Philosophy of Religion Research
Analysis and Investigation of Richard Swinburne's Perspective on ‘Propositional Revelation’
Document Type : Original Research
Author
Ph.D. Graduate in Philosophy of Religion, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Richard Swinburne discusses ‘Propositional Revelation’ in his book Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy. In his view, propositional revelation is genuine and true only if (1) it consists of truthful propositions about important religious facts, (2) it is accompanied by a miracle, (3) it constitutes an institution such as the Church as the authoritative interpreter of the revelation, and (4) the interpretations of this institution regarding the contents of the revelation are not false or implausible. Swinburne believes that Christian revelation meets all four criteria in the best way and therefore is the only authentic religious revelation. , the resurrection is the great miracle of Jesus; Secondly, Jesus established the church by appointing 12 apostles to spread his teachings; Thirdly, if we distinguish between non-historical content and historical form of revelation and different genres of the Bible, the content of Christian revelation and the interpretations of the church from this revelation contain no false claims. In criticizing Swinburne's perspective, we have argued that firstly, according to McLean, Swinburne lacks a historical-hermeneutical approach. Despite claiming a supra-historical position, he focuses on the Christian perspective to define the standards of authentic revelation and tries to prove the truth of Christian revelation with circular reasons, and ultimately attempts to impose the hegemonic discourse of Christianity on all other religions. Secondly, adhering to the distinction between proposition and statement, or form and content, is a conservative method to make the Bible unfalsifiable, which has also been applied to other mythical texts. Thirdly, the confirmation of the testimony of the narrators of Jesus' miracles is not reasonable, and Swinburne does not provide a convincing answer to Hume's criticism of the narration of miracles.
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