific people at specific times.
Propositional revelation:
the idea that the process of revelation involves God revealing truths about his nature
Non-propositional revelation:
the idea that God does not reveal facts or information during the process of revelation. God makes himself known in ordinary human experience.
Natural Theology:
the process of learning about God from the natural world by using reason.
Revelation: Key words
Divine inspiration:
Refers to the belief among Christians that God inspired the writers of the books of the Bible.
Verbal inspiration:
Refers to the divine origins or authorship of every word in the Bible. According to this view God effectively dictates the books of the Bible.
Infallible:
Used by religious believers to indicate that a teaching does not contain any error or possibility of error in matters of faith and practice.
Inerrant:
Used by religious believers to indicate that a teaching does not contain any error or possibility of error, even scientifically/historically. NB
Propositional Revelation: Refers to God directly revealing truths about his nature
Non-propositional Revelation: refers to the idea that God does not reveal facts or truths to people: instead the religious believer recognises God acting in human history and human experience.
This is a false antithesis to present them as either/or. ‘Non-propositional' revelation is always ambiguous without propositional revelation to interpret it. It's a necessity that, if God is personal, God needs to communicate using words
The OT and NT hold the two together; without Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush and later at Sinai, the departure of Israel from Egypt would simply have looked like any other migration of people and would not in itself reveal anything. Similarly, the cross of Jesus without the teaching of Jesus to interpret it (e.g. Mark 10:45) is simply another Jew being killed unjustly by the Romans. It needs interpretation of events using words to clarify what God is saying.
The Qur'an is at the other end of the spectrum, since it is entirely based on pure propositional revelation, rather than rooted in narrative of historical events. Dictated by Allah to Mohammed.
And mysticism is experience without propositions. So you can set up a spectrum with pure propositional (Islam) at one end (clear, but not rooted in history), pure non-propositional (e.g. modern New Age) at the other end (no clarity at all, but rooted firmly in human experience). And the Bible comes right in the middle of the spectrum, it seems to me, since it combines historical events with divine interpretation through divinely-appointed spokespeople.

4. Revelation ‘The disclosure from the divine of something previously hidden.’
Natural Theology/General Revelation What information is available about God to all people all times? What is the role of reason and philosophy?
Revealed Theology/Special Revelation What is revealed about God to certain people at certain times and places?

5. Research poster General revelation Sherlock Holmes Bruner Barth
Special revelation
Augustine
Islam
Schleiermacher

6. General Revelation - Sherlock Holmes and revelation
“He [Sherlock Holmes] walked past the couch to the open window, and held up the drooping stalk of a moss rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects. ‘There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion’, said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. ‘It can be built upon an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of providence seems to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. It’s smell, it’s colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras so I say again we have much hope from the flowers.’” Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes seems to be appealing to the idea of general revelation. He observes something of beauty within the rose, which instills hope.

7. General revelation Nein!
General revelation is available to all people at all times and in all places. Examples of these types of revelation would include the beauty of creation and the ‘still small voice’ of conscience, which is interpreted as the voice of God.
Emil Brunner was one such theologian who proposed that General revelation, through Natural Theology, could be used as an argument for the existence of God.
His reply was given by Karl Barth ( ) in a response creatively named Nein! Barth argued that the only way in which people gain true knowledge of God is through revelation, not natural theology.
Barth rejected the ideas of thinkers like Aquinas who tried to combine faith with reason, because he thought that their views led away from the truth of the Bible. He rather followed in Kierkegaard’s view, namely that all efforts to discover truth about God apart from God’s revelation to us in Jesus Christ were only likely to lead to error.
Nein!

8. Barth’s implications…
Barth’s thinking has two important implications:
Knowledge of God can only be found in Christianity, and other world religions therefore are considered not to have any truth except where they agree with Christian teaching.
The Old Testament is open to testing to see how far it meets the revelation of God in Christ. The New Testament is seen as superior in truth to the Old.
Barth’s concept of revelation, explained in his enormous work Church Dogmatics, included the following points:
God reveals to humans when HE wants not when man wants.
Divine revelation is not the same as human insight.
Ordinary language is inadequate to convey revelation.
Revelation is a personal disclosure of God’s being and nature.
Revelation is conveyed through the witness of the Bible.
Revelation is only given in Jesus Christ.

9. Special revelation
Special revelation is defined as God’s revelation of himself to particular persons at definite times and places. It is in this category that the revelation of sacred writings, e.g. the revelation of the Torah to Moses, is logically found.
If we assume that the revelation of the Bible is a special revelation, the question remains as to the way in which the scripture was revealed. Was God revealing facts or information (a propositional revelation), or was he merely making himself known during the process or revelation through the experience of Moses and the Israelite people (a non- propositional revelation)?
Without Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush and later at Sinai, the departure of Israel from Egypt would simply have looked like any other migration of people and would not in itself reveal anything

10. Propositional revelation - Aquinas
Traditionally revelation of scripture has been understood in a propositional sense. When God revealed himself to the writers of scripture, he revealed truths or facts about himself. This means that for Aquinas, a supporter of this view, faith can be described as ‘belief that’. In order to accept God’s revelation, we are required to believe that certain propositions are true. For example, in Christianity, the belief that Jesus is God in human form.

11. Propositional revelation in Islam
Ideas about propositional revelation raise important issues about the status of sacred writings. In Islam, the Holy Qur’an is believed to be a perfect record of the words of Allah, spoken to the prophet Muhammad, who recited them so that they could be written down. Each word of the Qur’an is believed to come directly from Allah; it does not reflect Muhammad’s own personal opinions and concerns, because Muhammad was simply the mouthpiece for the words. He did not have a profound religious experience and then decide afterwards how best to put his new knowledge into words.
The implications for Muslims today is that even if they don’t naturally speak Arabic they should learn it because only in it can the Qur’an be properly understood.
Revelation which bypasses the author The Quran is 100% the word of God and 0% the word of man.
Revelation which bypasses the author The Quran is 100% the word of God and 0% the word of man.

12. Non-propositional revelation - Schleiermacher
A more modern approach to scripture has been to see the writings as the product of non- propositional revelation. When God is revealed to the writers via religious experiences, facts and truths are not communicated. The experience is ineffable, meaning the experience is beyond what can be described. However, the writers attempt to put their experience into words later by reflecting on it.
Friedrich Schleiermacher ( ) believed that the biblical texts came about as writers reflected on their religious experiences. For supporters of this view, faith is ‘belief in’. It is not a matter of facts and information, it is more of an attitude of trust and relationship. For example, if you say that you have faith in a friend, you are likely to mean that you trust them, rather than you believe factual information about them.
More personable