DAY 78
CHALLENGE
“The concept of revelation is irrational. Why should we believe something just because an alleged prophet says so?”
DEFENSE
The concept of revelation is not irrational. In fact, it’s something we use all the time.
Something is revealed if it is disclosed to us by another rather than be- ing personally verified. Sometimes this is also referred to as accepting a claim “on authority.”
C.S. Lewis writes:
Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I have not seen it myself. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The or- ordinary man believes in the solar system, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority—because the scientists say so.
Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the [Spanish] Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life” (Mere Christianity, chapter 2).
The concept of revelation is thus rational. The question is how it functions in a religious context.
According to the Judeo-Christian view, God has given revealed information to prophets, who he authorized to communicate it to others. In doing so, he was sensitive to the question of how one would know if a prophet is reliable, and the Bible contains tests by which true prophets can be discerned. These include whether a prophet can produce a miracle to validate the claim that he is in contact with the supernatural (Deut. 18:21–22) and whether his message is consistent with prior divine revelation (Deut. 13:1–4; 1 Cor. 12:3).
From a Christian point of view, the Resurrection of Jesus was a key miracle validating Jesus’ message (Acts 17:31).