Revelation [from Latin revelátio, an unveiling, revealing, derivative of reveláre, unveil; re-, back + veláre, to veil, derivative of vélum, a veil]: in its active meaning, the act of God by which he communicates to man the truth concerning himself—his nature, works, will, or purposes; in the passive meaning, the knowledge resultant upon such activity of God. The term is commonly employed in two senses: a wider - general revelation; and a narrower - special revelation. In its wider sense it includes all modes in which God makes himself known to men; or, passively, all knowledge concerning God however attained, inasmuch as it is conceived that all such knowledge is, in one way or another, wrought by him. In its narrower sense it is confined to the communication of knowledge in a supernatural as distinguished from a natural mode; or, passively, to the knowledge of God which has been supernaturally made known to men. The reality of general revelation is disputed by none but the anti-theist and agnostic, of whom one denies the existence of a God to make himself known, and the other doubts the capacity of the human intellect, if there be a God, to read the vestiges he has left of himself in his handiwork. Most types of modern theology explicitly allow that all knowledge of God rests on revelation; that God can be known only because and so far as he reveals himself. In this the extremest “liberals,” such as Biedermann, Lipsius, and Pfleiderer, agree with the extremest “conservatives.” Revelation is everywhere represented as the implication of theism, and as necessary to the very being of religion: “The man who does not believe that God can speak to him will not speak to God” (A. M. Fairbairn). It is only with reference to the reality of special revelation that debate concerning revelation continues; and it is this that Christian apologetics needs to validate. Here, too, the controversy is ultimately with antitheistic presuppositions, with the postulates of an extreme deism or of an essential pantheism; but it is proximately with all those types of thought which seek to mediate between deistic or pantheizing conceptions and those of a truly Christian theism.
In the eighteenth century the debate was chiefly with deism in its one-sided emphasis upon the divine transcendence, and with the several compromising schemes which grew up in the course of the conflict, such as pure rationalism and dogmatistic rationalism. The deist denied the reality of all special revelation, on the grounds that it was not necessary for man and was either metaphysically impossible or morally unworthy of God. Convinced of the reality of special revelation, the rationalist still denied its necessity, while the dogmatist, admitting also its necessity, denied that it constituted the authoritative ground of the acceptance of truth. Kant’s criticism struck a twofold blow at rationalism. On the negative side his treatment of the theistic proofs discredited the basis of natural (general) revelation, in which the rationalist placed his whole confidence. Thus the way was prepared for philosophical agnosticism and for that Christian agnosticism which is exemplified in the school of Ritschl. On the positive side he prepared the way for the idealistic philosophy, whose fundamentally pantheistic presuppositions introduced a radical change in the form of the controversy concerning the reality of a special revelation without in any way altering its essence. Instead of denying the supernatural with the deists, this new mode of thought formally denied the natural. All thought was conceived as the immanent work of God. This change of position antiquated the forms of statement and argument which had been wrought out against the deists; but the question at issue still remained the same - whether there is any special revelation of God possible, actual, extant, whether man has received any other knowledge of God than what is excogitable by the normal action of his own unaided faculties. Men’s ontology of the human faculties and activities was changed; it was now affirmed that all that they excogitated was of God, and the natural was accordingly labeled supernatural. But a special supernatural interposition for a new gift of knowledge continued to be denied as strenuously as before. Thus it has come about that, in the nineteenth century, the controversy as to special revelation is no longer chiefly with the one-sided emphasis upon the transcendence of God of the deist, but with the equally one-sided emphasis upon the immanence of God of the pantheist, and with the various compromising schemes which have grown up in the course of the conflict, through efforts to mediate between pantheism and a truly Christian theism. It is no longer necessary to prove that God may and does speak in the souls of men; it is admitted on all hands that he reveals himself unceasingly through all the activities of creaturely minds. The task has come to be to distinguish between God’s general and God’s special revelations, to prove the possibility and actuality of the latter alongside of the former, and to vindicate for it a supernaturalness of a more immediate order than that which is freely attributed to all the thought of man concerning divine things.
In order to defend the idea of distinctively supernatural revelation against this insidious undermining, it has become necessary, in defining it in its highest and strictest sense, to emphasize the supernatural in the mode of knowledge and not merely in its source. When stress is laid upon the source only without taking into account the mode of knowledge, the way lies open to those who postulate immanent deity in all human thought to confound the categories of reason and revelation, and so practically to do away with the latter altogether. Even when the data on which our faculties work belong to a distinctively supernatural order, yet so long as the mode of acquisition of knowledge from them is conceived as purely human, the resultant knowledge remains natural knowledge; and, since intuition is a purely human mode of knowledge, so-called intuitions of divine truth would form no exception to this classification. Only such knowledge as is immediately communicated by God is, in the highest and strictest sense, supernaturally revealed. The differentia of revelation in its narrowest and strictest sense, therefore, is not merely that the knowledge so designated has God for its source, nor merely that it becomes the property of men by a supernatural agency, but further that it does not emerge into human consciousness as an acquisition of the human faculties, pure and simple.
Such a conception may give us a narrower category than that usually called special revelation. In contending for its reality it is by no means denied that there are other revelations of God which may deserve the name of special or supernatural in a distinctive sense. It is only affirmed that among the other modes in which God has revealed himself there exists also this mode of revelation, viz., a direct and immediate communication of truth, not only from God but by God, to minds which occupy relatively to the attainment of this truth a passive or receptive attitude, so that the mode of its acquisition is as supernatural as its source. In the knowledge of God which is acquired by man in the normal use of his own faculties - naturally, therefore, as to mode - some deserves the name of special and supernatural above the rest, because the data upon which the human faculties work in acquiring it belong to a supernatural order. Such knowledge forms an intermediate class between that obtained by the faculties working upon natural data and that obtained in a supernatural mode as well as from a supernatural source. Again, in the knowledge of God, communicated by the objective activities of his Spirit upon the minds of special organs of revelation - supernaturally, thus, as to immediate origin as well as to ultimate source - some may emerge into consciousness along the lines of the ordinary action of the human faculties. Such knowledge would form a still higher intermediate class - between that obtained by the natural faculties working according to their native powers on supernatural data and that obtained in a purely supernatural mode, as well as from a supernatural source and by a supernatural agency. These modes of revelation are not to be overlooked. But neither is it to be overlooked that among the ways in which God has revealed himself is also this way - that he has spoken to man as Spirit to spirit, mouth to mouth, and has made himself and his gracious purposes known to him in an immediate and direct word of God, which is simply received and not in any sense attained by man. In these revelations we reach the culminating category of special revelation, in which its peculiar character is most clearly seen. And it is these direct revelations which modern thought finds most difficult to allow to be real, and which Christian apologists must especially vindicate.