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PALGRAVE FRONTIERS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Religious Revelation
James Kellenberger
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

Series Editors
Yujin Nagasawa
Department of Philosophy
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK

Erik J. Wielenberg
Department of Philosophy
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN, USA
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion is a long overdue series
which will provide a unique platform for the advancement of research in
this area. Each book in the series aims to progress a debate in the philoso-
phy of religion by (i) offering a novel argument to establish a strikingly
original thesis, or (ii) approaching an ongoing dispute from a radically
new point of view. Each title in the series contributes to this aim by
utilising recent developments in empirical sciences or cutting-edge
research in foundational areas of philosophy (such as metaphysics,
epistemology and ethics).

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14700
 James Kellenberger

Religious Revelation
James Kellenberger
Department of Philosophy
California State University, Northridge
Northridge, CA, USA

ISSN 2634-6176     ISSN 2634-6184 (electronic)

Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion
ISBN 978-3-030-53871-2    ISBN 978-3-030-53872-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53872-9

All quotations from the Bible are from the Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise indicated. Revised
Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education
of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.
All rights reserved.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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Cover illustration: WanRu Chen / Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Mariana
 Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer of the manuscript for helpful

comments, to Brendan George for his editorial advice, to Lauriane Piette
for her editorial support, and to Vanipriya Manohar for seeing the book
through production.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Revelation in Judaism 7

3 Revelation in Christianity17

4 Revelation in Islam25

5 Revelation in Other Traditions29

6 Elaborations of Revelation33

7 Oracles, Dreams, and Other Revelatory Experiences37

8 Theologians on Revelation43

9 Views of Revelation53

ix
x Contents

10 Faith and Revelation61

11 Pervasive Revelation69

Bibliography81

Index85
 1
Introduction

When Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, reveals himself to Arjuna in his

divine form – as Vishnu in his cosmic godhead – Arjuna is overwhelmed
with awe and prostrates himself.1 Such high-relief epiphanic revelations
occur in the Torah when God reveals himself to Moses and in other reli-
gious traditions. At times revelations may be heard but have no visual
aspect or be communicated without physical hearing. Revelations are
often of God or a god, or manifested by an angel through which God
speaks. These and other types of revelations are phenomenally experi-
enced in theistic traditions. However, religious revelations are not limited
to the theistic religious traditions.
The definition of revelation that we will use is: a communication or
message, or a disclosure or awareness, whose source is phenomenally
received as the divine or religious reality or the transcendent.
Phenomenally – as they are experienced – revelations are epiphanic. In
some manner God or the divine or religious reality or the transcendent is
experienced in communication with, or as disclosed to, the one who
comes to have the revelation.

1
Bhagavad-Gita, Chap. 11. Several translations.

© The Author(s) 2021 1

J. Kellenberger, Religious Revelation, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53872-9_1
2 J. Kellenberger

The notion of revelation is well represented in the Abrahamic theistic

traditions. Moses received God’s commandments from God at Sinai. The
deliverances of the prophets who come after Moses are prefaced or fol-
lowed by “Thus says the Lord” or “Thus said the Lord.” The articles of
Christian faith relating to the Trinity and the Incarnation are taken to be
revealed. In the theistic traditions in a strong strain of these traditions
scripture is regarded as the revealed word of God: the Torah and Tanakh
in Judaism, the Christian Bible in Christianity, the Qur’an in Islam. John
Baillie observes that the “simple identification of divine revelation with
Holy Scripture was carried forward into the churches of the Reformation,
becoming no less characteristic of Protestantism than of the Counter-­
Reformation.”2 Baillie affirms the identification of revelation and scrip-
ture in the Protestant and Catholic traditions of Christianity, but it holds
as well for the other two Abrahamic traditions. Theistic revelations may
be dramatically epiphanic, as when God speaks to Moses out of the burn-
ing bush (Ex. 3.2–6) or later in the wilderness when God gives Moses his
commandments and ordinances (Ex. 24.15–18), or they may be more
quietly epiphanic, as when individual believers receive in quietude God’s
guidance or experience the presence of God.
Though the idea of revelation is more congenial to the theistic tradi-
tions where God provides revelations of himself or of his command-
ments, or of a new dispensation, revelations can occur or be obtained in
nontheistic traditions as well (traditions that do not regard God as the
ultimate religious reality). In the Buddhist tradition the historical
Buddha, Siddharta Gautama, in attaining enlightenment comes to see
the Four Noble Truths. They are, we may say, revealed to him. In the
Buddhist tradition, however, the Buddha comes to their realization
through his own meditative effort, as opposed to their being given to him
by a divine source. Yet they are truths about the deepest religious reality
in relation to human existence, and in this way reflect a source in reli-
gious reality.
In the Mahābhārata, of which the Bhagavad-Gita is a part, Vishnu
reveals himself in his godhead to Arjuna. Also in the Hindu tradition the

2
John Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought (New York: Columbia University Press,
1956), p. 31.
 1 Introduction 3

Vedas have a cosmic and divine source, although within the broader
Hindu tradition the source of the revelation of the Vedas may be God (the
Nyāya school) or not.
Revelation can be foundational to religious traditions, as the Vedas are
to Hinduism and as the revelations given to Moses are to Judaism, but
also revelations may serve other roles in a religious tradition, such as pro-
viding guidance to religious adherents. Though the scripture of a reli-
gious tradition may be accepted as revealed, a tradition can also
countenance revelation given to individuals well after the establishment
of its sacred book. Individuals receiving such revelations may not be
highly placed in their religion’s clerical hierarchy or be clerics at all. They
may be ordinary religious persons. The range of revelations experienced
by individuals includes revealed truths, visions, a given awareness of hid-
den faults, guidance, and a granted awareness of a relationship to reli-
gious reality.
Yet even in theistic traditions not all divine action is revelatory. In the-
istic traditions the religious may experience and thank God for various
manifestations of divine action that do not come under the rubric of
revelation. One instance is a change in our hearts wrought by God, an
opening of our hearts to others. Another is God opening our eyes to our
faults or to his glory in his creation. If God opens our eyes to his glory,
then his glory is revealed, but our eyes being opened is not a revelation,
though it may be received as an act of God, a miracle.
Divine revelations are usefully distinguished from quotidian insights,
which are sometimes called “revelations.” The “revelation” of how to fix
that stubborn leak in the plumbing is a flash of insight for which God
may be thanked but which has no distinct religious content. Phenomenally
such nonreligious insights, depending on their significance, may or may
not be felt by the religious to be divinely revealed.
Whether or not a mundane insight is received by a religious person as
a divine revelation, for the theistically religious, or many, all that they
receive in life – their sustenance, their awakening and their returning in
the evening – are the gifts of God, for which God is to be thanked. And
these, if God’s presence is felt in them, may be received as revelatory, as it
may be received as a divine revelation that these are gifts of God.
4 J. Kellenberger

In this book we will consider the place of revelation in different reli-

gious traditions and the internal understanding of divine revelation in
these traditions. Though our focus will be on the three major Western
theistic traditions, in which revelation is foundational, we will also exam-
ine revelation in nontheistic traditions and the multiple ways of under-
standing revelation in these traditions. We will also heed the different
forms of revelation. These range from the ancient time-shrouded revela-
tions that reside at the origins of religious traditions and provide their
doxastic structures to the personal revelations received by individual
believers, often contemporary religious believers.
Other concerns to be treated in this book include the way that Christian
theologians have understood revelation and different philosophical and
religious views of revelation, positive and negative. We will also give
attention to the relationship between faith and revelation and to a cate-
gory of revelation that we will call “pervasive revelation.”
In the next chapter, and in Chaps. 3 and 4, we will examine the place
of revelation in the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam respectively. In Chap. 5 the place of revelation in other traditions,
including two nontheistic traditions, will be considered. Chapter 6 will
bring us to various ways the religious category of revelation can be elabo-
rated, as when religious councils are taken to be guided by the Holy
Spirit. In Chap. 7 we will discuss the revelatory experience and deliver-
ances of the oracle at Delphi, revelatory dreams, the revelatory experi-
ences of Native Americans in their “spirit quests,” and the participatory
revelations of Haitian Vodouists. The subject of Chap. 8 is the perspec-
tives of theologians on revelation; among those that will be discussed are
the perspective of the thirteenth-century theologian and philosopher St.
Thomas Aquinas and that of the twentieth-century theologian John
Macquarrie. In Chap. 9 different fundamental views of revelations will be
considered; the three types of views to be examined are tradition-­
grounded views, “embracive” views, which expand the boundaries of the
category of religious revelation as it is traditionally understood, and onto-
logical views of revelation, which address the issue of the source of revela-
tion. In Chap. 10 it will be argued that reflection on the nature of faith
in and faith in God indicates that a reevaluation of the religious impor-
tance of foundational revelations in theistic traditions is in order and that
 1 Introduction 5

“abiding” or “praxis” relationships to God or religious reality in theistic

and nontheistic religious traditions can exist independently of beliefs-­
that about God or religious reality. Chapter 11 has as its subject a form of
revelation that may be called “pervasive revelation” in that it may occur
in the experience of individuals in all the domains of their lives, the expe-
rience of the presence of God being a theistic paradigm, although perva-
sive revelation is not exclusively theistic.
 2
Revelation in Judaism

Moses, who received from God the ten commandments and by tradition
a total of 613 commandments, positive and negative mitzvot, is regarded
as the founder of Judaism, and the Five Books of Moses, the Torah, con-
tains its foundational revelation as it was given to Moses. The Hebrew
Bible or Tanakh corresponds to the Christian Old Testament, although it
is differently organized. Like the Old Testament it begins with the Five
Books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy, known in the Jewish
tradition as the Torah, the Law. The next part of the Tanakh, however, in
contradistinction to the Christian Old Testament, is Nevi’im (the
Prophets), which includes Joshua, Judges, I and 2 Samuel, I and 2 Kings,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the “twelve minor prophets,” Hosea to
Malachi, but not Moses. At the end of the book of Deuteronomy we are
told, “[a]nd there has not arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the
Lord knew face to face” (Deut. 34. 10). The prophetic revelations and
actions of Moses the pre-eminent prophet of Judaism, are recounted in
the Torah, not in Nevi’im. The Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and
the rest of the Christian Old Testament are in Kethuvim (the Writings),
the third and final part of the Tanakh. The major prophets – Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel – have their own books in Nevi’im, as do the twelve

© The Author(s) 2021 7

J. Kellenberger, Religious Revelation, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53872-9_2
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