Revelation

"In other words, the religion of the Bible presents itself as distinctively a revealed religion. Or rather, to speak more exactly, it announces itself as a revealed religion, as the only revealed religion; and sets itself as such over against all other religions, which are represented as all products, in a sense in which it is not, of the art and device of man."

-B.B. Warfield

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים, transliterated it reads, bĕrēʾšît bārāʾ ʾĕlōhîm, and translated, it reads, "In the beginning God." The study of Religion in its essence and origin itself leads us to the subject of revelation, and the history of religions is proof that the concept of revelation is not only integral to Christianity and occurs in Holy Scripture but is a necessary correlate of all religion. [Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. I, p.284] There can be no Christian religion without revelation. Moreover, since revelation is supernatural, it follows that the Christian religion is a supernatural religion. Any attempt to deprive Christianity of its supernatural character only results in its eradication. Hence, to deny the supernatural is to deny revelation, and to deny revelation is to deny the truth claims of Christianity. To be a Christian in practice then is to affirm the fact of revelation.

The Hebrew word for revelation is gala. Its most basic meaning is to uncover or remove. It first appears in the Scriptures in 2 Samuel 7:27, "For You, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have made a revelation to Your servant, saying, ‘I will build you a house’; therefore Your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to You." The phrase "you have made a revelation to your servant" is literally "you have revealed in the ear of your servant." God had just entered into covenant with David and these words are included in David's prayer of response. The idea is that God had made a disclosure to David. The idea of revelation bound up in the act of disclosure. To reveal something is to disclose something. 

Even though this is the first time this word is used in Scripture, it is not the first time God revealed something to man in Scripture. The fact is that from the beginning God was disclosing himself to man. God revealed himself to Adam in the most profound way: "They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." (Gen. 3:8) The Hebrew word for sound in this instance is kol. This word refers most frequently to sound that is produced by the vocal cords. God reveals himself to Adam by walking in the Garden, that is, walking as his word in the garden. One cannot help but think about how the similarities between this language and the language of John, where "the Word became flesh and lived among us."

 The Scriptures are replete with stories of God revealing himself to men and women over the course of the history of redemption. God revealed himself to Noah, warned of the wrath that was to come, and provided for Noah's deliverance. God selects and reveals himself to Abraham, enters into covenant with him, promises him a son and reveals that he will be a father of many nations. God reveals himself to Moses, commissions him to be his spokesman before Pharaoh, promises to deliver the children of Israel, and finally reveals the Torah, the very law of God itself. God revealed himself to the prophets repeatedly in the Old Testament, promising blessing and cursing, and above all, a coming redeemer.

God revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. John wrote, "No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him." (Jn. 1:18) Simeon said that the birth of Christ was "A light of revelation to the Gentiles." (Lu. 2:32) God revealed to Peter that he was to preach to Cornelius' household because salvation was coming to the Gentiles. Paul was called up into the third heaven and shown unspeakable mysteries. John was called up in the Spirit on the Lord's day and shown things that would shortly come to pass. The evidence in Scripture is abundant. It seems plain to anyone taking the time to read it, that the Bible is a book of revelation. Moreover, it is clear that the Christian religion is itself a revealed religion. At the most basic level then, to admit that Christian theism is true is to admit that the idea of revelation is indeed not only plausible, not only possible, but in fact undeniable. God has most definitely revealed himself. To be a Christian then is to believe that God is the sort of God who reveals himself.

Even though God has revealed many truths concerning himself, his creation, and his plan, there are nonetheless, things that God, in his wisdom, has not revealed. In De. 29:29, it is written, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law." This text indicates that God has revealed to us that which he wanted us to know. He gave us access to particular truths. On the other hand, the things that God has not revealed to us do not belong to us. They belong to God. In other words, God has established a boundary for human knowledge. We are expected to honor that boundary. When we do so, we display respect and we show God the honor he is due. Jesus himself affirmed the fact that God not only reveals, but he hides things from man. "At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight." (Lu. 10:21) God deliberately hid things from the wise and the intelligent and Jesus responded to this fact with a prayer of thanksgiving. Indeed, this way of thinking is foreign to modern, Western ways of thinking about God. Now that we have a better understanding of the definition and fact of revelation, it is time to get to the specifics of the two types of divine revelation: natural and special.

In summary, Gordon Clark is right when he says, "An immediate point, touching on both epistemology and theology, that will commend this hypothesis to those who are religiously inclined, is the impossibility of knowing God otherwise than by revelation." This means that God can only be known by revelation. Moreover, only God can initiate that revelation. We would not know enough to even ask for more knowledge if God had not taken the initiative to reveal himself in the first place. This is the truly biblical and therefore, the truly Christian position regardless of what others, to include evangelicals claim about knowing God.

God Said…

 אַף כִּי־אָמַר אֱלֹהִים Did God really say? ʾap kî-ʾāmar ʾĕlōhîm? So goes the hiss of the serpent as the first seeds of doubt are planted in the mind of the first woman.

On the mountain bearing the name, Jabal an-Nour, in a cave called Hira, from what eventually became a book called the Qurán, an angel named Gabriel, brought a word for God to a man named Mohammad. Eventually, this event was the beginning of a series of events that resulted in what is today one of the largest religions in the world; Islam. Islam exists because a man claimed that God spoke to him on a mountain, in a cave, through an angel named Gabriel. Did God speak to Mohammad?

On Easter morning in 1935, in the Korean mountains, a young man was praying, when suddenly, Jesus appeared to him in a vision. In that vision, Jesus supposed informs the young lad, Sun Myung Moon that he is to finish the work that Jesus started 2,000 years earlier. From this experience was born the Unification Church, a.k.a. the Moonies.

One spring day, in 1820, a 14-year old boy went into a grove of trees to pray. This lad petitioned God for an understanding of which church was the true church. The young man reported that God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him. The Father and Jesus Christ informed the lad that all of the religious denominations were preaching false doctrine. He was told to wait for further instructions. According to the Church of the Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith’s revelation was the greatest revelation in the history of the Church since the Christ event. This experience produced the Mormon Church.

One man, on a very popular Christian network, tells his audience that God spoke to him and told him that Fidel Castro would die in the 90s. The same man said that God told him that Homosexuals in America would be destroyed by fire in 1995. This man also claimed that Jesus would appear physically in churches to show His people how close we are to the second coming. This man is none other than Benny Hinn.

I very recently heard someone claim that the Holy Spirit will oftentimes tell us the exact amount we should give, and to which causes. No so long ago, I had a dispute with Darrell Bock over at DTS regarding his position that God still speaks to us today by way of dreams and visions. Indeed, it is frightening that the idea that God is continuing to reveal things to us by way of personal, mystical encounters, has invaded even our most conservative evangelical and reformed churches, and it has done so with great haste and sensation. I can hear claims in our own conservative, Baptist church that parallel those of Mohammad, Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell, Sun Myung Moon, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Hagin and many, many others.

It seems to me that there can be no doubt that the foundation of Christianity for many, if not most professing evangelicals has eroded to the point that it no longer exists. The foundation of God stands firm. “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” (Eph. 2:19-22)

Recently it has been reported that John Piper publicly engaged in the Catholic practice of Lectio Divina. And if you visit Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC, Tim Keller’s church, you will find Lectio Divina is being taught there. Click here for Redeemer's teaching on lectio divina. It is no secret that Ronnie Floyd, president of the SBC has gone off the deep end a long time ago. He recently spoke at the heretic, Mike Bickle’s IHOP. Click here to read more I have been saying for years now that if Christianity is to be preserved in one’s life and in the local church, it will only be preserved insofar as Scripture is preserved. A proper understanding of the phenomenon of Scripture is essential for a healthy, vibrant Christian experience.

What is happening in the modern, American, evangelical churches? In order to get to the root-cause of this problem, we must return to the garden and our original parents. After God created Adam, he spoke to Him, saying, The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Gen. 2:16-17) God spoke to Adam. God’s speaking was clear. God’s speaking was authoritative. Adam knew without question that God had spoken. Adam trusted God’s Word. However, when the time was right, Satan entered the garden disguised as a serpent. While Satan would have obviously been out of place appearing in the garden, the serpent was not. It was an appropriate and clever disguise.

Eve willingly entertained a word from the serpent that contradicted God’s word. Eve was willing to consider the possibility that God’s word could be evaluated, tested, and scrutinized. Rather than accept God’s word for what it is, Eve listened to the tantalizing seduction of the serpent, Satan in the flesh so to speak, and ventured out into the realm of autonomous human reason. And when Eve reasoned using the serpent’s method, a method that cut God out of the process, she concluded that God’s word was not the final say in the matter. There were other possibilities. When man reasons apart from God, he will always, to varying degrees, conclude that God is wrong. So it was in the garden, and so it is today.

ὁ θεὸς…..ἐλάλησεν ἡμῖν ἐν υἱῷ. Ho Theos...elalensen humin en huioi. "God has spoken to us in the Son." Semantically, the aorist is consummative. The writer is emphasizng the the fact that God has spoken one final time through the person of Jesus Christ. The revelation of Scripture is the final event of God speaking until we are united with Christ in eternity at his return. What this means is that all claims that God has spoken to someone else apart from Scripture are false. If we dare venture down any other path, we are left with the seriously flawed argument that we can test personal revelation by an appeal to biblical revelation. The fact is such an endeavor is impossible. Take Benny Hinn’s claim that Fidel Castro would die in the 90s. How would it be possible for anyone to have evaluated Hinn’s claim at the time? Suppose I claim that God spoke to me in a dream and told me to give $15,000 to a particular ministry. How could I or anyone else know for sure that God had spoken to me?

If a claim of God speaking can actually be tested by Scripture, then the event itself can be ruled superfluous. That is to say, a person claiming that God spoke to them in a dream not to cheat on their spouse is redundant and unnecessary. These modern claims then are untestable. Not only are they untestable, they are ambiguous. The way God spoke in the biblical revelation compared with how God supposed speaks to people today is radically different. When Mary was visited by the angel, it was beyond doubt. When Jonah was instructed to preach to Ninevah, there was no question that God had spoken. When Adam was forbidden to eat from the tree, it was crystal clear. There was no chance that these people could have mistaken God’s word for some internal impression. Today, people have things pop into their minds and claim that it is God telling them to do something. It is just that ridiculous. How do you know God told you anything when all it is is a thought that popped into your mind? The claim that God spoke is a very serious claim indeed. But modern, American evangelicals think God is the all-tolerant sweet grandpa who will let you get away with anything because he is such a loving God. This picture of God is the product of a sinful, hedonistic, nihilist society that suffers from the accute condition of self-fascination. No one wants to offend or be offended. Everyone is interested in being politically correct, even most of those who say they don’t. And as a result, we let everything slide. We tolerate any and every claim that walks onto the field. If we didn’t, the charismatic movement would have died long ago. If we didn’t tolerate everything, Ronnie Floyd would have been publicly rebuked and maybe even replaced by now.

When we abandon the actual revelation of the self-attesting Word of God, we open the door to an "anything goes atmosphere." It is only when we can point to a final, actual, knowable revelation that we can distinguish false claims of revelation from true revelation. Only then can we know what is true and avoid what is false. In reality, the contemporary refusal to regard any truth as sure and certain is the word kind of infidelity. [John MacArthur, The Truth War] When we see the Bible as uncertain and perhaps even wrong or highly questionable in some places, it makes other claims that God has spoken, much easier to posit. It is only when we hold to the doctrines of the sufficiency, necessity, perspicuity, and authority of Scripture that such claims melt away under the heat and light of divine truth.

Revelation and Reason: Revisiting the Dialectical Movement [Part 1 of ?]

The first step in understanding is to understand which question(s) to ask. In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates says, “My way toward the truth is to ask the right questions.” The learning process unavoidably involves questions. If one studies the life of Jesus Christ recorded in the gospels, it is clear that He employed the use of questions often. Questions are intended to stimulate thinking. And thinking is the process by which we move through discovery to the answers for our questions. However, not all questions are created equal. Some questions are better than others. The real key to understanding an issue, in many cases, begins with the ability to understand the underlying question regarding the issue at hand. The question this paper seeks to answer is simply this: “What is the relationship between divine revelation and human reason?”

There is a vital distinction between the diverse forms that revelation takes, and the human reason that is required to understand it. I am going to argue in this paper that the relationship between divine revelation and human reason are both critical components of understanding Christian truth. It is the contention of this author that Christian doctrine, properly understood, asserts that without both, divine revelation and human reason, understanding, at least in the proper sense, is impossible. Hence, when I ask the question, “What is the relationship between divine revelation and human reason?” I am asking the epistemological question, “How do human beings experience knowledge of their world?”

THE NATURE AND FORM OF DIVINE REVELATION

Since it is my view that divine revelation is logically prior to human reason, it follows that an analysis such as this should begin with a clear understanding of divine revelation. There are two fundamental questions bound up in this discussion: 1) what is the nature and form of revelation? 2) Why is revelation necessary? The answer to the latter is indelibly related to the answer we arrive at for the former.

One of the most interesting verses concerning the Greek word apokalupsis appears in Paul’s letter to the Christian Church at Galatia. Paul writes, “For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”^[1] Paul informs the Christians in this community that he received the gospel of Jesus Christ by way of a “revelation” of Jesus Christ. One lexicon says this about the word: to uncover, to take out of hiding,’ not occurring in the NT) to cause something to be fully known—‘to reveal, to disclose, to make fully known, revelation.’^[2] The idea bound up in the concept of revelation is that of “hidden information, or facts.”

B.B. Warfield explains the aim of revelation as salvation. “But revelation after all, is the correlate of understanding and has as its proximate end just the production of knowledge, though not, of course knowledge of its own sake, but for the sake of salvation.”[1] Revelation is the tool by which God seeks to impart the kind of knowledge that leads to salvation. Once again, this assertion implies that some information, indeed, some very significant information is missing, hidden, veiled so to speak. Understanding the process by which ‘hidden’ facts becomes ‘known’ facts begins by understanding revelation. Revelation then is disclosure.

In Deut. 29:29, the Lord says that the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever. The Hebrew word translated “revealed” is gala. The “things revealed belong to us and they belong to us for a very specific reason: so that we may observe the law of God. It is difficult to miss the perlocutionary intent attached to the activity of revelation. “The goal of the uncovering is this not distant observation, but entrance to the most intense form of encounter which can involve the individual person.”[2] From this it would seem that revelation has a surprisingly personal nuance associated with it. To be sure, revelation is indeed a movement. It reflects the idea of motion. One cannot help but inquire about the type or motion involved in this very curious phenomenon. Revelation it seems then is an active movement of facts hidden to facts disclosed or publicized.

While it seems clear at this point that Christian doctrine points to the idea of an active unveiling or disclosure as the nature of revelation, the next question that concerns us is the shape that such revelation has been known to take throughout history. What are the modes of revelation to be studied in order to understand the concept of revelation?

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[1] B.B. Warfield, Revelation and Inspiration (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1932), 12.

[2] W. Mundle, The New International Dictioinary of New Testament Theology, 3rd ed., s.v. "Revelation."

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^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ga 1:11–12.

^[2] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 338.