RIVELAZIONE. — The term R., from the Latin recelare, literally “to uncover,” means the manifestation of an occult reality or truth. In this sense it was also used in biblical and theological language to designate the manifestation freely made by God of his inaccessible essence or of his designs unknown to human beings. The corresponding terms used by the Bible are ἀποκάλυψις (Mt. 11, 27), φανέρωσες and its derivatives (Rom. 3, 21), with a slight difference in meaning between them.
Every religion, being a relationship between God and human beings, presupposes in human beings a knowledge of God and therefore presupposes a manifestation of God to humanity. But in the historically known religious forms, apart from the Judeo-Christian religion, it is rather human beings who arrive at knowledge of God, by one way or another, than God who freely manifests himself to humanity as its God, Christ, and Saviour. Islam, which seems to be an exception, is a religion derived from the Judeo-Christian religion. Parsism is still of too obscure an origin to constitute a certain exception (cf. G. Kittel, op. cit. in bibl., III, pp. 566-73).
The Bible and Christianity recognize a manifestation of God to humanity through nature, which bears a relationship of dependence and likeness to its author; hence the human intellect can ascend from it to God and acquire certain knowledge of his existence and a certain (aliqualis) knowledge of his nature (Vatican Council, Denz-U, 1785, 1806). This first manifestation of God, clearly taught in Wis. 13, 1-9, presupposed by Rom. 1, 18-21, Acts 14-17; 17, 24-27, is often called natural R., or R. of God through nature. It is, however, essentially different from R. in the proper sense: for it is not an act of God manifesting himself to humanity, but an act of humanity arriving at knowledge of God.
In addition to this, the Bible and Christianity affirm the existence of a second, more direct and immediate manifestation of God, who has made himself and his designs known through a teaching addressed immediately to certain privileged human beings (prophets, Apostles), but intended for all humanity. This is R. properly so called, or supernatural R. Alongside public R., which alone is discussed here, the Church’s common teaching also admits the existence of private revelations, that is, revelations not intended for all humanity. It should be noted that revelations made to individuals but contained in Scripture, such as the vision of Zechariah (Lk. 1, 8-25) or of Peter (Acts 10, 9-16), belong to public R.
I. EXISTENCE
The existence of this public supernatural R. is a fundamental point of Catholic doctrine.1. Scripture
A few of the more characteristic testimonies of Scripture will suffice: in the Old Testament, the calling and promises made to Abraham (Gen. 12, 1-3; 15, 1-21; 17, 1-22), the R. of the burning bush and of Sinai (Ex. 3, 1-17; 19, 1 sqq.; 24, 1), the calling and teaching of the prophets (1 Reg. 3, 1-21; Is. 1, 2; 2, 1; Jer. 1, 4-19). In the New Testament, the existence of a divine R. is clearly taught by Jesus Christ himself: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him” (Mt. 11, 27; cf. ibid. 13, 3; Io. 15, 15). So evident is the novelty of the Master’s teaching concerning God to the disciples of Christ that John, despite his thorough knowledge of all the R. contained in the Old Testament, wrote: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten God, being in the bosom of the Father, he himself has spoken” (Io. 1, 18). The same clear awareness of a divine R., concerning especially God’s designs for humanity, is found in s. Paul (cf. 1 Thess. 2, 13; 1 Cor. 2, 10-16; Gal. 1, 12-13; Eph. 3, 1-9). The author of the Letter to the Hebrews summarizes the common understanding: “At many times and in various ways, from of old, God spoke to the fathers through the prophets; in these last days he has spoken to us in the Son” (Hebr. 1, 1).From biblical teaching one may derive a description of the nature of R.: a) by nature God is “hidden” from human beings (Io. 1, 18; 1 Cor. 2, 10-11; 1 Tim. 6, 16); they can know him as he truly is in himself only if he manifests himself, that is, reveals himself to them in a supernatural manner (Mt. 11, 27; 1 Cor. 2, 11-14); b) supernatural R. communicates to human beings a participation in the knowledge that God has of himself (1 Cor. 2, 10-14; indeed, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who reveal God, are God); c) this manifestation of God is not something to which God is bound, but a free initiative of love, an act of friendship on his part (Io. 3, 16 with 1, 18; ibid. 15, 15); d) participation in the knowledge that God has of himself, and in general in the mysteries of God, cannot take place through natural intelligence alone, but presupposes an interior influence of God, the communication of a new principle of knowledge (1 Cor. 2, 16; 1 Cor. 2, 10-11; cf. Mt. 16, 17; Eph. 1, 17-18; 3, 14-19).
2. Tradition
Guided by such clear teaching of Scripture, Christian Tradition has constantly affirmed the existence of a supernatural R.; it is sufficient to recall the importance attributed to divine revelations by the prophets of the Old Testament, and above all the clear affirmation of the divine value of every word of Jesus Christ. This existence encountered no opponents in the properly Christian world until the seventeenth century: all the Christian communities, in fact, that separated from the Catholic Church between the fifth and seventeenth centuries appealed to the supernatural R. of Jesus Christ. The denial of a supernatural R., even on the part of those who admit the existence of God, began deism (v.) and continued in the various forms of rationalism that subsequently arose: Enlightenment (v.), liberal Protestantism (v.), modernism (v.).3. Doctrine of the Church
In response to these denials, the Catholic Church defined her doctrine, especially at the First Vatican Council (sess. III, chaps. 2, 3, and 4), where it is affirmed: a) the existence of a twofold order of religious knowledge: knowledge which, like the existence of God, can be and often is also the fruit of natural intelligence alone (cf. Denz-U, nos. 1785, 1806); alongside this, “holy Mother Church holds and teaches ... that it pleased the wisdom and goodness of God to reveal himself and the eternal decrees of his will by another way (than nature), a supernatural way, according to the words of the Apostle” (Hebr. 1, 1; Denz-U, nos. 1786, 1807); b) to this divine R. is due the fact that religious truths which are in themselves accessible to human intelligence can, even in the present state of fallen nature, be known by all with certainty and without error. Nevertheless, R. is not necessary for this reason, but because God in his infinite goodness has destined human beings for a supernatural end, that is, to participate in goods that completely transcend human intelligence (cites 1 Cor. 2, 9; Denz-U, no. 1786). The object of R. therefore includes not only religious truths naturally accessible to human intelligence, but also mysteries properly so called (Denz-U, nos. 1795-96, 1808, 1816); c) divine R., contained in divinely inspired Scripture and in the traditions deriving from the Apostles, has been entrusted to the Church, which faithfully guards it and infallibly interprets it (Denz-U, nos. 1787-88, 1800); d) divine R. is owed the full assent of the intellect and will, which is exercised in faith (Denz-U, nos. 1789, 1810-11); e) in order to make divine R. knowable and the assent of faith owed to it reasonable, God grants interior aids of Grace and has furnished R. itself with external arguments, first of all miracles and prophecies, which “are most certain signs and suited to all intelligences of divine R.” (Denz-U, nos. 1789-90).This doctrine represents a complete summary of the Church’s traditional teaching concerning R. For this reason, both points were also taken up recently, in response to the resurgence of ancient errors, in the antimodernist oath (Denz-U, no. 2145) and in the recent encyclical Humani generis (12 Aug. 1950).
II. NATURE OF R
Theology has deepened its understanding of the nature of supernatural R., making use of the analogies offered by human experience.4. Active and passive R
R. is a “word of God to man”; it therefore entails an act in God, by which he communicates his thought, and implies in man an effect corresponding to this act, analogously to what occurs when one person wishes to communicate his thought to another. God’s act is called active R.; the effect in man, passive R. or received R. Active R. in God is nothing other than the eternal act of intelligence, in which are contained the truth to be communicated, the manner of communicating it, and the recipient of that truth; and the eternal act of will by which God freely wills that, in the course of time, at the moment and in the person chosen by him, the revealed truth should appear in the manner willed by him, and that a certain judgment of the immediately divine origin of this truth should be formed in that person. The realization in time of this act of the divine will constitutes passive R.5. The forms and content of passive R
Historically, it is established that God has chosen different ways of communicating truths, such as the word addressed to Moses from the burning bush (Ex. 3, 1 ff.), or those heard by the disciples at the Transfiguration (Mt. 17, 3), or through visions, such as that of Peter (Act. 10, 19-23), or simply through the communication of ideas which the recipient is conscious of receiving directly from God (this is probably how most of the “revelations” received by s. Paul should be understood: cf. Gal. 1, 12; Eph. 3, 3). The essential element of passive R. is the certain consciousness acquired by the recipient that this truth is communicated to him directly by God. Without this certain consciousness, there would be a truth communicated by God (infused knowledge), but there would not be R. in the proper sense, since one would not possess a truth guaranteed by God.The psychological origin of this consciousness may likewise vary. It may arise from an immediate experience, as appears in the prophets of the Old Testament; it may result from reflection enlightened by a particular divine light (thus, probably, in Peter’s confession [Mt. 16, 16-17] and in Paul’s revelations); it may arise from reasoning: when the Apostles definitively understood and believed that Jesus was truly the Son of God, and had been so from birth, then the whole life, gestures, and words of the Master acquired a new value in their eyes: everything in him became for them divine R. Traces of these reflections are evident in the Gospel of John (2, 21-22, 23-25; 6, 65; 7, 39). In this latter case, too, however, the formation of the certain judgment concerning the immediately divine origin of the truth received should not be regarded as having a purely natural origin. According to Thomistic doctrine, which in this respect is entirely consistent with biblical teaching, the origin of the certain consciousness of R. always lies in a supernatural illumination of the intellect (cf. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, De Revelatione, I, 3ª ed., Roma 1931, pp. 159-62).
3. Revelation, inspiration, assistance. — In the light of this doctrine, the differences and relations between R. and other supernatural facts, such as prophetic or biblical inspiration and the assistance promised to the Church for the infallible preservation of revealed truth, can be understood precisely: a) prophetic inspiration is a knowledge which the prophet acquires and expresses concerning facts or realities remote from his natural intelligence through a particular divine influence; he may not, however, be conscious of this influence, so that the prophet does not always, or at least not necessarily, present his word to others as the word of God, as truth of divine origin. If he were to acquire certain awareness of the divine origin of this knowledge of his, there would be true R. in the proper sense; b) R. is distinguished from biblical inspiration because the latter does not in itself entail the communication of new truths to be preserved in the sacred books, but only a particular divine influence so that the truth known and expressed in the book, by whatever means it may have been known, truly corresponds to the thought that God wishes to communicate to men through the sacred book. Moreover, the inspired writer may not be conscious of the divine influence guiding him in the composition of the book. Once, however, the sacred book has been composed or recognized as such, every assertion of the hagiographer, being inspired by God, thereby becomes a truth communicated by God to men and guaranteed by his authority; it becomes revealed truth. For this reason Scripture is the first “source of R.”; c) divine R. is distinguished from the divine assistance promised to the Church, because R. is the first supernatural communication of truth, whereas the promised assistance is a gift of understanding and accurate teaching concerning a truth already received. R. and infallible assistance stand to each other as creation and preservation in general.
4. Catholic and rationalistic conceptions of R. — According to Catholic doctrine, R. is an act of a transcendent and personal God who, by virtue of the supreme dominion he possesses over all intelligent creatures, enters into their cognitive life outside every purely natural psychological law. It is God who becomes the immediate teacher and witness of the truth he communicates; man merely becomes conscious of this objective supernatural divine intervention.
For rationalism, religious R. is a phenomenon analogous to any other discovery of naturally knowable truths: it is a subjective intuition of men particularly gifted, who attribute to the divinity the fruit of experiences that they find difficult to explain psychologically in an entirely natural manner. modernism (v.) R. is nothing other than the becoming-conscious of religious experience or sentiment; and when it seeks to express itself through concepts, like any other phenomenon of consciousness, it gives rise to religious doctrine, or objective R. Hence there is no place for any objective communication of truth on the part of God: everything originates in consciousness and subjective illusion.
III. THE STAGES OF REVELATION
In this immense work of instruction on the part of God, several stages must be distinguished: primitive Revelation; Jewish Revelation; Christian Revelation.1. Primitive Revelation. — The content of the truths communicated by God to the first parents and the manner in which they were communicated cannot be known with absolute certainty. The account of the origins of humanity, of the trial, the fall, and its consequences, contained in Genesis (v.), certainly reproduces historical realities, but it does not enable us to reconstruct in every detail the manner in which these events historically took place. The common theological teaching holds the existence of a primitive Revelation at the origins of humanity to be certain. And this teaching appears to be confirmed by the results of the comparative history of religions (v.).
2. Jewish Revelation. — The existence of a divine Revelation to the Jewish people is one of the fundamental teachings of Christianity; Jesus and the Apostles explicitly appeal to it (Mt. 5, 18, 21 sgg.; 22, 31; Act. 1, 16; 28, 25; Rom. 1, 2; Hebr. 1, 1; 3, 7). Christian Revelation itself is the fulfillment of Jewish Revelation, which prepared the way for it (cf. Mt. 5, 18). Here are some of its characteristics: a) progressiveness: it began with the calling of Abraham (Gen. 12, 1 sgg.), but Scripture itself attests that God did not reveal himself completely to Abraham (Ex. 6, 3). Historians of the Jewish religion point out the successive developments it underwent in relation to three fundamental ideas: monotheism, messianism, and the conception of the future life. This development was certainly due in part to a deepening of the Jews’ religious reflection, but to a large extent, especially with regard to the first two ideas, it was due to a progressive illumination of divine Revelation; b) instruments of this Revelation were certain men (patriarchs, prophets, hagiographers), whom God freely chose. Jewish Revelation was not continuous, and among the Jewish people there was no organ that served as the official bearer of divine Revelation, as the magisterium now does in the Church; there was, however, a means of transmitting Revelation: the sacred books. For this reason, in the Jewish religion it is possible to observe considerable differences in development during its various periods, and at times even temporary obscurations, as well as parallel currents not perfectly amalgamated with one another. Yet the divine action appears all the more evident: guiding and making use of all these natural diversities, it led the Jewish people to that degree of religious knowledge which made possible the insertion, without violent shocks, of Christian Revelation; c) Jewish Revelation was in fact a preparatory Revelation, which was not an end in itself; its function was to prepare Christian Revelation, in which it found its fulfillment (cf. Mt. 5, 18; Gal. 3, 24). For this reason Jewish Revelation ceased to perform its function with the advent of Christian Revelation; or, better, all the truth-content that it possessed was appropriated by Christian Revelation.
3. Christian Revelation. — The disciples of Christ had a vivid sense of the newness of Christian Revelation in relation to Jewish Revelation (cf. Io. 1, 18; Eph. 3, 1 sgg.; Hebr. 1, 2). Jesus himself emphasized the newness of his teaching, particularly with regard to the mystery of the Trinity (Io. 15, 15), the mystery of the Church (Mt. 13, 11), and the perfection of the Christian law (ibid. 5, 21 sgg.). But the teaching of Jesus Christ did not consist solely in words: every one of his actions and every one of his inner sentiments, insofar as they were externally known, was an objective manifestation of the thought and love of God. The first and great Revelation of God is the very Person of the Incarnate Word (cf. II Cor. 4, 4-6). In the light of the teaching of Jesus Christ and under the illumination of the Holy Spirit promised by him (Io. 14, 26; 15, 26; 16, 12-15), the Apostles increasingly fully understood the mystery of Christ and of our solidarity with him, the mystery of Redemption and of our participation in divine life through Jesus Christ, the mystery of Christ who is the Church, and the divine designs concerning the future life of the Church. This entire patrimony of truth constitutes Christian Revelation. It was completed with the death of the last Apostle and was entrusted to the Church either in the form of written documents (the inspired books of the New Testament) or in the form of traditions faithfully preserved and transmitted by the episcopal body. After the death of the last Apostle, the Church has no new public revelations, but understands, interprets, and explains, in an ever clearer light and with ever greater completeness, the content of the Revelation received from the Apostles. In dogma (v.).
IV. POSSIBILITY OF R
The difficulties against the possibility of R. are deduced from its superfluity, its incompatibility with divine wisdom, its alleged anthropomorphism, the incommunicability of divine knowledge or, insofar as mediated r. is concerned, the intervention of human instruments subject to error.The first difficulty is deduced from the self-sufficiency and autonomy of the human intellect. Man must suffice unto himself in the knowledge of truth, including moral and religious truth: nothing can be accepted as true unless it is recognized as true by reason; man would contradict the most intimate demand of his nature if he accepted a truth from outside, even from God. The answer is that the immanentist supposition of the self-sufficiency of the human intellect easily collapses, however, before two facts.
The first is the historical observation of the enormous difficulty human beings have in knowing fundamental moral and religious truths outside the influence of Jewish-Christian R. It is enough to recall the difficulties, contradictions, and errors of philosophy, the childishness and, at times, the gross deviations of religious conceptions. Secondly, the existence of truths inaccessible to the human intellect could be denied only by supposing that man can, through his natural intelligence, exhaust the reality and designs of God. Such a postulate would evidently contradict the infinity of the divine Being: if God is truly infinite, he must have something inaccessible to the finite intelligence of man. On the other hand, for man it constitutes no diminution to receive from God some illumination concerning the mystery of his life and his action in the universe. R. can appear contradictory to human dignity only to one who supposes that man is himself the absolute.
The second difficulty could be formulated as follows: in order for R. to appear intelligible and therefore possible, it is not enough that God should have unknown truths to communicate; there must be an intelligible reason for doing so. It is not apparent what purpose the revelation of unknown truths could serve. The answer is that, according to Catholic doctrine (v. above: Conc. Vat), R. has a twofold purpose: it makes up for the deficiencies of natural intelligence in the knowledge of religious and moral truths, completing the limited capacities of fallen intelligence with the superior light that comes from divine teaching; and it also introduces human beings to knowledge of the supernatural realities that constitute the real world in which the life of humanity now unfolds. R. is not an end in itself; it does not represent the final and definitive relationship between man and God, but is the beginning of another knowledge, the beatific vision, in which the present imperfect knowledge of supernatural realities communicated by R. will become a perfectly clear and self-transparent knowledge. R. therefore has an essentially pedagogical function: the immediate purpose of R. is to make possible the love of supernatural realities, that love which is called supernatural charity; for charity is the indispensable condition and preparation for the vision.
The third and fourth difficulties were particularly emphasized during the modernist period in the form of a dilemma: either R. is conceived as the communication of a “word” or a divine concept in the usual meaning of the term, in which case one falls into anthropomorphism; or the infinite transcendence of divine knowing is maintained, in which case it is not understood how it can be communicated to man. The answer is this: the difficulty reproduces, in the particular sphere of R., the general problem of the relations between the divine infinite and the human finite. Theological thought had already formulated the solution in analogy (v.). Divine truth is communicated to human beings by means of concepts which, although they do not express it as it is in God and therefore do not express it adequately, are nevertheless capable of truly reproducing, to a certain extent, its content. To illustrate this answer, one might appeal to the knowledge and teaching of Jesus Christ. According to the common and certain theological doctrine, during his earthly life Jesus possessed the immediate vision of the Being and designs of God: he saw the Trinity and, in the Trinity, all reality having any relation to him. He himself attested this (Io. 16, 14-15). This knowledge was a single, most simple, intuitive act that embraced everything. Jesus spoke to the disciples in order to communicate to them a participation in his own knowledge of God (ibid. 15, 15), and he spoke a human language, made up of concepts and words accessible to finite human intelligence. In his intelligence there occurred the passage from the simplicity of divine knowledge to the imperfect, but not deceptive, multiplicity of human concepts. What occurred in him as a consequence of his being the Incarnate Word, God can miraculously repeat in other human beings whom he chooses for revelation.
The last difficulty concerns the rationality of mediated R.: granted that R. is possible and knowable by the one who immediately receives it; but when it is communicated to human beings, it then loses the guarantee of its divine origin. The human beings who received it, apart from Jesus Christ, were all fallible and limited, and inevitably, even without realizing it, could transmit, together with the truth of divine origin, their limited, personal, or perhaps erroneous interpretation of the truth received. The answer is that it belongs to the essence of R. that the one who receives it should have a clear and certain knowledge of what he receives from God and distinguish it from his own personal reflections; and the experience of the recipients of R. itself assures us of this: it is enough to recall the way Paul speaks of virginity and marriage (I Cor. 7, 10-12). Moreover, it must be remembered that we are not dealing here with phenomena explicable by purely natural causes; if God willed the truth revealed by him to reach all human beings precisely as he revealed it, he certainly does not lack the ability to achieve this—and it is this that is guaranteed to us by the assistance of the Holy Spirit promised first to the Apostles and then to the Church.
V. CONOSCIBILITÀ
This reflection also opens the way to resolving the final difficulties concerning the knowability of divine R. The difficulty takes two forms: it is not clear how the person who receives R. can acquire certainty that he is not the victim of an illusion. Moreover, it is not clear how others, who have not experienced immediate contact with God, can acquire certainty that he is not the victim of an illusion.It has already been said (v. above, III, 2) that the certain awareness of receiving a truth from God may have different psychological origins: this certainty, like any other certainty, can be formed only by a purely interior path. Often, however, it is observed that the recipient of R. doubts its divine origin and wishes to evade the obligations imposed by the word of God; then God intervenes with extraordinary signs that eliminate every doubt, for example, in the vision of Zaccaria (Lc. 1, 18-20), or in the conversion of Paolo (Act. 9, 1-19). Above all, however, it must be remembered that, in forming this judgment, the human intellect is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth: Scripture regards those who receive some form of R. from God and who speak in God’s name as «full of the Holy Spirit», that is, as enlightened by him in a supernatural way. For this reason they can possess certainties that are naturally inexplicable to others (cf. I Cor. 2, 12-16). The question then arises how others, who do not have this immediate experience of theirs, can distinguish those who are truly enlightened by the Holy Spirit from the deluded or the liars; true prophets from false ones. R. itself suggests various criteria or signs, which constitute so many reasons for recognizing true R.: the prophet’s moral character, the content of his teaching, the fruits of this teaching, and finally — the decisive criterion — the works he performs to guarantee, through God’s intervention, the divine origin of what he asserts: prophecies and miracles (cf. Io. 15, 22-24). When God speaks, and wishes his R. to reach all men, he knows well how to accompany it with «signs» such as to guarantee its divine origin to every person disposed to accept it (cf. Mc. 16, 20).