01.05. Special Revelation.
5. Special Revelation.
(The manner of Revelation). The inadequacy of general revelation brings into focus the necessity of special revelation. But this necessity must be properly understood.
It does not imply, nor is it intended, that God would be obliged and compelled, internally by his essence or externally by the circumstances, to reveal himself in a special way. For all revelation, and especially that which comes to us in Christ and through the Scriptures, is an act of God’s grace, a free and open gift. of God’s grace, a free disposition of His will, a proof of His undeserved and thousandfold forfeited favor. Only so far can there be question of a necessity for special revelation, if it is inseparably connected with the purpose which God Himself has determined for His creation. If it is God’s will to restore creation destroyed by sin, to recreate mankind in His image and allow them to live with Him forever in heavenly bliss, then special revelation is necessary. Because for that purpose the general one is inadequate. And it is not even this goal that requires a special revelation. For if we recognize and acknowledge the inadequacy of general revelation for this purpose of the world and mankind, we already owe this to special revelation. We naturally think that we and our virtues, the world and its treasures, are enough for our salvation. The pagan religions are no exception, but are a confirmation of this rule. It is true that they all speak of and appeal to a special revelation which is said to have come to them through priests, soothsayers, oracles, etc. And this in turn provides an indirect link between the two. And this indirectly provides strong evidence for the thesis that no one is satisfied with the general revelation and that everyone feels the need in his heart for another, more detailed revelation of God than that which nature and history offer him. But these special revelations, to which Paganism. But these special revelations, to which Paganism appeals, clearly show that man, having lost his fellowship with God, no longer understands His revelation in nature either, and in seeking and groping after God, takes his own paths, which lead him further and further away from the knowledge of the truth and more and more into the service of idolatry and iniquity (Romans 1:20-32). The special revelation of God is therefore necessary if we are to understand correctly His general revelation in nature and history, in heart and mind, and to purify its pure contents from all kinds of human errors, and thus learn to value it correctly. In the light of Scripture we first realize that General Revelation has a rich significance for the whole of human life, and yet that with all its riches it is insufficient and inadequate for the attainment of mankind’s true destiny.
Although, for the sake of clear understanding and good order, we have first discussed general revelation and exposed its inadequacy before proceeding to deal with special revelation, this should not be understood to mean that in the previous paragraph we set aside special revelation and ignored its content. On the contrary, this special revelation has already guided us in the past and has illuminated the way we go about our research. That is why we are not engaging in a so-called unbiased investigation into which special revelation it is, whose necessity we have seen, and where it can be found. We do not go with the doubters of our days to examine all the different religions to ask whether they offer the special revelation of God which our hearts need. For the fact that we have come to know false religions as false, that we have learned to recognize idolatry and idolatry, divination and witchcraft, unbelief and superstition, whether in a coarser or a finer form, as sin and error and lies, we owe this to the special revelation which was given to us in Christ. We would therefore be deliberately extinguishing the light that shines on us if we were to set aside special revelation or, even if only temporarily and methodically, take it out of account; and we would thus actually be proving that we preferred darkness to light, and that our thoughts and deliberations could not bear the light, John 3:19-21.
Besides, general revelation can, to a certain extent, make us realize the need and necessity of special revelation. It can also provide many strong reasons for the possibility of such a special revelation. For if one does not agree with materialism and pantheism and therefore actually denies all revelation, but still truly believes in the existence of a personal God who created the world, gave man an immortal soul and destined him for eternal bliss, and who also maintains and governs all things through His providence, there is no longer any reason in principle to dispute the possibility of special revelation. Creation is Revelation, a very special, a completely super-natural, wonderful Revelation; whoever accepts it, recognizes in principle the possibility of all subsequent Revelation, even up to and including the Incarnation. But whatever general revelation may be able to bring to bear on the necessity and possibility of special revelation, it can say nothing about its reality, because it rests on a free gift from God alone. The reality of special revelation can only be seen in its own existence. It is only seen and recognized in its own light. This special revelation, in which God first spoke to us through the prophets and then through the Son (Hebrews 1:1), and which we recognize and accept not through reasoning and evidence but through childlike faith, is closely related to general revelation, but is nevertheless essentially distinct from it. This difference, as was indicated briefly before, but which now needs to be developed more fully, is especially evident in the manner in which special revelation takes place, in the content it contains, and in the goal it aims to achieve. The manner in which special revelation takes place, and which is the subject of this paragraph, is not always one and the same, but differs according to the means employed by God, and is therefore indicated by various names: appearing, revealing, discovering, making known, proclaiming, teaching, etc. Among these, the term of ’revelation’ is particularly important. Among these, the term ’speaking’ draws particular attention. The Holy Scriptures also use the same word for the works of God in creation and providence. God said: there be light, and there was light, Genesis 1:3. He made the heavens by the word, and all their host by the Spirit of His mouth, Psalms 33:6. He speaks, and it is there; He commands, and it is there, Psalms 33:9. The voice of the Lord is on the waters, speaks in the thunder, breaks the cedars, makes the desert tremble, retaliates and exterminates the enemies, Psalms 29:3-9, Psalms 104:7, Isaiah 30:31, Isaiah 66:6. [All this work of God in creation and providence can be called a speech, because God is a personal, conscious, thinking being, who brings all things into being by the word of His power, and thus puts thoughts into the creatures, which can be read and understood by mankind as His image and likeness. God indeed has something to say to mankind through his works.
There is relatively little disagreement about this speaking of God through the works of His hands. Many, who are unaware of a special revelation, still like to speak of a revelation of God in creation. But there is still a great difference among them. Some find this revelation more in nature, others more in history with its great men, and still others prefer to find it in the history of religions with its religious personalities. Some also place greater emphasis on the revelation that comes to mankind from outside, in nature and history; others attach greater importance to that which takes place in man himself, in his heart or in his conscience. The idea is gaining ground among many that Revelation and religion are closely related and intimately connected, indeed that both have the same content and are two sides of the same thing. Revelation is the divine and religion the human moment in the relationship between God and man. God reveals himself to each as much as he has religion, and man has religion as much as God reveals himself to him.
However, this view is fundamentally rooted in pantheism, which identifies God and man, and thus also revelation and religion. Those who adhere to it can no longer really speak of the revelation of God, not even in nature and history, in the world and in mankind. For revelation, properly understood, presupposes, as we noted earlier, that God is aware and knows Himself, and that He can therefore, at His pleasure, communicate knowledge of Himself to creatures. From the pantheistic point of view, however, the personhood, self-consciousness and self-knowledge, and thus also the reasonable will in God, are denied. God is nothing more than the essence, the power of and in all things. There can therefore be no question here of a revelation of God in the actual sense, at best only of an unconscious, unwilling appearance or working of God. Of an appearance and action of God which introduces no thoughts, no conceptions, no knowledge of God into the consciousness of man, but at best only arouses in man’s heart attitudes, inclinations, conditions of a certain mood, which are then interpreted and expressed by that man entirely independently and freely, according to his civilization and development. In fact, religion in mankind and in the individual man then becomes a process by which God becomes aware of himself and learns to know himself. God does not reveal Himself to man or speak to him, but it is man who reveals God to himself. So when this pantheistic school still uses the terms ’revelation’ and ’God’s speech’ etc., it does not derive them from its own world view, in which they no longer fit, but from another, the world view of Scripture, and it uses them in a distorted sense. Scripture, however, already calls general revelation a speaking of God, because it proceeds from the assumption that God really has something to say and says through that revelation to His creatures. Thus it also maintains the distinction between God and man, between Revelation and religion. For if God has His own thought and knows Himself, and if He has expressed that thought to a greater or lesser degree in His works, then the possibility remains that man, because of his darkened mind, may misunderstand God’s thoughts and be thwarted in his deliberations. And religion, in this case, is so little the other side of Revelation that it becomes, rather, a guilty and erroneous interpretation of it.
Because Scripture interprets God’s general revelation in the way it does, and can call it, in the defined sense, a speaking of God, it keeps the way open for yet another and more real speaking of God in His special revelation. All Scripture makes us know God as a being who is fully conscious, who can think and therefore speak. The question in Psalms 94:9 : Should He, who plants the ear, not hear? Will He, who forms the eye, not see? can, according to the meaning and the opinion of the Holy Spirit, be completed with these others: Could he who knows himself perfectly not communicate knowledge of himself to the creatures? He who disputes this possibility not only denies the God of regeneration, but also the God of creation and providence, as Scripture recognizes Him; just as he who understands God’s speech in general revelation in the proper sense, in the sense of Scripture, loses the right to raise fundamental objections to God’s speech in special revelation. For God can reveal Himself in a special way, because He does so in a general way. He can speak in an actual sense, because He can do so in a metaphorical sense. He can be the Resurrector, because He is the Creator of all things. The great difference between God’s speaking in general revelation and His speaking in special revelation is that, in the first case, God leaves it to man to derive his thoughts from the works of His hands, but in the second case He utters these thoughts Himself, and thus offers them to man and brings them into his consciousness. In IIsaiah 28:26 we read that God instructs and teaches the countryman about the way in which he should perform his work. But that education is not given to him in literal words, like a reading lesson; but it is grasped and expressed for him in all the arrangements of nature, in the nature of air and soil, of time and place, of grain and corn. And the countryman has to learn with great care to know all these orders of nature, in order to understand the teaching that God gives him therein. He is thereby exposed to error and mistake, but if he finally understands the teaching, he owes it to God, from whom everything originates, who is wonderful in counsel and great in deed. In general revelation this practical teaching is sufficient in relation to its purpose. For God intends by it to awaken mankind to seek Him, that they may seek Him and find Him, Acts 17:27, and if they do not find Him they will not be excused, Romans 1:20. There He seeks man himself and tells him who and what He is. He does not leave it to man to deduce and make up from a group of facts who God is, but He Himself says to man in clear words who He is.
He says to mankind in no uncertain terms: Here and such am I. It is true that God also uses facts from nature and history in special revelation to make Himself known in His various virtues. And those facts, which are often miracles, are no appendage and addition, but an indispensable element in Revelation. But they are never bare facts, the conception and explanation of which is left to us, but they are surrounded on all sides by God’s own word. They are preceded by it, accompanied by it, and followed by it. The central content of special revelation is the person and work of Christ; and this Christ is announced and described centuries before in the Old Testament, and, when He has appeared and performed His work, He is again explained and explained in the writings of the New Testament. Special revelation therefore runs from the Christ, but also, in parallel and in connection with it, from the Scriptures, from the Word of God. For this reason, special revelation can be called speech in a much more actual sense than general revelation. The first verse of the letter to the Hebrews summarizes the entire revelation of God in the Old and New Testaments, through the prophets and the Son, under the name of speaking. But it adds at the same time that this revelation has taken place many times and in many different ways. The first expression indicates that the revelation was not given completely in a single act, but that it took place in many successive acts, and thus had a long history. And the second expression indicates that the various divine revelations were not all given in the same way either, but that they took place in different times and situations, in different ways and in different forms. In many places of the Holy Scriptures, e.g. Genesis 2:16; Genesis 2:18, Genesis 4:6 ff, Genesis 6:13 ff, Genesis 12:7, Genesis 13:14 etc. it is simply said that the Lord appeared, said, commanded etc., without any further mention of the way in which this took place. But other texts also shed some light on the manner of revelation, and enable us to distinguish between two types of means employed by God. The first type includes all those means which have an objective (figurative) character and through which God appears and speaks to man as it were from without. Thus God appears many times to Abraham, Moses and the people of Israel on Mount Sinai, above the Tabernacle and in the Holy of Holies, in clouds of smoke and fire as signs of His presence, Genesis 15:17, Exodus 3:2, Exodus 13:21, Exodus 19:9, Exodus 33:9, Leviticus 16:2, etc., or makes what He has to say in the presence of the people of Israel known as the ’Holy Spirit’. Or also He makes known to mankind what He has to say through angels, Genesis 18:2, Genesis 32:1, Daniel 8:13, Zechariah 1:9, Matthew 1:20 etc., and especially through the Angel of the Covenant, who carries the name of the Lord within him, Exodus 23:21. Furthermore, in order to make His will known He often uses destiny, Proverbs 16:33, and the Urim and Thummim, Exodus 28:30. Some times He speaks with an audible voice, Exodus 19:9, Deuteronomy 4:33, Deuteronomy 5:26, Matthew 3:17, 2 Peter 1:177, or writes His own law on the tablets of the testimony, Exodus 31:18, Exodus 23:16. To this group of means of revelation are also to be counted the miracles, which occupy such a wide and prominent place in Scripture, but are at present subject to fierce opposition from all sides. It is a futile effort to defend the miracles of Scripture against those who have utterly rejected the world view of Scripture. For if God does not exist, as atheism and materialism teach, or if He does not have an independent, personal existence but is at one with the world, as pantheism proposes, or if He withdrew from the world after Creation and abandoned it to His own devices, as deism proclaims, then it goes without saying that miracles are impossible. And if the impossibility of miracles is established in advance, there is no need to argue about their reality. But Scripture has a different idea of God, the world and the relationship between the two. Firstly, it teaches that God is a conscious, willing, and also omnipotent being, who has brought the whole world into being with all its powers and laws, but who has by no means exhausted his full power in it. He retains and possesses in Himself an infinite fullness of life and power. Nothing is too miraculous for Him, Genesis 18:14; with Him all things are possible, Matthew 19:26.
Secondly, Scripture does not see the world as a whole, which in all its parts possesses one and the same being, one and the same substance, and only differs in forms. But it understands the world as an organism, the members of which, although belonging to the whole, are each equipped with a different power and vocation. In the one world there is room for different kinds of beings, which, although maintained and governed by the same divine power, nevertheless differ in nature from one another. In that rich world there is matter and spirit, soul and body, heaven and earth; there are inorganic and organic, lifeless and living, senseless and reasonable creatures in it, minerals and plants and animals, human beings and angels. And in mankind there is again a distinction between his head and his heart, his reason and conscience, his mind and will, his ideas and his actions. And all these different realms in one and the same world are based on different forces and work according to different laws. Everything is interrelated, as are all the members of the body, but in the whole each part still has its own place and task. And thirdly, the Schritt teaches us that God and the world, although distinct, are never separate. God has an own, completely independent existence in Himself, but He is not separated from the world; on the contrary, in Him we live and move and are, Acts 17:28. He is not only the Creator, who called all things into being at the beginning, but He is and remains the owner, the possessor, the King and the Lord, who constantly maintains and regenerates everything by His omnipotent and omnipresent power. Everything, therefore, not only had its beginning, but everything, as it progresses, has its first cause in Him. The second causes by which God works are different; but the first cause of all creations is always God and God alone.
If we agree with the Scriptures in these basic ideas, and thus stand on the ground of theism, all grounds for questioning or disputing the possibility of miracles are lost. For everything that happens in nature and history is then an act, a work of God, and in this sense a miracle. And the so-called miracles are nothing but a special demonstration of that same divine power which works in all things. It works in those things in different ways, by different means (second causes), according to different laws and therefore with different results. It has been said, with some justification, that for a stone it is a miracle that a plant grows, for a plant it is a miracle that an animal moves, for an animal it is a miracle that a human being thinks, and thus for a human being it is a miracle that God raises the dead. If God, with His omnipresent and omnipotent power, works through all creatures as His means, how could He not work with that same power in another way ׳ and by other means than those familiar to us from the ordinary course of nature and history? Miracles, therefore, are not a breaking of the laws of nature. For these are fully recognized by Scripture, even though it does not enumerate them or formulate them; for, according to it, the order of the whole structure is fixed in God’s natural covenant with Noah, Genesis 8:22. But, just as man subdues the earth with his mind and will and controls nature with his culture, so God has the power to make this created world subservient to the execution of His counsel. The miracles prove that the Lord is God, not the world.
Now this would not have needed any explanation to man if he had not fallen. Then he would have known and acknowledged God from all the works of His hands. Without entering into the question whether miracles would have occurred without sin, we will suffice here with the remark that they would have had a different character and a different purpose in any case. For the miracles which have actually taken place and of which the Scriptures tell us are characterized by their own nature and purpose. In the Old Testament miracles, purpose and salvation go hand in hand. The flood is a means to destroy the godless generation of the time and to keep Noah and his family in the ark. The miracles which are grouped around the persons of Moses and Joshua: the plagues in Egypt, the passage through the Red Sea, the legislation at Sinai, the entry into and the conquest of Canaan, have as their purpose to judge the enemies of God and His people and to provide a safe residence for His own people in the land of promise. The miracles, of which later the person of Elijah in particular forms the centerpiece, fall in the time of Ahab and Izebel, when paganism threatens to suppress the entire service of Jehovah, and reach their climax on Carmel, where the battle between Jehovah and Baal is decided.
All the miracles of the Old Testament have the common characteristic of executing a negative judgment on the nations and of positively creating and preserving in the people of Israel a ground for the continuing revelation of God. They find their purpose in that, in the face of all idolatry and idolatry, Jehovah, the God of the covenant, the God of νοίΐς Israel, is known and acknowledged as God. Behold, that I, I Who am and no God with me. I kill and make alive, I smite and I heal; and there is none that saveth out of my hand, Deuteronomy 32:39, Deuteronomy 4:35, Isaiah 45:5, Isaiah 45:18, Isaiah 45:22. And when this goal has been reached, then the full revelation in the person of Chris begins. This person of Christ is himself a miracle, in his origin, in his essence, in his words and works, the miracle of world history. Accordingly, the miracles He performs are also of a unique nature. First of all, He Himself performs many miracles during His earthly life: miracles by which He proves His power over nature (changing water into wine, miraculous feeding, calming the storm, walking on the sea, etc.); then miracles by which He proves His power over the consequences of sin, the diseases and infirmities, the elixirs of life; and finally miracles by which He proves His power over sin itself, over its guilt and blemish and over the dominion of Satan (forgiveness of sins, expulsion of Satan and the evil spirits). In these three kinds of miracles the peculiarity of the person of Christ is already expressed. Apart from a single exception, such as the curse of the fig tree, all the miracles of Jesus are miracles of salvation. He did not come to condemn the world, but to save it, John 3:17. In these miracles He also acts as Prophet, Priest and King and does the works that the Father has shown Him and commissioned Him to do, John 4:34, John 5:36, John 9:4, etc. But even more clearly, the person of Christ approaches us in the miracles, which are not performed by, but in and with Him. Therein we see above all who and what He is. His supernatural conception, his miraculous life and death, his resurrection, ascension and sitting at the right hand of God are miracles of salvation. They prove much better than the works done by Jesus his absolute power over sin and all its consequences, over Satan and his entire empire. And likewise, they reveal even more clearly than those works that this power is a saving, redeeming power, which will only gain its complete victory in the new heaven and the new earth. The miracles performed by the first witnesses in the apostolic age are to be considered as works of the exalted Christ, Acts 3:6, Acts 4:10. They were necessary to prove that Jesus, who was rejected by the world, attached to the cross and dead and now considered dead, was alive and had all the power not only in heaven but also on earth. The miracles of the Old Testament showed that Jehovah was God and that no one was with Him. The miracles of the New Testament show that Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, whom the Jews crucified, was raised up by God and exalted at His right hand to be a Sovereign and a Blessed Maker (Acts 4:10, Acts 5:30-31). When this goal has been reached, when a congregation has been planted in the world that believes and confesses this revelation of the Father in the Son through the communion of the Holy Spirit, then the outward visible miracles will cease, but the spiritual miracles of regeneration and conversion will continue in the congregation, until the fullness of the Gentiles enters and all Israel becomes sick. At the end of time, according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures, will come the miracles of the future, the appearing of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment, and the new heaven and earth. The entire revelation runs to the restoration of the fallen human race, to the re-creation of the world, to the recognition of God as God by all creatures, and all the miracles also run into this revelation. They are thus no strange element, no arbitrary appendage or annex to Revelation. But they are a necessary, an indispensable part of it. They are themselves revelation. In word and deed God makes himself known to mankind with all his virtues and perfections. In addition to this first type of means, which are all objective and external, there is a second series of forms and methods which God uses in His revelation. These include all those means which have a subjective character, which are not present outside but within man himself, and through which God does not speak from outside to man, but from within him. The first place is taken by that peculiar revelation which was given to Moses, the Mediator of the Old Testament. It is described as one in which the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend, Exodus 33:11.
Moses had a completely unique place in the Old Testament and was also highly elevated above all the prophets. God spoke to him, not through a vision, not in dark words, but from mouth and mouth; he did not see the Lord in a vision, but he saw his likeness, his stature, not his essence or face, but the afterglow of the glory of God that passed before his eyes, Numbers 12:8, Exodus 33:18-23.
Furthermore, among these means of revelation are the dream, Numbers 12:6, Deuteronomy 13:1-6; the vision, that is to say, such a state, in which the eye of the body is closed to the outside world and the eye of the soul is opened to the perception of divine things, Numbers 12:6, Deuteronomy 13:1-6, Deuteronomy 12:6, Deuteronomy 13:1-6; and especially also the inspiration, or the intervention of God’s Spirit in the human consciousness, Numbers 11:25-29, 2 Samuel 23:2, Matthew 16:17, Acts 8:29, 1 Corinthians 2:12, 2 Peter 1:211. This last revelation, by means of intervention in the consciousness of man, already occurs several times in the Old Testament, but there it is still always presented as a working of the Spirit, which comes from above and for a moment strikes the prophet. But in the New Testament, when the Holy Spirit himself has been poured out, inspiration not only becomes more common as a form of revelation, but it also assumes a more organic and lasting character.
These two types of means of revelation may be summarized under the name of manifestation and inspiration. It must be remembered, however, that the content of manifestation consists not only of deeds but also of thoughts and words. And it must also be borne in mind that inspiration, as referred to here, is distinct both from that activity of the Holy Spirit which prophets and apostles received when recording the revelation (inspiration or theopneustion of the Scriptures), and from that interior enlightenment which is the portion of all believers.