For Now We See Through A Glass, Darkly
I recently wrote an article for Medium called “I Don’t Know, And Neither Do You”. (https://medium.com/@william.marut/i-dont-know-0935aa01333f) It was about theology, and what theology can and cannot know. The word theology comes from the Greek words theos and logos, so theology means words about God(s), and, by extension, things pertaining to God(s). Several people posted replies / responses to the article saying (I am paraphrasing) that theology is not the only way to know about God(s) and things pertaining to God(s) — there is also direct experience, often called revelation. I did some research on this, and came up with the following.
Revelation as a Way of Knowing
Introductory courses in epistemology usually present a familiar list of ways human beings acquire knowledge: sense experience, reason, memory, and testimony. Occasionally — often briefly and a bit uneasily — another category appears: revelation.
When it does, many students react with skepticism or amusement. Revelation sounds pre-modern, religious, or naïve. It seems to invite gullibility, fanaticism, or worse. And yet the category persists. Philosophers keep mentioning it, not because they are credulous, but because people keep reporting experiences that do not fit comfortably into the other boxes.
The question is not whether revelation produces truths that everyone else must accept. It rarely does. The more interesting question is whether revelation counts as a way of coming to know something — for the person who experiences it — and, if so, what kind of knowing that might be.
What philosophers mean by “revelation”
In philosophical terms, revelation refers to knowledge claimed to arise from disclosure rather than discovery. Something is not inferred, measured, or taught; it is experienced as given. The subject does not reason their way to the insight, but receives it.
This immediately creates epistemic discomfort. Revelation is typically
- First-person
- Non-repeatable
- Not independently verifiable.
Those features violate the norms of public knowledge. But they do not make the experience unreal. They place it in a different category — one philosophy has never been fully comfortable with, but has never been able to eliminate.
Mysticism: the cleanest case
If revelation is going to be discussed seriously, mysticism is the best place to start.
Mystical experiences appear across cultures and religious traditions: Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and non-theistic. Despite doctrinal differences, reports of mystical experience show striking similarities. Philosophers and historians have long noted recurring features: the experience resists language; it feels like insight rather than emotion; it is often brief; and it is experienced as happening to the subject rather than being produced by effort.
What matters most is what mystics usually do not claim. They rarely say
- “I now possess facts others must believe” or
- “My experience settles doctrinal disputes.”
Instead, they report a change in perception — a sense of unity, meaning, or reality seen under a different aspect. This suggests that mystical revelation is not primarily propositional knowledge (“this statement is true”) but transformative knowledge (“this is what reality is like when apprehended differently”).
That distinction does a great deal of philosophical work.
Revelation versus interpretation
Many objections to revelation conflate experience and interpretation.
A person may have an overwhelming experience of unity, presence, or meaning, and later interpret it using the language and symbols of their religious tradition. The interpretation is contestable; the occurrence of the experience itself is not. Philosophy can acknowledge the reality of the experience without endorsing the framework used to explain it.
This places revelation closer to other forms of first-person knowing — moral insight, aesthetic perception, self-knowledge — that shape a life without obligating others to agree.
What about “Jesus as my personal savior”?
Modern religious language often frames revelation in highly personal terms: “I accepted Jesus as my personal savior,” “God spoke to my heart,” “I was saved.”
These experiences are real to the people who report them. Epistemologically, however, most of them are not cases of unmediated revelation in the same sense as classical mysticism.
They are better understood as a hybrid of:
- Testimony (scripture, preaching, community)
- Emotional and moral experience (forgiveness, release, purpose)
- Narrative adoption (placing one’s life inside an inherited story).
Such experiences are powerful and often life-changing, but they usually involve belief formation rather than new disclosure. They re-orient meaning rather than reveal previously unavailable knowledge. Recognizing this distinction respects religious experience while preserving analytic clarity.
Conflicting revelations and public reason
The strongest objection to revelation as a way of knowing is obvious: people report incompatible revelations. If one person’s revelation affirms X and another’s denies X, they cannot both be publicly authoritative.
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This objection is decisive against treating revelation as a foundation for shared factual knowledge. But it overreaches if it tries to eliminate revelation altogether. Many accepted ways of knowing also conflict: eyewitness testimony, moral intuitions, even interpretations of evidence. The solution is not elimination but limitation.
Revelation may disclose meaning or orientation for a person without functioning as public proof.
The real danger: certainty without limits
The historical dangers associated with revelation do not usually come from mystics. They come from certainty divorced from humility — from the claim that a private experience licenses authority over others.
Classical mystics tend to emphasize moral fruits over factual claims, humility over command, transformation over instruction. Ironically, the epistemic danger lies less in revelation itself than in the refusal to recognize its limits.
What about dualism?
If one is having a mystical experience, how does one know which “side” it is coming from? Reverting back to theology, different traditions have different positions on this. Very roughly, and at the risk of oversimplification:
- Strong dualism: Zoroastrianism
- One God, real evil: Judaism, Christianity, Islam
- Moral but not cosmic evil: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism
- Balance, not battle: Taoism
- Ethical focus only: Confucianism
If you are a Christian, how do you know that your experience is with the one God, and not with Satan and / or the demons? Even if you are not a Christian, how do you know this? Notice the use of the word “know”.
Some loose ends (of which there are many)
Here are just a few. They are left as an exercise for you. Or for future articles. Or both.
- What about experiences facilitated by the use of psychedelic drugs? Might they be revelations?
- What about experiences that do not involve the use of psychedelic drugs? Might they be purely psychological in nature?
- What about revelations that are documented and labeled as such, such as the book of Revelation?
- What about other books of the Bible? What is the difference between inspiration and revelation, if any?
- What about shamans?
- What about degrees of revelation? Is communing with nature a low-level form of revelation?
- Are revelations miracles?
So does revelation count as a way of knowing?
Yes — but only modestly, and only precisely.
Revelation:
- Is not a shortcut around reason or evidence
- Does not generate knowledge others must accept
- Does not settle scientific or metaphysical disputes.
What it can do is disclose meaning, value, orientation, and a changed apprehension of reality. In that sense, revelation belongs alongside other forms of first-person knowing that shape human lives without grounding public consensus.
A modest conclusion
Philosophy does itself no favors by pretending revelation does not exist. Nor does it help to romanticize it.
Revelation is epistemically fragile, culturally mediated, and easily abused. It is also a persistent feature of human experience, reported by sane, reflective people across history.
The task is not to mock it or canonize it, but to understand what kind of knowing it is, and what kind it is not. Once that distinction is made, both the embarrassment and much of the danger disappear.
