ART. VI. DIVINE REVELATION.

1. History of Philosophy. By W. WINDELBAND. Second Edition revised and enlarged. (New York: Macmillan Co. 1901.)

2. Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels. Edited by JAMES HASTINGS. Art. 'Christianity.' By W. T. DAVISON. (Edinburgh T. and T. Clark. 1906.)

3. Inspiration. Bampton Lectures. By W. SANDAY. (Oxford: At the University Press.

I

1896.)

THE Concept of Divine Revelation is the natural outcome of a few simple postulates of the religious life. It is rooted in religious experience and stands or falls with the validity of the latter. If we assume the existence of GOD as the Living One, a Being at the least not less than the highest we know, viz. Personal; and if, further, we think of Him as Perfect Personality and in His Essence Holy Love, and ourselves as created in His Image, and our end that we may become like unto Him, it follows that on His part, in accord with His beneficent purpose, He will make Himself known to us, and on our part that we shall be so constituted as to be capable of receiving His Self-revelation and responding to His advances. A capacity on His part to communicate and on ours to receive the communication is of the very essence of Religion and its natural presupposition. We thus approach the problem of Divine Revelation with certain presuppositions which are the inevitable outcome of our world-view' as religious people. We rightly assume the possibility and are justified in stating the probability of a Divine disclosure and a providential rulership of the universe and all human life for a Divinely ordained end, which itself has been the subject of Revelation in accord

ance with our growing powers of receptivity and is further governed and conditioned by these.

So far all is clear. Grant the assumptions of the religious life and the inferences deduced from religious experience, apart from the question of the legitimacy or otherwise of such inferences and their ultimate validity, and we have room for a reasonable belief in a Divine Revelation. Difficulties arise when we go on further to consider the method of Divine Revelation, its exact content, the validity of its claim to be regarded as a communication from on high and not earth-born, and its relation to our finite experience. The problem becomes still more complicated when we seek to distinguish Divine Revelation in general and the special Revelation of GOD in Christ Jesus, and when further we proceed to discuss this last in relation to human reason.

The questions at issue are somewhat as follows:

Do we possess in the Christian teaching a body of truth which could not have been reached by man's unaided natural reasoning? If so, in what precisely does it consist and what is its claim to authoritative acceptance? Is the Christian Revelation in irreconcilable conflict with the conclusions reached by human thought concerning GOD, Freedom, and Immortality? Further, are we to acquiesce in the position that GOD's revelation of Himself in and through an historic Person is one beyond our finite understanding? Are there truths about Himself and His relation to the world which, though revealed, are none the less beyond the grasp of our finite minds and end in mystery? Is this appeal to mystery an acknowledgement of intellectual bankruptcy, or does it not itself carry with it a denial of the revelation, since ex hypothesi a revelation can only be made subject to the capacity of the recipient, and the latter's failure to grasp it proves that it has not really been made? Again as regards the method of revelation, can we claim to know by supernatural agency something we confess to be unknowable by natural means? Christianity the result of a normal evolution in ethical and spiritual thought, its origin, its progress, perfectly

Is

explicable on purely naturalistic lines, or are we forced to see in it unmistakable evidence of a special supernatural activity on God's part at a certain point in historya Divine impartation and self-disclosure to human reason necessitated by the course of human history and the disastrous results of man's sin? Generally, are we to confine Divine Revelation in this special sense to Christianity, or are we to see in this the culmination of a progressive revelation on God's part at sundry times and in divers manners in time past . and now in His Son '? More particularly, are we to look for the content of this Revelation in a book, or in a society, the Church? Is it confined to either and incapable of further addition? Is the activity of human reason doomed to a continuous effort to understand the meaning of a revealed truth once given, with no possibility of superseding it by fresh discovery? What are we to say to the claim of Christianity to finality? Can no future progress in human thought and advancing knowledge ever supersede the knowledge of God we now possess as the result of the Incarnation? Is the absolute character of the Christian Revelation such that no future self-disclosure on God's part can ever alter in any crucial point what Christ has told us concerning Him? The finality of the Christian truth is the point at issue. Are we to acquiesce in the relativity of knowledge in every other department of thought and yet rule out Christian Revelation as exempt from the law of relativity, thus postulating a kind of Newtonian absolutism for Christianity in the sphere of revealed religion? If so, upon what grounds? Is it conceivable that we are justified in thus mortgaging the future in this way when in every other department of thought advancing knowledge is continually upsetting our conclusions, casting our absolutes back into the melting-pot and forcing us to abandon our outworn hypotheses in the light of fresh discoveries? Is the supernatural sanction of Christianity so sure and irrefutable as to exempt it from the law of change?

Such are some of the questions raised and the issues at stake in the consideration of the concept of Divine Revelation

and the claim put forward by some for Christianity that in it is contained a body of revealed truth reason must accept and a finality nothing can upset.

II

We shall best approach the problem by a consideration of Divine Revelation in general and the method of it in the light of religious experience. We can then go on to consider special Revelation and the Christian claims.

The concept of Divine Revelation arises historically in connexion with the question of the conditions of knowledge in general and the whole problem of epistemology. Scepticism as to the power of human reason to attain to absolute truth paved the way to the conception of a Divine Revelation which should aid reason in the search for reality. Divine Revelation was thus regarded as an additional method of gaining knowledge and a new source of enlightenment when the finite mind despaired of finding the truth. Man's need was God's opportunity. Hence the belief in Divine Revelation as supplementing human effort, and this distinction and demarcation between

reason and

revelation led, as we shall see, to disastrous results. It is not our purpose to tabulate the theories of knowledge which have been held in the past, or to discuss the philosophical problem from this standpoint. It will be sufficient if we just note that in the search for the universally valid knowledge (Plato's Episteme') some of the best thinkers grounded their hopes upon the conviction that God had implanted right knowledge in the soul of man, and that therefore it was within the grasp of finite beings in communion with the Supreme Being to discover in experience the truth they were seeking.

Attention has been drawn to the significance of human personality in this connexion and the enhanced value that became attached to it as the vehicle, if not the embodiment, of the Divine world-reason. Admiration for the great men of the past, amounting to veneration and even to deification, was one of the results of this belief, and Windelband

suggests that this same motive appears in grandest form as a power in the world's history, in the stupendous, overpowering impression of the personality of Jesus. This psychological motive, he thinks, 'justified itself to theory by the consideration that the admired personality was regarded, in teaching and life, as a revelation of the divine World-reason. The metaphysical and epistemological bases for this were given in Platonism and especially in Stoicism. Attachment to the Platonic doctrine that knowledge is recollection, with the turn already expressed in Cicero that right knowledge is implanted by God in the soul, is innate within it, the carrying out of the Stoic logos doctrine, and of the idea contained in it that the rational part of the soul is a consubstantial emanation from the divine Worldreason, all this led to regarding every form of right knowledge as a kind of divine revelation in man. All knowledge is, as Numenius said, "the kindling of the small light from the great light which illumines the world." 1

We thus reach the conception of universal Divine Revelation, and the Johannine thought of the Light which lighteth every man coming into the world. This belief is of the very nerve of all true religion. God has not left Himself without a witness. We are familiar with the way in which the early Christian Apologists sought to make use of this idea of the Logos spermatikos' in their efforts to commend Christianity as the true and highest philosophy and to shew that the Word made flesh was the culminating revelation, the final crown to a long process of Divine self-disclosure in and to the nature of man made in the image of God. The Christian Revelation from this point of view is eminently reasonable. Reason itself has taught and guided men in past ages, and is now revealed in the Incarnate Logos. Knowledge gained by human reason is seen to have been in reality knowledge from the Supreme Reason who at last reveals Himself in human form as the true teacher and guide. The Christian Apologist, from this standpoint, could proclaim Christianity as the final and perfect Revelation and maintain that philosophers had not found the full

1 History of Philosophy, p. 223.