Revelation. In general, it is the act of revealing or making public a thing that was previously secret and unknown.

This word comes from the Latin revelo , formed of re- and - velum , veil, as if to say to draw the veil or curtain that hid something, in order to manifest and exhibit it to the eyes.

One particularly uses this word revelation to express things that God has shown to his messengers and his prophets, and which they have revealed to the world. ( See Prophecy.)

It is also used in a more particular sense, to signify things that God has manifested to the world through the mouths of his prophets, on certain points of speculation and morality, that natural reason does not teach or that it has not been able to discover by its own force, and in this sense revelation is the object and foundation of faith. ( See Faith.)

Religion is divided into natural religion and revealed religion. ( See Religion.)

Revelation considered in relation to true religion is divided into Jewish revelation and Christian revelation. Jewish revelation was made to Moses, to the prophets, and to other sacred writers in the Old Testament. Christian revelation was made by Jesus Christ and to his apostles in the New Testament. ( See Testament.)

A modern author thinks he has posed a solid problem by remarking that revelations are always founded on previous revelations . Thus, he says, Moses mission presupposes a first revelation made to Abraham; Jesus Christ’s missions presupposes that of Moses; the so-called mission of Mohammed presupposes that of Jesus Christ; that of Zoroaster to the Persians presupposes the religion of the magus, etc. But apart from the facts that the last allegation is pure ignorance, since Zoroaster passes as the founder of the religion of the magus, and that one cannot without impiety made a parallel between two imposters such as Zoroaster and Mohammed with the legislators as divine as Moses and Jesus Christ, one does not see why Jesus Christ’s mission would presuppose that of Moses, or why the latter would presuppose the revelation made to Abraham. Is it so absurd that God should manifest by degrees to men the truths that he judges necessary for them? Is it unworthy of his wisdom and goodness for him to make them promises at one time and reserve to another time their fulfillment?

Any revelation in general is founded on what God wants men to know concerning Him most particularly, as to the nature of God and his mysteries, the dispensation of His grace, etc. and subjects to which the natural faculties that it has pleased God to give to men cannot attain by their own force. Revelation also has the goal of requiring on the part of man a more particular kind of worship than what he renders to God as Creator and sustainer, and of prescribing laws and ceremonies for this worship so that it is agreeable in the eyes of the divinity.

The particular revelations have their own characteristic purposes and goals. Thus those of Moses and the prophets of ancient law particularly concerned the Israelites, considered as the descendants of Abraham. The purpose of these revelations seems to have been to withdraw this people from their slavery; to give them a new country, new laws, new customs, to fix their worship, to make them confront bravely all sorts of dangers and to face all enemies, by strongly imprinting on their minds that they were protected and governed directly by divinity itself; to prevent them from mixing in alliances with neighboring peoples, based on the opinion that they were a holy and privileged people cherished by God, and that the Messiah would be born in their midst; and finally, to leave them an idea of their reestablishment in case they should come to be oppressed, through the expectation of a liberator. It is to some of these purposes that all the prophecies of the Old Testament seem to tend. But let us add that they were insufficient to captivate a people as stubborn as the Hebrews, if these revelations had not been sustained by truly divine traits of miracle and prophecy.

Christian revelation is founded partly on that of the Jews. The Messiah is predicted and promised to the latter; he is manifest and granted to the Christians. All the rest of the revelations that directly concerned the Jewish people no longer occurs in the new law, except for what concerns Morality. Moreover we only use the part of this old revelation that concerns the world in general, in which the coming of the Messiah is spoken of.

The Jews attributed to themselves directly the completion of this part of their revelation, thinking they were more particularly the subjects than the rest of the world; which was to them exclusively that the Messiah was promised; that he ought to be their liberator and the restorer of their nation. But the new revelation was substituted for the old, and everything changed; this part of the old was, as it is demonstrated, wholly allegoric and symbolic; the prophecies that related to it could not be taken literally. They presented a carnal and crude meaning; they hid another that was spiritual and sublime. The Messiah would not be the restorer of the freedom and earthly power of the Jews, who were then under the domination of the Romans; but instead he would reestablish and deliver the world that had lost any justice and had been rendered the slave of sin. He would preach penitence and the remission of crimes and at the end suffer death, so that all those who believed in him should be delivered from the slavery of death and of sin, and should obtain the life eternal that he had come to acquire for them through his blood.

Such was the tenor and design of Christian revelation , whose advent was so different and so distant from what was thought by the people to whom the Messiah had been promised in the first place; such that instead of reestablishing and confirming the other branches of their revelation , on the contrary it destroyed and overthrew them. The advantage of being a child of Abraham has ceased to be particular and proper to the Jews; all the people of the universe without distinction between Jew or gentile, Greek or pagan, had been invited to enjoy the same privilege. And the Jews refused to recognize the Messiahs that had been promised to them, incapable of seeing that all the prophecies were accomplished in him and that the prophecies had only an allegorical and representative meaning, and so they were excluded from the advantages of this mission that particularly concerned them; and their total destruction came from the same cause from which they had expected their redemption. But what they could not dissimulate is that this very stubbornness in rejecting the Messiah, this blindness on their part in not interpreting the prophecies that concerned them, except in a literal and carnal sense, and finally their ruin and their dispersion had all been predicted. The accomplishment of these three points ought to have opened their eyes to the rest. This is a subsistent proof of religion and the truth of revelation , attested sufficiently in the new law as in the old by the miracles and prophecies of Jesus Christ and his apostles.

This double portrait suffices to perceive the utility and necessity of revelation and to see at a glance the link that exists between the revelation that is the foundation of the law of Moses and that which serves as basis for the religion of Jesus Christ.

A modern author who has written on religion defines revelation as the knowledge of some doctrine that God gives immediately and by Himself, to some of his creatures, to communicate it to others on His behalf and to instruct them.

He adds that the term revelation taken strictly presupposes that the one who receives it in absolute ignorance of that of which he is the recipient. But that in a less restricted and more extended sense, it signifies the man ifesta6tion of a point of doctrine, that is either unknown or that is perfectly known but is simply obscured by the passions of men.

If revelation is about an entirely unknown point, it retains the name revelation ; if on the contrary it is about a known or obscured point, it takes the term inspiration. (See Inspiration.)

After having demonstrated the need for revelation for reasons that we have reported in substance, and that the reader might see under the word Religion, he thus traces the characteristics that revelation should have in order for its divinity to be recognized. We will give here the summary of what he treats and proves in a more extended manner.

Any revelation, he says, can be considered from three different angles, either in itself or in its subject, its promulgation, and those who publish it and instruct others in it.

For any revelation , he says, to be considered in itself and in its subject to be marked by the seal of divinity requires a) that what it teaches should not be opposed to the clear and evident notions of natural light. God is the source of reason as well as of revelation . Consequently it is impossible for ito propose as true what reason demonstrates to be false; any truly divine revelation cannot be contrary to itself. It is absolutely impossible for it to teach as truth in one place what it produces as falsehood in another. God is presumed to be the author and the principle and so can never contradict Himself; c) a true revelation should perfect the knowledge of natural light about everything that concerns the truths of religion and should give them an unshakeable consistency, because revelation presupposes a confusion, or errors in the human mind that it ought to dispel; d) it should not be received as emanating from God except inasmuch as it prescribes practices capable of making man better and rendering him master of its passions; the Creator is by nature incapable of authorizing a licentious doctrine; e) any revelation to prove the doctrine it proposes believing in, should be clear and precise. It is by goodness and mercy that God is determined to instruct, by Himself, his creatures in the truths they ought to believe, or the obligations they ought to fulfill. Thus it is necessary for him to speak clearly to them.

Revelation as envisaged in its promulgation, in order to be received as divine, should be accompanied by three characteristics: a) it siècle necessary that the promulgation be public and solemn, because nobody is held to submit to instructions he does not undersstand; b) this promulgation should be dressed in external markers that make it known that it is God who is speaking through the mouth of the person who says he is inspired, without being taken for divine oracles or the discourse of a prime fanatic; c) the prophecy and miracles done in confirmation of a doctrine, announced on the part of God, are the external marks that should accompany the promulgation of the revelation and consequently demonstrate its divinity; because God would never confide these striking marks of his science of the future, and of his power over all Nature, to an imposter to entrain men into falsehood.

The character of revelation considered from the aspect of those who publish it and instruct others in it might be envisaged in two ways: as the signs by which a man might know that he is inspired by God, and the marks by which others might recognize that a man who says he is sent by God is really in possession of this quality.

As for the first means: a) The marvels performed in confirmation of the divinity of the mission that one believes one has received; b) the predictions made to show its truth, and which are seen to be accomplished; c) the power that he receives himself to make miracles or to predict the future, is a power confirmed by the effects of one or more kinds; d) humility, disinterestedness, profession of healthy doctrine – all these things combines are the sufficient motives to a man who feels them to believe himself inspired by God.

As for the second means, if the prophet has holy and regulated morals, if he announces a pure doctrine; if to confirm it he predicts the future, and his predictions are verified by events; if he joins to this the gift of miracles, then other men with these traits should recognize him as God’s messenger, and his word as revelations . Treatise of the true religion , by M. de la Chambre, doctor of the Sorbonne, vol. II, part 3, dissert i-iii, p. 202 ff.

The word revelation is taken in various senses in Scripture. 1) As the manifestation of things that God discloses to men in a supernatural manner, either in dreams, in visions, or in ecstasy. Thus St. Paul called things that were manifested to him in his ravishment to the third heaven (II Cor 12:1). 2) For the manifestation of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and to the Jews (Luke 2:32). 3) For the manifestation of the glory that God bestows on his elect at the last judgment (Romans 8:9). 4) For the declaration of his just judgments in His conduct toward the elect and against the outcasts (Romans 11:5).