Tag Archives: Special Revelation

General vs Special Revelation

I was listening to an atheist present his case a while back, and one of his complaints was Christian apologists wanting to start from scratch, trying to prove the existence of generic theism ad nauseam, rather than the Christian Trinitarian God we supposedly believe in. Since his talk was about why he was an atheist, addressing his rejection of theism didn’t seem that unreasonable of a place to start.  But regardless of where we start, there are two fundamental questions to deal with: does God exist? and is the biblical presentation of Him true? The claims of Jesus and the Bible are foolish at best and deceitful at worst if God doesn’t even exist. But these two questions take us into aspects of how God reveals Himself to humanity. Let’s work through that today.

Revelation is simply the revealing of something, and God reveals Himself to us in two ways: general and special revelation. General revelation is also called natural revelation, or natural theology, because it is God’s disclosure about Himself and His relation to His creation, made manifest in physical nature, human nature, and history.[1]  This is the primary focus of apologetics, because we are often talking to people who reject the authority of the Bible. But, of course, God does not leave Himself without a witness, and astronomy, biology, genetics, geology, archeology, history, and philosophy are some of the disciplines that all reveal calling cards of God, consistently pointing us back to Him. Special revelation, on the other hand, is His direct revelation as recorded in the 66 books of the Bible, written by human authors inspired for His purpose, to specific people or groups of people, but also for people of all times and places.

I think of general revelation like the title sheet of a set of contract drawings for a building, while special revelation is the drawings themselves:

  • The title sheet of the drawings tells you who’s responsible for the design of the project: the various architects, engineers, and specialty consultants. Each designer is responsible for their portion, but the architect over the project will have his stamp on there. It’s not his biography, just his stamp certifying that the drawing set is ready to be used for construction. Similarly, we only get a stamp of divine authority in the wonders of nature. You have to go to the Bible for the rest of the story.
  • There will often be a scaled map of the project site showing where the building is in relation to different streets and how it will be oriented. Nowadays, there is often a nicely rendered 3D view of the project, with cars and people to show the scale of the project.  I can tell a lot about the project just from a good title sheet. Is this from a qualified design team known for good work? Is the project in Miami, Florida or Valdez, Alaska? I would expect pretty different types of buildings depending on the location. The first would need to be designed for hurricanes, while the second would need to account for massive snow loads and earthquakes. Just seeing the project location on the title sheet can tell me about some of the design issues dealt with on that project. The 3D view of the building model might tell me that this is a narrow, 50-story office tower in a one-city-block parcel in a crowded downtown environment, or that it’s a sprawling 1-story retail store with acres of parking all around. Natural revelation tells us where we’re situated and gives us an idea of the scope of this “project” we are part of. Going from the smallest cellular machines up to the grandeur of the universe, we realize our own smallness, and God’s awesome majesty to have created everything encompassed by such extremes (and God’s love that He would care about us on this “pale blue dot” of earth).
  • Most importantly, I can’t build off of that title sheet. Sure, I do know a lot about the project from it. I know where to build, roughly how big to build, some of the loads the building will have to be able to handle. But it’s pretty obvious that that isn’t enough. I don’t know any of the internal layout of the building, or how it’s braced against those various loads like hurricane winds, or the critically-important foundations that will support it. That general overview of the project isn’t enough to actually build it. For that, I need to open up the dozens, sometimes hundreds, of pages of detailed drawings and other contract documents. In the same way, I can observe the world around me and learn that God exists, and even that He is a conscious being, is powerful, intelligent, immaterial, and eternal. But that’s not enough. Just like I need detailed plans to go with that general knowledge of a proposed building if I want to build anything that will last, I need the detailed message of the gospel if I want to spend eternity with my Creator.

When it comes to your eternal fate, don’t stop at the title page and try building your life on insufficient information, when the Master Designer has made available to you the detailed plans needed to build a life that will endure forever. And don’t ignore the drawings and title sheet altogether, and say there is no Designer as you try building a life on your own. Atheists are fond of saying religion is only a crutch for weak people, but really, it’s simply that making a mess of our lives is usually what it takes to force many of us to reach out to our life’s Designer and ask for help. Sad but true. As an engineer, I put my contact info on any of my structural drawings or reports so that people will reach out to m before they build something wrong and cause a disaster. Likewise, God has left His contact info. Don’t wait until your life comes crashing down before you call your life’s Designer to figure out how it was supposed to go together.


[1] “Revelation, General”, Norm Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000).

 

Truth Revealed

“Still Life with Bible” – Vincent Van Gogh, 1885

One objection to arguments for the existence of God like the cosmolgical, teleological, or axiological arguments, is that these don’t necessarily show the existence of the Christian God (i.e. the Trinitarian God of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible). That’s true, they don’t. but these arguments do lead you to the necessary existence of a first cause, a supreme designer, and a moral lawgiver – roles all fulfilled by the Being described in the Bible as God. That is a huge step in the right direction. Once you’ve gotten over that big hurdle of admitting that God does (and must) exist, the journey to becoming a Christian can be as short or long as you make it. Sometimes we like to take the long way (just to satisfy ourselves, I suppose), but even if you investigate all the world religions first, a sincere pursuit of truth will lead you back to the God of the Bible.

Now, none of those arguments for God’s existence rely on the Bible. They are all separate lines of philosophical reasoning, pointing to the same conclusion, but they don’t use the most direct explanation of the origins of the universe, life, and morality – the testimony of the Bible. That’s because there are two different sides to God’s revealing of His truth: general revelation and special revelation. General revelation is what He reveals of Himself and His actions in the world around us. That’s why it’s also called “natural theology.” Special revelation is the record we have of God speaking directly to humankind through various chosen people throughout history, and most importantly, through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. These two approaches to revealed truth are like the difference between forensics and testimony. You might try to piece together who left some incredible surprise gift on your porch from the little bits of evidence you can scrape together. You may be able to narrow down the list of suspects from the large shoe size tracks leading up to the porch, or some other forensic clues. But if you received a letter in the mail the next day from your good friend explaining that it was from him and why he did it, wouldn’t that simplify things tremendously? The Bible is that letter explaining everything!

Or consider this example from my engineering job.  The American Institute of Steel Construction publishes a rather hefty little book every so often that’s commonly just known as “the steel manual”. It’s filled with all kinds of good information relating to steel design, and I reference it nearly every day for something or other. If I couldn’t remember the formula for deflection of a beam, for instance, would I have to have that book? No, I could do an experiment with a stick over 2 supports with different weights hanging in the middle, and eventually work out the relationship between loading and deflection of beams. But it would likely take me a while, and probably wouldn’t be very exact. Or I could look in Table 3-23 and quickly confirm that the deflection of a simply supported, uniformly-loaded beam is (5wL^4)/(384EI). Now, that’s an example of something that I can determine from actual experiment or from simply reading the book. However, there are other things that no amount of experiments will tell me. For example, in design, we use various safety factors to account for variability in real-life conditions, and to provide a somewhat consistent “cushion” in case of accidental (or deliberate) overloading. Can I ever determine that from any experiments? Not really. That’s because these are philosophical reasons. We generally prefer nice, slow, ductile yielding of building framing in the event of a failure rather than sudden, brittle, snapping without warning. The first warns the occupants of the building that something’s wrong, giving them time to evacuate; the latter can result in sudden collapse and many tragic deaths. Therefore, our design philosophy is to favor ductile limits over brittle ones.[1] But that philosophy, and the values of the safety factors we derive from that goal, can only be determined by going to the authoritative source, AISC’s book.

Similarly, there are some general things about Himself that God has revealed in nature, and that we can determine from rational thinking. But for the most part, you need to go to His book. I’ve heard friends say that they would believe if God did something like write “I made you. – God” across the sky, or arranged the stars to say something similar. Ironically, they say they would believe at a rather short, simplistic message, even though God has left a long, detailed message in the form of the Bible. I encourage you to use all the resources available to you; explore both God’s general revelation and special revelation. The world-famous atheist Antony Flew finally had to admit there was a God just from the general revelation of God in the clear design of DNA. Sadly though, it doesn’t appear that he was willing to take the next logical step before he died. Don’t complain of not having enough of a message from God when He has left you His own narrative. He has taken the stand, so to speak, and testified of Himself. Don’t dismiss Him without reading what He has to say.


[1] AISC Steel Construction Manual, 14th Ed (2010), Commentary on section J.4., p.16.1-413. Also, Commentary on section K2, p. 16.1-427.