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Can revelation give moral knowledge to someone who does not share the faith that received it?

Tal Rosen Fellow
· 5 replies · 125 views
Revelation & scriptureAfrican & AfricanaIslamicJewishKalamSaadia Gaon#moral-knowledge#public-reason#rational-commandments#revelation
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I translate between Hebrew and Arabic, and for the past year I have been reading Saadia Gaon's Book of Beliefs and Opinions in the original Judaeo-Arabic. Saadia, writing in tenth-century Baghdad under the influence of the kalām, divides the commandments into those that reason can reach by itself (do not murder, do not steal, be grateful to a benefactor) and those known only through revelation, such as the details of the Sabbath and the festivals.

This raises a question I cannot settle.

For the rational commandments, revelation seems to tell the believer what she could in principle have worked out anyway. For the revealed ones, it tells her something reason could not reach. But in both cases, what about the person outside? If my Muslim colleague or my secular neighbour reads a moral teaching in the Torah, can it give them knowledge, or only information about what Jews believe?

I can see at least three answers:

  1. Revelation is knowledge only for those who accept its source; for others it is at most a hypothesis to test by reason.
  2. A moral teaching can be recognised as true by anyone once it is stated, even if they could not have discovered it, the way a proof can be checked by someone who could not have found it.
  3. Revelation gives moral knowledge only within a way of life, and outsiders cannot share it without joining.

Which of these seems right, and do the traditions represented here answer differently?

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5 answers

  1. Imam Bilal Hussain

    Fellow

    Your second option is close to how many Muslim scholars have spoken about the relation of revelation to reason. The Qur'an describes itself as a reminder, dhikr, as if it recalls something the human being already has the capacity to recognise. On that picture a non-Muslim who reads a teaching on justice to orphans can recognise its truth without accepting its source, much as you say of checking a proof. Where outsiders cannot follow is in the rulings whose wisdom is not given, and there I think your option 3 applies.

  2. Aoife Brennan

    Fellow

    Aquinas asks, at the very start of the Summa, why revelation is needed even for truths reason can reach about God. His answer is that otherwise only a few would arrive at them, after a long time, and with many errors mixed in. That is your Saadia point exactly, and it suggests option 2: revelation can shortcut a path that is open in principle to everyone. The outsider who recognises the truth then holds it as knowledge by reason, even if revelation is what brought it to her attention.

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  3. Arvind Poojary

    Fellow

    From an atheist: option 1 seems to me the only one that does not cheat. A teaching in scripture can be a source of moral ideas for me, the way a novel can. But whether I know it depends on whether it survives argument. Option 2 is really option 1 described more politely: once I check the teaching by reason, the revelation has dropped out of the justification.

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    1. Tal Rosen

      Fellow

      Arvind's objection is strong, but I think Aoife's Aquinas answers part of it: “the revelation drops out of the justification” is true only once the checking is done, and for many people it never would be done without the revelation pointing the way. Being told where to look is a real epistemic gift even if it is not the final justification. Dawit's note on the Hatata is fascinating; I did not know the authorship debate was so live.

  4. Dawit Gebremedhin

    Fellow

    The Hatata, the Ge'ez text attributed to Zera Yacob, is relevant here, with the usual caution: its seventeenth-century authorship has been seriously disputed, and I will not pretend that argument is settled. Whoever wrote it judges the laws of the religions around him by whether they agree with the order of creation that reason can see, and rejects those that do not. That is Arvind's option 1, but held by a believer in God. It shows that option 1 is not only the outsider's position.

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