Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana

In order that the nature of revelation may be fully understood, there must be set forth both its notion and its division.

1. The genuine notion. a) Etymologically, the Latin verb 'to reveal' (revelare) means "to remove a veil," which impedes the vision of a thing. The same notion underlies the synonymous Greek words (ἀποκάλυψις, φανέρωσις) and the vernacular words (Offenbarung, révélation, etc.). From physical things the word 'revelation' was transferred to signify an intellectual manifestation of a truth more or less unknown. And indeed, from general usage, the divine manifestation of religious truth is customarily called revelation.

Hence revelation in the broadest sense is defined: a divinely made manifestation of religious truth. There is understood, moreover, both the act by which the truth is manifested (active revelation) and the object, or the truth itself that is manifested (passive revelation). We speak only of the act, or fact, by which God manifests religious truths. God, however, can manifest religious truths by a twofold act, namely natural and supernatural. Whence we distinguish natural and supernatural revelation.

b) Natural revelation is a divinely made manifestation of religious truth through the works of creation. For God indeed left as it were his traces in the created world, so that through the works of creation he manifests his existence, his nature, and the other religious truths that are drawn from them. The work proclaims its maker; the creature proclaims the creator, mover, and governor of the world. It suffices to have employed sound reason, so that from the world we ascend to God and from the world we come to know God by the force of the principle of causality.

Since, however, he renders himself knowable through natural works and the exercise of natural reason, this revelation is rightly called natural.

The psalmist magnifies this natural revelation of God: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth the work of his hands"¹. Paul extols it: "God manifested it to them (the gentiles). For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: his eternal power also, and divinity, so that they are inexcusable"². Theologians, however, when they speak of revelation, for the most part do not understand it as natural, but as supernatural.

c) Supernatural revelation, or revelation strictly taken, is a manifestation of religious truth made through the words of God to man. This revelation, therefore, consists in this, that God himself directly enlightens and instructs the human intellect concerning religious truths. Such an influx of God, moreover, is altogether supernatural, since it takes place apart from every concurrence, faculty, and exigency of nature. Apart from every concurrence of nature, because God no longer manifests himself through the works of creation, but through his own speech. Apart from every faculty of nature, because by inborn power man is able to draw religious truths from the created world alone, and indeed by his own reasoning. Apart, finally, from every exigency of nature, because it does not pertain to the constitution, or essence, of human nature that God himself directly instruct man.

Of this supernatural revelation the Apostle writes: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son"³ 2. Spurious notions. a) Certain rationalists, indeed — not to speak of the monists and deists — bandy about 'revelation.' Nevertheless, as is clear from what has been said, they do not understand it as supernatural. For the idealistic, or older, rationalists (Reimarus, Lessing, Semler, Wegscheider, and others) call 'revelation' every, and only, religious knowledge that we acquire by the help of natural reason. Thus Wegscheider, easily the chief among the earlier rationalists, writes: "Only natural revelation, or the manifestation of God through the works of nature, seems able to be rightly defended"⁴ Lessing adds: "that revelation, exactly like education, gives man nothing except what he already possesses by his own nature and can find by his own reason; and hence that there is to be substituted for supernatural revelation a natural revelation so-called only in an improper sense"⁵

b) The empirical rationalists also, under the leadership of Kant, acknowledge only "religion within the bounds of mere reason"⁶ Indeed they contend that "pure" or "theoretical" reason is not even apt for knowing any religious truths whatsoever. For by his intellect man does not know the supersensible "noumena" (transcendental things), but apprehends only sensible "phenomena" by the aid of external experience. "Practical reason," nevertheless, by the aid of internal or subjective experience, "feels" the utility, necessity, and existence of religious truths.⁷ This subjective experience, however, or religious consciousness (religiöses Erlebnis, religiöse Erfahrung, religiöses Bewußtsein), which is nothing but a dictate of the human will, or rather of human sentiment, they call revelation.

c) In almost the same way all the neo-rationalists, or modern Kantians, define revelation, to whom belong the liberal Protestants and those modernists who have come forth from the Catholics.

Albert Ritschl († 1899), father of the liberal school, teaches that Christian revelation arose from this, that God educated the human conscience.⁸

Aug. Sabatier († 1901), the leader of Protestant liberalism in France, calls revelation a manifestation of God in our conscience.⁹

Alfred Loisy, head of the modernists, understands revelation as the conscience, or experience, acquired by man of his own relation to God.¹⁰

The program of the Italian modernists judges revelation to be "an elaboration of religious consciousness." Religious consciousness experiences, or feels, the supernatural, just as the ear feels music. Revelation is that which is produced by this sensation, or subjective experience, and is convertible with it.¹¹

These systems, therefore, reject every revelation in the true sense of the word. They boast of the word 'revelation,' in order the more cunningly to attack it in reality.

Supernatural revelation is specified by reason of the object that is manifested, by reason of the mode in which it is manifested, and by reason of the end for which it is manifested.

1. By reason of the object that is manifested, revelation is either formal or material. That revelation is called formal whose formal object alone (the motive of assent) is supernatural; that is called material whose material object (the argument) as well is supernatural.

Formal revelation, therefore, contains truths that are natural in themselves and on that account accessible to human reason (e.g. the existence of God, the immortality of the soul). For whatever things are natural are also capable of being perceived by natural light. There are, to be sure, countless things in the bowels of the earth or in the firmament of heaven that escape rational cognition, e.g. the number of stars, the essence of electricity, of light, of matter, of animal and vegetative life. Yet these truths remain hidden only per accidens, not per se. They escape the grasp of reason because of external difficulties, not because of their substance or matter itself. If, therefore, they are divinely revealed, they become supernatural with respect to the formal object (or motive or principle) by which they are made known to us; yet they remain natural with respect to the material object (or argument or substance) of the truth itself.

Material revelation, on the other hand, contains truths that are not natural in themselves and on that account are inaccessible to human reason. The very matter (substance or argument) of these truths is such that it cannot be known without revelation.

But a truth to be known can be inaccessible to reason in two ways: either absolutely (simpliciter) or only relatively (relative seu secundum quid).

That truth exceeds reason secundum quid whose existence reason cannot prove before revelation, but whose essence it is able to grasp after revelation, e.g. the institution of the Church, the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. That these truths exist, reason cannot prove with certainty before revelation, although it can affirm their possibility or even their probability. After revelation, however, reason can understand what these truths are, how they are, and why they are. Hence they are rightly called praeterrational truths, or mysteries secundum quid (broadly so called, of the second degree).

That truth exceeds reason simpliciter whose existence reason in no way can prove without revelation, and whose essence it cannot grasp even after revelation has been made. For this reason truths of this sort are called suprarational truths, or mysteries simpliciter (strictly so called, of the first degree), e.g.¹ the mystery of the Trinity. Reason left to itself can prove the existence of the Trinity neither as certain, nor as probable, nor even as possible. Through revelation, however, it learns with certainty that the Trinity is; it also partly understands, i.e. by analogous notions, what the Trinity is; finally it shadows forth at least somewhat, by fitting similitudes, how and why there is a Trinity of persons in God.

2. By reason of the mode in which it takes place, revelation is either mediate or immediate.

It is immediate when God Himself communicates the truth with no legate interposed; it is mediate when God manifests the truth through a legate. The revelation that Moses, the prophets, and the apostles received was immediate; the revelation that the Israelites received through Moses, and Christians through the apostles, is mediate.²

In immediate revelation God must so affect the cognitive faculties that man clearly perceives the truth that is communicated, and knows with certainty that it is communicated to him by God. Since, however, the cognitive faculty is threefold, immediate revelation is likewise distinguished into a threefold kind: sensitive, imaginative, and intellective.

It is sensitive when God speaks to the external senses by voices and other sensible signs. To this belong not only audible voices, but also theophanies (God appearing in the flame of the bush; Daniel seeing the writing on the wall), symbolic visions (Peter seeing unclean animals), and types (the paschal lamb; the bronze serpent; the sacrifice of Melchisedech). Imaginative revelation is present when God opens the truth through a power or influence upon the internal senses. This He can indeed do either by impressing imaginary forms not received through the senses (for instance, if likenesses of colors were impressed in the imagination of one born blind) or even by forms divinely ordered from those that have been received from the senses (Jeremiah 1, 13 seeing a boiling pot; Amos 8, 1 a basket of summer fruit). Intellective revelation consists in this, that God produces intelligible species in the mind itself, as in an internal vision, in prophetic illumination, very often in ecstasy, and likewise in those men who receive infused knowledge and wisdom.³

In mediate revelation God must make men certain that the immediate revelation from which the mediate one is derived is true and divine; in other words: the preacher of revelation must prove that he is sent by God and is a legate for communicating the truth to men. But this divine mission He can render certain by divine signs, especially by miracles and by fulfilled prophecies.⁴

3. By reason of the end for which it takes place, revelation is either private or public.

Private revelation is that which is given for the benefit of one man alone, or at least not of all men. The persons to whom private revelation has been made are bound to believe it with divine faith; the rest, however, neither ought nor can believe it with divine faith, since such a revelation does not pertain to them. Moreover, certainty of its divine origin is had only most rarely; indeed, even the Church in approving private revelations does not declare them truly to be divine, but only that they contain nothing contrary to faith and morals. It is not lawful, however, to despise them, since they are probably divine and certainly useful.

Public revelation is that which is given for the common benefit of all men, namely to found, to develop, and to complete the true religion for the whole human race. It is of this revelation alone that we shall treat.