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Special Revelation is a violation of freewill
As stated,
Andricus once said, 'God doesn't care about free will. If God cared about free will he wouldn't ever directly internally influence anyone to to anything.'
FrankToday also said, 'wouldn't special revelation be a violation of free will too?'
Andricus then said, 'Special revelation is evidence of God not caring if humans know who he is or not. Special revelation could be interpreted as a violation of free will, yes. that's good @Frank. Special revelation could very easily be argued as a violation of free will. So long, Bible.'
What is 'Special Revelation'?
Special revelation is a Christian theological term that refers to the belief that knowledge of God and of spiritual matters can be discovered through supernatural means, such as miracles or the scriptures—a disclosure of God's truth through means other than through reason.
The immediate failure of this argument is then, that we are not proposing a Christian worldview and in actuality reject and refute such a worldview. For example we may point to the story of Abraham, who was said to have determined a monotheistic God entirely through reason and logic – which would occlude a necessary reliance on special revelation (as defined above).
In terms of Judaism and Noachidism, we do not hold that all levels of special revelation necessarily infringe upon freewill. For example, God revealed himself to Moses, and yet Moses asked several times that God should send someone else. And, despite being the only one to see God “faces to faces” as the idiom goes, he was still able to refuse to do God's commandments to a degree that got him banned from entering the holy land.
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Theologians use the term Special Revelation for the belief in God's intervention to make God's will and knowledge available that would not otherwise be available through General Revelation. They believe that disclosure of this Special Revelation is at specific times to specific persons, and believed by Christian theologians to have been generally given through scripture, miracles, and through the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. In view of the specific substance in the immediately below paragraph it is important that recipients of Special Revelation are provided with a reference perspective for potential defense of their experiences. This can be accomplished by viewing Special Revelation as consisting of three intensities or levels, with the middle intensity referred to as Medium Intensity, and the level deemed to be “above” that sometimes referred to as High Intensity. Such a triad will allow peace of mind for many, and will remove the challenge of having to potentially defend one's experience against another's (even to oneself), inasmuch as there are no distinct boundary areas regarding those three intensities of Special Revelation. Also, a Special Revelation comfort zone, regardless of the intensity of the experience(s), does not oblige one to have to assess implications of one having possibly transitioned to what is referred to below as Direct Revelation.
Other means by which God reputedly gave Special Revelation were by Divine Voice or Divine Writing, angels, prophets, visions, dreams, dream-visions, Divine Dictation, inspiration, and “Spirit's guidance”, or guidance from the Holy Spirit. When reviewing these examples, one can see that they refer to Direct Revelation, which is now the third type of revelation, as a distinction between Special Revelation by way of self-disclosure through the Bible and personal communication from God, some forms of which include actually hearing the voice of God.
Special Revelation is a contrast to General Revelation, which refers to the knowledge of God and spiritual matters which reputedly can be discovered through natural means, such as observation of nature, philosophy and reasoning, conscience or providence.
The purpose of Special Revelation is to impart the knowledge and understanding of Jesus Christ, salvation and the atonement. Essentially it is knowledge and understanding, “that is requisite to salvation, that is, an explicit knowledge of Christ and his gospel.”[2]
The forms of special revelation as considered by mainstream Christianity are
- Personal Experience
- Miracles
- Prophecy
- The Earthly Life of Jesus Christ
- The Scriptures (as a source of special Revelation). In divine affairs, we are saved by the grace of Christ from our sins and guilt before God
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