Talk:Special revelation

NPOV

A request was made to explain the problems with the current version so it can be fixed. Here goes:

• It assumes that God exists, which is disputed.
• It assumes that God has a gender, and that this gender is male; that's disputed, too. The compromise on God is to use only gender-neutral terms like "God" and "the deity" unless you are referring to a particular conception of God.
• It fails to distinguish the theology of the LDS church from that of other denominations.
• It fails to clarify what "Orthodox Christianity" is; that page is a disambiguation page.
• It should couch whatever explanation it makes in terms of third-party claims; it shouldn't sound like Wikipedia itself is saying these claims are true or false.
• Who are these vaguely defined "Christian theologians"? This doctrine does not appear to be universal.
• It would be interesting to see explanation to any denominations or theologians who have specifically denied this doctrine, if any.
• The necessary antecendents of "salvation" are disputed; this article should make clear which sect's conception of salvation it is referring to.

General comments:

• It should not use the second person - e.g. "we" and "us".
• It would be useful to have the explanation about general vs. special vs. direct early on.
• Revelation cites the book of Timothy; it would be good if this article more explicity describes the source(s) of the doctrine.
• It would be useful to give specific notable examples, and to discuss the circumstances in which special revelation is believed to have occurred - after prayer? At times of cosmic significance? Can anyone be a recipient? Etc.

-- Beland 03:28, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I am removing the NPOV tag. It looks like there have been two editors who have cleaned up the 'we' language and gender language. The article as written doesn't make Wikipedia-unique claims of truth but attributes them to theologians, some of which are cited in footnotes. If Beland or others want to improve the article, I definitely agree that improvement is in order, but I don't see that the flaws of this article are particularly POV right now. MPS 16:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Sources

I am finding it difficult to find proper sources to rewrite this article. Most stuff I can find is ultimately somebody's personal opinion, any ideas? Sam Hayes 23:20, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

NPOV revisited

The article currently skews heavily toward usage by "evangelical scientists" and other evangelicals. However, the term continues to be used widely among other Christian communities to distinguish between God’s acts which are available to all via nature or creation (general revelation) and the unique revelation in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ (special or specific revelation). The POV needs to take into account use of the term by the wider community of mainstream Christianity. (It is also possible, though I am not aware of it, that the term "special revelation" is also used outside of Christian theology by other religious communities.) If necessary a specific section on distinctive use within the subset of evangelical Christianity and/or "evangelical scientists" can be created.

Once the semester is over in two weeks I will try to make a stab at rewriting this article, but anyone else can take a crack at it in the meantime.

Basil Fritts (talk) 02:11, 3 December 2018 (UTC)