By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Niebuhr makes a statement about revelation that I find interesting because it so strikingly parallels something Whitehead says about reason -- namely, that it is "universal and yet individual to each."
Speaking of what he calls both "personal-individual revelation" and "private revelation," Niebuhr says that it "is, in a sense, synonymous with 'general' revelation, without the presupposition of which there could be no 'special' revelation. It is no less universal for being private. Private revelation is 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" (The Nature and Destiny of Man, 1:127).
19 December 2003
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