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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
DePauw University
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James Kellenberger
Religious Revelation
James Kellenberger
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
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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

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53872-9_2
8 J. Kellenberger
minor prophets, but not all the prophets of Nevi’im have their own
books. One prophet who does not is the early prophet Nathan, whose
prophecy is recounted in the Second Book of Samuel. Nathan, who is a
prophet in the court of King David, brings the word of the Lord to
David. David had desired Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and had told his
general, Joab, to place “Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and
then draw back from him, that he may be struck down and die” (2 Sam.
11.15). This was done. Uriah was killed, and David took Bathsheba as his
wife. The prophet Nathan then comes to David and tells him a parable.
In Nathan’s parable a rich man who has “many flocks and herds” takes the
one ewe lamb of a poor man – an ewe lamb that is like a daughter to him
and dear to his family – and prepares it for his guest, rather than prepare
one of his own flock. David is outraged against the rich man and says that
he deserves to die. Nathan says to David, “You are the man.” He continues:
Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and
I delivered you out of the hand of Saul, and I gave you your master’s house,
and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel
and of Judah; and if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.
Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his
sight?’ (2 Sam.12.7–9)
David repents and confesses,
“I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Sam. 12.13).
As God spoke to Moses, so he speaks to the prophets that follow

Moses, and they like Nathan often preface or mark their deliverances
from God with “Thus says the Lord” or “Thus said the Lord” or a cognate
phrase. Isaiah regularly uses such a refrain, for all or nearly all of the book
of Isaiah consists of God’s words delivered to the prophet. In a prophecy
against Babylon we have:
“I will rise up against them,” says the Lord of hosts, “and will cut
off Babylon name and remnant, offspring and posterity, says the Lord. And
I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of water, and I will
sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of hosts” (Is.
14.22–23).
And against Damascus:
Behold, Damascus will cease to be

a city,
and will become a heap of ruins . . .
Says the Lord of hosts (Is. 17.1 and 3).
Isaiah also delivers God’s pronouncements against Moab (Chap. 15) and
Egypt (Chap. 19).
Regarding the people of Ariel or Jerusalem there is this:
And the Lord said:

Because this people draw near with
their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their fear of me is a command-
ment of men learned by rote,
therefore, behold, I will again
do marvelous things with this people,
wonderful and marvelous,
and the wisdom of their wise men
shall perish . . . (Is. 29. 13–14).
However,
thus says the Lord,

who redeemed Abraham concerning
the house of Jacob:
“Jacob shall no longer be ashamed,
no more shall his face grow pale.
For when he sees his children,
the work of his hand in his might,
they will sanctify my name . . .” (Is. 29. 22–23).
And
10 J. Kellenberger
Comfort, comfort my people,

says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned (Is. 40.1).
And regarding the people of Israel (or Jacob):
Thus said God, the Lord,

who created the heavens and
stretched them out . . .:
I am the Lord, I have called you
in righteousness. . .
I have given you as a covenant to
the people,
a light to the nations. . . .” (Is. 42.5–6).
On questioning God, the Lord, through Isaiah, is rhetorical. The

Lord says:
“Woe to him who strives with his

Maker,
an earthen vessel with the potter!
Does the clay say to him who fashions
it, ‘What are you making’?” (Is. 45.9).
On proper worship and observance we find this:
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?

says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of he-goats . . . . (Is. 1.11)
And
Thus says the Lord:

Keep justice, and do righteousness,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my deliverance be revealed . . . . (Is. 56.1).
In more than one place the Lord speaks of his majesty and power:
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,

Who formed you from the womb:
“I am the Lord, who made all things,
who stretched out the heavens alone,
who spread out the earth . . . .” (Is. 44.24).
Isaiah is one of the three major prophets of Nevi’im. The other two,
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, are later than Isaiah. Isaiah’s prophetic life dates
from the Assyian invasion (eighth century BCE), while Jeremiah and
Ezekiel were active in the time of the Babylonia Captivity (sixth century
BCE). Like Isaiah, the prophet Jeremiah communicates God’s displeasure
at the turning of the people of Israel from the way of the Lord:
Thus says the Lord:

“What wrong did your fathers find in me
that they went far from me,
and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?” (Jer. 2.5)
Jeremiah delivers God’s instruction:
Thus said the Lord:

“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty
man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches,
but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and
knows me . . . .” (Jer. 9. 23–24).
The “word came to Jeremiah from the Lord”:
Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken
to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the
12 J. Kellenberger
day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today. It may
be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil I intend to do
to them, so that every one may turn from his evil way, and that
I may forgive their iniquity and their sin. (Jer. 36. 1–3)
Ezekiel’s prophetic pronouncements say more about this theme:
“Behold, all souls are mine, the soul of the father as well as the
soul of the son is mine: the soul that sins shall die.
“If a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right
. . . [if he] walks in my statutes and is careful to observe my
ordinances – he is righteous, he shall surely live, says the Lord
God” (Ezek. 18.4–5 and 9).
And
I will judge you, O house of Israel, everyone according to his

ways, says the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions,
lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions
which you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart
and a new spirit! (Ezek. 18.30–31).
Sometimes in the Tanakh when God reveals his word there is an

encounter with God in which there is an exchange, a dialogue, and in
some instances the dialogue has the character of contention. Abraham,
whose story is recounted in the Torah, in the book of Genesis, stands
before God and contends with him regarding God’s intended destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham argues that if there are only fifty – or
forty or ten – just persons in the city of Sodom it would be unjust to
destroy the city, destroying the innocent with the guilty. God hears
Abraham and departs from Abraham without destroying the city
(although later he does rain down destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah)
(Gen. 18.23–33 and 19.24).
Abraham is not recognized as a prophet in Nevi’im. Jonah, who is
recognized as a minor prophet also contends with God. The word of the
Lord comes to Jonah and he is instructed to proclaim God’s judgment
upon Nineveh. Jonah seeks to flee, but God thwarts his effort, and the
word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time. This time he goes to
Nineveh and predicts its destruction in forty days. But the people of
Nineveh fast and put on sackcloth, and God renounces his intended
destruction. Jonah is displeased and angry that God did not carry out his
intention. He complains to God that he wishes to die. God replies by
asking if he does well to be angry. Jonah’s contention with God comes to
naught, except that Jonah is taught a lesson by God about what merits
pity (the book of Jonah).
Moses receives the word of the Lord many times and sometimes speaks
to the Lord. In more than one instance he contends with God. When
God in the wilderness becomes angry with the people of Israel and
resolves to destroy them Moses implores God to turn from his anger. He
argues to God that if he destroys his people the Egyptians will say that he
delivered them only to destroy them, and he reminds God of his promise
to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their descendants would be as numer-
ous as the stars of heaven. Here too God relents and renounces the pun-
ishment he had intended (Ex. 32.9–14).
Sometimes God reveals visions to his prophets. Isaiah beholds the Lord
on a throne surrounded by seraphs (Is. 6.1–2), and Ezekiel has visions of
God in which he sees four figures, each with four faces and four wings,
above whom there is an expanse, and above the expanse a throne with a
human-like figure on it surrounded by radiance (Ezek. 1.2–28). Though
within the revelations given to the prophets of Nevi’im there may be
dialogue and visions, most prominent in Nevi’im are the deliverances of
God’s word, communicating his prophecies for the future, his anger and
disappointment, his expectations and promises, and reminders of his
majesty, while at the center of the Torah’s significance are the command-
ments given by God to Moses.
The revelations given to Moses at Sinai are the foundational bedrock of
Judaism, and the prophets of Nevi’im are honored in the Jewish tradi-
tion. Revelation in the Jewish tradition, however, is not limited to bibli-
cal revelation. It is not limited to prophetic pronouncements offered
under the rubric “Thus says the Lord” or to received visions. In Judaism
it can take contemporary forms. Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff writes:
14 J. Kellenberger
The most direct way in which revelation continues to occur is through

study. In fact, according to the [Jewish] tradition, each time a Jew studies
The Torah or its rabbinic commentaries and expansions, God is revealed
anew.1
According to the Rabbis of the Talmud, Dorff observes,
[n]o longer . . . did God’s revelation take the forms common in the
Bible, of visions, voices, and signs; that ceased shortly after the
destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. Instead Jews were
to look for God in the Torah, the product of the original public
revelation at Sinai.2
For centuries after the destruction of the First Temple and the exile to
Babylon sections of the Torah were recited in temple services. Today, as
Dorff observes, sections of he Torah are read in temple services through-
out the week. These readings are communal and heard with “reverence
and deference.” They are not like reading the Torah for study. They are a
“reenactment of Sinai,” says Dorff, and “God gives the Torah anew each
time it is read publicly in the synagogue.”3 The communal reading and
study of the Torah bring with them a renewed revelation of the Torah.
However, that revelation for Dorff and the Jewish tradition is more than
of God’s law and commandments. It is also a confirmation of the cove-
nant between God and the people of Israel.4
The fundamental revelation in the Jewish tradition is the Torah, and in
another place Rabbi Dorff raises an issue. On the one hand the revelation
at Sinai was given all at once and is fixed, but on the other hand the law
revealed to Moses needs to be interpreted in each generation. In the
Jewish tradition there is both the teaching that all interpretations and
elaborations are implicit already in the original revelation and the
teaching that God “shows Himself ” little by little, which allows that there
1
Elliot N. Dorff, Knowing God: Jewish Journeys to the Unknowable (Northvale NJ and London:
Jason Aronson, 1992), p. 114 (emphasis deleted).
2
Dorff, Knowing God, p. 114.
3
Dorff, Knowing God, pp. 117, 120–21 (emphasis deleted).
4
Dorff, Knowing God, p. 123.
are new incremental revelations in succeeding generations. “How is it

possible,” Dorff asks, “that everything was revealed at Sinai and yet new
things are revealed each day?”5
These seemingly conflicting threads of understanding in fact go
together, Dorff argues. That they do is not unique to Mosaic law but has
analogues in reading and interpreting literature and in reading and inter-
preting the US Constitution. A literary work is given and set in its text,
but different people, or the same person at different times, can find new
meaning in it. Similarly the Constitution exists as a text, but the Supreme
Court interprets that text, developing its meaning. Sometimes it revises
or reverses earlier interpretations. Yet its renderings are grounded in the
Constitution and its principles.6 The US judicial analogy is perhaps
closer, for in the Jewish tradition there are judges who interpret the law.
In their case, though, they may enact takkanot (revisions), which are a
change in the meaning and content of the law, but these “nevertheless are
part of the Jewish law because they are enacted by its only authorized
representatives throughout the generations to our day.” “In this sense,”
Dorff says, “every later development in Jewish Law . . . was already
revealed to Moses at Sinai because it comes from a judge ultimately
authorized by the Torah.”7
Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis offers further reflection on the place and
character of revelation in the Jewish tradition, which he comes to through
a consideration of the interconnections between conscience, covenant,
and commandment. Though, as Schulweis observes, there is no Hebrew
word for conscience in the Bible, the Tanakh, the notion of conscience is
not alien to the Jewish tradition and “the voice of conscience is rooted in
the moral covenant between God and Israel.”8 Conscience in the Jewish
tradition is the “inner voice” of the covenant between God and the peo-
ple of Israel. The biblical figures “who dare to confront God” and protest
5
Elliot N. Dorff, For the Love of God and People: A Philosophy of Jewish Law (Philadelphia: The
Jewish Publication society, 2007), pp. 199–201.
6
Dorff, For the Love of God and People, pp. 201–202.
7
Dorff, For the Love of God and People, p. 202 (Dorff’s emphasis). Dorff cites Deuteronomy 17 as
the relevant passage in the Torah that authorizes judges.
8
Harold M. Schulweis, For Those Who Can’t Believe: Overcoming the Obstacles to Faith (New York:
HarperCollins, 1960), p. 86.
16 J. Kellenberger
against injustice “draw legitimacy from the divine source of conscience.”9

When Abraham contends with God about God’s intended destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah and argues that it would be unjust to kill the
innocent he appeals to God’s justice.
The implication of this religious role of conscience for revelation are
traced by Schulweis: “Revelation is not a one-way directive from above or
a human projection from below.” It is a dialogue, “an ongoing process of
listening and interpreting, of receiving and giving” within a “reciprocal
covenant,” and “[a]wareness of having entered the covenant makes it
impossible to separate the divine and human element in the encounter of
revelation.”10
In the Jewish tradition revelation is significantly of the law given at
Sinai, interpreted anew in succeeding generations. More than law and
command, in Judaism revelation is also of the covenant established by
God with the people of Israel. For Rabbi Dorff revelation of God occurs
for individual Jews when they study the Torah or its commentaries, or the
Torah is read in temple services. For Rabbi Schulweis revelation is not a
one-way directive from above when the religious conscience of individual
Jews becomes involved, but a dialogue between the divine and the human.
It remains, however, that revelation and the tradition of revelation in
Judaism is grounded in the prophets of the Nevi’im and ultimately in the
revelation of the Torah.
9
Schulweis, For Those Who Can’t Believe, pp. 86–87.
10
Schulweis, For Those Who Can’t Believe, p. 87.
3
Revelation in Christianity
As revelation informs the foundational story of Judaism so it informs the

story of Christianity. The Christian narrative begins with an event that
precedes the birth of Jesus, the Christ. In the Gospel according to Luke
the angel Gabriel, sent by God, announced to a virgin, Mary, that she will
have a son to be named Jesus. The angel reveals to Mary that though she
has no husband the “Holy spirit will come upon” her and “the power of
the Most High will overshadow” her, and that “therefore the child to be
born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk. 1.26–35).
When Jesus is born in Bethlehem an angel of the Lord appears to shep-
herds in the fields near Bethlehem and tells them that “a Savior, who is
Christ the Lord” has been born; they go into Bethlehem, find the babe in
a manger, and tell Mary and Joseph what the angel has revealed to them
(Lk. 2.9–18). In another account of the birth of Jesus, in the Gospel
according to Matthew, “wise men from the East” who have seen Jesus’
star in the East come to Bethlehem to worship the one “who is born king
of the Jews” (Mt. 2.1–2). They go first to Jerusalem, and King Herod
directs them to Bethlehem, telling them to bring him word when they
have found the child that he “too may come and worship him,” although
Herod, concerned about his own kingship, has other intentions. Perhaps

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18 J. Kellenberger
the wise men or magi had no divine revelation leading them from the
East but only read the stars. Yet when they leave Bethlehem they are
“warned in a dream not to return to Herod” – perhaps by an angel of the
Lord, as Joseph is told by an angel in a dream to take Mary and the child
to Egypt (Mt. 2.2–13).
Later, when Jesus is mature and in his ministry he asks his disciples
who people say he is. They tell him that some say that he is John the
Baptist, some that he is Elijah, and others that he is Jeremiah or one of
the prophets. “But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. To this Peter
replies that he is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus says to
Peter that he is blessed, for “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,
but my Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 16.13–17).
Jesus’ teachings also are revelations. The Christian commandments to
love God and to love one’s neighbors echo the teachings of the Torah. In
Deuteronomy there is the commandment that “you shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
might” (Deut. 6.5). And in Leviticus there is the commandment that
“you shall love your neighbor as yourself ” and the “stranger who sojourns
with you . . . you shall love as yourself ” (Lev. 19.18 and 34). For Christians
Jesus’ teachings that we should love God with all our heart, all our soul,
and all our mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves (Mt. 22.37 and 39)
come anew as revelations from God in the Person of the Son of God.
Jesus is seen as a prophet and teacher by his contemporaries and is
regarded as a prophet by Islam. He does not, however, make prophetic
pronouncements introduced by “Thus says the Lord.” In the Christian
tradition Jesus’ pronouncements are those of the Son of God and hence
revelatory, and he is in his very presence as the Son of God a revelation.
Because the Tanakh as the Old Testament is also in the Christian tradi-
tion the divine revelations given to Moses and the other prophets, includ-
ing God’s revelations of himself, are also in the Christian tradition. But
revelations in the Christian tradition are not limited to biblical events
any more than they are in the Jewish tradition. In the Christian tradition
experiences of a revelation of God are not given exclusively to priests,
saints, and martyrs. A perhaps widespread Christian revelatory experi-
ence of God is finding him in the midst of those in need or in the glories
3 Revelation in Christianity 19
of nature. Such experiences, in contrast with some prophetic biblical

experiences of God, may often be low-key and quietly received.
Another type of revelatory experience of God within the Christian
tradition consists of experiences appropriately termed “mystical.” The life
of St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) was richly adorned with such experi-
ences. In her writings she describes a range of such revelations that came
to her unbidden. Many are sensory, visual and pictorial (or “imaginary”
as St. Teresa calls them because they present images and come through
the faculty of the imagination). One day when she is at prayer “the Lord
was pleased to reveal to me nothing but His hands, the beauty of which
was so great as to be indescribable” and a few days later, she says, he
revealed his “Divine face.”1 These are visions of Christ. At another time,
she tells us in her Life “when I was at Mass, I saw a complete representa-
tion of this most sacred Humanity, just as in a picture of His resurrection
body, in very great beauty and majesty . . . .”2 Not all of her sensory
visions are of Christ, but often they are. She recounts another sensory
revelation of Christ in which “I saw the most sacred Humanity in far
greater glory than I had ever seen before. I saw a most clear and wonder-
ful representation of it in the bosom of the Father.”3
St. Teresa also had nonsensory visions of Christ (called “intellectual”
because they are communicated to the “intellect” without sensory con-
tent). At a festival of St. Peter when she is at prayer she became conscious
of Christ at her side. At first she says that she “saw Christ at her side,” but
then she says, “to put it better, I was conscious of Him, for neither with
the eyes of the body nor with those of the soul did I see anything.” Yet she
feels very clearly that “He was at my right hand.”4
In another class of mystical revelatory experiences that Teresa describes
she experiences union with God. In the Interior Castle she recounts her
experience of Spiritual Marriage. This “secret union,” she says, “takes
place in the deepest centre of the soul, which must be where God Himself
1
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 28, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1972), vol. 1, p. 178.
2
St. Teresa, Life, Chap. 28, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus, vol. 1, p. 179.
3
4
20 J. Kellenberger
dwells . . . .” “The Lord appears in the centre of the soul, not through an
imaginary, but through an intellectual vision . . . .” The Spiritual Marriage,
however, is not a transitory experience. “For He has been pleased to unite
Himself with His creature in such a way that they have become like two
who cannot be separated from one another.”5
Other Christian revelatory visions of the divine have been received by
those who occupy a humble status in society, the poor and children. The
mother of Jesus is Mary and especially in the Catholic tradition she is
given a special place. Marian visions have appeared to several Catholic
believers in past centuries. In 1531 near Mexico City Juan Diego had a
vision of a woman in robes surrounded by light. She is the Virgin Mary,
she tells Juan Diego, and she would come to be called the Virgin of
Guadalupe. Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France experienced eigh-
teen visions of the Virgin Mary in the nineteenth century, her first vision
occurring when she was fourteen. In the early twentieth century three
children had visions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal. These three
instances of Marian visions have gained notoriety, but there have been
many others in places as diverse as Medjugorje, Croatia and Conyers,
Georgia in the US.6
In a well-established tradition within Christianity the central doctrines
and dogmas of Christianity, like the whole of Christian scripture, have
been taken to be revealed. The doctrine of the Trinity – that God is tri-
une – and the doctrine of the incarnation – that Jesus is God incarnate –
are religious truths in propositional form believed to be revealed to be
true. The understanding of divine revelation as revealing truths is time-
honored in the Christian tradition and goes back at least to the Middle
Ages. Nevertheless it is not the only Christian view of revelation’s nature
and content. Also within the Christian tradition there is an understand-
ing of revelation according to which God reveals Himself, as opposed to
propositions about Himself. The American philosopher of religion
George Mavrodes (1926–2019) observed that “it is not uncommon now
5
St. Teresa, Interior Castle, Seventh Mansions, Chap. 2, in The Complete Works of St. Teresa of Jesus,
trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers (London: Sheed and Ward, 1972), vol. 2, pp. 334–35.
6
Willard G. Oxtoby, “The Christian Tradition,” in World Religions: Western Traditions, 2nd ed., ed.
Willard G. Oxtoby (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 257.
to read that modern theologians favor the view that in revelation God
reveals Himself, while earlier theologians are said generally to favor the
view that God revealed a set of truths, propositions, or doctrines.”7
John Baillie (1866–1960) in his The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought
discusses the theological movement toward an understanding of revela-
tion that in it God reveals Himself. Writing in the middle of the twenti-
eth century, Baillie makes the observation that
[t]he present wide acceptance in this country [the United Kingdom] of

the view that revelation is not merely from Subject to subject, but also
of Subject to subject, and that what God reveals to us is Himself and not
merely a body of propositions about Himself, owes much to the teaching
of Archbishop William Temple . . . .8
Father Herbert Kelly (a priest in the Church of England), who influenced

William Temple, remarked that what comes to “man’s apprehension” in a
revelation “is not truth concerning God but the living God Himself.” He
continues: “There is no such thing as revealed truth. There are truths of
revelation; but they are not themselves directly revealed.”9 And Baillie
cites an earlier contributor to this idea, Wilhelm Herrmann, who in 1887
claimed that “God is the content of revelation. All revelation is the self-
revelation of God.”10
An implication of this understanding of revelation, traced by Baillie, is
that “the propositions which the Bible contains, and likewise the proposi-
tions contained in the Church’s creeds and dogmatic definitions and
theological system are all attempts, on however different levels, on the
part of those who have received this revelation [of God Himself ] to
express something of what it portends.”11 In a related vein Autin Farrer
7
George I. Mavrodes, Revelation in Religious Belief (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1988), p. 91.
8
John Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought (New York: Columbia University Press,
1956), pp. 32–33 (Baillie’s emphasis), William Temple (1881–1944) became the Archbishop of
Canterbury in 1942.
9
Quoted by Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, p. 33.
10
Quoted by Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, pp. 33–34 (Herrmann’s emphasis).
11
Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, p. 34.
22 J. Kellenberger
stated: “We now recognize that the propositions on the Scripture page
express the response of human witnesses to divine events, not a miracu-
lous divine dictation.”12
Always for Farrer “the primary revelation is Jesus Christ Himself ”; he
was struck by Jesus’ sayings being expressed in “images,” such as the
Kingdom of God and the Son of Man. It is through such images, not
propositions, Farrer suggests, that supernatural truth is revealed. Baillie,
however, objects to such an effort to give precedence to “images.” He
avers that it is difficult to know why we should think images are “directly
the medium of revelation” in any way that propositions are not. In the
letters of Paul the two are mingled together. Further, as God Himself is
distinct from propositions about God so God Himself is distinct from
images that point to God, and if revelation is of God Himself proposi-
tions and images are equally outside the content of revelation.13 It should
be noted, though, that those advancing the understanding of revelation
as revelation of God Himself do not contend that there are no revealed
Christian truths, but rather that they are not “directly” revealed and that
revelation does not consist “merely” of propositions.
This qualification notwithstanding when Baillie recounts his own
experience of revelation it is a revelation of God Himself. His “knowledge
of God,” he recalls, first came to him as “an awareness that I was ‘not my
own’ but one under authority.” This awareness did not arrive via a “voice
from the skies.” It came from “the spiritual climate of the home into
which I was born,” a part of “a wider community . . . under the same
single authority,” an authority “closely bound up with” and emanating
“from a certain story,” that “of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses and David,
of God’s covenant with the Israelites,” culminating “in the coming of
Jesus Christ.” It was, Baillie writes, through the “media” of “my boyhood’s
home, the Christian community of which it formed a part, and the ‘old,
old story’ from which that community drew its life, that God first revealed
12
Austin Farrer, The Glass of Vision (London: Dacre Press, 1948). Quoted by Baillie, The Idea of
Revelation in Recent Thought, p. 36.
13
Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, p. 37–39.
Himself to me,” and “it is not only that God used these media but that in
using them He actually did reveal Himself to my soul.”14
In the Christian tradition, as in the Jewish tradition, then, contem-
porary religious revelatory experiences may be had by individual believ-
ers. In the Jewish tradition study of the Torah and commentaries are
significant for such experiences. In the Christian tradition prayer can be
important for them. William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience
quotes from accounts of religious experience that cite prayer. In one a
woman says of her prayer experience that it was “almost like talking
with God and hearing his answer”; in another a man says, “I talk to him
as a companion in prayer and praise,” and he delights in “our
communion.”15 The experiences of prayer by these individuals are in the
context of perhaps extraordinary religious experience, which in one case
James calls “mystical or semi-mystical.” However, the felt sense of
encounter with God in prayer is available more commonly. Also in the
Christian tradition unanticipated moments of wonder may be occa-
sions when the presence of God is felt to be revealed, and as Baillie’s
recollection of how God revealed Himself to him illustrates, a back-
ground of a religious environment can be important as that through
which God is revealed.
It is to be further noted that within strands of both the Jewish and
Christian traditions revelation has two elements: a divine provenance and
a human reception. Rabbi Schulweis, as we have seen, finds within reve-
lation when conscience speaks to and confronts God, a receiving and a
giving in dialogue. In the Christian tradition in a strand of theological
reflection and an associated religious sensibility revelation not only in
contexts of confrontation but generally involves the two elements of
God’s giving or disclosing and human reception. Farrer sees the revealed
religious propositions of scripture as expressing “human witness to divine
events.” Baillie, who is very much aware of the two elements in
John Baillie, Our Knowledge of God (New York: Scribners, 1939), pp. 182–84 (Baillie’s emphasis).
14
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York:
15
Modern Library, 1902), pp. 69 and 70.

24 J. Kellenberger
revelation, says that “the distinction must be kept clearly in mind between
the divine and the human elements in the process.” In what is given by
God “there can be no imperfection,” while in the human reception “there
is always imperfection.” Not that the two elements are easily distinguished
for Baillie, for they may to a great extent be “inextricably . . . intermingled
in the result.”16
16
Baillie, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought, p. 34.
4
Revelation in Islam
Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is an Abrahamic religion. All three

religious traditions name Abraham in their scriptures and provide him
with a prominent place as a patriarch in their stories. In the biblical story
of Abraham in Genesis in both the Jewish and Christian Bibles God
instructs and blesses Abraham. In the Qur’an we are told that Abraham
was “obedient to God” and “true in faith” and moreover that God “chose
him and guided him/To a Straight Way” (Qur’an 16.120–121).1 Abraham
as one true in faith, who “bowed his will to God” and showed submission
to God (the meaning of islam in Arabic), is regarded as a Muslim before
Muhammad (Qur’an 3.67).
Islam, the youngest of the three Abrahamic monotheisms, was founded
by Muhammad, who lived in the sixth and seventh centuries of the
Common Era. In the Qur’an many prophets are recognized, including
Abraham and Moses, and John the Baptist and Jesus, who is
acknowledged as a prophet with a message from God but not as the Son
of God. Muhammad, however, is the final Prophet, the Seal of the
1
Unless otherwise indicated all Qur’anic quotations are from The Holy Qur’an, 9th ed., trans.
Abdullah Yusuf Ali (New Deli: Kitab Bhavan, 2013).

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26 J. Kellenberger
Prophets, and though Jews and Christians are “People of the Book” Islam
finally is the one true religion (Qur’an 3.19).
The revelations that constitute the 114 suras of the Qur’an were given
to Muhammad in the early seventh century. For twenty-two years, in
Mecca and Medina, Muhammad received the revelation of the Qur’an
through the angel Gabriel (Qur’an 2.97). Gabriel in the Jewish Bible or
Tanakh appeared to Daniel (Dan. 9.20–27), and Gabriel in the Christian
tradition announced to Mary that she, a virgin, would bear a son to be
called Jesus (Lk. 1.31). In the scriptures of the three Abrahamic traditions
the angel Gabriel is a messenger through which God delivers revelations.
The suras of the Qur’an are interspersed with verses that begin with “Say”
or “Say ye” followed by what is to be said or proclaimed. To take two
examples, the 136th verse of the second sura reads:
Say ye: “We believe

In God, and the revelation
Given to us, and to Abraham,
Ismā‘il, Isaac, Jacob,
And the Tribes, and that given
To Moses and Jesus . . . .”
And the 59th verse of Sura 10 begins:
Say: “See ye what things

God hath sent down to you
For sustenance?”
The Qur’an, even when this explicit instruction is absent, is revelatory of

God’s commandments, expectations, intentions, and warnings, as well as
of God’s nature. God’s expectations and ordinances regarding alms for
the poor are made clear (as in Qur’an 9.60), almsgiving being one of the
five pillars of Islam. The Qur’an specifies what is forbidden as food
(Qur’an 5.4). Allah or God is the one God, and God’s condemnation of
polytheism and idol-worship is made manifest in the Qur’an (Qur’an 4.
116–117 and 21.51–54).
4 Revelation in Islam 27
Part of the Qur’an’s revelation is that there is to be a Day of Judgment,

when “every soul” will be “paid what it earned” (Qur’an 2.281). Those
who reject God will suffer the blazing penalty of Hell (Qur’an 67.6–7),
while the righteous will enjoy Gardens in “nearness to their Lord” (Qur’an
3.15 and 69. 19–31). Yet in the revelation given to Muhammad Allah or
God is forgiving and merciful to anyone who does evil or “wrongs his
own soul” if God’s forgiveness is sought (Qur’an 4.110). In the first sura
of the Qur’an God is praised as “Most Gracious, Most Merciful.” Each
sura of the Qur’an begins with “In the name of God, Most Gracious,
Most Merciful” (in the Yusuf Ali translation) or “in the name of Allah,
the Beneficent, the Merciful” (in another translation). God’s mercy and
forgiveness are prominent in the Qur’an, but also God is exalted in power
and wise (Qur’an 2.209), knows what is secret and hidden and all things
(Qur’an 2.33 and 227), is the Creator of all things (Qur’an 6.102), and
is free of all wants (Qur’an 4.31).
As there were mystical revelations in Christianity and in Judaism in the
Kabbalah, after the biblical period, so there were mystical revelations in
the Islamic tradition following the twenty-year period in which
Muhammad received the Qur’an. The mystics of Islam were Sūfīs, who
aspired to absorption in God and the passing away of self (fanā). The
attainment of these states in themselves may be distinguished from reve-
lation, but in their realization there can be elements of revelation. The
Sūfī Abū Hāmad al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) in describing absorption
said this:
This absorption at first will be like a flash of lightning, lasting but
a short time, but then it becomes habitual and a means to enabling the
Soul to ascend to the world above, where pure and essential Reality is
manifested to it, and it takes upon itself the impress of the invisible
World and the Divine Majesty is revealed to it . . . and at the last it looks
upon God face to face.2
2
Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam (London: Luzac & Company, 1972), p. 70.
28 J. Kellenberger
He also said this:
All that we behold and perceive by our senses bears undeniable
witness to the existence of God and His power and His knowledge and
the rest of His attributes, whether these things be manifested or hidden,
the stone and the clod, the plants and the trees, the living creatures, the
heavens and the earth and the stars, the dry land and the ocean, the fire
and the air, substance and accident, and indeed we ourselves are the
chief witness to Him.3
Here al-Ghazālī expresses the sense that all that we perceive in the world
reveals the existence of God to us, an idea not so distant from that of St.
Paul when he said, “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible
nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in
the things that have been made” (Rom. 1.20).4 The Sūfī mystic Ibn
al-Fārid (c.1181–1235) found Allah or God to be revealed in the beauti-
ful: “Though he be hidden from me, yet by each of my members He is
seen, in every lovely thing, that is fair and gives joy to the heart.”5
Al-Ghazālī spoke of unity with God, a unity without multiplicity.6
Muhyī al-Dīn Ibn al-‘Arabī (1165–1240) spoke of knowing that “you
and God are one and the same.”7 Similarly Husayn B. Mansūr al-Hallāj
(858–922) spoke of coming to a place where he is alone with God and “I
am He Whom I love and He Whom I love is I.”8 Rābi‘a al-‘Adawiyya
(713–801), an earlier Sūfī mystic than the others mentioned, perceived
the fear of Hell and the Hope of Paradise to be “veils” or hindrances to
the true vision of God, and, she said, “[m]y peace is in solitude, but my
Beloved is always with me.”9 For Rābi‘a the reality of God and God’s love
was a constant revelation.
3
Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam, pp. 59–60.
4
Neither al-Ghazālī nor St. Paul is offering an argument –teleological or otherwise – for God’s
existence. Each is affirming that what is revealed has been revealed by God in all that is perceived.
5
Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam, p. 95.
6
7
8
9
5
Revelation in Other Traditions
In the three Abrahamic traditions of the West revelations are given by

God, directly as when God gives Moses his commandments, or indirectly
as when Gabriel, a messenger of God, announces to Mary that she will
give birth to a son to be called Jesus or as when Gabriel delivers the
Qur’an to Muhammad. In these traditions foundational revelations are
received in a form that may be written upon tablets or appear in scrip-
tures. Revelations can be prophetically voiced: the prophets of the Tanakh
proclaimed to the people of Israel what God would say to his people.
Such revelations are explicit disclosures, but disclosures of religious real-
ity need not have a theistic provenance, they need not be disclosed by
God or his intermediary.
In the Buddhist tradition, particularly in Vajrayana Buddhism, there
are numerous deities with various functions, such as guardianship and
protection from evil forces. Though meditation on them may be helpful
in the journey to enlightenment, they are not sources of revelation, as
God or God’s angel is in Western traditions. Nevertheless, as we observed
in Chap. 1, there is a place for revelation in nontheistic Buddhism in the
enlightenment experience of the historical Buddha. Gautama Buddha in
attaining enlightenment came to see the nature of human existence in

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30 J. Kellenberger
relation to religious reality. He came to see the working of the law of

karma and the Four Noble Truths.1 The Four Noble Truths that the
Buddha came to see through meditation are:
One, that suffering is inevitable for living beings.

Two, that the source of suffering is desire or craving.
Three, that cessation of suffering would be possible if
desires ceased, and
Four, that the way to overcome desire and banish suffering
is the Eightfold Path.2
Beyond this revelation attained by the historical Buddha, as we will see in

a later chapter there is a place in Buddhism for the recognition of revela-
tory experience available to ordinary Buddhists.
There is a place for revelation in the Hindu tradition as well, although,
because that tradition is complex with both devotional (essentially theis-
tic) and nontheistic strains the source of revelation is variously under-
stood. In the Hindu tradition there is a distinction between sruti and
smrti. Sruti texts are “heard” and regarded as revealed. Smrti texts are
“remembered” and regarded as humanly composed, though inspired. The
Vedas are sruti or revealed. The great epics, the Rāmāyana and the
Mahābhārata, composed around 500 BCE, centuries later than the origin
of the Vedas, are smrti.3
Though the Vedas are generally accepted in the Hindu tradition as
revealed, this is not to say that there is general agreement on the source of
their revelation. For one school, the Nyāya school of epistemology and
logic, God is the source. For other schools, including the Mīmāmsā and
Vedānta schools the source of the Vedas is beyond human authorship; it
is cosmic or divine, but not God or a supreme being. For both Hindu
ways of understanding revelation the Vedas hold eternal truths humanly
1
Roy C. Amore and Julia Ching, “The Buddhist Tradition,” in World Religions:Eastern Traditions,
2nd ed., ed. Willard G. Oxtoby (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 209.
2
Amore and Ching, “The Buddhist Tradition,” pp. 213–214. The eight areas of the Eightfold Path
are right view (or understanding), right thought, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right
effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation (Amore and Ching, p. 214).
3
Vasudha Narayanan, “The Hindu Tradition,” in World Religions: Eastern Traditions, p. 32.
5 Revelation in Other Traditions 31
“seen” but not humanly composed, though only for orthodox Hindus
following the Nyāya school is their cosmic source God.4
In Advaita Vedānta, Arvind Sharma observes, there is no “revealer” of
revelation; it is not given by God.5 God is not the author or source of the
Vedas’ revelation but is involved in the communication of its revelation as
its “transmitter” or “promulgator.”6 While in Catholic Christianity the
proper response to revelation is faith understood as assent to the proposi-
tional truths delivered by revelation, in Advaita Vedānta for which also
revelation is propositional, the proper response is jnāna or knowledge.7
The Christian revelation to which Catholic faith or assent is directed is
foundational, as the revelation of the Vedas is foundational to Hinduism.
Not all religious revelation is foundational but limiting our present focus
to foundational revelation we should appreciate that not all revelations in
this category are ancient. In the early nineteenth century in the tradition
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormonism, Joseph
Smith (1805–44), the founder of Mormonism, was visited by an angel.
The angel was not Gabriel but Moroni, and he revealed to Smith buried
golden plates. These plates, which were inscribed in “reformed Egyptian,”
Smith translated into the Book of Mormon, a holy book of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though, as its name indicates it is a
denomination of Christianity, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints has its own ancillary and foundational scripture in the Book of
Mormon (and other texts). The Book of Mormon includes the teaching
that before Columbus there were migrations to the New World and after
his crucifixion Christ visited the western hemisphere to institute a new
church.8
Another comparatively recent instance of a revelation that is founda-
tional to a religion is found in the origin of Sikhism. Sikhism is older
than Mormonism but was founded in the modern era in the sixteenth
4
Narayanan, “The Hindu Tradition,” pp. 22–23.
5
Arvind Sharma, The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedānta: A Comparative Study in Religion
and Reason (University Park PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), p. 53.
6
Sharma, The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedānta, p. 57.
7
Sharma, The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedānta, p. 55.
8
Willard G. Oxtoby, “The Christian Tradition,” in World Religions: Western Traditions, 2nd ed., ed.
Willard G. Oxtoby (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 302–303.
32 J. Kellenberger
century. Nanak (1469–1539), the founder of Sikhism, was born in

Punjab in northern India. In the Sikh tradition when Nanak was thirty
he had a revelatory vision in which God gives him a cup of nectar and
assigns him the mission to teach the practice of devotion. Nanak does so
in a way that transcends the ritualistic practices of Hinduism and Islam,
and he proclaims: “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.” Nanak tra-
verses India and travels to Muslin centers beyond India, including
Baghdad and Mecca, before settling in a community in Punjab 55 miles
north of present-day Amritsar, at the age of fifty. There for 20 years he
instructed followers in the ways of meditation and devotion.9 Today
Sikhism, like Mormonism, has millions of followers.
9
Willard G. Oxtoby, “The Sikh Tradition,” in World Religions: Western Traditions, pp. 129–30.
6
Elaborations of Revelation
A commentary on the Bible might relate different parts of the Bible to

one another or describe the historical setting in which different books
were composed, but any such commentary on the face of it is distinct
from the Bible itself or parts of the Bible. An elaboration of biblical rev-
elation is different. In the Jewish tradition Talmudic interpretations or
elaborations of the Torah are seen as unfolding what is implicit in the
original revelation given to Moses and are revelatory in their own right.
Such an understanding may also be brought to Christian elaborations of
the Bible or Islamic elaborations or interpretive commentaries on
the Qur’an.
In this way the original revelation of a religious scripture, or the origi-
nal way of understanding it, may change. Its meaning may become refo-
cused to have an application to contemporary events and concerns. This
may be seen as a revelatory drawing out and making explicit what is in
the original revelation or alternatively as a new revelation. In either case
the new way of understanding the original revelation is regarded as con-
tinuous with it.
Also revelations can be cancelled or revised, as Supreme Court deci-
sions can be overridden or reversed by future decisions. At the end of the

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53872-9_6
34 J. Kellenberger
nineteenth century the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

reversed its teaching on polygamy (which in Mormon practice had been
polygyny: having more than one wife at the same time). The reversal, the
leader of the Church, Wilford Woodruff (1807–1898), said had been
revealed to him. In the first book of Samuel, Samuel goes to King Saul
and tells him the word of the Lord is to “Smite Amalek, and utterly
destroy all that they have, do not spare them, but kill both man and
woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Sam. 15.3).
Saul attacks and defeats the Amalekites. He “utterly destroy[s] all the
people with the edge of the sword.” But he spares Agag, the king of the
Amalekites, and he does not kill “the best of the sheep and of the oxen
and of the fattlings, and the lambs, and all that was good” (1 Sam. 15.9).
(There is no mention of Saul’s sparing women and children.) In the first
book of Samuel God is displeased that Saul did not follow his instruc-
tions precisely, and the word of the Lord comes to Samuel that God
repents that he made Saul king (1 Sam. 15.10). Saul tries to make amends
by hacking Agag to death, but it is too late. David is chosen by God (1
Sam. 16.12–13). It is a part of the revelation given to Samuel that Saul is
to destroy the Amalekites, men and women, children and infants, and the
livestock of the Amalekites. Today such a fierce command hardly seems
compatible with God’s mercy and love. Today very few nations or politi-
cal entities would follow such a rule of war. It would be rejected on both
moral and religious grounds. It would be rejected in both the Jewish and
Christian traditions on the basis of a widely received new understanding
of God’s commandments, more in accord with a humane understanding
of the treatment of others required both in a war setting and more
generally.
Revelations, sought or unsought, can come to individual believers in
religious traditions, giving them guidance and direction. In the Bible
God or his angel may warn or direct individuals in dreams, as Joseph is
told by an angel in a dream to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt (Mt. 2.13).
But revelation in the form of felt guidance need not come through a
dream. Its avenue can be a vivified sense of how one should proceed in,
say, a perplexing moral situation. In the Christian tradition such guid-
ance is understood as given by the Holy spirit. As an elaboration of such
revelatory guidance those participating in church councils may hope for
6 Elaborations of Revelation 35
and believe they are given guidance by the Holy Spirit. In the election of
a new pope, as the cardinals retreat to the place of their conclave they
recite the Latin hymn Veni, Sancte Spiritus (Come, Holy Spirit).
In the Catholic tradition there is the doctrine of papal infallibility,
which in effect postulates the revelatory guidance of God when the pope
speaks ex cathedra. Papal infallibility was officially proclaimed by the
First Vatican Council, although an acceptance of the substance of the
doctrine goes back to Counter-Reformation thinking. A leitmotif hark-
ing back to well before the Reformation is that church councils and con-
vocations are given guidance by the Holy Spirit. This idea augments and
is in tension with, the doctrine of papal infallibility.
In the fifteenth century a council of the Catholic Church was held in
Constance in present-day Germany. The Council of Constance
(1414–1418) addressed the issue of the Western Schism and other mat-
ters, successfully resolving the issue of the schism. (The Western Schism
lasted from 1378 to 1417, during which time there were two and even
three rival popes.) In its 1425 decree the Council of Constance declared
“that it is lawfully assembled in the Holy Spirit, that it constitutes a
General Council, and that therefore it has its authority immediately from
Christ,”1 At the Council of Constance, Natacha-Ingrid Tinteroff observes
in her essay on councils and the Holy Spirit, Jean Gerson in a sermon
“noted that the spirit unifies, shapes and enlivens the council,” and
Dietrich Kolde in another sermon “asserted that, if the gifts of the Holy
Spirit are given to each individual, then they are given for the benefit of
all.”2 These perceptions of the role and presence of the Holy Spirit in the
Council of Constance resonate with concilliarism, a movement that took
place in the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages “based on a theory
according to which the church’s final authority lay not with the popes,
but with the full body of the faithful,” a view that saw the expression of
1
Documents of the Christian Church, ed. Henry Bettenson (New York and London: Oxford
University Press, 1943), p. 192.
2
Natacha-Ingrid Tinteroff, “The Councils and the Holy Spirit: Liturgical Perspectives,” in The
Church, the Councils, and Reform: The Legacy of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Gerald Christianson,
Christopher M. Bellitto, and Thomas M. Izbicki (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2008), pp. 147 and 151 [electronic resource].
36 J. Kellenberger
the will of the church in general councils.3 However, in its proclamation

of papal infallibility in 1870 the First Vatican Council gave superiority to
papal authority.
We may regard the elaborations of revelation in the doctrines of papal
infallibility and conciliar guidance as theological, or theologically
inspired, as they may be. If they are, however, this would not show or
tend to show that the provenance of papal pronouncements or of con-
ciliar decisions is ultimately other than divine revelation.
3
Tinteroff, “The Councils and the Holy Spirit,” p. 141 n.7. In the Catholic tradition ecumenical
councils, when approved by the Pope, are infallible. By contrast, in the Protestant tradition The
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) explicitly recognized that “synods or councils. . . may err,
and many have erred.” The Creeds of the Churches, ed. John H. Leith (Richmond VA: John Knox
Press, 1973), p. 228.
7
Oracles, Dreams, and Other Revelatory
Experiences
The prophets of the Bible – of Nevi’im in the Jewish tradition and of the
Old Testament in the Christian tradition – were oracles in that they spoke
for and communicated the words of the divine – God. Oracles, speaking
as the medium of the divine and providing revelations of what was to
come, are found in other traditions as well. Perhaps the most familiar
oracle is the oracle at Delphi, the Pythia. She was the oracle of the Greek
god Apollo, whose temple was at Delphi. Many, including kings and oth-
ers highly placed, came to the oracle for advice and predictions of the
future. When Socrates’ friend Chaerephon asked the oracle if anyone was
wiser than Socrates, she replied that no one was wiser.1 Socrates, who had
the sense that he had “no claim to wisdom great or small,” tested the
oracle’s pronouncement by holding conversations with those reputed to
be wise (presumably on such issues as the nature of piety, knowledge, and
courage). He discovered that they were not wise and reflected that he was
wiser than they were at least to the extent that he knew what he did not
know.2 Above the entrance to Apollo’s temple was the inscription “Know
1
Plato, Apology 21a, trans. Hugh Tredennick, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton
and Huntington Cairns (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 7.
2
Plato, Apology 21b–d, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues, pp. 7–8.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53872-9_7
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advantages he did not regard himself as invulnerable. And, of course,
he had no need to assume personal risks. By the public nonspace
and air systems, he would move anywhere on earth within hours; and
wherever he went, any human being within the range of his mind
became a potential tool. He could order death at will and be at a safe
distance when the order was executed. Within ten weeks, he had
Special Activities on the ropes. The attempts to identify him were
called off. And the abnormal series of disasters promptly ended. The
rogue had made his point."
Arlene said soberly, "You say he attacked some of your investigators
later on. What was that about?"
"That was a year later," Weldon said. "A kind of stalemate had
developed. As you're aware, the few operating telepaths in the
government's employment are a daintily handled property. They're
never regarded as expendable. It was clear they weren't in the
rogue's class, so no immediate attempt was made to use them
against him. But meanwhile we'd assembled—almost entirely by
inference—a much more detailed picture of this opponent of mankind
than DEDCOM had been able to provide. He was a freak in every
way. His ability to read other minds and to affect them—an apparent
blend of telepathy and irresistable hypnosis—obviously was a much
more powerful and definite tool than the unreliable gropings of any
ordinary telepath. But there was the curious point that he appeared to
be limited—very sharply limited—simply by distance, which to most of
our trained telepaths is a meaningless factor, at least this side of
interplanetary space. If one stayed beyond his range, the rogue was
personally harmless. And if he could be identified from beyond his
range, he also could be—and by that time almost immediately would
have been—destroyed by mechanical means, without regard for any
last-moment havoc he might cause.
"So the first security island was established, guarded against the
rogue's approach by atmospheric blocks and sophisticated somatic
barriers. Two government telepaths were brought to it and induced to
locate him mentally.
"It turned out to be another mistake. If our unfortunate prodigies
gained any information about the rogue, they didn't live long enough
to tell us what it was. Both committed suicide within seconds of each
other."
"The rogue had compelled them to do it?" Arlene asked.
"Of course."
"And was this followed," Dr. Lowry asked, "by another public
disaster?"
"No," Weldon said. "The rogue may have considered that
unnecessary. After all, he'd made his point again. Sending the best of
our tame telepaths after him was like setting spaniels on a tiger.
Ordinarily, he could reach a telepath's mind only within his own range,
like that of any other person. But if they were obliging enough to
make contact with him, they would be instantly at his mercy, wherever
he might be. We took the hint; the attempt wasn't repeated. Our other
telepaths have remained in the seclusion of security islands, and so
far the rogue has showed no interest in getting at them there."
Weldon stubbed his cigarette out carefully in the ashtray beside him,
added, "You see now, I think, why we feel it is necessary to take
extreme precautions in the further handling of your diex projector."
There was silence for some seconds. Then Dr. Lowry said, "Yes, that
much has become obvious." He paused, pursing his lips doubtfully,
his eyes absent. "All right," he went on. "This has been rather
disturbing information, Ferris. But let's look at the thing now.
"We've found that diex energy can be employed to augment the
effects of the class of processes commonly referred to as telepathic.
The projector operates on that theory. By using it, ordinary mortals
like Arlene and myself can duplicate some of the results reportedly
achieved by the best-trained telepaths. However, we are restricted in
several ways by our personal limitations. We need the location
devices to direct the supporting energy to the points of the globe
where the experiments are to be carried out. And so far we have not
been able to 'read the mind'—to use that very general term—of
anyone with whom we are not at least casually acquainted."
Weldon nodded. "I'm aware of that."
"Very well," Lowry said. "The other advantage of the projector over
unaided natural telepathy is its dependability. It works as well today
as it did yesterday or last week. Until a natural telepath actually has
been tested on these instruments, we can't be certain that the diex
field will be equally useful to him. But let's assume that it is and that
he employs the projector to locate the rogue. It should be very easy
for him to do that. But won't that simply—in your phrasing—put him at
the rogue's mercy again?"
Weldon hesitated, said, "We think not, Ben. A specialist in these
matters could tell you in a good deal more detail about the functional
organization in the mind of a natural telepath. But essentially they all
retain unconscious safeguards and resistances which limit their
telepathic ability but serve to protect them against negative effects.
The difference between them and ourselves on that point appears to
be mainly one of degree."
Lowry said, "I think I see. The theory is that such protective
processes would be correspondingly strengthened by employing the
diex field...."
"That's it," Weldon said. "To carry the analogue I was using a little
farther, we might again be sending a spaniel against a tiger. But the
spaniel—backed up by the projector—would now be approximately
tiger size ... and tiger-strong. We must assume that the rogue would
be far more skilled and deadly in an actual mental struggle, but there
should be no struggle. Our telepath's business would be simply to
locate his man, identify him, and break away again. During the very
few seconds required for that, the diex field should permit him to hold
off the rogue's assault."
Dr. Lowry shook his head. "You can't be sure of it, Ferris!" he said.
"You can't be sure of it at all."
Weldon smiled. "No, we can't. We don't really know what would
happen. But neither, you see, does the rogue."
Lowry said hesitantly, "I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"Ben," Weldon said, "we don't expect your diex projector will ever be
put to the use we've been discussing just now. That isn't its purpose."
Lowry looked dumfounded. "Then what is its purpose?"
Arlene Rolf's face had gone pale. "Doctor Ben," she said, "I believe
Colonel Weldon is implying that the rogue already knows about the
diex projector and what might be attempted with it."
Weldon nodded. "Of course, he knows about it. How many secrets do
you think can be kept from a creature who can tap the minds of
anybody he encounters? You can take it for granted that he's
maintained information sources in every department of the
government since the day we became aware of his existence. He
knows we're out to get him. And he isn't stupid enough to allow things
here to develop to the point where one of our telepaths is actually
placed in front of that projector. He can't be sure of what the outcome
would be. After all, it might ... very easily ... be fatal to him."
Lowry began, "Then I don't...." He checked himself, gave Arlene Rolf
a bewildered look. "Are you still with this madman, Arlene?"
Her smile was twisted. "I'm afraid so! If I am, I don't like the situation
at all. Colonel Weldon, have you people planned to use the diex
projector as a trap for the rogue?"
"As bait for a trap," Weldon said. "Ben, put yourself in the rogue's
place. He regards this entire planet as his property. But now the
livestock is aware of him and is restless. On the technological side it
is also becoming more clever by the decade—dangerously clever. He
can still keep us in our place here, and so far he's succeeded in
blocking a major exodus into the solar system where his power would
vanish. But can he continue indefinitely? And can he find any
enjoyment in being the lord of all Earth when he has to be constantly
on guard now against our efforts to get rid of him? He's blocked our
first thrusts and showed us that he can make it a very costly business
to harass him too seriously. But the situation is as unsatisfactory to
him as to us. He needs much more effective methods of control than
were required in the past to bring us back to heel."
Lowry said, "And the diex projector...."
Weldon nodded. "Of course! The diex projector is the perfect solution
to the rogue's problems. The security islands which so far have been
our principle form of defense would become meaningless. He could
reach any human mind on Earth directly and immediately. Future
plots to overthrow him would stand no chance of success.
"The rogue has shown no scientific ability of his own, and the handful
of other men who might be capable at present of constructing a
similar instrument have been placed beyond his reach. So he has
permitted the development of the projector to continue here, though
he could, of course, have put an abrupt stop to it in a number of
ways. But you may be sure that he intends to bring the diex projector
into his possession before it actually can be used against him."
Arlene said, "And he's assumed to know that the projector is now
operational, aside from any faults that might still show up in the
tests?"
"Yes," Weldon said.
She went on, "Does the fact that I was allowed to leave the project
several times a week—actually whenever I felt like it—have
something to do with that?"
Weldon said, "We believe that the rogue has taken advantage rather
regularly of that arrangement. After all, there was no more
dependable way of informing himself of the exact state of affairs on
the project than...."
"Than by picking my mind?"
Weldon hesitated, said, "There's no denying that we have placed you
both in danger, Arlene. Under the circumstances, we can offer no
apology for that. It was a matter of simple necessity."
"I wasn't expecting an apology, Colonel Weldon." Her face was white.
"But I'm wondering what the rogue is supposed to attempt now."
"To get possession of the projector?" Weldon hesitated again. "We
don't know that exactly. We believe we have considered every
possible approach, and whichever he selects, we're prepared to trap
him in the process of carrying it out."
Dr. Lowry said, "But he must suspect that you intend to trap him!"
Weldon nodded. "He does, naturally. But he's under a parallel
disadvantage there—he can't be certain what the traps are. You don't
realize yet how elaborate our precautionary measures have been."
Weldon indicated the small door in the wall beyond Dr. Lowry. "The
reason I use only that private conduit to come here is that I haven't
stepped off a security island for almost three years! The same has
been true of anyone else who had information we had to keep from
the rogue ... including incidentally Mr. Green, whose occasional
'public appearances' during this critical period have been elaborately
staged fakes. We communicate only by viewphone; in fact, none of
us even knows just where the others are. There is almost no chance
that he can do more than guess at the exact nature of our plans."
"And with all that," Lowry said slowly, "you expect he will still go
ahead and make a bid for the projector?"
"He will because he must!" Weldon said. "His only alternative would
be to destroy this security island with everything on it at the last
moment. And that is very unlikely. The rogue's actions show that in
spite of his current troubles with us he has a vast contempt for
ordinary human beings. Without that feeling, he would never have
permitted the diex projector to be completed. So he will come for it—
very warily, taking every precaution, but confident of out-maneuvering
us at the end."
Arlene asked, "And isn't it possible that he will do just that?"
There was a barely perceptible pause before Weldon replied. "Yes,"
he said then, "it's possible. It's a small chance—perhaps only a
theoretical one. But we're not omniscient, and we may not know quite
as much about him as we think. It remains possible."
"Then why take even that risk?" Arlene asked. "Wouldn't it be better
to destroy the projector now—to leave things as they are—rather than
offer him a weapon which would reduce us all to helpless chattels
again?"
Weldon shook his head. "Arlene, we can't leave things as they are!
Neither can the rogue. You know that really—even though you refuse
to admit it to yourself at the moment."
"I ... what do you mean?"
"This year," Weldon said patiently, "we have the diex projector. What
will we have five years from now when diex energy has been more
fully explored? When the other fields of knowledge that have been
opened in recent years begin to expand? We could, perhaps, slow
down those processes. We can't stop them. And, at any point, other
unpredictable weapons may emerge ... weapons we might use
against the rogue, or that he might use against us.
"No, for both sides the time to act is now, unless we're willing to leave
the future to chance. We aren't; and the rogue isn't. We've challenged
him to determine whether he or mankind will control this planet, and
he's accepted the challenge. It amounts to that. And it's very likely
that the outcome will have become apparent not many hours from
now."
Arlene shook her head but said nothing. Dr. Lowry asked, "Ferris,
exactly what is our role in this situation supposed to be?"
"For the next few hours," Weldon said, "you'll be instructing me in the
practical details of operating the projector. I've studied your reports
very carefully, of course, and I could handle it after a fashion without
such help. But that isn't good enough. Because—as the rogue knows
very well—we aren't bluffing in the least in this. We're forcing him to
take action. If he doesn't"—Weldon nodded at the polished hardwood
box on the table before Dr. Lowry—"one of our telepaths presently
will be placed before that instrument of yours, and the rogue will face
the possibility of being flushed into view. And there is no point on the
globe at this moment which is more than a few minutes' flight away
from one of our strike groups.
"So he'll take action ... at the latest as soon as the order is given to
move our telepath to the Cleaver Project. But you two won't be here
when it happens. You're not needed for that part, and while we've
been talking, the main project conduit has been shunted from our
university exit here to a security island outside the area. You'll move
there directly from the project as soon as you finish checking me out,
and you will remain there until Operation Rogue is concluded.
"And now let's get busy! I think it would be best, Ben, if I assumed
Arlene's usual role for a start ... secondary operator ... and let you go
through the regular pattern of contacts while I look on. What do you
say?"
Arlene Rolf had taken a chair well back from the table where the two
men sat before the diex projector. She realized it had been an
attempt to dissociate herself—emotionally as well as physically—from
what was being done there, and that the attempt hadn't been at all
successful. Her usual composure, based on the awareness of being
able to adjust herself efficiently to the necessities of any emergency,
was simply gone. The story of the rogue had been sprung on them
too abruptly at this last moment. Her mind accepted the concept but
hadn't really assimilated it yet. Listening to what Weldon had said,
wanting to remain judiciously skeptical but finding herself increasingly
unable to disbelieve him—that had been like a slow, continuous
shock. She wasn't yet over it. Her thoughts wouldn't follow the lines
she set them on but veered off almost incoherently every minute or
two. For the first time in her adult life she was badly frightened—
made stupid with fear—and finding it something she seemed unable
to control at will.
Her gaze shifted back helplessly to the table and to the dull-blue
concave viewplate which was the diex projector's central section.
Unfolded from its case, the projector was a beautiful machine of
spider web angularities lifting from the flat silver slab of its generator
to the plate. The blurred shiftings of color and light in the center of the
plate were next to meaningless without the diex goggles Dr. Lowry
and Weldon had fitted over their heads; but Arlene was familiar
enough with the routine test patterns to follow their progress without
listening closely to what was said....
She wanted the testing to stop. She felt it was dangerous. Hadn't
Weldon said they still couldn't be sure of the actual extent of the
rogue's abilities? And mightn't the projector be luring their minds out
now into the enemy's territory, drawing his attention to what was
being done in this room? There had been seconds when an uncanny
certainty had come to her that she could sense the rogue's presence,
that he already was cynically aware of what they were attempting,
and only biding his time before he interfered. That might be—almost
certainly was—superstitious imagining, but the conviction had been
strong. Strong enough to leave her trembling.
But there was, of course, exactly nothing she could do or say now to
keep them from going on. She remained silent.
So far it had been routine. A standard warm-up. They'd touched
Vanderlin in Melbourne, Marie Faber in Seattle. The wash of colors in
the viewplate was the reflection of individual sensory impressions
riding the diex field. There had been no verbalizing or conscious
response from the contacted subjects. That would come later. Dr.
Lowry's face was turned momentarily sideways to her, the conical
grey lenses of the goggles protruding from beneath his forehead like
staring insect eyes.
She realized he must have said something to Weldon just now which
she hadn't heard. Weldon's head was nodding in agreement. Dr.
Lowry shifted back to the table, said, "Botucato, Brazil—an untried
location. How the pinpointing of these random samplings is brought
about is of course...." His voice dropped to an indistinct murmur as he
reached out to the projector again.
Arlene roused herself with an effort partly out of her foggy fears. It
was almost like trying to awake from a heavy, uncomfortable sleep.
But now there was also some feeling of relief—and angry self-
contempt—because obviously while she had been giving in to her
emotional reactions, nothing disastrous had in fact occurred! At the
table, they'd moved on several steps in the standard testing
procedure. She hadn't even been aware of it. She was behaving like
a fool!
The sensory color patterns were gone from the viewplate, and now as
she looked, the green-patterned white field of the projector's location
map appeared there instead. She watched Dr. Lowry's practiced
fingers spin the coordinating dials, and layer after layer of the map
came surging into view, each a magnified section of the preceding
one. There was a faint click. Lowry released the dials, murmured
something again, ended more audibly, "... twenty-mile radius." The
viewplate had gone blank, but Arlene continued to watch it.
The projector was directed now towards a twenty-mile circle at
ground level somewhere in Brazil. None of their established contacts
were in that area. Nevertheless, something quite definite was
occuring. Dr. Lowry had not expected to learn much more about this
particular process until a disciplined telepathic mind was operating
through the instrument—and perhaps not too much more then. But in
some manner the diex energy was now probing the area, and
presently it would touch a human mind—sometimes a succession of
them, sometimes only one. It was always the lightest of contacts. The
subjects remained patently unaware of any unusual experience, and
the only thing reflected from them was the familiar generalized flux of
sensory impressions—
Arlene Rolf realized she was standing just inside the open records
vault of Dr. Lowry's office, with a bundle of files in her arms. On the
floor about her was a tumbled disorder of other files, of scattered
papers, tapes. She dropped the bundle on the litter, turned back to
the door. And only then, with a churning rush of hot terror, came the
thought, What am I doing here? What happened?
She saw Dr. Lowry appear in the vault door with another pile of
papers. He tossed them in carelessly, turned back into the office
without glancing in her direction. Arlene found herself walking out
after him, her legs carrying her along in dreamlike independence of
her will. Lowry was now upending the contents of a drawer to the top
of his desk. She tried to scream his name. There was no sound. She
saw his face for an instant. He looked thoughtful, absorbed in what he
was doing, nothing else....
Then she was walking through the living room, carrying something—
the next instant, it seemed, she'd reentered Lowry's office.
Nightmarishly, it continued. Blank lapses of awareness followed
moments in which her mind swayed in wild terrors while her body
moved about, machinelike and competent, piling material from
workshop and file cabinets helter-skelter into the records vault. It
might have been going on for only three or four minutes or for an
hour; her memory was enclosed in splinters of time and reality. But
there were moments, too, when her thoughts became lucid and
memory returned ... Colonel Weldon's broad back as he disappeared
through the narrow door in the living room wall into the private conduit
entry, the strap of the diex projector case in his right hand; then the
door closing behind him. Before that had been an instant when
something blazed red in the projector's viewplate on the table, and
she'd wondered why neither of the two men sitting before it made any
comment—
Then suddenly, in one of the lucid moments, there was time for the
stunned thought to form: So the rogue caught us all! Weldon's self-
confidence and courage, Dr. Lowry's dedicated skill, her own
reluctance to be committed to this matter ... nothing had made the
slightest difference. In his own time, the rogue had come quietly
through every defense and seized their minds. Weldon was on his
way to him now, carrying the diex projector.
And she and Dr. Lowry? They'd been ordered by the rogue to dispose
of every scrap of information dealing with the projector's construction,
of course! They were doing it. And after they had finished—then
what?
Arlene thought she knew when she saw Dr. Lowry close the vault,
and unlock and plunge the destruct button beside the door.
Everything in there would be annihilated now in ravening white fire.
But the two minds which knew the secrets of the projector—
She must have made a violent effort to escape, almost over-riding the
rogue's compulsions. For she found herself in the living room, not ten
feet from the door that opened into the outer halls where help might
still have been found. But it was as far as she could go; she was
already turning away from the door, starting back across the room
with the quick, graceful automaton stride over which she had no
control. And terror surged up in her again.
As she approached the far wall, she saw Dr. Lowry come out of the
passage from the office, smiling absently, blinking at the floor through
his glasses. He turned without looking up and walked behind her
towards the closed narrow door before Colonel Weldon's nonspace
conduit entry.
So it wasn't to be death, Arlene thought, but personal slavery. The
rogue still had use for them. They were to follow where Weldon had
gone....
Her hand tugged at the door. It wouldn't open.
She wrenched at it violently, savagely, formless panic pounding
through her. After a moment, Dr. Lowry began to mutter uneasily,
then reached out to help her.
The room seemed suddenly to explode; and for an instant Arlene Rolf
felt her mind disintegrating in raging torrents of white light.
She had been looking drowsily for some moments at the lanky, red-
headed man who stood, faced away, half across the room before any
sort of conscious understanding returned. Then, immediately,
everything was there. She went stiff with shock.
Dr. Lowry's living room ... she in this chair and Dr. Lowry stretched out
on the couch. He'd seemed asleep. And standing above him, looking
down at him, the familiar raw-boned, big figure of Frank Harding. Dr.
Frank Harding who had walked up to the Cleaver Spaceport entry
with her today, told her he'd be flying back to the coast.
Frank Harding, the....
Arlene slipped quietly out of the chair, moved across the room behind
Harding's back, watching him. When he began to turn, she darted off
towards the open hall entry.
She heard him make a startled exclamation, come pounding after her.
He caught her at the entry, swung her around, holding her wrists. He
stared down at her from under the bristling red brows. "What the devil
did you think you were doing?"
"You....!" Arlene gasped frantically. "You—" What checked her was
first the surprise, then the dawning understanding in his face. She
stammered, almost dizzy with relief, "I ... I thought you must be...."
Harding shook his head, relaxed his grip on her wrists.
"But I'm not, of course," he said quietly.
"No ... you're not! You wouldn't have had to ... chase me if you were,
would you?" Her eyes went round in renewed dismay. "But I don't ...
he has the diex projector now!"
Harding shook his head again and took her arm. "No, he doesn't!
Now just try to relax a bit, Arlene. We did trap him, you know. It cost
quite a few more lives at the end, but we did. So let's go over and sit
down. I brought some whisky along ... figured you two should be able
to use a little after everything you've been through."
Arlene sat on the edge of a chair, watching him pour out a glass. A
reaction had set in; she felt very weak and shaky now, and she
seemed unable to comprehend entirely that the rogue had been
caught.
She said, "So you were in on this operation too?"
He glanced around. "Uh-huh.... Dome at the bottom of an ocean
basin wasn't at all a bad headquarters under the circumstances. What
put you and Dr. Ben to sleep was light-shock." He handed her the
glass.
"Light-shock?" Arlene repeated.
"Something new," Harding said. "Developed—in another security
island project—for the specific purpose of resolving hypnotic
compulsions, including the very heavy type implanted by the rogue.
He doesn't seem to have been aware of that project, or else he
regarded it as one of our less important efforts which he could afford
to ignore for the present. Anyway, light-shock does do the job, and
very cleanly, though it knocks the patient out for a while in the
process. That side effect isn't too desirable, but so far it's been
impossible to avoid."
"I see," Arlene said. She took a cautious swallow of the whisky and
set the glass down as her eyes began to water.
Frank Harding leaned back against the table and folded his arms. He
scowled thoughtfully down at her.
"We managed to get two persons who were suspected of being the
rogue's unconscious stooges to the island," he said, "and tried light-
shock out on them. It worked and didn't harm them, so we decided to
use it here. Lowry will wake up in another hour at the latest and be
none the worse. Of course, neither of you will remember what
happened while the rogue had you under control, but...."
"You're quite wrong about that," Arlene told him. "I don't remember all
of it, but I'm still very much aware of perhaps half of what happened—
though I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer to forget it. It was like an
extremely unpleasant nightmare."
Harding looked surprised. "That's very curious! The other cases
reported complete amnesia. Perhaps you...."
"You've been under a heavy strain yourself, haven't you, Frank?" she
asked.
He hesitated. "I? What makes you think so?"
"You're being rather gabby. It isn't like you."
Harding grunted. "I suppose you're right. This thing's been tense
enough. He may have enjoyed it—except naturally at the very end.
Playing cat and mouse with the whole human race! Well, the mice
turned out to be a little too much for him, after all. But of course
nothing was certain until that last moment."
"Because none of you could be sure of anyone else?"
"That was it mainly. This was one operation where actually nobody
could be in charge completely or completely trusted. There were
overlaps for everything, and no one knew what all of them were.
When Weldon came here today, he turned on a pocket transmitter so
that everything that went on while he was being instructed in the use
of the diex projector would be monitored outside.
"Outside was also a globe-scanner which duplicated the activities of
the one attached to the projector. We could tell at any moment to
which section of Earth the projector's diex field had been directed.
That was one of the overlapping precautions. It sounded like a
standard check run. There was a little more conversation between
Lowry and Weldon than was normal when you were the assistant
operator, but that could be expected. There were pauses while the
projector was shut down and preparations for the next experiment
were made. Normal again. Then, during one of the pauses, we got
the signal that someone had just entered Weldon's private nonspace
conduit over there from this end. That was not normal, and the
conduit was immediately sealed off at both exits. One more
overlapping precaution, you see ... and that just happened to be the
one that paid off!"
Arlene frowned. "But what did...."
"Well," Harding said, "there were still a number of questions to be
answered, of course. They had to be answered fast and correctly or
the game could be lost. Nobody expected the rogue to show up in
person at the Cleaver Project. The whole security island could have
been destroyed in an instant; we knew he was aware of that. But he'd
obviously made a move of some kind—and we had to assume that
the diex projector was now suspended in the conduit.
"But who, or what, was in there with it? The project guards had been
withdrawn. There'd been only the three of you on the island. The
rogue could have had access to all three at some time or other; and
his compulsions—until we found a way to treat them—were good for
a lifetime. Any of you might have carried that projector into the
conduit to deliver it to him. Or all three might be involved, acting
together. If that was the case, the conduit would have to be re-
opened because the game had to continue. It was the rogue we
wanted, not his tools....
"And there was the other possibility. You and Dr. Ben are among the
rather few human beings on Earth we could be sure were not the
rogue, not one of his impersonations. If he'd been capable of building
a diex projector, he wouldn't have had to steal one. Colonel Weldon
had been with Special Activities for a long time. But he could be an
impersonation. In other words, the rogue."
Arlene felt her face go white. "He was!" she said.
"Eh? How do you know?"
"I didn't realize it, but ... no, go ahead. I'd rather tell you later."
"What didn't you realize?" Harding persisted.
Arlene said, "I experienced some of his feelings ... after he was inside
the conduit. He knew he'd been trapped!" Her hands were shaking. "I
thought they were my own ... that I...." Her voice began to falter.
"Let it go," Harding said, watching her. "It can't have been pleasant."
She shook her head. "I assure you it wasn't!"
"So he could reach you from nonspace!" Harding said. "That was
something we didn't know. We suspected we still didn't have the
whole picture about the rogue. But he didn't know everything either.
He thought his escape route from the project and away through the
conduit system was clear. It was a very bold move. If he'd reached
any point on Earth where we weren't waiting to destroy him from a
distance, he would have needed only a minute or two with the
projector to win all the way. Well, that failed. And a very short time
later, we knew we had the rogue in the conduit."
"How did you find that out?"
Harding said, "The duplicate global scanner I told you about. After all,
the rogue could have been Weldon. Aside from you two, he could
have been almost anyone involved in the operation. He might have
been masquerading as one of our own telepaths! Every location point
the diex field turned to during that 'test run' came under instant
investigation. We were looking for occurrences which might indicate
the rogue had been handling the diex projector.
"The first reports didn't start to come in until after the Weldon imitation
had taken the projector into the conduit. But then, in a few minutes,
we had plenty! They showed the rogue had tested the projector, knew
he could handle it, knew he'd reestablished himself as king of the
world—and this time for good! And then he walked off into the conduit
with his wonderful stolen weapon...."
Arlene said, "He was trying to get Dr. Ben and me to open the project
exit for him again. We couldn't, of course. I never imagined anyone
could experience the terror he felt."
"There was some reason for it," Harding said. "Physical action is
impossible in nonspace, so he couldn't use the projector. He was
helpless while he was in the conduit. And he knew we couldn't
compromise when we let him out.
"We switched the conduit exit to a point eight hundred feet above the
surface of Cleaver Interplanetary Spaceport—the project he's kept us
from completing for the past twenty-odd years—and opened it there.
We still weren't completely certain, you know, that the rogue mightn't
turn out to be a genuine superman who would whisk himself away
and out of our reach just before he hit the marblite paving.
"But he wasn't...."
THE END
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Religious Revelation 1st Edition James

More information about this series at

ISSN 2634-6176 ISSN 2634-6184 (electronic)

Cover illustration: WanRu Chen / Getty Images

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

5 Revelation in Other Traditions29

7 Oracles, Dreams, and Other Revelatory Experiences37

10 Faith and Revelation61

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

© The Author(s) 2021 1

The notion of revelation is well represented in the Abrahamic theistic

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

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

© The Author(s) 2021 7

David repents and confesses,

“I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Sam. 12.13).

As God spoke to Moses, so he speaks to the prophets that follow

And against Damascus:

Behold, Damascus will cease to be

And the Lord said:

thus says the Lord,

Comfort, comfort my people,

And regarding the people of Israel (or Jacob):

Thus said God, the Lord,

On questioning God, the Lord, through Isaiah, is rhetorical. The

“Woe to him who strives with his

On proper worship and observance we find this:

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?

Thus says the Lord:

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,

Thus says the Lord:

Jeremiah delivers God’s instruction:

Thus said the Lord:

The “word came to Jeremiah from the Lord”:

Ezekiel’s prophetic pronouncements say more about this theme:

I will judge you, O house of Israel, everyone according to his

Sometimes in the Tanakh when God reveals his word there is an

The most direct way in which revelation continues to occur is through

According to the Rabbis of the Talmud, Dorff observes,

are new incremental revelations in succeeding generations. “How is it

against injustice “draw legitimacy from the divine source of conscience.”9

As revelation informs the foundational story of Judaism so it informs the

© The Author(s) 2021 17

of nature. Such experiences, in contrast with some prophetic biblical

[t]he present wide acceptance in this country [the United Kingdom] of

Father Herbert Kelly (a priest in the Church of England), who influenced

Modern Library, 1902), pp. 69 and 70.

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is an Abrahamic religion. All three

© The Author(s) 2021 25

Say ye: “We believe

And the 59th verse of Sura 10 begins:

Say: “See ye what things

The Qur’an, even when this explicit instruction is absent, is revelatory of

Part of the Qur’an’s revelation is that there is to be a Day of Judgment,

He also said this:

In the three Abrahamic traditions of the West revelations are given by

© The Author(s) 2021 29

relation to religious reality. He came to see the working of the law of

One, that suffering is inevitable for living beings.

Beyond this revelation attained by the historical Buddha, as we will see in

century. Nanak (1469–1539), the founder of Sikhism, was born in

A commentary on the Bible might relate different parts of the Bible to

© The Author(s) 2021 33

5 Revelation in Other Traditions29

7 Oracles, Dreams, and Other Revelatory Experiences37

10 Faith and Revelation61