The University of Chicago Martin Marty Center

Revealed and Concealed: Rethinking Human Knowledge, Action, and Culture

It is a common declaration of the world's religions that "things are not the way they appear." Everyday life is not self-explanatory on its surface or able to be comprehended from a single point of view. Wisdom about life's deeper mysteries therefore requires an initiation, the communication of a higher knowledge, and the disciplined adherence to a distinctive path of life. Religious experts and sacred texts are the guides and guardians for the process of discernment, but, frequently, they too are thought to have their limits, beyond which stand further mysteries, impenetrable by mortal capacities. Hence, a perennial feature of religious culture is the assumption that the point or meaning of life is both revealed and concealed in the course of living it.

The interplay of revealed and concealed, as it occurs in religions and is theoretically appraised by religious thinkers, has sparked long and complex debates in the various religions. The issues have included the relation of disclosure to deception, the ethics of secrecy, the relation of intention to action, and questions of perception and evidence. The exploration of such issues in religion opens out toward a diagnosis and theoretic analysis of broader cultural themes. How does religious reflection on revelation and concealment illuminate analogous workings of this dialectic in other professional fields and social forms, such as politics, law, the media, and journalism?

The Marty Center launched an inquiry into these questions in 2002-03. It does so in an effort to reground the centrality of the Divinity School as a locus for thinking about religion in the broader academy and culture. For further information about the "Revealed and Concealed" research project, please contact the director of the Marty Center, Clark Gilpin, at w-gilpin@uchicago.edu.