Revelation : From Metaphor to Analogy

The great religions often claim that their books or creeds contain truth revealed by God.

How could we know that they do? In Part I of "Revelation", Richard Swinburne investigates the general philosophical issue of how eternal truth can be conveyed in unfamiliar genres of poetry or parable, by analogy and metaphor, within false presuppositions about science and history.

Part II considers the general question of what would show that some book or creed conveys revealed truth; and Part III considers what would show that the Christian Creeds and Bible convey revealed truth.

A notable feature of the book is the sustained discussion of the criteria for which passages in the Bible should be taken literally and which should be taken metaphorically. "Revelation" is the second volume of a projected tetralogy on the philosophy of Christian doctrine, of which the first volume was "Responsibility and Atonement".