199RICOEUR, PAUL(following Aquinas) or the information
bearing pattern that organizes matter.
Part of what is at stake in this debate is
the issue of personal identity. What is the
source or carrier of continuity that makes
the resurrected person the same person
as the one who died? On the traditional
view, it is the soul, a spiritual substance
that retains not only consciousness, but
also memory, character traits, and the
like. On the other view, the carrier of
identity would be the information bear-
ing pattern that is retained in memory by
God between death and resurrection.
REVEALED THEOLOGY. Theolog y
based on a scripture that is taken to
be normative or given or foundational.
Revealed theology contrasts with natural
theology, which seeks to offer knowledge
or an awareness of God without appeal to
special revelation.
REVELATION. In theology and philoso-
phy of religion, revelation refers to a dis-
closure of God either through events
(ostensible acts of God) or through lan-
guage (which is special in that it differs
from whatever general revelation of God
is available through reflection on the
cosmos). Paradigmatic cases of revelation
are in the form of auditions (heard speech
or sounds as when one appears to hear
music “in one’s mind” when there are no
musicians or recordings being played) or
mediated language through a prophet,
oracle, or some other human agent. The
Qur’an is traditionally understood to be
God’s very words, dictated to the Prophet
Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel.RICHARD OF St. VICTOR (c.1123–
1173). A student of Hugh of St. Victor,
Richard further developed mystical the-
ology in the late medieval era, juxtapos-
ing it to moral theology. He believed that
moral theology was a presupposition for
approaching mysticism, but that the latter
constituted a vital, new stage in the never
ending journey of the human soul that
ultimately seeks union with God.RICOEUR, PAUL (1913–2005). French
philosopher Paul Ricoeur wrote more
than a dozen major books in philosophy
and hundreds of articles; even before
his death, Ricoeur’s writings had been
translated into more than 20 different
languages. Although often found difficult
to categorize, Ricoeur’s contribution to
twentieth-century philosophy is undeni-
able; interest in his ideas has continued to
increase since his death in 2005. Highly
distinctive is Ricoeur’s own “hermeneutic
pheno menology”: a theory of interpreta-
tion of texts that is extended to actions
and the meaning of lived experience
more generally. Ricoeur’s first major
project is a philosophy of will, which
begins with Kant’s antinomy of freedom
and determinism. The first volume of
this project, his doctoral dissertation, was