divine revelation

an insight or foresight purportedly revealed by a deity; revelation given byGod o

r his prophets to spiritually gifted persons
Christians believe that God reveals the truth through the Bible. Some regard the Bible as inerrant totally without error or contradiction. Others, more practically regard the Bible as infallible containing possible errors or contradictions on matters of history and the natural world, but not on
matters of faith.
Since the early Church Councils helped define much of the most important doctrines of Christianity,
Christians would also believe that the Councils received those doctrines by divine revelation.
Catholics also believe that God can reveal the truth through the saints and the person of the pope.
Some believe that God will reveal the truth to anyone who prays.

What is the religious definition of divine revelation?

God's gift of making himself known to us and giving himself to us by gradually
communicating his own mystery in words and deeds.

Creation reveals God

Gods purpose for humanity
History reveals God
The Bible record

The Stoics appeal to human nature in their theory of virtue and preferred indifferents,
showing in a developmental account how grasping virtue is the culmination of a natural
progression. They also appeal to the nature of the cosmos to support ethics as a whole,
but this does not, as issometimes claimed, provide premises from which specific ethical
conclusions are inferred.
Keywords: cosmos, developmental account, nature, Stoics
The Stoics discuss nature in many parts of their philosophy; in doing so they are often
talking about the nature of the universe, which I shall call cosmic nature. Since cosmic
nature comes up in many contexts, they regarded it as a unifying feature of their
philosophy, a point brought out by identifying cosmic nature with many other things,
notably reason, fate, providence and Zeus.1 Each of these identifications can be
understood only by unpacking a large connected system of ideas. It is clear, however,

that nature is a leading idea in questions of freedom and responsibility, in metaphysics

and in physics. The nature of things matters for the Stoics because they hold strong
theses about the way things are: they are determinists, physicalists, teleologists. 2 It
appears from some texts that cosmic nature had a role within Stoic ethical theory. For it
is a firm part of Stoic ethics that our final end is living in accordance with nature, and
some texts make it appear as though we do this by first finding out about cosmic nature
and its requirements, and then conforming ourselves to those requirements. The view
this suggests is clearly foundational, since to be virtuous we first have to discover
nature, and then follow it. Moreover, what seems to be foundational is not human
nature, but cosmic nature, of which human nature is a mere part.
The primary impulse an animal has, they say, is to preserving itself, since from the start
nature familiarizes it to itself, as Chrysippus says in Aims book I, where he calls familiar
to every animal its own constitution and its consciousness of this. For it was not likely
that nature would make an animal alien [to itself], nor that having produced it nature
would make it neither alien to nor familiar to itself; for in this way it repulses what is
harmful and accepts what is familiar to it.
But as for what some say, that pleasure is what animals' primary impulse is for, this they
show to be false. Pleasure, they say, if there actually is any, is something (p.160) that
supervenes when nature itself has sought and found what fits the thing's constitution
like good condition in animals and flourishing in plants. Nature, they say, drew no
distinction between plants and animals, since plants organize themselves, though
without impulse and perception, and in our own case some things go on in the way they
do in plants. Impulse supervenes in animals as an extra, and making use of it they go for
what is familiar to them; and for them what accords with nature is running their lives
according to impulse. But reason has been given to rational animals for more complete authority,
and for them what accords with nature rightly becomes living according to reason; for this supervenes as
the craftsman of impulse

Stoic physics is the natural philosophy adopted by the Stoic philosophers of ancient
Greece and Rome used to explain the natural processes at work in the universe. To the Stoics the universe
is a single pantheistic God, but one which is also amaterial substance. The primitive substance of the
universe is a divine essence (pneuma) which is the basis of everything which exists. The separation
of force from matter produces a divine fire (aether) which, as the basis of all matter, is differentiated into
elements and shaped by the tension caused by the pneuma working according to the divine reason (logos)
of the universe. These processes are responsible for the formation, the development, and ultimately, the
destruction of the universe in a never-ending cycle (palingenesis). The human soul is an emanation from
the fiery aether which permeates the universe, and sensation is transmission of pneuma-currents from
objects, which interact with the substance of the mind, which is the soul's ruling part. The Stoics also
recognised the existence of other gods and divine agents as manifestations of the one primitive Godsubstance.

Heliocentric universe
The word "helios" in Greek means "sun." Heliocentric means that the sun is at the center. A
heliocentric system is one in which the planets revolve around a fixed sun. Thus Mercury, Venus,
the Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all revolve around the sun. The moon is the only celestial
sphere in this system which revolves around the earth, and, together with it, around the sun.
This theory was first proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus was a Polish astronomer.
He first published the heliocentric system in his book: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium,
"On the revolutions of the heavenly bodies," which appeared in 1543. Copernicus died the same
year his book was published. After 1,400 years, Copernicus was the first to propose a theory
which differed from Ptolemy's geocentric system, according to which the earth is at rest in the
center with the rest of the planets revolving around it. The claim that all planets revolve around
the sun had been raised in ancient times, but Copernicus was the first to succeed in describing the
movements of the planets using an astronomical theory which placed the sun at the center.
Copernicus conducted his studies over many years and was well acquainted with the Ptolemaic
theory. In order to explain the exact movements of the planets, it was necessary to add more and
more spheres along which the planets move. Copernicus noticed that all of the planets, apart
from the sun, have the same annual movement, and he thought that this movement might be
explained by the annual movement of the earth around the sun. His hypothesis that all the planets
revolve around the sun was reinforced by the unique characteristics of the sun, which gives light
and heat to all the other planets. Hence, it was plausible that the sun served as the center of the
planetary system.
The daily movement of all the stars around the earth, claimed Copernicus, could be explained by
the rotation of the earth on its axis within a 24-hour period. The view experienced from an object
revolving around itself is identical to the view experienced when all the other objects revolve
around it.
In his book, Copernicus explained the movement of the planets and the stars in a simpler way
than the Ptolemaic theory did. However, one cannot point out any observational difference
between the two theories. Both of them predict identical planetary movements.
Definition of Heliocentric Theory
Think about the sun. It comes up in the morning and sets at night. Why? For
a long time, people believed it was because the earth was the center of the
universe, and the sun revolved around us. Now we know the opposite is true;
the sun is the center of our solar system and we revolve around it.

The theory that the earth revolves around the sun is called the heliocentric
theory, helio meaning 'sun' andcentric meaning 'in the center.' This theory
was developed in parts by different astronomers over many years, namely
Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo.