revealed theology

revealed theology

• is the idea that knowledge of God can be gained from God’s revelation to us e.g in Jesus and the Bible. This results in revealed knowledge which is based on faith that what is received is from God. Typically, both Catholics and protestants believe in revealed theology

• St Thomas Aquinas said that revealed theology provides “saving knowledge” – that is, knowledge that will result in our salvation.

STRENGTH: barth

• Epistemic Authority and Clarity of Revelation

• strongly defended the idea that God's self-disclosure through Scripture provides an authoritative and reliable source of theological knowledge.

• In Church Dogmatics (I/1), Barth argues that human reason is too fallen and finite to grasp divine truths independently.

• Therefore, divine revelation must come directly from God, and the Bible is the locus of this disclosure.

• For Barth, the Bible is not merely a human record but a vehicle for the living Word of God.

• This view upholds the epistemic strength of revealed theology: it is grounded in a source that transcends human subjectivity.

EVALUATION OF barth

• This perspective offers clarity and assurance in theological knowledge.

• Doctrines such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and divine grace are not philosophical constructs but divinely given truths.

• Revelation through Scripture provides not only content but also the authority behind belief, insulating theology from the shifting sands of cultural and subjective reasoning.

• Thus, the biblical model of revelation ensures that faith is not just speculation or inference but a response to the self-revealing God.

STRENGTH: plantiga

• Accessibility to the Faithful and the Role of Scripture in Religious Experience

• Plantinga defends revealed theology by suggesting that belief in God through Scripture can be properly basic—rational without inferential evidence.

• In Warranted Christian Belief (2000), he argues that Scripture, as a form of special revelation, can function as a properly basic belief when formed in the right epistemic conditions by a properly functioning cognitive faculty aimed at truth.

• This aligns with the biblical model wherein ordinary believers (not just theologians) can know God personally through Scripture.

WEAKNESS: hick

• Historical and Cultural Contingency of the Bible Undermines Universality of Revelation

• John Hick, in The Myth of God Incarnate (1977) and later works, challenges the idea that the Bible can function as a final and universal revelation.

• He argues that the biblical text is deeply embedded in the cultural, linguistic, and historical worldviews of ancient Israel and early Christianity.

• As such, its capacity to reveal universal truths is compromised by its particularity.

• For Hick, revelation must be reinterpreted in pluralistic and global terms; otherwise, it risks becoming ethnocentric or exclusive.

WEAKNESS: Flew

• Revelation is Epistemically Problematic Without Independent Verification

• Flew, in his essay "Theology and Falsification" (1950), argues that claims based on revealed theology are unfalsifiable and thus epistemically meaningless.

• If someone claims, “God revealed Himself through Scripture,” but offers no way to test or falsify that claim, then the claim is vacuous. Flew insists that meaningful theological statements must be open to empirical or logical scrutiny.

• Flew’s concern targets the way revealed theology often bypasses critical reason by appealing to divine authority.

• For example, if a biblical passage asserts that God is just, but allows suffering, any attempt to reconcile the two is often done by reinterpretation rather than by accepting the contradiction.

• This introduces a danger: Scripture can be made to say anything by interpretive flexibility, leading to theological subjectivism disguised as divine objectivity.