such revelatory messages could be and presumably for some periods have been
transmitted orally, the great theistic religions all possess sacred writings, which are either
viewed as a record or testimony about God's revelation or as itself a form of revelation.
The latter is the case, for example, for Islam, which views the Quran as a divinely
authored book that was transmitted to Muhammed. The same is true, to a lesser degree,
for Christianity, since many Christians claim that the Bible, though composed by human
authors, is still at least partially authored by God, who inspired those human authors.
For these religions faith in God is closely linked to how humans respond to God's special
revelations, since a right understanding of God is crucially dependent on such revelations.
The primary object of faith is God himself, not revelation. However, because God is
known only through revelation, faith in God naturally includes a believing, trusting
response to what God has revealed. I first examine the nature of revelation, particularly
special revelation, and the different ways this concept has been understood. I then focus
on the concept of faith as a response to God and to divine revelation, focusing
particularly on questions concerning the relation between faith and human reason.
Though, as I have noted, the issues to be discussed arise for all of the Abrahamic
religions, and even for such faiths as theistic versions of Hinduism, I mainly use debates
within the Christian tradition to illustrate the issues. Also, in what follows I use the term
“revelation” to mean “special revelation” unless qualified otherwise.
Revelation as Propositional
The traditional Christian view of revelation emphasizes the notion that God reveals
truths, propositions that human should believe. Thomas Aquinas will serve, on this issue
as on many others, as a good example. Aquinas holds that truths about God naturally fall
into two types: truths that “exceed all the ability of the human reason” and those “which
the natural reason also is able to reach” (1975, 63). Aquinas goes on to say that both
types of truths are revealed by God and are fitting objects of human belief, since if those
truths that human reason can in principle apprehend were not also revealed, they would
be known by only a few people, and even for those people their grasp of these truths
would come only after long inquiry and would be mixed with error (66–68). This
“propositional” view of revelation is one that reformers such as Calvin and Luther un
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hesitatingly affirmed as well, and it can be clearly seen in early Protestant creeds, such as
the Belgic Confession, the Westminster Confession, and the Augsberg Confession. The
Belgic Confession is typical in affirming that “we receive all these books [of
Scripture]believing, without any doubt, all things contained in them” (Schaff 1877, 386).
Revelation as Nonpropositional
This traditional view of revelation as propositional in character was questioned by many
twentieth-century theologians, especially those linked with “neo-orthodox” or “dialectical
theology,” who affirmed that revelation is not the proposing of propositions for belief,
but the unveiling of God himself so as to establish a personal relation with humans. A