How do we come to know who God is? For that matter, how do we come to know who anybody is? Now stop for a moment; have you ever thought about how it is that we can know something about another person? How do you know that your brother, father, daughter, or aunt likes or dislikes something? How do you know how they think politically? How do you know what they fear or what they love? The answer to all of these questions, in a very real sense, is revelation.
Allow me to demonstrate with an example from my own life. My favorite flavor of ice cream is mint chocolate chip. This is something that is true about me that some of you may or may not know. Now there are two basic ways you can know this about me. First, you could observe that when I have ice cream, more often than not, I will choose mint chocolate chip, and you can reasonably infer that that is probably my favorite flavor. You would probably not be certain that it is my favorite, but your observation would lead you to a conclusion that is most likely correct. The second way you could know this about me is if I tell you, as I just did. I am making a self-disclosure about myself that you now know for sure. You are not making an educated guess, but are taking my word for it that this is true about me and my ice cream preferences. Now let us take the thought one step further. Suppose somebody else told you that my favorite ice cream flavor was mint chocolate chip, could you truly know that about me? Yes, you could, but only if that other person’s information was based upon my own self-revelation, whether through their observation of my actions or through my self-disclosure. Ultimately, I myself am the source of this revelation about my favorite flavor of ice cream. If somebody were to come up to you and tell you that my favorite flavor was mocha, well such an assertion is just flat wrong (I am no fan of mocha at all) and it is not derived from the most authoritative source about my favorite ice cream flavor: myself. My own self-revelation is necessary for you to know this about me, whether by demonstrating it through my actions or by telling you about it. If I so choose, I could withhold this information. I could choose to never again have ice cream and could choose to never tell anyone what my favorite flavor of ice cream is. The fact that mint chocolate chip is my favorite flavor would still be true, but it could never be known beyond my own mind without some form of revelation.
If it is true that knowledge about other persons is based upon their own revelation of themselves, then this is even more true of God himself. How could we know about God, who is so much higher above us, unless he revealed himself to us? As C. S. Lewis so artfully put it, “If Shakespeare and Hamlet could ever meet, it must be Shakespeare’s doing. Hamlet could initiate nothing.”1 As mere created beings, we cannot initiate contact with God; it is the Creator who must reach out to us and show himself to us. This is the great why of the need for revelation and leads us to a discussion of the two ways in which God reveals himself to us: general revelation and special revelation.
General revelation pertains to our knowledge of God as discerned through observing his actions in the world around us and is probably best understood as what we may learn about God through creation. We call this type of revelation general revelation because it is generally revealed to all peoples in all places at all times. As Paul put it, “For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse” (Rom. 1:19–20). This revelation is such that men are without excuse as to this basic knowledge about God. The creation itself tells us of God’s wise and powerful nature in how he has ordered it; as the psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Ps. 19:1). God has revealed himself to us in his actions in creating the world. Just as you could make reasonable inferences from observing my choice of ice cream, so much more can we come to reasonable conclusions about God through an observation of creation. Yet general revelation is also limited: it is clear enough to provide us with a general knowledge of God’s existence and power such that mankind is without excuse, yet it does not tell us many specific details about God. It does not tell us, for example, what sort of God he is, nor his plan of salvation, nor his character. Our knowledge of God through general revelation alone is incomplete; the picture is dim and we can very easily wrongly interpret this revelation or even intentionally distort it. Yet God did not leave us with a dim picture of himself, but he chose to reveal himself specifically through his special revelation. This is why special revelation is absolutely necessary, for what can be discerned about God is more clearly and directly revealed by it.
The term special revelation is used to refer to the various ways in which God has spoken: in a direct voice from heaven, in dreams, through prophets, or through the written word. Each of these is a form of special revelation, as they are revealed at specific places and times to specific people. Just as me telling you my favorite flavor of ice cream is clearer, so much clearer is God’s special revelation of himself, of his character, of his attributes, and of his plan for salvation. The greatest form of special revelation that we recognize is God’s self-disclosure through the person of his Son, Jesus Christ: “On many past occasions and in many different ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets. But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe” (Heb. 1:1–2). Jesus came into the world and took on flesh, and was a living and breathing special revelation of God. He came and revealed himself not to “condemn the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:17). Now while God has used various means of delivering his special revelation, the most enduring means that God has intended as normative down through the generations has been the written word of his revelation, in what we call the Bible or the Scriptures.
Though God once used prophets in the past, we no longer have prophets declaring to us “thus says the Lord,” but we have the Word of God in an enduring written form. The Scriptures are God’s special revelation to us; they are the means by which we come to know God and his character, of his moral law, and of his plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. We know of God through general revelation, but we truly come to know God through his special revelation which he has given to us.
So why do we need revelation? Because without it, we would have no knowledge of God. Just as you would have no knowledge about my ice cream preferences without revelation through my actions or through my words, so too would we have no knowledge of God unless he chose to reveal himself to us through his general and special revelation. Knowledge of God can only come through God’s own self-disclosure; if supposed knowledge of God is based upon anything but the source, it is illegitimate and without any firm foundation. If someone tells you, “I believe God is like X” or “God would never do Y,” yet this statement is not rooted in God’s revelation about himself, it cannot be given any credence. This would be akin to someone telling you that my favorite flavor of ice cream is really mocha, despite my own actions and statements indicating that my favorite flavor is mint chocolate chip. The assertion is divorced from the only real authority that could give it legitimacy.
To truly know anything about God, he must reveal it to us. And indeed, he graciously has.
Adapted from “The Words of God and of Men” in God Spoke: The Story of How We Came to Have the Bible as We Know It Today
Notes
- C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002), 264. ↩︎
