In this paper I introduce John D. Caputo’s view of the divine and argue against his claim that we can preserve faith in God while dropping the idea of divine revelation. Despite Caputo’s apophatic point of view, he makes two claims with regard to God, or ’the divine’. First, he claims that we all have a divine call for justice and compassion in us. Secondly, he claims that God’s kingdom comes true if we make it happen and that this is (...) something we can hope for. In the first half of this paper I will argue that Caputo does not have to reject the idea of revelation if we understand revelation as involving an interpretation of the experiences with the divine. In the second half, I will claim that Caputo even has to allow for divine revelation if he wants to stick to his positive statements about God. We can only know that a desire is divine if we have criteria to distinguish the divine from the profane or the diabolic. Based on Richard Kearney and John Hick I argue that particular traditions offer such criteria and that they ultimately depend on what is taken to be God’s will. Likewise, to hope that the kingdom of God comes and to act in a way that realizes it presupposes that the agent believes this to be the way God wants him to live—and God’s will must have somehow been disclosed. (shrink)

Divine revelation is a topical subject, given the many claims to revelation in the modern world. This article looks at recent discussion within the analytic tradition of philosophy which particularly relates to how to evaluate claims about divine revelation. The subjects covered are: defining divine revelation; direct cognition of God; evidence‐based approaches; divine testimony; conversion and faith; competing claims about divine revelation. Brief comments are then made on some related areas.

A proof is offered that aims to show that there can be no knowledge of God, excluding knowledge based on natural theology, without divine self-testimony. Both special and general revelation, if they occur, would be forms of divine self-testimony. It is argued that this indicates that the best way to model such knowledge of God is on the basis of an analogy with knowledge gained through testimony, rather than perceptual models of knowledge, such as the prominent model defended by Plantinga. (...) Appropriate causal chains and reliable cognitive processes only seem at best to ensure that a belief proposed for acceptance is the belief the testifier wants accepted; they do not ensure that it is rational to accept the belief. This particularly applies where there is much at stake, where it seems rational to seek some form of evidence, if available. Some brief comments are made on Trinitarian self-testimony. Another model of the ‘inner witness’ is briefly sketched out, based on the analogy with conscience. This model may capture some of the features of Plantinga’s approach, but leaves room for a free rejection of divine self-testimony, in a way that the perceptual analogy does not. A point connected to Plantinga’s aims is then made about the link between evidence, value and divine self-testimony, in relation to religious experience. Finally, it is suggested that the earlier proof may apply in a particular sense to all knowledge of God, including that based on natural theology. (shrink)

The present article analyzes and compares the idea of divine revelation to justify religious beliefs from the viewpoints of Paul Moser and Mulla Sadra. Moser suggests a kind of moral transformation experience that includes direct cognition and internal experience of self-revelation and God’s unselfish love while he considers mere theoretical reason to be inefficient and emphasizes God’s authority and His attributes and goals as well as the axis of divine revelation. Knowledge-by-presence and direct experience of God in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy (...) which is the only way to access true recognition of God is close to divine revelation. The present article shows that, considering the relationship between love and salvation, and knowledge-by-presence and the practical intellect, in Sadrian belief in God, Moser’s approach is close to Mulla Sadra’s even though the method of argumentation of these two philosophers in representing this type of cognition is not completely the same. Considering the commonalities and differences between Moser and Mulla Sadra in justifying belief in God, it seems possible to revise Moser’s approach with a Sadrian reading with a combination of innate nature arguments and self-knowledge. (shrink)

Privacy is valued by many. But what it means to have privacy remains less than clear. In this paper, I argue that the notion of privacy should be understood in epistemic terms. What it means to have (some degree of) privacy is that other persons do not stand in significant epistemic relations to those truths one wishes to keep private.