Religious Revelation by James Kellenberger

Author:James Kellenberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030538729
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Gilkey continues:Correspondingly, symbolic answers, latent in all human awareness

although received always in a particular natural, social, and historical

context, are universally symbolized and thematized in the omnipresent

religious life of man – and rationalized in other, more “secular”

communities into the bases of man’s many philosophical visions.17

For Gilkey, in “general revelation . . . the universal presence – or sense of absence – of the unconditioned and the sacred enters into human awareness.” However it always does so in a particular form of experience, peculiar to a religious or secular community, that results in definite answers to the ultimate questions of existence. Thus, for Gilkey, “[g]eneral revelation is always and in each case special revelation.”18

In this way general revelation, always manifested in some form of special revelation, for Gilkey is universal, although the symbols central to one special revelation can be very different from those central to another, as is the case with secular special revelations and the Christian revelation.A naturalistic, rationalistic, or positivistic philosopher quite naturally

makes ultimate the symbolic forms, the criteria of truth, and the values

of the scientific and democratic communities in which that thinker

spiritually exists. In the same way, most Christian theologians appeal

to the symbolic forms, criteria, and values of their own Christian

tradition. In each form of thought, personal experience of clarification

and release, apprehended within some communal tradition and its

forms – what we have chosen to call a “revelation” of the ultimate

ground of reality and coherence – makes possible our thinking and

thus sets for each of us those definite principles of reality, truth, and

value in terms of which we answer the fundamental questions of our

common life.19

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