RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Revelation
the content whose form of transmission is under examination is itself spiritual. Within this anthropocentric, exclusively earthly horizon two fundamentally distinct series of observation have found room: one, the historical empiricism from Bengel to Hegel, to the modern science of religion; the other, the psychological, proceeding from " the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit," through Schleiermacher, to the agnostic mysticism of the religion of the indeterminate or blank religiousness. According to Aristotle (see Religion, Philosophy of), the practical activity of reason consists in the judgments of formal thought, from which results the overestimation of coordinating abstractions and
of empty universal formal concepts.
5. Sub- Such a fate also befalls the considera-
jectivism. tion of the religious life from which
depends the understanding of revelation. Employed by the universal concept of religion, revelation is either not universal and then not essential to religion, or else remains as an inseparable accompaniment, theology presumes to find in revelation the cause of religion, and the term offers itself conveniently to denote that unknown quantity through the effective entrance of which into the soul-processes the appearance of religion in the inner household may be explained. The points of connection with the ideas of natural religion and revelation lie already at hand for the correlation of these ideas. The axiom is assumed: no revelation, no religion, whether in history or in personal life. ^Avhat, however, is thus thought of as revelation is compared throughout with the prevalent idea of religion according to psychological determination. In this collation immediacy of the religious relation or the original capacity for religious experience in every human being coalesces with revelation. R. A. Lipsius emphatically pronounces mystical experience to be the vital center in religion and the essential in revelation. This experience, however, is not a disclosure, since it gives rise to a feeling never fully tangible to apprehension. Turning the thought around, it appears evident that religion, so far as its content is concerned, would never get beyond the speaking of tongues. But the fundamental perception is everywhere at hand, wherever the fact of religion is found in universal religiousness fundamentally independent of history. In case this religiousness is found in connection with an atheistic philosophy, it affords revelation even without deity. -< The transfer of the ecclesiastical technical expression to formal analogies observed in other departments of life affords means for closer comparison. v Discoveries have been made, whether by search or fortuitously, which have been designated revelations. The ingenious conception of the thinker (especially of the artist), or vision, offers itself as analogous to the flash of the religious spark. If thought be not reinforced by conviction, with reference to the content of religion, from elsewhere, namely, from the more securely grounded ethical consciousness, or if the pious only experiences himself and the self-assigned relation to the non-ego, then the fear arises that such revelation may be no more than self-deception of the imagination, or possibly a universal strained representation, without,]
foundation in fact (Feuerbach). Against such a subjectivistic dissection of the generalized concept of revelation recourse from the abstract theory of religion to comparative religion affords no relief. There is, indeed, no little mention, in such presentations, of revelation underlying all religions, without going into the concept of it. Nevertheless it is admitted (Thiele) that a class of religions of revelation is to be abstracted; namely, those conscious of the possession of revelations. Meanwhile there remains for this consciousness, so long as religion is assumed to be nothing else than becoming inwardly aware of an inevitable superior power, nothing but the verdict that it is an imagery of the fancy pertaining to psychological movements otherwise explainable. If it is only a matter of influences and their psychological exercise, then the specially religious lies either in the content, or perhaps on the side of the elaborating soul and its mode of apprehension. In either case the special mediation of religious operations drops out and with this also the occasion for applying the notion of revelation. If not set aside, its universalized use serves to generalize the Biblical religions with the others, by presenting them merely as particularly shaded modes of the universal concept of religion.
This entire point of view is guilty of a depreciation of the historical. Schleiermacher was aware of this when he declared ethics to be the book of forms for history, and history to be the book of illustrations for ethics; only it is to be borne 6. Depre- in mind that by ethics he meant the ciation of formulation of the natural laws of sothe Histor- cial life. The uniform laws, therefore, ical and are essential; the variations of phe- Personal. nomena are secondary. So also as regards the religious; they are varieties similar in kind to the species of a genus. So far, however, the introduction of the historical treatment of religion does not alter the case. For if the steps of religious movement are deduced not from what is characteristic in religion, but from the progress of mental culture, the illumination of ethical views, or the repletion of philosophical thought — in short, from influences whose representations are independent of religion — then religion and its line of development remain the same, namely, the ever fundamentally invariable religiousness. Only its reflex imagery in consciousness and its spiritual elaboration vary. Consequently the standard for judging these influences lies outside of the religious, according to this position. In this connection also appears, with some logical consequence, a departure in the use of the concept of revelation. Originally denoting an impulse giving rise to the fact of religion, its given historical connection leads to the observation that religiousness in the strongly exercised becomes itself revealing upon the passively susceptible. As these transmissions must fulfil themselves in the active appropriation of impulses, and their use is determined by influences from without, these mediations must ultimately be of indifferent importance or must act as inhibitions, just as soon as religiousness becomes first-hand or original. Inasmuch as this form of revelation again removes itself from the field, all thought of a relig-
Revelation