I. WHAT IS “REVELATION”?#

The term “revelation”, which is so basic to present-day Christian theological writings, may be defined by examining its etymology, its New Testament uses, and its modern theological significance.

A. ETYMOLOGY#

The English term “revelation” is derived from the Latin noun revelatio, which is a translation of the Greek noun apokalypsis.

Etymologically, the term means an “unveiling” and hence a disclosure.

B. NEW TESTAMENT USAGES#

1. The word appears in the title of the last book of our New Testament canon, and hence this book is called the Revelation, or the Apocalypse.

By such a title the book is linked to the intertestamental and noncanonical “apocalyptic” writings of the Jews with their theme of sudden, decisive divine intervention.

2. The word is one of three Greek nouns used in the New Testament, chiefly by Paul, to refer to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

3. The word did not become for New Testament authors a comprehensive, oft-used term for God’s action(s) of self-disclosure to human beings.

C. THEOLOGICAL USAGE#

1. The concept of revelation has been of great importance in modern Christian theology.

Theologically, the term means the self-disclosure of deity to humankind.

2. A claim to revelation is basic to many, if not to all religions.

Even nontheistic religions claim that ultimate meaning or truth is disclosed or is discoverable.

“Revelation is one of the fundamental words of religion …. The concept of revelation … is as widespread as the idea of God.”

3. Revelation involves both a Revealer and the recipients of the revelation.

Divine revelation has come to humans in their total human situation. Its recipients have lived amid:

• their quest for meaning

• man’s grandeur and misery

• man’s consdence and guilt

• man’s eagerness to know his origin and his destiny

• man’s capacity for God and his kinship to the animals

• man’s mortality and yearning for life after death

But human self-understanding, including a grasp of one’s origin, nature, and destiny, is actually dependent upon a “breakthrough” from the outside; that is, it is dependent on what Christians speak of as “divine revelation.”

4. Revelation, in the distinctive Jewish, Christian, and Islamic senses of that concept, comes through the medium of history.

This will become more evident in the examination of what has been called “special revelation” or “historical revelation.”

John Macquarrie has differentiated between:

• ‘Classic’ or ‘primordial’ revelations on which communities of faith get founded

• The subsequent experience of the community in which the primordial revelation keeps coming alive in the ongoing life of the community so that the original disclosure of the holy is being continually renewed.

The latter, according to Macquarrie, can be called ‘repetitive’ revelation.

5. Revelation, in the distinctive Christian sense, is not merely God’s making available information about himself but the personal unveiling of God that transforms and reconciles the believing recipient of the revelation.

Later in the twentieth century, Protestants engaged in extensive theological debate as to whether revelation is primarily or solely propositional or is primarily or solely relational.

6. Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians have understood the mediation or transmission of revelation according to various models.

II. GENERAL REVELATION#

A. ITS DEFINITION AND DIFFERENTIATION FROM SPECIAL REVELATION#

“General” revelation is that disclosure of God that is available to all human beings through the created universe (nature) and in the inner nature of human beings (conscience).

On the contrary, “special” revelation is the historical disclosure of God to the people of Israel and in Jesus Christ. The distinctly Christian revelation of God is, therefore, special or historical revelation.

B. THE BIBLICAL WITNESS TO GENERAL REVELATION#

Although the content and means of general revelation are different from those of that special revelation which is recorded in the Bible, the Bible itself does, strange as it may seem, bear witness to or teach the reality of general revelation.

1. Revelation in and through the Created Universe

a. Psalm 19:1-6

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.

They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.

It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.

The psalmist declares that the created universe embodies a manifestation or revelation of God. That revelation is not defined more explicitly than in the term “glory” and the name “God” (El, the God of power). Verses 1-6 are joined to a context (19:7-11) in which the law of God is also discussed.

Some contend that any apprehension of such a revelation through the heavens depended in the psalmist’s time upon being in covenant relation with Yahweh and hence having the Torah. Accordingly, only those who had special revelation (the Israelites) could apprehend general revelation. But verses 1-6 do not compel such an interpretation, and the Apostle Paul was much clearer as to universality.

b. Romans 1:18-32

Seven features of this passage are pertinent to the doctrine of general revelation.

1. Paul teaches that there is and has been a revelation of God through the created universe (v. 20a).

2. This revelation has existed since the creation of humankind and existed in Paul’s day (v. 20).

Hence this is not a revelation given only to unfallen Adam and Eve; it has indeed been given to all fallen humanity as well.

3. This revelation has been made to all humankind and hence is universal, as verse 18 implies.

4. This revelation embraces “the eternal power and deity” of God (v.20)

5. This revelation carries with it a serious responsibility or accountability for one’s response to it (v. 20c).

6. This revelation has not been accepted and implemented but rejected and corrupted by human beings in the context of the universality of sin (vv. 18, 21-32).

7. This revelation through the created universe, as also the revelation through the inner nature of human beings, does not provide an experiential knowledge of the true God despite one’s sin but rather is the source of human idolatry (v. 25).

c. Acts 14:17

In his sermon at Lystra, “his first to a pagan audience” according to Acts, Paul urged his hearers to from idolatry to the Creator God.

The text suggests some revelation of in and through nature. “It was not through the power of the fertility gods that they received their food,” but through the one true “the controller of nature.”

2. Revelation in and through the Inner, Created Nature of Human Beings

a. Acts 17:26-28

In his sermon amid the Areopagus in Athens Paul, having referred to an altar “to an unknown God”, proclaimed God as Creator of all, not living in human shrines or dependent on human ministrations, but the Giver of life and breath to all humans (17:23-25).

Paul was teaching that:

• God created human beings that they might seek and find him

• Documented this human quest by quoting Stoic authors.

Paul’s point is simply this: “Since the Stoics themselves admit that man depends entirely upon God, why should they give credence to idols?”

Taylor Clarence Smith (1915-) has concluded that:

• Paul’s first quotation “is possibly a modification of part of a poem by Epimenides, a sage of Greece in the sixth century B. C. who came from the island of Crete”
• His second is derived “from Aratus (Phaenomena, line 5), the poet from Tarsus in the fourth century B. C. who greatly influenced Stoic thought.”

The quotations are designed to show the folly of idolatry, not the salvific or redemptive effect of this revelation of God.

b. Romans 2:14-16

This passage, according to Dale Moody:

is intended to make clear that there is a type oflaw in general revelation apart from the Mosaic law in special revelation… Gentiles may come to a knowledge of God through the light of creation (Rom. 1: 19f) and conscience (2:14f).

Paul… here has in mind the pagan conscience, despite Luther and Karl Barth… Calvin was wiser than Luther on this point… Paul’s gospel declared that the final judgment would be by Jesus Christ…

The truth in creation and conscience by general revelation and the truth in the old covenant find fulfilment and will be finally judged in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

C. THREE TWENTIETH-CENTURY APPROACHES TO THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL REVELATION#

1. Denial of the Existence or Occurrence of General Revelation (Karl Barth)

a. Barth’s Interpretation of Romans 1:18-32

How did Barth intetpret this passage in his The Epistle to the Romans?

Those “who hold the truth imprisoned in unrighteousness” are taken to be people who have exalted themselves in an idolatrous fashion so that God’s righteousness is imprisoned or encased.

For Barth, “That which may be known of God is manifest unto them” means the “truth concerning the limiting and dissolving of men by the unknown God, which breaks forth in the [final] resurrection,” not the present knowledge of his “everlasting power and deity.”

The Swiss theologian understands “For the invisible things of God are clearly seen” to refer to the rediscovery or remembrance of “the archetypal, unobservable, undiscoverable Majesty of God.” Barth alludes here to animals, not to the total created universe.

• Paul’s words “his everlasting power and divinity” are identified with “the gospel of the resurrection.”

• “So that they are without excuse” means human “godlessness” and “unrighteousness.”

On and on the Barthian exegesis goes, and one gets the impression that for Barth Romans 1 either means a Platonic remembering of an eternity past or an anticipation of the Christian fulfilment of the last days, neither of which allows for general revelation in the present.

In his Church Dogmatics, Barth held that Rom. 1:18-32 refers to those who have already received special revelation.

b. The Barthian Conclusion

Barth equated general revelation and natural theology and rejected both. Consequently, for Barth, since there is no general revelation of God whatsoever, the only kind of divine revelation is what others call special revelation.

Hendrik Kraemer, the missiologist who was influenced by Barth, called the term “general revelation” “one of the most misleading and confusing terms possible” and stated that it “ought to be abolished.”

But Kraemer’s objection arose from his recognizing that “general revelation” had so often been used as a synonym for “natural theology” and his holding that “natural theology” is far different from Rom. 1:18-32.

2. General Revelation As Being, At Least to an Extent, Salvific or Redemptive

a. Biblical Texts Most Often Cited in Support

Advocates of this view tend to cite two texts among those already analyzed:

• Acts 17 :27, with emphasis on “and find him”

• Rom. 2:15, with emphasis on “perhaps excuse them”

They also cite and stress John 1 :9, two translations of which are as follows:

There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world. (ASV)

There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. (NASV)

Certain questions have been raised regarding these texts.

• Does Paul’s reference in his Areopagus sermon to seeking and finding God mean finding God’s mercy, forgiveness, and grace apart from the historic Jesus and his death?

• If the thoughts of human beings excuse them, does this mean that these persons have been excused by and reconciled to God?

• How does the Logos enlighten every human being?

• Do all humans effectively receive this enlightenment, or do only certain humans effectively receive it?

• Can revelation through the Logos and not through nature and/or conscience be rightly identified as general revelation?

• Is this illumination by the universal Logos redemptive apart from the incarnation and death-resurrection of the Logos and a faith-response to the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus Christ?

Those who hold to this third position concerning general revelation normally give affirmative and sympathetic answers to these questions.

b. Some Recent and Varied Statements of This View

1) Romans 1-2 as referring collectively, not individually, to the Gentiles (Hans Kung)

The general revelation taught by Paul in Romans 1-2 is said to have a collective, not an individual, significance.

But this does not amount to a judgment on the salvation or damnation of an individual pagan. For the question being asked here is not about the fate of individual pagans before Christ but about the responsibility and guilt of both groups of pre-Christian mankind, Jews and gentiles alike.

2) The faint revelation of God’s mercy and the clear revelation of God’s wrath (Eric C. Rust)

The background of general revelation must not be viewed negatively. Man in his sin did grasp in his religious consciousness some significant aspects of the divine nature and purpose. His religious imagination did weave some images and patterns of the invisible reality which foreshadowed the truth that was to come.
Even though he experienced the living God more as wrath than as grace, even though his religious consciousness was strangely perverted by sin, we cannot see secular history wholly in a negative way. Something of God was breaking through. God’s mercy was being faintly recognized, and the light that lightens every man by coming into the world was dispelling man’s darkness.

3) The preexistent Logos and the Noahic covenant (John Baillie, 1888-1960, Dale Moody)

Baillie’s argument may be summarized as follows.

Since “in Hebrew thought revelation is always conceived as being given within a covenant relationship,” since we have the record of a covenant which God made with Noah which included “the whole human race before it was divided into the Shemites, the Hamites, and the sons of J apheth,” and since the Noahic covenant was the “most appealed to in later Judaism,” the Noahic covenant, not Stoicism, stood behind Paul’s thought in Romans 1-2.

Thus “any measure of authentic insight” in the sacred books of ethnic religions “was in fact the fruit of God’s historical dealings with the souls of the peoples concemed.”

Moody agreed with Baillie’s position.

c. Salvific Dimensions of This View

Certain individual Christian thinkers, notably Justin Martyr in the second century and Ulrich Zwingli in the sixteenth century, have taught the divine salvation ofleading Greek philosophers. In the twentieth century the arena of effective divine salvation has been extended by some Christian thinkers to include modem leaders in or members of non-Christian religions, such as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948).

But the Christian churches have not, at least until Vatican Council II, pronounced on or clearly affirmed with certitude as salvific or redemptive the effects of general revelation. The issue has generally been left to the arena of the unknown dimension of the outworking of God’s grace and providence.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for Protestants especially, the missionary movement has both raised:

• the possibility of such salvation apart from specific faith in the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus as the Son of God

• reemphasized the exclusive character of salvation only through Jesus Christ

This second option as to general revelation tends to give support to this wider line of salvation apart from the specifics of the Christian gospel.

3. General Revelation as the Basis of Human Accountability but Not Assuredly the Means of Salvation (John Calvin, Emil Brunner)

The advocates of this third position depend heavily on the texts in Acts and the Pauline epistles which have been examined earlier in this chapter. Theological defense of the position may be explained as follows.

1. The biblical writers did not seek to prove the existence of God by formal argument but rather assumed that God was on the scene of action.

The biblical doctrine of God’s revelation in the created universe and in human beings is that of a divine disclosure of the being and power of God, not a formal proof of the existence of God such as Thomas Aquinas utilized in the opening pages of his Summa Theologica.

2. The revelation in the created universe and in human conscience ought to be differentiated from “natural theology.”

Admittedly there are various legitimate usages of the term “natural theology”. Here only two definitions will be considered.

a) Two-story view

“Natural theology” has been used to refer to a natural and rationally discoverable foundation of the knowledge of God to which “supernatural revelation” has been added as the superstructure.

Such a definition underlies the theology of Thomas Aquinas and the teaching of Vatican Council I.

b) Competitive view

“Natural theology” has been defined by Emil Brunner as “the knowledge of God based on purely rational grounds, independent of the Christian revelation of salvation and therefore in competition with it… "

General revelation, Millard J. Erick.son has concluded, “cannot be used to construct a natural theology.”

The opposite is also true: natural theology cannot be constitutive of general revelation.

3. General revelation helps “to explain the worldwide phenomenon of religion and religions.”

The widespread occurrence of human beings as religious is explicable on the basis that they have an awareness, even if corrupted and misused, of God. The Christian missionary does not take the entire awareness of God to non-Christian peoples but wisely builds upon that foundation.

4. General revelation, therefore, affords “a common ground or a point of contact between the believer and the nonbeliever, or between the gospel and the thinking of the unbeliever.”

Hence the Christian gospel is not to be flung at human beings as if they were inanimate objects or animal creatures but instead addressed to “areas of sensitivity” such as one supreme deity, creation, human accountability, and the like.

5. General revelatio is, as Paul argued in his Epistle to the Romans, the ground of or basis for the accountability of all human beings to God; for Paul, this was especially true of the Gentiles.

The Pauline “without excuse” conclusion is basic to the thought of Romans and should inform a multi-continent Christian theology of missions at the turn of the twentieth-first century.

6. According to Paul, general revelation, as received and applied, does not furnish to human beings a sufficient, effective, and redemptive knowledge of God and his will.

a) This revelation has been darkened and corrupted by human sin. Humans do not in response live up to the light and truth of this revelation.

b) This revelation provides some knowledge of God as the powerful Creator and the faithful Sustainer of the universe and of human existence, but it cannot and does not provide a transforming knowledge of the holy love and redeeming grace of God in behalf of sinful human beings.

c) Paradoxically, this revelation is sufficient for the condemnation of humans as sinners but not sufficient in itself for the redemption or salvation of humans from sin and into the fellowship of God.

D. CONCLUSIONS CONCERNING GENERAL REVELATION#

The three major viewpoints among twentieth-century Protestant theologians about general revelation can be instructive for all who would seek to draw proper conclusions on this subject.

• The Barthian view is right in stressing that revelation must necessarily proceed from the initiative of God but seems wrongly to deny the genuineness of that general revelation which the Apostle Paul affirmed.

• The view of Kung, Baillie, and others is right in stressing that Christians should not limit unduly the theatre of God’s revelatory activity but seems to go beyond the New Testament by affirming the salvific character of general revelation.

• The view of Calvin and Brunner is right in stressing that God reveals himself both in creation and in redemption but seems not to provide an adequate answer to the problem as to a revelation that is adequate to condemn but not to save.

Yet the last view, that of Calvin and Brunner, though not without problems, seems to be most consistent with the biblical teaching, especially that of Paul, even in an era increasingly dominated by pluralism.