Religious fanaticism, or religious extremism, is a pejorative designation used to indicate uncritical zeal or obsessive enthusiasm that is related to one's own, or one's group's, devotion to a religion – a form of human fanaticism
that could otherwise be expressed in one's other involvements and
participation, including employment, role, and partisan affinities.
Historically, the term was applied in Christian antiquity to denigrate non-Christian religions, and subsequently acquired its current usage with the Age of Enlightenment.
Features
Lloyd Steffen cites several features associated with religious fanaticism or extremism:
Spiritual needs: Human beings have a spiritual longing for understanding and meaning, and given the mystery of existence,
that spiritual quest can only be fulfilled through some kind of
relationship with ultimacy, whether or not that takes the form as a
"transcendent other". Religion has power to meet this need for meaning
and transcendent relationship.
Attractiveness: It presents itself in such a way that those
who find their way into it come to express themselves in ways consistent
with the particular vision of ultimacy at the heart of this religious
form.
A 'live' option: It is present to the moral consciousness as a
live option that addresses spiritual need and satisfies human longing
for meaning, power, and belonging.
Examples of religious fanaticism
Members of the Jansenist sect having convulsions and spasms as a result of religious fanaticism. Engraving by Bernard Picart.
Ever since Christianity was established, some of those in authority
have sought to expand and control the church, often through the
fanatical use of force. Grant Shafer says, "Jesus of Nazareth is best
known as a preacher of nonviolence".
The start of Christian fanatic rule came with the Roman Emperor Constantine I. Ellens
says, "When Christianity came to power in the empire of Constantine, it
proceeded to almost viciously repress all non-Christians and all
Christians who did not line up with official Orthodox ideology, policy,
and practice". An example of Christians who didn't line up with Orthodox ideology is the Donatists, who "refused to accept repentant clergy who had formerly given way to apostasy when persecuted".
Fanatical Christian activity continued into the Middle Ages with the Crusades. These religious wars were attempts by the Catholics, sanctioned by the Pope, to conquer the Holy Land from the Muslims. However many Catholics see the crusades as a just war. Charles Selengut, in his book Sacred Fury: Understanding Religious Violence, said:
The Crusades were very much holy wars waged to maintain
Christianity's theological and social control. On their way to
conquering the Holy Land from the Muslims by force of arms, the
crusaders destroyed dozens of Jewish communities and killed thousands
because the Jews would not accept the Christian faith. Jews had to be
killed in the religious campaign because their very existence challenged
the sole truth espoused by the Christian Church.
Shafer adds that, "When the crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099,
they killed Muslims, Jews, and native Christians indiscriminately".
Contrary to what Shafer alleges, however, no eyewitness source refers
to Crusaders killing native Christians in Jerusalem, and early Eastern
Christian sources (Matthew of Edessa, Anna Comnena, Michael the Syrian,
etc.) make no such allegation about the Crusaders in Jerusalem.
According to the Syriac Chronicle, all the Christians had already been
expelled from Jerusalem before the Crusaders arrived. Presumably this
would have been done by the Fatimid governor to prevent their possible
collusion with the Crusaders.
Another prominent form of fanaticism according to some came a few centuries later with the Spanish Inquisition.
The Inquisition was the monarchy's way of making sure their people
stayed within Catholic Christianity. Selengut said, "The inquisitions
were attempts at self-protection and targeted primarily "internal
enemies" of the church".
The driving force of the Inquisition was the Inquisitors, who were
responsible for spreading the truth of Christianity. Selengut
continues, saying:
The inquisitors generally saw themselves as educators helping people
maintain correct beliefs by pointing out errors in knowledge and
judgment... Punishment and death came only to those who refused to admit
their errors ... during the Spanish Inquisitions of the fifteenth
century, the clear distinction between confession and innocence and
remaining in error became muddled.... The investigators had to invent
all sorts of techniques, including torture, to ascertain whether ... new converts' beliefs were genuine.
During the Reformation Christian fanaticism increased between Catholics and the recently formed Protestants.
Many Christians were killed for having rival viewpoints. The
Reformation set off a chain of sectarian wars between the Catholics and
the sectarian Protestants, culminating in the wars of religion.
Since Osama bin Laden's fatwa in 1998, jihad
has increasingly become an internationally recognized term. Bin Laden's
concept, though, is very different from the actual meaning of the term.
In the religious context, jihad most nearly means "working urgently for a certain godly objective, generally an imperialist one". The word jihad
in Arabic means 'struggle'. The struggle can be a struggle of
implementing the Islamic values in daily activities, a struggle with
others to counter arguments against Islam, or self-defense when
physically attacked because of belief in Islam. According to Steffen,
there are portions of the Quran where military jihad is used. As
Steffen says, though, "Jihad in these uses is always defensive. Not only
does 'jihad' not endorse acts of military aggression, but 'jihad' is
invoked in Qur'anic passages to indicate how uses of force are always
subject to restraint and qualification". This kind of jihad differs greatly from the kind most commonly discussed today.
Thomas Farr, in an essay titled Islam's Way to Freedom,
states that "Even though most Muslims reject violence, the extremists'
use of sacred texts lends their actions authenticity and recruiting
power". (Freedom 24) He goes on to say, "The radicals insist that their
central claim – God's desire for Islam's triumph – requires no
interpretation. According to them, true Muslims will pursue it by any
means necessary, including dissimulation, civil coercion, and the killing of innocents". (Freedom 24)
According to certain observers this disregard for others and
rampant use of violence is markedly different from the peaceful message
that jihad is meant to employ. Although fanatic jihadists have
committed many terroristic acts throughout the world, perhaps the best
known is the September 11 attacks.
According to Ellens, the al-Qaeda members who took part in the
terrorist attacks did so out of their belief that, by doing it, they
would "enact a devastating blow against the evil of secularized and
non-Muslim America. They were cleansing this world, God's temple".
Its name derives from source of the funding, petroleum exports, that spread it through the Muslim world after the Yom Kippur War The term is sometimes called "pejorative" or a "nickname".
According to Sandra Mackey the term was coined by Fouad Ajami. It has been used by French political scientist Gilles Kepel, Bangladeshi scholar Imtiyaz Ahmed, and Egyptian philosopher Fouad Zakariyya, among others.
Usage and definitions
The
use of the term to refer to "Wahhabism", the dominant interpretation of
Islam in Saudi Arabia, is widespread but not universal. Variations on
or different uses of the term include:
Use of resources by Saudi Arabia "to project itself as a major
player in the Muslim world": the distribution of large sums of money
from public and private sources in Saudi Arabia to advance Wahhabi
doctrines and pursue the Saudi Arabian foreign policy.
Attempts by the Saudi rulers to use both Islam and its wealth to win the loyalty of the Muslim world.
Diplomatic, political, economic, and religious policies promoted by Saudi Arabia.
The type of Islam favored by petroleum-exporting Muslim-majority countries, particularly the other Gulf monarchies (United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, etc.), not just Saudi Arabia.
A "hugely successful" enterprise made up of a "colossal ensemble" of media and other cultural organs that has broken the "secularist and nationalist"
monopoly of the state on culture, media and, "to a lesser extent",
education; and is supported by both Islamists and socially conservative
business "elements", who opposed the Arab nationalist ideologies of Nasserism and Baathism.
More conservative Islamic cultural practices (separation of the sexes, wearing of the hijab or a more complete hijab) brought back (to other Muslim states, such as Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.) from Gulf oil states by migrant workers.
A term used by secularists, particularly in Egypt, to refer to efforts to require the enforcement of sharia (Islamic law).
An Islamic interpretation that is "anti-woman, anti-intellectual,
anti-progress, and anti-science... largely funded by the Saudis and
Kuwaitis."
A map of the Muslim world. Hanbali (dark green) is the predominant Sunni school in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.Petroleum products revenue in billions of dollars per annum for five major Arab petroleum exporting countries. Saudi Arabian production
One scholar who spelled out the idea of petro-Islam in some detail is Gilles Kepel.
According to Kepel, prior to the 1973 oil embargo, religion throughout
the Muslim world was "dominated by national or local traditions rooted
in the piety of the common people." Clerics looked to their different
schools of fiqh (the four SunniMadhhabs: Hanafi in the Turkish zones of South Asia, Maliki in Africa, Shafi'i in Southeast Asia, plus Shi'a Ja'fari, and "held Saudi inspired puritanism" (using another school of fiqh, Hanbali) in "great suspicion on account of its sectarian character," according to Gilles Kepel.
While the 1973 War
(also called the Yom Kippur War) was started by Egypt and Syria to take
back land won by Israel in 1967, the "real victors" of the war were the
Arab "oil-exporting countries", (according to Gilles Kepel), whose embargo against Israel's western allies stopped Israel's counter offensive.
The embargo's political success enhanced the prestige of those
who embargoed and the reduction in the global supply of oil sent oil
prices soaring (from $3 per barrel to nearly $12)
and with them, oil exporter revenues. That put Muslim oil exporting
states in a "clear position of dominance within the Muslim world." The
most dominant was Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter by far (see bar
chart).
Saudi Arabians viewed their oil wealth not as an accident of
geology or history but connected to religion, a blessing by God of them,
to "be solemnly acknowledged and lived up to" with pious behavior.
With its new wealth the rulers of Saudi Arabia sought to replace
nationalist movements in the Muslim world with Islam, to bring Islam "to
the forefront of the international scene," and to unify Islam worldwide
under the "single creed" of Wahhabism, paying particular attention to
Muslims who had immigrated to the West (a "special target").
Influence of "Petro-dollars"
According to scholar Gilles Kepel, (who devoted a chapter of his book Jihad to the subject -- "Building Petro-Islam on the Ruins of Arab Nationalism"), in the years immediately after the 1973 War,
'petro-Islam' was a "sort of nickname" for a "constituency" of Wahhabi
preachers and Muslim intellectuals who promoted "strict implementation
of the sharia [Islamic law] in the political, moral and cultural spheres."
In the coming decades, Saudi Arabia's interpretation of Islam became influential (according to Kepel) through
the spread of Wahhabi religious doctrines via Saudi charities; an
increased migration of Muslims to work in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states; and
a shift in the balance of power among Muslim states toward the oil-producing countries.
Author Sandra Mackey describes the use of petrodollars on facilities for the hajj
such as by leveling hill peaks to make room for tents, providing
electricity for tents and cooling pilgrims with ice and air
conditioning, as part of "Petro-Islam", which she describes as a way of
building the Muslim faithful's loyalty toward the Saudi government.
Religious funding
The Saudi ministry for religious affairs printed and distributed millions of Qurans
free of charge, along with doctrinal texts that followed the Wahhabi
interpretation. In mosques throughout the world "from the African plains
to the rice paddies of Indonesia and the Muslim immigrant high-rise
housing projects of European cities, the same books could be found,"
paid for by Saudi Arabian government.
Imtiyaz Ahmed, a religious scholar and professor of International Relations at University of Dhaka
sees changes in religious practices in Bangladesh as linked to Saudi
Arabia's efforts to promote Wahhabism through the financial help it
provides countries like Bangladesh. The Mawlid,
the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday and formerly "an
integral part of Bangladeshi culture" is no longer popular, while black
burqas for women are much more so. The discount on the price of oil
imports Bangladesh receives does not "come free", according to Ahmed.
"Saudi Arabia is giving oil, Saudi Arabia would definitely want that
some of their ideas to come with oil."
More than 1,500 mosques were built around the world from 1975 to 2000 paid for by Saudi public funds.
The Saudi-headquartered and financed Muslim World League
played a pioneering role in supporting Islamic associations, mosques,
and investment plans for the future. It opened offices in "every area of
the world where Muslims lived."
The process of financing mosques usually involved presenting a local
office of the Muslim World League with evidence of the need for a
mosque/Islamic center to obtain the offices 'recommendation' (tazkiya) to "a generous donor within the kingdom or one of the emirates."
Saudi-financed mosques were generally built using marble
'international style' design and green neon lighting, in a break with
most local Islamic architectural traditions, but following Wahhabi ones.
One mechanism for the redistribution of (some) oil revenues from
Saudi Arabia and other Muslim oil-exporters, to the poorer Muslim
nations of African and Asia, was the Islamic Development Bank. Headquartered in Saudi Arabia, it opened for business in 1975. Its lenders and borrowers were member states of Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and it strengthened "Islamic cohesion" between them.
Saudi Arabians also helped establish Islamic banks with private investors and depositors. DMI (Dar al-Mal al-Islami: the House of Islamic Finance), founded in 1981 by Prince Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud, and the Al Baraka group, established in 1982 by Sheik Saleh Abdullah Kamel (a Saudi billionaire), were both transnational holding companies.
Migration
By 1975, over one million workers, from unskilled country people to experienced professors – from Sudan, Pakistan, India, Southeast Asia, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria – had moved to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf
states to work and returned after a few years with savings. Most of the
workers were Arab and most were Muslim. Ten years later the number had
increased to 5.15 million and Arabs were no longer in the majority. 43%
(mostly Muslims) came from the Indian subcontinent. In one country, Pakistan, in a single year, (1983),
the money sent home by Gulf emigrants amounted to $3
billion, compared with a total of $735 million given to the nation in
foreign aid.... The underpaid petty functionary of yore could now drive
back to his hometown at the wheel of a foreign car, build himself a
house in a residential suburb, and settle down to invest his savings or
engage in trade... he owed nothing to his home state, where he could
never have earned enough to afford such luxuries.
Muslims who had moved to Saudi Arabia, or other "oil-rich monarchies
of the peninsula" to work, often returned to their poor home country
following religious practice more intensely, particularly practices of
Wahhabi Muslims. Having "grown rich in this Wahhabi milieu", it was not
surprising that the returning Muslims believed that there was a
connection between that milieu and "their material prosperity" and that
when they returned, they followed religious practices more intensely,
which followed Wahhabi tenants.
Kepel gives examples of migrant workers returning home with new
affluence, asking to be addressed by servants as "hajja" rather than
"Madame" (the old bourgeois custom).
Another imitation of Saudi Arabia adopted by affluent migrant workers
was increased segregation of the sexes, including shopping areas.
State leadership
In the 1950s and 1960s Gamal Abdul-Nasser,
the leading exponent of Arab nationalism and the president of the Arab
world's largest country had great prestige and popularity.
However, in 1967 Nasser led the Six-Day War against Israel which ended not in the elimination of Israel but in the decisive defeat of the Arab forces
and loss of a substantial chunk of Egyptian territory. This defeat,
combined with the economic stagnation from which Egypt suffered, were
contrasted with the perceived victory of the October 1973 war whose pious battle cry of Allahu Akbar replaced "Land! Sea! Air!" slogan of the 1967 war, and with the enormous wealth of the resolutely non-nationalist Saudi Arabia.
This changed "the balance of power among Muslim states" toward
Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting countries. gaining as Egypt lost
influence. The oil-exporters emphasized "religious commonality" among
Arabs, Turks, Africans, and Asians, and downplayed "differences of
language, ethnicity, and nationality."
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, whose permanent Secretariat is located in Jeddah in Western Saudi Arabia, was founded after the 1967 war.
Criticism
At least one observer, The New Yorker magazine's investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, has suggested that petro-Islam is being spread by those whose motivations are less than earnest or pious. Petro-Islam funding following the Gulf War, according to Hersh, "amounts to protection money" from the Saudi regime "to fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it."
Egyptian existentialistFouad Zakariyya
has accused purveyors of Petro-Islam as having as their objective the
protection of the oil wealth and "social relations" of the "tribal
societies that possess the lion's share of this wealth," at the expense
of the long-term development of the region and the majority of its
people.
He further states that it is a "brand of Islam" that bills itself as
"pure" but rather than being the Islam of the early Muslims has "never"
been "seen before in history".
Authors who criticize the "thesis" of Petro-Islam itself (that
petrodollars have had a significant effect on Muslim beliefs and
practices) include Joel Beinin and Joe Stork. They argue that in Egypt,
Sudan and Jordan, "Islamic movements have demonstrated a high level of
autonomy from their original patrons." The strength and growth of Muslim Brotherhood
and other forces of conservative political Islam in Egypt can be
explained, according to Beinin and Stork, by internal forces: the
historical strength of the Muslim Brotherhood, sympathy for the
"martyred" Sayyid Qutb, anger with the "autocratic tendencies" and the failed promises of prosperity of the Sadat government.
Illumination from Liber Scivias, showing Hildegard of Bingen receiving a vision, dictating to her scribe and sketching on a wax tablet.
In religion and theology, revelation (or divine revelation) is the disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity (god) or other supernatural entity or entities.
Background
With the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, beginning about the mid-17th century, the development of rationalism, materialism and atheism, the concept of supernatural revelation itself faced skepticism. In The Age of Reason (1794–1809), Thomas Paine developed the theology of deism, rejecting the possibility of miracles and arguing that a revelation can be considered valid only for the original recipient, with all else being hearsay.
Types
Individual revelation
Thomas Aquinas believed in two types of individual revelation from God, general revelation and special revelation. In general revelation, God reveals himself through his creation, such that at least some truths about God can be learned by the empirical study of nature, physics, cosmology, etc., to an individual. Special revelation is the knowledge of God and spiritual matters which can be discovered through supernatural means, such as scripture or miracles, by individuals. Direct revelation refers to communication from God to someone in particular.
Though one may deduce the existence of God and some of God's
attributes through general revelation, certain specifics may be known
only through special revelation. Aquinas believed that special
revelation is equivalent to the revelation of God in Jesus. The major
theological components of Christianity, such as the Trinity and the Incarnation,
are revealed in the teachings of the church and the scriptures and may
not otherwise be deduced. Special revelation and general revelation are
complementary rather than contradictory in nature.
According to Dumitru Stăniloae, Eastern Orthodox Church’s position on general/special revelation is in stark contrast to Protestant and Catholic
theologies that see a clear difference between general and special
revelation and tend to argue that the former is not sufficient to
salvation. In Orthodox Christianity, he argues, there is no separation
between the two and supernatural revelation merely embodies the former
in historical persons and actions.
"Continuous revelation" is a term for the theological position that God continues to reveal divine principles or commandments to humanity.
In the 20th century, religious existentialists
proposed that revelation held no content in and of itself but rather
that God inspired people with his presence by coming into contact with
them. Revelation is a human response that records how we respond to God.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote of his personal experience of inspiration and his own experience of “the idea of revelation” in his work Ecce Homo (book):
Has any one at the end of the
nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age
understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one
had the smallest vestige of superstition left in one, it would hardly be
possible completely to set aside the idea that one is the mere
incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power. The idea of
revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly convulses and
upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable
certainty and accuracy—describes the simple fact. One hears—one does not
seek; one takes—one does not ask who gives: a thought suddenly flashes
up like lightning, it comes with necessity, without faltering—I have
never had any choice in the matter.
Public revelation
The mass-revelation at the Mount Horeb in an illustration from a Christian Bible card published by the Providence Lithograph Company, 1907
Some religious groups believe a deity has been revealed or spoken to a
large group of people or have legends to a similar effect. In the Book of Exodus, Yahweh is said to have given Ten Commandments to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. In Christianity, the Book of Acts describes the Day of Pentecost wherein the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples of Jesus in the form of fire that they began praising in tongues and experienced mass revelation. The Lakota people believe Ptesáŋwiŋ spoke directly to the people in the establishment of Lakota religious traditions. Some versions of an Aztec legend tell of Huitzilopochtli speaking directly to the Aztec people upon their arrival at Anåhuac. Historically, some emperors, cult leaders, and other figures have also been deified and treated as though their words are themselves revelations.
Methods
Verbal
Some people hold that God can communicate with people in a way that gives direct, propositional content: This is termed verbal revelation. Orthodox Judaism and some forms of Christianity hold that the first five books of Moses were dictated by God in such a fashion.
Non-verbal propositional
One
school of thought holds that revelation is non-verbal and non-literal,
yet it may have propositional content. People were divinely inspired by
God with a message, but
Isaiah writes that he received his message through visions, where he would see YHWH,
the God of Israel, speaking to angelic beings that surrounded him.
Isaiah would then write down the dialogue exchanged between YHWH and the
angels. This form of revelation constitutes the major part of the text of the Book of Isaiah. The same formula of divine revelation is used by other prophets throughout the Tanakh, such as Micaiah in 1 Kings 22:19–22.
not in a verbal-like sense.
RabbiAbraham Joshua Heschel
has written, "To convey what the prophets experienced, the Bible could
either use terms of descriptions or terms of indication. Any
description of the act of revelation in empirical categories would have
produced a caricature. That is why all the Bible does is to state that
revelation happened; how it happened is something they could only convey
in words that are evocative and suggestive."
Epistemology
Members of Abrahamic religions,
including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, believe that God exists and
can in some way reveal his will to people. Members of those religions
distinguish between true prophets and false prophets, and there are documents offering criteria by which to distinguish true from false prophets. The question of epistemology then arises: how to know?
Some believe that revelation can originate directly from a deity or through an agent such as an angel.
One who has experienced such contact with, or communication from, the
divine is often called a prophet. An article (p. 555) under the heading
"mysticism," and contributed by Ninian Smart, J. F. Rowny Professor of
Comparative Religion, University of California, and President of the
American Academy of Religion, writing in the 1999 edition of "The Norton
Dictionary of Modern Thought," (W. W. Norton & Co. Inc.), suggests
that the more proper and wider term for such an encounter would be
mystical, making such a person a mystic. All prophets would be mystics, but not all mystics would be prophets.
Revelation from a supernatural source is of lesser importance in some other religious traditions, such as Taoism and Confucianism.
'Revelation writing': The first draft of a tablet of Bahá'u'lláh, recorded in shorthand script by an amanuensis
The Báb, Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá, the central figures of the Bahá'í Faith,
received thousands of written enquiries, and wrote thousands of
responses, hundreds of which amount to whole and proper books, while
many are shorter texts, such as letters. In addition, the Bahá'í Faith
has large works which were divinely revealed in a very short time, as in
a night, or a few days. Additionally, because many of the works were first recorded by an amanuensis, most were submitted for approval and correction and the final text was personally approved by the revelator.
Bahá'u'lláh would occasionally write the words of revelation down
himself, but normally the revelation was dictated to his amanuensis,
who sometimes recorded it in what has been called revelation writing,
a shorthand script written with extreme speed owing to the rapidity of
the utterance of the words. Afterwards, Bahá'u'lláh revised and approved
these drafts. These revelation drafts and many other transcriptions of Bahá'u'lláh's writings, around 15,000 items, some of which are in his own handwriting, are kept in the International Bahá'í Archives in Haifa, Israel.
Many Christians believe in the possibility and even reality of private revelations, messages from God for individuals, which can come in a variety of ways. Montanism is an example in early Christianity and there are alleged cases today also. However, Christians see as of a much higher level the revelation recorded in the collection of books known as the Bible. They consider these books to be written by human authors under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They regard Jesus as the supreme revelation of God, with the Bible being a revelation in the sense of a witness to him. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "the Christian faith is not a 'religion of the book.' Christianity is the religion of the 'Word of God', a word which is 'not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living".
Gregory and Nix speak of Biblical inerrancy
as meaning that, in its original form, the Bible is totally without
error, and free from all contradiction, including the historical and
scientific parts. Coleman speaks of Biblical infallibility as meaning that the Bible is inerrant on issues of faith and practice but not history or science. The Catholic Church
speaks not about infallibility of Scripture but about its freedom from
error, holding "the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture". The Second Vatican Council,
citing earlier declarations, stated: "Since everything asserted by the
inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the
Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged
as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God
wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation".
It added: "Since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human
fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly
what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what
meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to
manifest by means of their words."
The Reformed Churches believe in the Bible is inerrant in the sense
spoken of by Gregory and Nix and "deny that Biblical infallibility and
inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes,
exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science". The Westminster Confession of Faith speaks of "the infallible truth and divine authority" of the Scriptures.
In the New Testament, Jesus treats the Old Testament as authoritative and says it "cannot be broken" . 2 Timothy
3:16 says: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness". The Second Epistle of Peter
claims that "no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own
interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man,
but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit".
It also speaks of Paul's letters as containing some things "hard to
understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own
destruction, as they do the other Scriptures".
This letter does not specify "the other Scriptures", nor does the
term "all Scripture" in 2 Timothy indicate which writings were or would
be breathed out by God and useful for teaching, since it does not
preclude later works, such as the Book of Revelation and the Epistles of John may have been. The Catholic Church recognizes 73 books as inspired and forming the Bible (46 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament). The most common versions of the Bible that Protestants have today consist of 66 of these books. None of the 66 or 73 books gives a list of revealed books.
Theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher Paul Johannes Tillich
(1886–1965), who sought to correlate culture and faith so that "faith
need not be unacceptable to contemporary culture and contemporary
culture need not be unacceptable to faith", argued that revelation never
runs counter to reason (affirming Thomas Aquinas who said that faith is eminently rational), and that both poles of the subjective human experience are complementary.
Karl Barth
argued that God is the object of God's own self-knowledge, and
revelation in the Bible means the self-unveiling to humanity of the God
who cannot be discovered by humanity simply through its own efforts. For
him, the Bible is not The Revelation; rather, it points to
revelation. Human concepts can never be considered as identical to God's
revelation, and Scripture is written in human language, expressing
human concepts. It cannot be considered identical with God's revelation.
However, God does reveal himself through human language and concepts,
and thus Christ is truly presented in scripture and the preaching of the
church.
'Our holy mother, the Church, holds
and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things,
can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light
of human reason.' Without this capacity, man would not be able to
welcome God's revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created
'in the image of God'.
In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however,
man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of
reason alone [...]
This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God's revelation,
not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also
'about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not
beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition
of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm
certainty and with no admixture of error'
The Catholic Church also believes Jesus Christ is the "fullness and mediator of all Revelations", and that no new divine revelation will come until the Second Coming.
It also believes that God gradually leads the church into a deeper
understanding of divine revelation, such as by private revelations,
which do not fulfill, complete, substitute or supersede divine
revelation but help one live by divine revelation. The church does not
obligate the faithful to believe in, follow, or publish private
revelations, whether they're approved or otherwise.
The Latter Day Saint movement teaches that the movement began with a revelation from God, which began a process of restoring
the gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth. Latter Day Saints also teach
that revelation is the foundation of the church established by JesusChrist and that it remains an essential element of his true church today. Continuous revelation provides individual Latter Day Saints with a testimony, described by Richard Bushman as "one of the most potent words in the Mormon lexicon".
Latter Day Saints believe in an open scriptural canon, and in addition to the Bible and the Book of Mormon, have books of scripture containing the revelations of modern-day prophets such as the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price.
In addition, many Latter Day Saints believe that ancient prophets in
other regions of the world received revelations that resulted in
additional scriptures that have been lost and may, one day, be
forthcoming. Latter Day Saints also believe that the United States Constitution is a divinely inspired document.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sustain the President of the Church as prophet, seer, and revelator, the only person on earth who receives revelation to guide the entire church. They also sustain the two counselors in the First Presidency, as well as the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, as prophets, seers, and revelators.
They believe that God has followed a pattern of continued revelation to
prophets throughout the history of mankind to establish doctrine and
maintain its integrity, as well as to guide the church under changing
world conditions.
When this pattern of revelation was broken, it was because the
receivers of revelation had been rejected and often killed. In the
meridian
of time, Paul described prophets and apostles in terms of a foundation,
with Christ as the cornerstone, which was built to prevent doctrinal
shift—"that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and
carried about by every wind of doctrine".
To maintain this foundation, new apostles were chosen and ordained to
replace those lost to death or transgression, as when Matthias was
called by revelation to replace Judas (Acts 1:15–26). However, as
intensifying persecution led to the imprisonment and martyrdom of the
apostles, it eventually became impossible to continue the apostolic succession.
Once the foundation of apostles and prophets was lost, the
integrity of Christian doctrine as established by Christ and the
apostles began to be compromised by those who continued to develop
doctrine despite not being called or authorized to receive revelation
for the body of the church. In the absence of revelation, these
post-apostolic theologians couldn't help but introduce elements of human
reasoning, speculation, and personal interpretation of scripture (2 Pet
1:19–20)—which over time led to the loss or corruption of various
doctrinal truths, as well as the addition of new man-made doctrines.
This naturally led to much disagreement and schism, which over the
centuries culminated in the large number of Christian churches on the
earth today. Mormons believe that God resumed his pattern of revelation
when the world was again ready, by calling the Prophet Joseph Smith to
restore the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth.
Since that time there has been a consistent succession of prophets and
apostles, which God has promised will not be broken before the Second
Coming of Christ (Dan 2:44).
Each member of the LDS Church is also confirmed a member of the
church following baptism and given the "gift of the Holy Ghost" by which
each member is encouraged to develop a personal relationship with that
divine being and receive personal revelation for their own direction and
that of their family. The Latter Day Saint concept of revelation
includes the belief that revelation from God is available to all those
who earnestly seek it with the intent of doing good. It also teaches
that everyone is entitled to personal revelation with respect to his or
her stewardship
(leadership responsibility). Thus, parents may receive inspiration from
God in raising their families, individuals can receive divine
inspiration to help them meet personal challenges, church officers may
receive revelation for those whom they serve, and so forth.
The important consequence of this is that each person may receive
confirmation that particular doctrines taught by a prophet are true, as
well as gain divine insight in using those truths for their own benefit
and eternal progress. In the church, personal revelation is expected
and encouraged, and many converts believe that personal revelation from
God was instrumental in their conversion. Joseph F. Smith,
the sixth president of the LDS Church, summarized this church's belief
concerning revelation by saying, "We believe… in the principle of direct
revelation from God to man." (Smith, 362)
Śruti, Sanskrit for "that which is heard", refers to the body of most authoritative, ancient religious texts comprising the central canon of Hinduism. It includes the four Vedas including its four types of embedded texts—the Samhitas, the early Upanishads. Śrutis have been variously described as a revelation through anubhava (direct experience), or of primordial origins realized by ancient Rishis. In Hindu tradition, they have been referred to as apauruṣeya (not created by humans). The Śruti texts themselves assert that they were skillfully created by Rishis (sages), after inspired creativity, just as a carpenter builds a chariot.
Muhammad's Call to Prophecy and the First Revelation; leaf from a copy of the Majmac al-tawarikh (Compendium of Histories), ca. 1425; Timurid. From Herat, Afghanistan.
Muslims believe that God (Arabic: ألله Allah) revealed his final message to all of existence through Muhammad via the angel Gabriel. Muhammad is considered to have been the Seal of the Prophets and the last revelation, the Qur'an, is believed by Muslims to be the flawless final revelation of God to humanity, valid until the Last Day. The Qur'an claims to have been revealed word by word and letter by letter.
Muslims hold that the message of Islam is the same as the message preached by all the messengers sent by God to humanity since Adam.
Muslims believe that Islam is the oldest of the monotheistic religions
because it represents both the original and the final revelation of God
to Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and Muhammad. Likewise, Muslims believe that every prophet received revelation in their lives, as each prophet was sent by God to guide mankind. Jesus is significant in this aspect as he received revelation in a twofold aspect, as Muslims believe he preached the Gospel while also having been taught the Torah.
According to Islamic traditions, Muhammad began receiving
revelations from the age of 40, delivered through the angel Gabriel over
the last 23 years of his life. The content of these revelations, known
as the Qur'an, was memorized and recorded by his followers and compiled from dozens of hafiz as well as other various parchments or hides into a single volume shortly after his death. In Muslim theology, Muhammad is considered equal in importance to all other prophets of God and to make distinction among the prophets is a sin, as the Qur'an itself promulgates equality between God's prophets.(Quran 3:84)
Many scholars have made the distinction between revelation and inspiration,
which according to Muslim theology, all righteous people can receive.
Inspiration refers to God inspiring a person to commit some action, as
opposed to revelation, which only the prophets received. Moses's mother,
Jochebed, being inspired to send the infant Moses in a cradle down the Nile river is a frequently cited example of inspiration, as is Hagar searching for water for the infant Ishmael.
"Mattan Torah" redirects here. Mattan Torah is "the gift of Torah". For Z'man Mattan Torah ("the time of the giving of the Torah"), see Shavuot.
The term revelation is used in two senses in Jewish theology; it either denotes (1) what in rabbinical language is called Gilluy Shekinah,
a manifestation of God by some wondrous act of his which overawes man
and impresses him with what he sees, hears, or otherwise perceives of
his glorious presence; or it denotes (2) a manifestation of his will
through oracular words, signs, statutes, or laws.
One of the major trends in modern Jewish philosophy was the
attempt to develop a theory of Judaism through existentialism. One of
the primary players in this field was Franz Rosenzweig. His major work, Star of Redemption,
expounds a philosophy in which he portrays the relationships between
God, humanity and world as they are connected by creation, revelation
and redemption.
Conservative Jewish philosophers Elliot N. Dorff and Neil Gillman take the existentialist philosophy of Rosenzweig as one of their starting points for understanding Jewish philosophy. (They come to different conclusions, however.)
Rabbinic Judaism, and contemporary Orthodox Judaism, hold that the Torah (Pentateuch) extant today is essentially the same one that the whole of the Jewish people received on Mount Sinai, from God, upon their Exodus from Egypt.
Beliefs that God gave a "Torah of truth" to Moses (and the rest of the
people), that Moses was the greatest of the prophets, and that the Law
given to Moses will never be changed, are three of the Thirteen Principles of Faith of Orthodox Judaism according to Maimonides.
Orthodox Judaism believes that in addition to the written Torah, God also revealed to Moses a set of oral teachings, called the Oral Torah. In addition to this revealed law, Jewish law contains decrees and enactments made by prophets, rabbis, and sages over the course of Jewish history. Haredi Judaism tends to regard even rabbinic decrees as being of divine origin or divinely inspired, while Modern Orthodox Judaism tends to regard them as being more potentially subject to human error, although due to the Biblical verse "Do not stray from their words" ("Deuteronomy 17:11) it is still accepted as binding law.
Conservative Judaism
tends to regard both the Torah and the Oral law as not verbally
revealed. The Conservative approach tends to regard the Torah as
compiled by redactors in a manner similar to the Documentary Hypothesis.
However, Conservative Jews also regard the authors of the Torah as
divinely inspired, and many regard at least portions of it as
originating with Moses. Positions can vary from the position of Joel Roth, following David Weiss HaLivni,
that while the Torah originally given to Moses on Mount Sinai became
corrupted or lost and had to be recompiled later by redactors, the
recompiled Torah is nonetheless regarded as fully Divine and legally
authoritative, to the position of Gordon Tucker
that the Torah, while Divinely inspired, is a largely human document
containing significant elements of human error, and should be regarded
as the beginning of an ongoing process which is continuing today. Conservative Judaism regards the Oral Law as divinely inspired, but nonetheless subject to human error.
Reform and Reconstructionist Jews also accept the Documentary
Hypothesis for the origin of the Torah, and tend to view all of the Oral
law as an entirely human creation. Reform believe that the Torah is not a direct revelation
from God, but is a document written by human ancestors, carrying human
understanding and experience, and seeking to answer the question: 'What
does God require of us?'. They believe that, though it contains many
'core-truths' about God and humanity, it is also time bound. They
believe that God's will is revealed through the interaction of humanity
and God throughout history, and so, in that sense, Torah is a product of
an ongoing revelation. Reconstructionist Judaism denies the notion of revelation entirely.
Prophets
Although the Nevi'im
(the books of the Prophets) are considered divine and true, this does
not imply that the books of the prophets are always read literally.
Jewish tradition has always held that prophets used metaphors and
analogies. There exists a wide range of commentaries explaining and
elucidating those verses consisting of metaphor. Rabbinic Judaism regards Moses as the greatest of the prophets, and this view is one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith
of traditional Judaism. Consistent with the view that revelation to
Moses was generally clearer than revelation to other prophets, Orthodox
views of revelation to prophets other than Moses have included a range
of perspectives as to directness. For example, Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed said that accounts of revelation in the Nevi'im were not always as literal as in the Torah and that some prophetic accounts reflect allegories rather than literal commands or predictions.
ConservativeRabbi and philosopherAbraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972), author of a number of works on prophecy, said that, "Prophetic inspiration must be understood as an event, not as a process."[52] In his work God in Search of Man, he discussed the experience of being a prophet. In his book Prophetic Inspiration After the Prophets: Maimonides and Others, Heschel references to continued prophetic inspiration in Jewish rabbinic literature following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and into medieval and even Modern times. He wrote that
"To convey what the prophets experienced, the Bible could either
use terms of descriptions or terms of indication. Any description of
the act of revelation in empirical categories would have produced a
caricature. That is why all the Bible does is to state that revelation
happened. How it happened is something they could only convey in words
that are evocative and suggestive."
Sikhism
The Guru Granth Sahib is considered to be a divine revelation by God to the Sikh gurus.
In various verses of Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh gurus themselves state
that they merely speak what the divine teacher (God) commands them to
speak.
Guru Nanak frequently used to tell his ardent follower Mardana "Oh Mardana, play the rabaab the Lord's word is descending onto me."
In certain passages of Guru Granth sahib, it is clearly said the
authorship is of divine origin and the gurus were merely the channel
through which such revelations came.
Recent revelations
Crowd looking at the Sun during the "Miracle of the Sun", Fatima, Portugal, 1917.
The Miracle of the Sun
occurred in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. While some consider it to be a
genuine miracle, others regard it as a natural phenomenon with a natural
explanation.
A revelation communicated by a supernatural entity reported as being present during the event is called a vision. Direct conversations between the recipient and the supernatural entity, or physical marks such as stigmata, have been reported. In rare cases, such as that of Saint Juan Diego, physical artifacts accompany the revelation. The Roman Catholic concept of interior locution includes just an inner voice heard by the recipient.
In the Abrahamic religions, the term is used to refer to the process by which God reveals knowledge of himself, his will, and his divine providence to the world of human beings. In secondary usage, revelation refers to the resulting human knowledge about God, prophecy, and other divine things. Revelation from a supernatural source plays a less important role in some other religious traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.
Quakers, known formally as the Religious Society of Friends, are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to experience the light within or see "that of God in every one". Most Quakers believe in continuing revelation: that God continuously reveals truth directly to individuals. George Fox said, "Christ has come to teach His people Himself." Friends often focus on feeling the presence of God. As Isaac Penington
wrote in 1670, "It is not enough to hear of Christ, or read of Christ,
but this is the thing – to feel him to be my root, my life, and my
foundation..." Quakers reject the idea of priests, believing in the priesthood of all believers.
Some express their concept of God using phrases such as "the inner
light", "inward light of Christ", or "Holy Spirit". Quakers first
gathered around George Fox in the mid–17th century and belong to a
historically Protestant Christian set of denominations.
.jpg)
