I. Supernatural revelation did not take place once,
in one manner and immediately in its entirety. Rather, from the
day of creation on, God spoke “at sundry times and in divers manners” to
mankind (Heb 1:1), and presumably He will not stop speaking until the day when
His last word will be His word of judgment for the damned, but for the blessed—the
call to enjoy His eternal Word. Hence the individual manifestations of
supernatural revelation form a chain that runs parallel with natural
revelation, in such a way, however, that its links do not run as continuously,
are not so uniformly shaped and in particular are not all as directly of a
general nature as those of the latter chain. For natural revelation by
its nature is immediately, constantly, and uniformly directed to
all mankind, to all bearers of human nature as such, and is effectively
offered to the same. Supernatural revelation, in contrast, always takes
place immediately only to individual human beings and furthermore is not
necessarily always destined for all mankind, which is why it must be subdivided
into public and private revelation. Public supernatural
revelation, however, in the strict sense of the word, exists only when the
immediate recipients thereof receive from God also a formal mission to proclaim
it officially. Here, of course, we have to speak at first only about public
revelations, because only these come into consideration as a principle of
general theological knowledge. (Matthias Scheeben, Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, Book 1, Part
1 [trans. Michael J. Miler; Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2019], §6 no.
46)
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