Posted by Robin Edgar on December 17, 19102 at 17:21:19:
In Reply to: Re: Neale Donald Walsch posted by KT on December 17, 19102 at 13:52:37:
: I understand your point, but it's a tough call. Who is to say that God didn't reveal himself to Walsch through his (Walsch's) contemplation and experience, which later became the basis for his philosophy?
I guess that we are getting into semantics here. I agree that in principle that God could subtly reveal itself to Walsh (or anyone else for that matter) over time however, generally speaking, when one uses the word capital 'R' "Revelation" in a religious context one is talking about a profound revelatory/prophetic religious experience that is an unusual intervention of God and which delivers a clear message that comes very directly from God. What little I have seen of Walsh's point of view seems not to be this kind of capital 'R' "Revelation" of God and some of what he said in his Beliefnet interview gave me reason to believe that he was just pronouncing his personal opinion on various things without any direct referrence to a bona fide revelatory experience of God. He is of course more than welcome to state his religious opinions but I think it is misleading to refer to them as a "Revelation" unless they are based directly on a profound revelatory experience of some sort. Again, I have not read his books and thus my knowledge of what he is claiming is quite limited, but I believe that he is misusing the word "revelation" if he is only conveying personal opinions which have little or no basis in any direct revelatory experience of God.
: Can anyone - including the writers of the various scriptures - really speak for God?
I guess that depends on what you mean by "speak for God" but as someone who has had a kind of profound revelatory religious experience that is very comparable to those claimed by various Biblical prophets I can say that human beings can and do receive specific messages from God and can convey those specific messages to their fellow human beings. It is precisely because I have undergone such a profound revelatory experience of God and am claiming a capital 'R' "Revelation" of God that I urge caution in using this word. I have actually narrowed what I am claiming as "revelation" to only that which I am fully convinced is an actual "revelation" of God that comes very directly as a result of my revelatory experience. Everything else that I claim is simply my own personal opinion that, while it is of course informed in part by that revelatory experience, I none-the-less do not claim as a capital 'R' "Revelation" of God.