It is essential that special or historical or biblical revelation be explored in greater detail. Obviously there are two phases of biblical revelation:
That which came to and through the people of Israel (Old Testament)
That which came in and through Jesus Christ (New Testament).
I. SPECIAL REVELATION TO AND THROUGH ISRAEL UNDER THE OLD COVENANT#
A. THE BASIS OF DIVINE REVELATION UNDER THE OLD COVENANT#
The basis of revelation under the Old Covenant is God’s choice of a special people, Israel, out of God’s sovereign love and with a view to the blessing of all humankind through Israel.
Yahweh’s choice of Israel was dramatized and particularized in His deliverance of Israel from Egypt (the Exodus), was symbolized and formalized by his covenant with Israel through Moses, and was to be fulfilled in the eschatological kingdom of God.
The covenant was intended to be a distinct blessing to Abram’s seed and to result in blessing to all peoples on earth (Gen. 12: 1-3 ). The covenant, conditioned on obedience and covenant-faithfulness, was offered to the people of Israel through Moses and called for their affir mative response (Exod. 19:3-8).
Israel was to know the presence of the invisible God (Exod. 33: 12-23) and to receive the land of Canaan devoid ofidolatry (Exod. 34:10-17).
The covenant must be renewed by subsequent generations of Israelites (Deut. 29; 2 Kings 23:1-3; also 2 Chr. 34:29-33).
In view of great ancient civilizations one may be prone to ask the question: Why not God’s choice of China, of India, or of Egypt, with their cultures, history, religions, and people? Why tiny Israel? There seems to be no answer apart from the electing love and sovereign pur pose of God. This election did not exclude Yahweh’s sovereignty over all the nations, as the Old Testament prophets often made clear.
B. PERIODS OF REVELATION UNDER THE OLD COVENANT#
One should recognize that there were distinct periods or eras of revelation under the Old Covenant. To assert such periods is not to subscribe to any theory of the naturalistic evolution of Israel’s religion.
The Graf-Kuenen-Wellhausen approach to the Old Testament, so dominant at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, seemed to presuppose a straight-line evolution of the religion of Israel from the lowest to the highest levels. Moreover, God’s revelation was directed to Israel’s situation and need.
But revelation advanced not only because Israel was willing or ready to receive or perceive but also because God was ready and willing to disclose his nature and his will to Israel.
Consequently, one may identify as periods of revelation under the Old Covenant:
the patriarchal
the Mosaic (Exodus, Law and wanderings)
the monarchical or early national (Samuel and the United Kingdom)
the divided kingdom or prophetic
the captivity in Babylon
the restoration or postexilic.
From the perspective of the Old Testament canon one may say that the revelation under the Old Covenant embraces “the law (or Torah), the prophets (or Nebiim) and the writings (or Kethubim).”
C. MODALITIES OF REVEIATION UNDER THE OLD COVENANT#
Many and diverse were the ways in which God revealed himself to Israel (Heb. 1:1). Bernard Ramm described biblical revelation as “anthropic” and as “analogical.”
- By “anthropic” he meant “marked by human characteristics throughout.”
Especially does this include what is called anthropomorphisms and the use of human languages.
- By “analogical” Ramm meant the “bridge from the incomprehensibility of God to the knowability of God.”
An analogy is that conceptual device whereby something in one universe of discourse is employed to explain, illustrate, or prove something in another universe of discourse.
Emil Brunner listed as modalities of revelation under the Old Covenant the following: theophanies, angels, dreams, oracles (such as Urim and Thummim), visions, locutions, natural phenomena, historical events, guidance to individuals and groups, and words and deeds of the prophets.
Ramm’s list includes the following: the lot, Urim and Thummim (stones), deep sleep, dreams, visions, theophanies, and angels.
Brunner also discussed revelation under the Old Covenant under four special categories:
“The word of God,” including teaching and the Law
“The mighty acts” of God, embracing narratives, signs, and acts of deliverance
“The ’name’ of God” as revelation itself
“The ‘face’ of God,” or theophanies.
The Old Testament warns against two dangers concerning the modalities of divine revelation.
First, there are dangers from false uses of true modalities, as one may see in the case of false prophets.
Second, there are wrong kinds of modalities that are never to be trusted or heeded, such as witchcraft, astrology, and necromancy.
D. THE UNIQUENESS OF THE REVELATION UNDER THE OLD COVENANT#
1. The Events
The uniqueness of the religion of the Old Testament is to be found not only in the capacity of Israel’s prophets to “see [the one] God in history” but also in the very events themselves. Necessary to that uniqueness was the series of events which constituted Israel’s history, which events we Christians by faith explain as God’s self-disclosure to and through Israel.
In the very recent past, Old Testament scholars have been divided concerning the issue of the locus of the uniqueness of the faith of Israel.
- First, certain Old Testament scholars such as Albrecht Alt (1883-1956), Martin Noth (1902-68), and Gerhard von Rad (1901-71), employing form criticism in the study of the Old Testament, have stressed Israel’s own confession or interpretation of her faith.
Von Rad has held that the subject matter of Old Testament theology “is simply Israel’s own assertions about Yahweh.” These assertions were founded on a “credo” around which numerous and various separate traditions were clustered. Accordingly, most of the Old Testament is an expansion of or commentary on this credo.
Von Rad has denied that modern Christians, scholars or otherwise, can get behind these traditions to the bare events themselves. Von Rad would accept some historical reality behind the traditions without making any effort to describe the “bare events.”
- Second, other Old Testament scholars such as Eichrodt, G. Ernest Wright, and Eric C. Rust have stressed the closer correlation of Israel’s theology and the actual history of Israel so that the history is not relegated to uncertainty or nonimportance by the predominance of the credo or the kerygma.
According to Eichrodt, there “must be an absolute refusal to surrender a real historical foundation to the faith of Israel, or to interpret the conflicts between the statements of the Old Testament version of history and that discovered by critical scholarship in a merely negative way as proof of the unimportance of the historical reference of religious statements.”
Wright declared that biblical theology “is a theology of recital or proclamation of the acts of God, together with the inferences drawn therefrom. These acts are themselves interpretations of historical events, or projections from known events to past or future, all described within the conceptual frame of one people in a certain historical continuum.”
Millard Erickson critics Wright’s view within the context of a threefold typology of recent views as to the relation between divine revelation and historical events recorded in the Bible.
Revelation through history
Erickson sees the Neoorthodox view as that of “revelation through history.” Accordingly, God has employed history as means or as “the shell” for his revelatory purpose, but revelation actually occurred in the past in experience (Abram, Moses, Isaiah, Paul) and occurs today whenever the reader or hearer of the Bible under the sovereignty of God has an encounter with God.
Revelation in history
Wright’s view is labeled “revelation in history.” Erickson interprets Wright’s view to be that the mighty historical acts of God are the means of revelation but that the attributes of God are merely “inferred” from the mighty acts by the biblical writers and that modern Christians may have to correct or revise such inferences.
Revelation as history
Erickson identifies the view of Wolfhart Pannenberg as that of “revelation as history,” according to which the historical events of the Bible as God’s mighty acts were indeed the revelation of God and clearly unfolded God’s attributes.
2. The Concepts
Not only the events in Israel’s history but also some of the concepts in Israel’s apprehension of God were unique. Such concepts served to attract Gentile proselytes to the Jewish faith during the late intertestamental period and proved to be foundational to the faith of the New Testament.
Four such concepts may be specified in particular.
a. The Significance of History
The sense of the significance of Israel’s history, which came to be expressed in Israelite history writing, was not shared by contemporary nations.
b. Monotheism
Israel alone was devoted to “the adoration of the one and only God”. This meants, in its maturity, that there was only one God for all humankind, not merely henotheism, or one deity for each nation or culture.
c. Attributes of Yahweh
Distinctive attributes were ascribed to Yahweh (holiness, righteousness, love, faithfulness, etc.)
d. Messianism
Only in Israel was divine redemption seen to be from sin, in history, and through one from David’s line, the Messiah.
E. LIMITATIONS OF REVELATION UNDER THE OLD COVENANT#
Neither an awareness of the unfolding character of revelation to Israel nor an acknowledgment of aspects of uniqueness in the revelation of God to and through Israel should prevent the frank acceptance of basic limitations within the revelation under the Old Covenant. Particularly should these limitations be viewed from the perspective of the postexilic or intertestamental era.
1. The Law as Burdensome Code
Although it had been given as revelation and for Israel’s good, the law, supplemented by a vast body of interpretation and application, became during the intertestamental period a burdensome code or system.
2. Inadequate Provision for Sin
Sacrifices for sin under the law had to be repeated. Moreover, they were effective only for sins of inadvertence (Lev. 4:2, 22, 27; 5:18; Num. 15:22-29), not for sins “with a high hand” (Num. 15:30).
3. Extreme Transcendence of God
Especially during the intertestamental era, Yahweh was understood as quite transcendent, and thus Yahweh could only be approached through angels and mediaries.
4. Unfulfilled Messianism
The Messiah had not yet appeared or come to the Jewish people, and thus all the associated expectations were as yet unrealized.
5. Dim Hope of Life after Death
The Hebrew doctrine of Sheol consisted of a shadowy, vague survival of human beings without any clear relationship to the living God.
6. Jewish Particularism
Although Israelite-Jewish history, especially with Ezra and the Maccabees, had been marked by the exclusion of the noncovenanted peoples, there had been exceptional Gentile inclusions Cyrus, Jonah to Nineveh).
Although the exceptions continued (Gentile God-fearers and proselytes), Jewish particularism was so dominant as to prevent any considerable mission to the Gentiles.
7. Repeated Covenant-Unfaithfulness of the Covenant People
The sinful wickedness and covenant-unfaithfulness which so repeat- edly marked the rulers and the peoples of Israel and Judah served to obscure and to make less persuasive the revelatory features in Yahweh’s covenant with this people.
II. SPECIAL REVELATION IN JESUS CHRIST UNDER THE NEW COVENANT#
Christianity can be differentiated from Judaism by the Christian affirmation that God has made a new covenant in Jesus Christ that fulfills and in some ways supersedes the Old Covenant with Israel.
Christianity can be differentiated from second-century and later forms of Marcionism by the Christian affirmation that the Old Covenant was essential to salvation history and that the books of the Old Testament belong within and are integral to the canon of the Christian Scriptures.
A. THE MODALITY OR MODALITIES OF REVELATION UNDER THE NEW COVENANT#
1. One Modality
It is possible and indeed quite proper to conclude that under the New Covenant there is but one modality of revelation, namely, Jesus Christ himself. Erickson has identified “the incarnation” as “the most complete modality of revelation.”
It is possible also to focus the modality in the person of Jesus Christ or in his death and resurrection. Any such answers mean that special revelation has only one modality.
2. Multiple Modalities
It is also possible to subdivide the modality so that one can conceive of a cluster of modalities through which God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ.
a. The Death-Resurreection of Jesus
For post-Pentecostal Christianity of the first century A.D., no modality was of greater importance than Jesus’ death and resurrection.
By his resurrection Jesus was manifested as “Son of God in power” according to the Holy Spirit (Rom. 1:4, RSV).
Following his resurrection he was exalted by God the Father and given “the name which is above every name” (Phil. 2:9).
His crucifixion at “the hands of lawless men” was nevertheless both consonant with and expressive of God’s purpose and plan (Acts 2:23).
The One whom “God has made … both Lord and Christ” was the crucified Jesus (Acts 2:36).
Jesus as crucified is “both the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5: 19).
Paul saw in Jesus’ death both a revelation of God’s condemnation of human sin and a revelation of God’s holy love for sinners (Rom. 8:34; 5:8).
b. Jesus’ Claims concerning His Relationship with God the Father
Such claims by Jesus were threefold:
- Jesus claimed to have been sent into the world with or upon a divine mission by God the Father.
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34).
“… I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30).
“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).
- Jesus claimed to have a special, intimate, and unique knowledge of God the Father.
He taught that “no one knows the Father except the Son” (Matt. 11:27c).
“I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:14-15).
- Jesus claimed to be the only conveyor or mediator of that special or unique knowledge of God to human beings.
One should take note of the words: “and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27d).
c. Jesus’ Manifest Awareness of and Specific Teaching about God the Father
1) Jesus’ conscious awareness of and fellowship with God the Father
This was the controlling factor in Jesus’ life. His knowledge of the Father was direct and interpersonal, not based on argument or investigation or tradition. His relationship with the Father was unbroken by sin and continuous.
2) Jesus’ teaching about God the Father
God was the center and subject of Jesus’ teaching. His primary identification for Yahweh God was the analogical name “Father.” God the Father was characterized by love, grace, mercy, righteousness, power, wisdom, and such qualities. Even those who deny Jesus’ deity and the significance of his redemptive work acknowledge the superiority of his teaching about God.
d. Jesus’ Deeds and Actions
1) Miracles of healing
Jesus’ miracles, called “signs” in the Fourth Gospel, manifested God’s compassion and power and were expressive of God’s purpose (John 14:10-11).
2) Jesus’ association with “sinners” (outcasts)
By associating with those persons who were religious and social outcasts Jesus manifested the Father’s compassionate love for them.
3) Jesus’ perfect embodiment of his own teaching
Jesus perfectly embodied his teaching about relationships with God the Father and with other human beings. He was sinless, being successfully resistant to temptation and not needing to repent of sin, as he had taught all others to do. Hence he was fully qualified to be the Redeemer or Savior of humankind.
3. Propositional Revelation or Relational Revelation?
A major debate among Protestant theologians of the middle and latter twentieth century has been conducted between those who advocate propositional or conceptual revelation and those who advocate relational revelation.
Propositionalism holds that revelation as propositions or concepts is either the primary or the sole characteristic of special revelation. Advocates of propositionalism include Cornelius Van Til, Edward J. Camell, James I. Packer, and Carl F. H. Henry.
Advocates of relational revelation include Karl Barth, William Temple (1881-1944), John Baillie, Emil Brunner, and William Hordern. Building upon
Søren Kierkegaard’s distinction between objective and subjective truth
Martin Buber’s distinction between an I-Thou relationship and kind of knowledge and an I-it relationship and kind of knowledge
These theologians interpret revelation primarily, if not solely, as interpersonal, fiduciary, and encounter-centered.
Must one choose sides completely in this debate? No, for there is some truth on both sides, and these truths need to be correlated.
Propositionalism rightly stresses that God has employed human languages, including key words and concepts, in his self-disclosure through Israel and in Jesus Christ and that God has spoken and not merely acted in revelation with the result that revealed truth is not meaningless jargon.
Relationalism rightly stresses that divine revelation is not dispensed information about God that does not transform the recipients with the result that revelation can never be rightly divorced from its liberating, saving, reconciling, and transforming effects upon human beings.
B. REVELATION IN JESUS CHRIST AS THE FULFILLMENT OF THE REVELATION THROUGH ISRAEL#
The leading aspects of this fulfillment coincide with the limitations characteristic of the revelation under the Old Covenant.
“Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Matt. 5: 17, RSV).
1. Law and Prophets
The Law and the Prophets of the Old Covenant were fulfilled in him who was more than a prophet, the very Son of God, the Word of God, and the one who “ends the law and brings righteousness for everyone who has faith” (Rom. 10:4, NEB).
“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17, RSV)
2. Forgiveness/Reconciliation
The unresolved problem of human sin which necessitated repeated sacrifices under the Old Covenant has been solved in and by Jesus Christ. This was accomplished through his death as the Suffering Servant (Isa. 53) and as the High Priest who offered the once-for-all sacrifice for sin (Heb. 7:27; 9:12).
3. Transcendence Balanced by Immanence
Under the New Covenant, the transcendent Yahweh has disclosed himself in and through the eternal Word “who became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). This Word could even be “heard” and “seen” and “touched” (1 John 1:1, NIV). He is superior to all angels (Heb. 1:4).
4. Messianic Kingdom
The promise and hope of the Messiah have been fulfilled by Jesus as the Messiah and, to use his preferred term, Son of Man. He heraled the drawing near of the kingdom of God through his proclamation and ministry and its finalization at his second coming.
5. Life after Death
The expectation under the Old Covenant, dominated by the concept of Sheol and with occasional allusions to resurrection from the dead, has been clarified and made more specific by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and its serving as the basis for the final resurrection of humandkind.
6. Particularism and Universalism
Although Jesus’ own public ministry and that of the Twelve was focused on the people of the Old Covenant (Matt. 10:5-6), following Jesus’ resurrection the good news concerning Jesus was proclaimed to Samaritans and Gentiles as well as Jews (Acts 8:4-25; ch. 10; 11 :20-21).
There began that missionary expansion of the Christian faith outside the boundaries of the Jewish people which issued from the belief that Jesus had died “for the sins of the whole world” ( 1 John 2:2b) and that “every [human] tongue [should] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2: I la) and from the specific commission by the risen Jesus (Matt. 28: 18-20 and par.).
7. Revelation in the Obedient Divine-Human Person of Jesus Christ
Jesus by his submission to and obedience of the will of the Father, both in life and death and despite the allurements of temptation, perfectly fulfilled the New Covenant, thereby revealing the Father in unprecedented fashion and reconciling with singular effectiveness human beings to God.
C. REVELATION IN JESUS CHRIST AS ALSO REVELATION BY THE HOLY SPIRIT#
God, or God the Holy Spirit, is, according to the New Testament, actively involved in the reception of divine revelation. That reception is, of course, described as man’s “believing” or “faith.” But it is also described as the result of God’s bestowal or initiative.
This divine agency in the reception of revelation is not always specifically attributed in the New Testament to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it is ascribed to God the Father (Matt. 11:25; 16:17; Gal. 1: 16).
There are New Testament texts in which the divine agency in the reception of revelation is specifically and clearly attributed to the Holy Spirit. Especially is this true of John 14-16 and 1 Corinthians.
Paul explicated the revelatory work of the Spirit in 1 Cor. 2:10-13. Similarly the same apostle declared that “no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3).
D. REVELATION IN JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO THE WITNESS OF THE APOSTLES#
All later Christians are dependent upon the witness of the apostles to Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Their apprehension of Jesus Christ as derivable through the New Testament depends upon this apostolic witness.
- The apostolic witness was post-Pentecostal, and hence the form of this witness in the Acts and Epistles is different from its form in the Gospels.
Even so there is no basis for the anti-Pauline “Back to Jesus” movement in Ritschlianism or for the Bultmannian overemphasis on the early church’s forming of the kerygma, or the proclaimed gospel.
- The apostolic witness centered in the death-resurrection of Jesus, not merely in his life and teachings.
It did include or use materials incorporated in the four canonical Gospels.
- The apostolic witness was that of irreplaceable eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ.
The apostles had a providential proximity to Jesus as well as personal selection and calling by Jesus. Thus all later Christians are necessarily dependent on their witness. Yet, against Rudolf Bultmann, it must be argued that the apostles did not “mythologize” the Christian message.
- Witness and mission rather than rulership or dominion constituted the chief functions of the apostles, although they indeed exercised apostolic authority.
In the Catholic (Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglo-Catholic) tradition the doctrine of apostolic succession from apostles to a line of bishops led those bishops to become rulers as well as teachers in the church, whereas for Irenaeus and Tertullian in the second and third centuries A.D. the emphasis was on the bishops’ validation of apostolic truth.
- The apostolic witness came to be embodied in the writings which we call “the New Testament”
Thus the New Testament may be rightly construed as the successor to the apostles, even though every one of its books was not authored by an apostle.
Peter Taylor Forsyth declared: “The real successor of the Apostolate… was not the hierarchy but the canon of Scripture written to prolong their voice and compiled to replace the vanished witness.”
E. THE FINALITY OF THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JESUS CHRIST#
1. The New Testament Witness
The New Testament writers bore witness to the finality or ultimacy of the revelation in Jesus Christ primarily by the use of the terms “image” and “Word”.
- In 2 Cor. 4:4 Paul speaks of Christ as “the image of God,” and in Col. 1:15 Christ is referred to as “the image of the invisible God.”
The Greek word for “image” is the same word which came later to be used in the Iconoclastic Controversy for “image” or “idol.”
- In Heb. 1 :3 (ASV) the author speaks of Christ as “the effulgence [or outshining] of his [God’s] glory and the very image of his substance.”
The word translated “image” here (charaktir) was used in the Greek in a manner similar to our modem English term used in engraving and printing, that is, the word “cut.” Christ is the exact likeness of God even as the cut is the likeness of a human being.
- In John 1:1, 14-18 the Evangelist presents Jesus as the Word of God and as the incarnate Word.
As the Word of God Jesus has “declared” or “exegeted” (exigisato) the Father.
The finality of Jesus is also expressed by the sufficiency of his saving work. His work of reconciling the world is the work of God (2 Cor. 5: 19), and his death as sacrifice is the “once-for-all” offering for sin (Heb. 9:12, 26; 10:12, 14).
2. The Contemporary Doctrine
The term “finality” needs to be understood in the sense of ultimacy and not in terms of chronological lastness. The finality of the revelation in Jesus Christ means that that revelation will not be abandoned, supplemented, or superseded.
a. Finality and the Person of Christ
The question as to the finality of special revelation in Christ depends on the finality of his person and work. Any erosion as to the latter will inevitably affect the former. The cognitive aspect of revelation in Christ should never be severed from the redemptive or transformative aspect.
b. Finality and the Universal Mission of Christianity
During the age of the Church Fathers the term “Catholic” came to mean not only geographical extensity, its original meaning, but also doctrinal authenticity, or both “universality” and “identity.”
Christianity has and will continue to have a “catholic” or universal mission. The gospel is to be taken to all human persons (demographic), “into all the world” (geographic), and “unto the end of the age” (chronological).
c. Finality and the General or Secular History of Humankind
Lesslie Newbigin has insisted that “the finality of Christ is to be understood in terms of his finality for the meaning and direction of history.”
He has asserted that the central question is not the Christian gospel vis-a-vis non-Christian religions (Will the pious Hindu be saved?) but rather Jesus Christ and universal history (Is Jesus the clue to all history?)
d. Finality and Individual Human Destiny after Death
For centuries Christianity has connected “salvation” or “eternal life” with personal faith in Jesus Christ, his person and his work, so that individual destiny after death was governed by relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Today much of the theology and missiology of Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants has severed this relationship between the crucified and risen Jesus and personal destiny after death, with the result that only evangelical Protestants continue consistently to bear witness to the essentiality and necessity of personal faith in the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus for “salvation” or “eternal life.”
SUMMARY#
In summary, special or biblical revelation consists both of revelation to and through Israel under the Old Covenant and revelation in Jesus Christ under the New Covenant, and the latter is the proper and complete fulfillment of the former.
“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken tous by his Son … " (Heb.1:1-2a, NIV).