Standards for Revelation

There remains, then, only to discern what, if any, are the words of the designer to humanity. I do not pretend to have a sufficient list of criteria, but I hope to present here a preliminary list of necessary criteria for judging between what are the words of us and what could be the words of one above us. A true "scripture" must at least be...

1) ...completely true.

I argued for this point previously. If it is at some point false, then we--presumably--have no standard but ourselves to judge which parts are true and which are false. If we set ourselves up as a reliable standard, then there is no sense in going this route at all.

2) ...internally consistent.

This is demanded by the first requirement. If something is internally inconsistent, that is, it is self-contradictory, then it must necessarily be false at that point, because one of its two claims must be false.

3) ...externally consistent.

Our hope is that the scripture is written by one who is knowledgeable about the world we live in. He would then be qualified and capable of writing about this world without error. We therefore expect such a scripture to be consistent with what is true in our world. This standard is somewhat dangerous to apply, because we ourselves have judgments about this world which are not always completely correct. So if I disagree with a scripture, and I disagree because I am wrong about the world and it is right, can I really say that it is wrong about the world?

4) ...authoritative.

We seek words from one who designed our world, from one who knows it intimately. His knowledge of the world is not dependent upon that of others; it is self-sufficient. When these words claim, "This is so," then we should not be surprised when we do not see, "This is so because this great thinker has said that," or, "This is so because we see that and that are so," but simply, "This is so," because he has no need to appeal to any other standard but himself.