Revelation Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Epistemology== Members of [[Abrahamic religions]], including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, believe that God exists and can in some way reveal his will to people. Members of those religions distinguish between true [[prophet]]s and [[false prophet]]s, and there are documents offering criteria by which to distinguish true from false prophets. The question of [[epistemology]] then arises: how to know? Some believe that revelation can originate directly from a [[deity]] or through an agent such as an [[angel]]. One who has experienced such contact with, or communication from, the divine is often called a prophet. An article (p. 555) under the heading "mysticism," and contributed by Ninian Smart, J. F. Rowny Professor of Comparative Religion, University of California, and President of the American Academy of Religion, writing in the 1999 edition of "The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought," (W. W. Norton & Co. Inc.), suggests that the more proper and wider term for such an encounter would be mystical, making such a person a [[mysticism|mystic]]. All prophets would be mystics, but not all mystics would be prophets. Revelation from a supernatural source is of lesser importance in some other religious traditions, such as [[Taoism]] and [[Confucianism]]. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page