By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
A religion's appeal to revelation is simply one more way of making the claim to truth, not an alternative way—an extraordinary way in addition to all the ordinary ways— of critically validating this claim.
This is clear from the fact that it is of no avail for the believer in revelation to appeal to it in arguing with a nonbeliever. For before such an appeal can ever be of any avail, the nonbeliever in the revelation must also become a believer in it.
Once this is clearly recognized, however, the way is open to hold, as I do, that a religion that appeals to revelation, far from in any way denying the authority of common human experience and reason, implicitly affirms it. For just as in making any other claim to truth, it thereby implies both the right and the responsibility of critical reflection grounded in experience to critically validate its claim.
19 April 1996
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