11. Revelation.

By the capitalized word, Revelation, we mean the supernatural disclosure by God to people of otherwise unknowable truths. Man is a part of the world. The world was created without man’s participation. Man is limited by the time of his birth and death, the extent of his stay within the world. As a part cannot know the whole, so man cannot perceive all. He can, by the strength of his own mind, comprehend neither the original cause of everything in existence, nor the meaning of his own life and that of the world, nor the goal of the universe. These questions which arise and demand a solution in the consciousness of every man are unsolvable by the mind of man. The only possible method of solving these and many other most urgent spiritual inquiries is Revelation. If God should want to disclose to the people these otherwise unknowable truths, then, and only then, will man become able to perceive them.

God desired this and opened the Truth to people. He sent to the earth his Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who brought people the Truth, the way of understanding it (the method or way of perceiving the Truth) and the authentic life, for without the aid of God there cannot be eternal life. I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), said Christ.

In another passage He said, Without Me ye can do nothing (John 15:5). Nobody had previously spoken as having power to reveal Truth Itself. Christ is the fullness of God-revealed Truth. Speaking with His lips was God Himself. His every word was the absolute pure Truth. For He Himself, the Savior of the world, was the Son of God; He was the true God.

Revelation was accomplished gradually. The Lord did not reveal Himself and His will at once. In the beginning, through miraculous and wonderful phenomena of nature and its laws, He gave the so-called natural revelation. Then He gave the supernatural revelation by means of spiritual prophets and through miraculous events in man’s history, and, finally, He gave the full Revelation of good tidings in the Son, the God-Man, Christ.

In the composition of every supernatural revelation there is sure to be contained the foretelling of the future, the disclosure of God’s mysteries and the explanation of religious-ethical truths which rise above all possibilities and capabilities of man’s knowledge.

The revelation of nature as well as the voice of our conscience says that above us there should a cause, a power and wisdom of a creative principle witnessing the presence of a personal Higher Being, that is, that there exists a God! All so-called proofs of the existence of God are the result of this supernatural revelation.

An honest and normal person’s mind, through examination of the nature of the world and the nature of his own conscience, reaches the conviction of the existence of God, and only an evil or abnormal mind can deny Him. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God (Psalm 13:1).

But besides a conviction of the existence of God, man also desires personal communion with Him. Religion begins not with the acceptance of God’s existence (this, properly speaking, is a problem of philosophy) but through communion with Him. This communion of man with God is impossible without the aid of God. It is exactly this aid which is given by supernatural Revelation.

Besides the subdivision of Revelation into natural and supernatural, there are distinguished yet other aspects of Revelation: direct and intermediary, external and internal.

Direct Revelation is the communication with God Himself of one or another religious truth to a selected person (for example, the prophet and God-seer Moses). Intermediary Revelation occurs when it is communicated to people through divinely inspired persons (for example, the prophets) or higher intellectual beings — angels (for example, the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary). External Revelation is the act of communication of the Truth, and Internal Revelation is the act of understanding what was communicated.

For the latter, supernatural inspiration, usually described as “divine inspiration,” is a necessity. This signifies the effect of the Spirit of God upon the prophets and Apostles: under God’s inspiration they correctly explained the Revelations communicated to them and faithfully set them down in the holy books. Such holy books received the name “divinely inspired.”

Regarding the nature of Revelation, false views were often expressed and are still being expressed. It is necessary to expose them.

The famous Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, and several ancient Christian sectarians (for example, the so-called Montanists), expressed the view that for the perception of Revelation a special state of unconscious ecstasy is a necessary condition. At a later time, a similar opinion was expressed in various Protestant circles of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. According to this teaching, people esteemed worthy of being heralds of divine Revelations were themselves not conscious of these Revelations, but received them passively and were only the technical transmitters of God’s word. This teaching is profoundly false. The very meaning of “Revelation” presupposes the intelligence of the receiver. There is no reason to take away the light of intelligence from a person at the moment of Revelation, for the intellect itself is given to man by God precisely for the perception of Truth.

At the other extreme, we find that overly rationalistic opinions of the nature of Revelation eventually lead to a denial of the possibility of supernatural Revelation and to various attempts to bring the supernatural down to the level of natural revelation. All of these attempts prove fruitless, since they also lead to insoluble contradictions. The analysis of the perception of absolute Truth brings us to this dilemma: either such Truth is incomprehensible, or it can only be divinely revealed and, therefore, is supernatural.

Pantheistic understanding of Revelation virtually amounts to a denial of it. If nature is God, then there is no need for One to reveal Himself to anybody or anything. In philosophical pantheistic systems, Revelation is understood as the self-revelation of God in man’s spirit. For instance, according to the teaching of Hegel, the absolute spirit is eternally and variously revealed in diverse forms — in nature, in man’s spirit, in the history of man. He is revealed not to man but in man, coming to self-consciousness in him. In such a teaching, man’s knowledge of God is, in essence, a knowledge of God about Himself.

In the most recent history of philosophy there have been attempts at building whole complicated theories about Revelation. One of these theories, which has received considerable circulation, is the theory of the German philosopher Schleiermacher, who lived in the first half of the 19^th century. Schleiermacher regarded as miraculous every vital phenomenon, because no phenomenon of life can be completely understood. By expanding in such a way an understanding of miracles, he denied miraculous phenomena as they are understood in Christianity. Schleiermacher acknowledged as revelation every new prominent phenomenon of man’s spirit, natural to genius. In such a way, the supernatural, in his opinion, is the same as the natural, but of exceptionally rare and wonderful meaning in man’s life. This mixture of deism and pantheism is full of contradictions. Arbitrarily and excessively expanding the understanding of miracles, revelation and inspiration, Schleiermacher dilutes meaning and explains nothing.

Other recent philosophers have raised doubts regarding the possibility of supernatural Revelation. By nature, the problem of supernatural Revelation rests upon the problem of miracles in general. If a miracle is possible (see the chapter on the problem of miracles above), then supernatural Revelation is possible. Faith in it depends on the good or evil will of man. The verity of Revelation, besides the rationalistic basis, is finally proved pragmatically, by the experience of Christian life.

The question of the criteria of true Revelation is a serious question of Christian Apologetics and, therefore, is subject to more minute examination.

The criterion of true revelation.

If a teaching which claims to be Revelation contains obvious internal contradictions or contradictions to elementary ethical demands, then there can be no doubt that this teaching is not true Revelation. However, if in a teaching we find an elevated religious-ethical instruction, producing an exceptionally salutary influence on the spiritual life of man, then this serves as a serious argument in favor of its being true Revelation. For instance, Tertullian, in his “Apologetics,” pointed to the unusually ethical-salutary action of Christian teaching as a proof of its divine origin. St. Clement of Alexandria pointed to the true enlightenment spread throughout the whole world through Christianity as an indication of its divine issue. The revelation of new truths, serving as a stimulus for the religious-ethical development of mankind, also certainly bears witness to the truth of Revelation.

The holy Apostle Paul points to the regeneration into a new life as an indication of true Revelation, saying: Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (II Cor. 5:17). But newness alone is not enough for it to be accepted as an indication of supernatural Revelation. The truth of Revelation can never become obsolete, as man’s new teachings do. Being an inexhaustible source for the spiritual renewal of man, it abides eternally unchangeable in its principle, while at the same time it does not lose its profoundly vital meaning in spite of the most diverse changes in the historical life of man. Revealed Truths are always eternal Truths.

The discovery of mysteries inaccessible to the natural capabilities of man’s research is the most apparent indication of true Revelation. When God Himself reveals about Himself — about His unsearchable plans concerning the fates of the world and man — then, before man’s intellect there is necessarily disclosed a whole series of truths which exceed every intellect of man.

According to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, the Truth of God’s Revelation is verifiable, chiefly, by its announcement to us of “the mysterious, intimate, great wisdom of God,” which, in the words of the Apostle Paul, which reveals God’s unfathomable depth, into which nobody can penetrate or know, except the Spirit of God. The Church Fathers point with especial insistence to the great mysteries of the Christian faith — to the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the future Resurrection of the Dead — as unquestionable proofs of the divinity of Christian teaching.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, in his On the Incarnation, proved the truth and godliness of Christianity from an analysis of the Mystery of the Incarnation. Origen, the Blessed Augustine and St. Gregory of Nyssa arrived at the same conclusion, analyzing the Mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Many ancient Christian apologists pointed to the Christian teaching about the Resurrection as a proof of the divine greatness of Christianity, especially Athenagoras’ About the Resurrection of the Dead, and Tertullian’s About the Resurrection of the Body.

The supernatural character of Revelation cannot be proved in the absence of supernatural signs, that is, miracles. Therefore, the most important proof of the divine truth of Revelation should be acknowledged in those phenomena and miracles, which the Savior not only produced, but to which He Himself referred: Though ye believe not Me, believe the works (John 10:38).