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Wiki MarkupReinhold Niebuhr defines "private revelation," or "personalindividual personal-individual revelation," as "the testimony in the consciousness of every person that his life touches a reality beyond himself, a reality deeper and higher than the system of nature in which he stands" _(NDM,_ 1:127).

But this, clearly, is equivalent to my claim (1) that every person simply as such is aware not only of her- or himself together with others (and thus of "the system of nature in which \ [she or\] he stands"), but also of the allencompassing the all-encompassing whole; and (2) that the reality of the whole (as well as of any of its parts simply as such) is not merely factual or contingent but rather transcendental or necessary (and so indeed "a reality deeper and higher than the system of nature," etc.).

12 December 2005