11.1-3 Theology of Revelation 1

11.1 Rule of Faith

• God has revealed himself through nature and reason (natural revelation). The human mind can apprehend some truth, although it is almost always partial and skewed. Our language about such things is more expression than explanation.
• The Holy Spirit has revealed and reveals truth (special revelation).
• The Spirit has revealed and reveals himself through Scripture, the Church, and spiritual experiences. 
• Wesley's quadrilateral aptly captures these sources of truth--Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, although I refer to spiritual experience here.
• Prevenient grace is God's grace that reaches out to us and empowers us to move toward him, including our knowledge of him.
• Scripture was inspired, is infallible, and authoritative.

11.2 Natural Revelation

• Psalm 19 - "The heavens declare the glory of God."
• Romans 1:20 - "The invisible things of God are clearly seen by that which is made, even his eternal power and divinity."
• Acts 17:26
• Debates between Barth and Brunner, Cornelius van Til and the Calvinist presuppositionalists
• Critical Realism and postmodernism

11.3 Christ, the Word

• John 1:1 - "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
• John 14:6 - "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
• All we need to know about God is revealed in Christ. 
• The Old Testament anticipates Christ. The New Testament witnesses to Christ. 
• The Holy Spirit has continued to unfold the significance of Christ in the Church.

Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation
Chapter 4: Sin and Atonement
Interlude: A Theology of Israel
Chapter 5: Jesus the Christ
Chapter 6: Salvation
Chapter 7: The Holy Spirit
Chapter 8: The Church
Chapter 9: Eschatology
Chapter 10: Christian Ethics

F3. God has revealed himself in nature.

This is the third post in the first section in my series, theology in bullet points. (Here are three of the later sections that I've already done).
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God has revealed himself in nature. [1]

1. That is to say, certain aspects of the creation suggest truths about God. As Psalm 19:1 puts it, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." The magnificence of the creation suggests the magnificence of the God who rules over it.

In later articles, we will discuss various options concerning God's relationship to the creation. There, we will suggest that historic Christianity 1) considers the creation to be something distinct in existence from God. In opposition to pantheism, which holds that the creation is God, and in opposition to panentheism, which sees the creation as part of God, orthodox Christianity sees the creation as something distinct from God that God created out of nothing. At one point, the creation did not exist. Then God spoke and it did.

A 2) second consideration is the degree to which God has created the universe to run on its own. That is to say, does God determine everything that happens by his continuous action in the universe on the quantum level? Some Christian traditions would say yes; other traditions leave room for the possibility that God has created the world to run on its own by certain "natural laws." I am writing these explorations of Christian theology, the study of all things relating to God, from a perspective that can allow for belief in natural laws. [2]

The idea of natural law is more or less intrinsic to science, where it refers to the predictable nature of the way the universe works, at least on the macro-scale. [3] We can distinguish between nature and miracle by using the word "natural" to refer to events that seem to follow the normal operations of the universe and "miracle" to refer to God's interruptions of the normal operations of the universe in order to do something. [4]

Natural revelation thus refers to aspects of the universe, in its normal patterns of operations, that point to truths about God. To believe in natural revelation is thus to believe that the normal operations of the world point to truths about God.

2. The three classic arguments for the existence of God fall into this category. The first two relate mostly to the so called law of cause and effect. "For every effect, there is an adequate cause." So if the universe began at a particular point, we seemingly need to account for the cause of its beginning. The current majority position of cosmology (the study of the universe) is that the universe did indeed begin at a particular point in time. Therefore, it is appropriate to ask why it began when it did.

The Christian answer is to suggest that God is the cause, and that God created the universe out of nothing. [5] This is the cosmological argument for God's existence, the argument from cause and effect. We might formulate this argument in this way:

1. Everything event we observe in the macro-universe has a cause.
2. It is reasonable to suggest that the entire universe began in an event at a point in time.
3. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that there was a cause behind that event. [6]

You will notice that I have only suggested the reasonableness of belief in God as Creator. A deductive presentation might start with faith and go in the opposite direction:

1. Christians affirm that God created the universe out of nothing.
2. In order to cause something, there must be as much potential power in the causes as the effects.
3. Therefore, God is "all-powerful" in relation to the creation. He had as much power as he created.

The teleological argument or the argument from design is similarly based on an aspect of cause and effect. In this argument, the complexity of the world suggests that the universe had a designer. For example, William Paley (1743-1805) suggested that, if you find a watch, you immediately wonder whose it is. You do not suspect that nature has accidentally caused the watch to exist. You assume there was a designer.

In the same way, the argument goes, the beauty and complexity of the universe suggests an intelligent Designer. In more recent times, the theory of evolution and chaos theory might be thought to work against the argument from design. The theory of evolution is the theory that holds that the complex forms of life we observe to day evolved from simpler forms of life over the course of millions of years. Chaos theory suggests that instances of complexity will result randomly over time as a result of the sheer number of events taking place (it is the "truth is stranger than fiction" principle).

In the end, these theories merely push the question back further. So evolution takes place by a set of rules, and chaos theory also follows the laws of cause and effect. As Richard Swinburne has suggested, the question of design can be pushed back to the very existence of laws of nature themselves. [7]

A third classic argument is problematic in its earlier forms, but may hold some force if modified. The ontological argument as presented by Anselm (1033-1109) largely amounted to saying that, because we can conceive of God, he must exist. It went something like the following:

1. God exists in my mind as the greatest possible Being.
2. But to be the greatest possible Being, he must exist in the world of senses as well as my mind.
3. Therefore, God must also exist in the world of senses.

This argument does not make sense. It mixes apples and oranges (my thoughts and the world outside my thoughts) on the basis of assumptions Anselm made about the world. These are assumptions with which most of us no longer agree (namely, Platonic assumptions).

However, Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) made an argument that we might also modify to create a form of revised ontological argument.

1. The existence of everything we observe is contingent. Nothing we observe has to exist.
2. But if the existence of everything is contingent, then the universe in theory, might not exist.
3. This is contrary to what we know, namely, that the universe does exist.
4. Therefore, there must be at least one Entity that exists necessarily.

Christians call this Necessary Being God, the "ground of all being."

3. These arguments, based more or less on the natural realm, probably do not prove the existence of God. However, they seem to be reasonable arguments. They suggest that the existence of a "First Cause" or "First Mover" who was an "Intelligent Designer" and a "Necessary Being" who grounds all being is reasonable.

Next week: F4. God reveals himself in events apart from nature.

[1] In a later article, we will note that God is not literally male. He does not have sexual organs. If it were natural English to say, "God has revealed Godself in history" or "personself," it would be more literal.

[2] I am writing from a Wesleyan-Arminian perspective. This is a perspective that historically derives from the thinking of Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) and John Wesley (1703-91). However, it is not limited to their thinking. See F5. There is a spectrum of Christian thinking and practice.

[3] The atomic and subatomic level, as it turns out, is much less predictable, at least in terms of our current understanding.

[4] These definitions can work for those who believe God determines everything that happens as well. They will simply believe that the distinction here is between the normal predictable way God acts, which look like natural laws, and those instances where he does not act in that way.

[5] We discuss the question of where God came from in a later article.

[6] In Christian circles, William Lane Craig is known for a certain version of the medieval Kalaam argument. It goes something like the following (I am paraphrasing): 1) Infinites do not exist in the real world, only theoretically in math; 2) an infinite past would be an infinite in the real world; 3) therefore, the universe must have had a beginning. It seems difficult to me, however, to demonstrate either 1 or 2, despite my agreement that 3 is true.

It is currently fashionable in cosmological circles to speak of multiple universes and the creation of our universe as a sort of bubble that arose within the multi-verse. Such schemes do not disprove the cosmological argument. For example, they could take it further back than we could possibly imagine at this point. There are also alternative creation schemes that, while historically "heterodox" or outside the mainstream, could be engaged in the never-ending search for the all truth that is God's truth.

[7] Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004)

F2. All truth is God's truth.

This is the second post in the first section in my series, theology in bullet points. (Here are three of the later sections that I've already done).
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"All truth is God's truth," the saying goes.

1. The basic idea of this saying is that, if something is true, then it not only fits with God, but it comes from God, since God designed and created all things. You might say that the Truth is everything that God believes or, rather, that God knows. You might say that the Truth is everything God has created to be true in this universe. [1]

It is in the application of the saying that Christians begin to get bent out of shape. This saying is usually used to say that if science comes up with something as a truth, then that truth fits with God just as much as a truth from the Bible, since "all truth is God's truth." Someone might then object that the Bible gives us a much more certain view of truth than science or some other field like psychology.

So while everyone mostly agrees that truth is truth, wherever you may find it, arguments over this saying amount to disagreement over where and how you find that truth. Here we enter into debates over whether truth is mostly something that we can discover or whether truth is mostly something that is revealed. The saying, "All truth is God's truth," is usually made by someone who is arguing that the truths that are discovered are just as much truths as the truths that are revealed.

There are several possibilities: 1) human thinking is fallen or damaged such that we cannot hope to reason or discover our way to truth; 2) human thinking is perfectly reliable at arriving at the truth by reason or discovery; 3) there are some truths at which human reason and discovery can arrive but others where we will never come up with the right answer without direct revelation from God.

Here we might pause to notice that we are thinking. We cannot have this discussion without thinking. Indeed, we cannot interpret the Bible without thinking. True, the Spirit might zap you with a direct revelation while you are reading it. But any attempt to understand the Bible can only take place with the involvement of basic reasoning. This is a fundamental insight.

Therefore, reason is more fundamental to the process of arriving at truth than the Bible can be, because the Bible itself is an object of knowledge. The Bible contains definitive truths, but you cannot know them apart from the exercise of basic human reasoning. The Bible provides true content, but it does not provide the most fundamental mechanisms by which my mind organizes that content, which have to do with the "operating system" we call, "thinking."

Nor does the Bible exhaust the Truth. The Truth is a much bigger set with many more elements than the Bible. The Bible does not give the birth date of my grandfather. It is a truth that is not in the Bible.

2. The bottom line is the proper mix of presupposition and evidentiary thinking. To what extent should we allow evidence to trump our presuppositions or to what extent should we let our presuppositions steer our processing of evidence?

Presuppositions are things that we assume without evidence. Those who most favor a presuppositional approach are quick to point out that we all have presuppositions--often ones that we are not even aware of. If you ever took a geometry class, you might remember that you started with axioms and postulates like, "For every two points A and B, there exists one and only one line that contains them both." You cannot prove this. It is a matter of definition. Then you built "theorems" out of these basic assumptions.

However, those who most favor a presuppositional approach usually go well beyond common sense assumptions like these. A presuppositional approach usually wants you to assume entire ideological systems and shove them down the throat of reality no matter what evidence you might find to the contrary. The fundamental problem is the source of such systems. They usually claim to be biblical, but this claim proves to be mistaken and self-contradictory.

For example, it is impossible for any such "worldview" to be truly biblical because the Bible was not written as a worldview textbook. The books of the Bible themselves tell us that they were written to specific audiences at specific times and places to accomplish specific purposes. Any attempt to abstract a philosophical worldview from them thus involves a massive exercise of reason, inference, and induction in a way that stands in tension with the obvious genres of the documents themselves. [2]

In the end, such attempts are pre-modern, based upon unreflective readings of the texts themselves. Ideological presuppositionalism has to make massive assumptions about the biblical texts in order to get any content for its assumptions from the biblical texts. In other words, its most basic assumptions still come from outside the biblical texts, assumptions about how to draw information from the biblical texts.

Such interpretation obviously involves fundamental reasoning processes on a massive scale. Thus, the presuppositional approach on this level is fundamentally incoherent. It must base its presuppositions on massive amounts of thinking and reason while claiming to by-pass such reasoning as a source of truth.

3. We cannot escape evidence. There is a certain personality that can dig a hole of ideological coping mechanism that is as profound and complex as it is perverse. But there is a point where most if not all human minds will finally concede what lies before my eyes. I may not want my father to be dead. Maybe that was not really his body at the funeral. Maybe he has just gone on an extended trip. Maybe he was abducted by aliens.

But eventually, the evidence may persuade me. Evidence almost never proves something. Except for my belief that something exists, all other conclusions about the outside world require some degree of faith. I do not think that I am dreaming right now or in a computer program. I cannot prove it, but it is reasonable to think otherwise. I am willing to take it on faith.

Evidence can be misleading. My senses can be misleading. I can make mistakes in my reasoning. Evidence is not an infallible indicator of truth. Science can go for long periods of time with models and paradigms that are rejected in the end.

Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to believe that God is not a trickster, that the evidence of the universe more or less points us in the right direction. "There is something up in the sky," is much more reasonable than, "The Devil tricked me into thinking that there was a shiny ball above my head today."

4. The point is that we can find truth not only in the Bible, but in science and in the world around us. Our apprehension of that truth will always face the potential skew of my thinking and reasoning, not to mention the fact that I can only see the universe from one small, tiny spot within it.

We call the truth that we find in the Bible and in God's direct revelations to humanity, special revelation. Then we call the truths that anyone can discover in the world, natural revelation. I strongly believe in both. Truth is both revealed and discovered in the world.

All truth is God's truth, wherever we may find it. We can find it in the Bible, but we can also find it as we behold the glory of the heavens (Ps. 19:1-6).

Next week: God has revealed himself in nature.

[1] At this point someone might say that Jesus is the "way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Certainly this is true, but it is a metonymic statement. That is, truth is so associated with Jesus, that we can figuratively say that he is the truth.

A metonymy is a figure of speech where we call something by the name of something closely associated with it. Let's say I always wear a particularly goofy hat. So you might say, "Here comes the hat." The hat is so closely associated with me that you can say that I am the hat.

To say "God is love" or "Jesus is truth" is to use a metonymic figure of this sort. It is to call God by a characteristic that dominates his nature. It is to call Jesus by something to which he is key. It is not to say that if you were to look at the atoms of God or Jesus under a microscope you would conclude, "Well, what do you know? God's atoms are made up of love!" Or, "Jesus' cells really are made up of  truth."

So to believe in Jesus is to understand the most significant aspects of the universe. But every truth is not covered by the category of Jesus. "There is a trampoline in the backyard" may be a true statement, but it is not a statement about Jesus in any obvious or straightforward way. (At this point, someone will no doubt try to come up with some tortured and convoluted connection)

Jesus is part of the Truth, just like the Bible is part of the Truth. However, neither exhaust the Truth. To say otherwise is to be confused about what a statement like, "I am the truth" means.

[2] The degree of defensive backpedaling that can take place in argument is nothing short of astounding. "God has to define what the appropriate definition of a genre is." OK, and how do you know what that definition is? Did God tell you this morning? You can't answer, "the Bible," because we are talking about how to interpret the Bible. You cannot get an answer on that question from the Bible until we know how to get an answer from the Bible.

The level of irrationality to which some will go to defend an obviously incoherent position is nothing short of astounding.

Revelation (Wes. Theo. series)

For the last few weekends, I've been spinning out what kinds of things I might write if I did a small book overviewing Wesleyan theology.  The brainstorms I've done include:

Faith (Introduction)
God
Creation and Alienation

There is so much of me in these posts that it really should be called a Wesleyan theology rather than anything like an overview from a historical perspective. It seems to me the last two hundred years push us to broaden our consideration, not least because we now have a better understanding of how to read the biblical texts on their own terms. A re-presentation seems necessary to speak with full power to today, and a mere repetition of historical categories seems two dimensional to me.

Today's overview is Revelation.

4.1 Natural Grace
John Calvin had a sense of grace built into nature, and I personally believe it is healthy for us to believe that there is a great deal of goodness in nature still that remains an embodiment of God's love for us. The Stoics spoke of "logos seeds" in all of us, which some parts of the New Testament call "the implanted word" (e.g., James 1:21). These are bits of the truth of God's will in all of us. Perhaps we want to call this "natural revelation," elements of the creation that point to God.

Dare we believe that God reaches out to the non-human parts of his creation as well, both in salvation and in goodness?

4.2 Prevenient Grace
Wesley and Wesleyans have traditionally gone one step forward to speak of God's prevenient grace, his  "lightening" of everyone who comes into the world (cf. John 1:9). In my opinion, the most coherent Wesleyan theology today will believe that God reaches out to everyone who ever lives in this world. This is a reaching out not with the head, since clearly most of those who have lived on the earth have never heard of Christ.  It is a reaching out with the heart.

Similarly, the response God is looking for is surely not a response with the head, some hollow assent to certain beliefs, but an assent with the heart. But that is for tomorrow.

4.3 Israel
Christians believe that God reached out to humanity through a people. Surely he must have been reaching out to humanity long before Abraham.  Egyptian culture had flourished for well over a 1000 years before then. Even by Bishop Ussher's standards, humanity had lived for over 2000 years before then, and science would say a massively greater time than this. From Abraham to the Christian age, the overwhelming majority of the world knew nothing of Israel's faith.

So once more we must either believe that God cared nothing for these poor souls or that he was reaching out to their hearts long before he came with matters of the head. Christians believe that his coming to Israel was the beginning of a coming with the head. But even here, he reveals by building a relationship with a people. He meets them where they are at.

It is not a full revelation of himself. He meets them with their understanding. A fuller truth is "concealed" or, better, it is partial. He lets them do things that are not his perfect will. Jesus includes divorce in this category. I would include the attempted annihilation of whole peoples in Canaan.

4.4 Scripture
The texts that we now call Scripture accumulated over a 1000 year period or so.  So we once again see that God's revelation is vastly larger than these written texts. But these written texts are the fullest witness of the head to God and his relationship with his creation. They give us the story of God's focal reaching out to the world through Israel and then ultimately, through Christ. They are the playing field on which Christians wrestle together to find God's will, to work out our salvation together with fear and trembling.

4.5 Christ as Revelation
The Word of God is Jesus Christ (John 1:14). No other word compares to the fullness of God's reaching out to reveal himself, and any confusion on that matter bespeaks a tendency to idolatry. It is in Jesus Christ that God has most fully revealed himself, once again showing that reaching out in relationship and not knowledge is the center of revelation.

4.6 The Spirit and the Church
God has not stopped revealing himself.  New issues arise.  Further, the Christians of the first centuries systematized their understanding of Scripture in the time after Christ. If we are to believe the historic doctrines of Christian faith and accept the canon of Christian Scripture, we must believe that God continued to reveal himself to them even after the time of the New Testament.

The tension between the pneumatic and the traditional in knowing and doing God's will remains present with us today. Surely God still speaks to individuals through the Spirit. Yet much individual revelation is none of the sort, and traditional structures help sift through such matters. This tension is already present within the witness of the New Testament in the contrast between the prophets of the early church and structures that included overseers and deacons.