Below is a brief summary of my class notes from Seminary on Special Revelation. Remember, in theology, all revelation comes from God in two broad forms, General Revelation and Special Revelation.

Special Revelation Defined

Special Revelation is the acts of God whereby He makes Himself and His truth known at specific times and to specific people.

Special Revelation comes in various forms.

Personal Experience

Some people have visions, see dreams, receive visits from angels, or hear an inner voice. There are numerous examples of this in Scripture, and it still happens to some people today. But these are “personal” since they rarely happen to groups of people.

Miracles

Miracles can reveal the nature, presence, and power of God. There have been three major periods of miracles in history, during the ministry of Moses, the ministry of Elijah, and the ministry of Jesus and the Early Church.
[Read more…]

Over the last several posts, I neglected to review and summarize my seminary class notes, which is supposed to be a part of this series on theology. When I first introduced “Divine Revelation” last week, I forgot to open my notes and look at them until today.

So here is a summary of the class notes on General Revelation. Tomorrow I will post the class notes on Special Revelation.

* * * * *

General Revelation is accessible and available to all. It comes from God in various forms:

The World of Nature

It can tell us about the existence of God, including His power, greatness, supremacy, wisdom, and goodness (cf. Psa 19:1-4; Rom 1:18-28).

[Read more…]

When science and scripture disagree, there are three options: We can reject science, reject Scripture, or find a way to fit the two together.

I am of the third opinion, but with some qualifications.

Scripture and Nature

First, despite my post yesterday, we must recognize that the debate is not exactly between Scripture and Science. Scripture is raw data, but science is not. Science is the interpretation of the raw data that is found in nature. The real comparisons are between Scripture and Nature. The interpretation of the data of Scripture leads to theology, and the interpretation of data of Nature leads to Science.

So we can never really say that Science contradicts Scripture. It doesn’t. Nature and Scripture cannot disagree, because both are simply the pools of data from which Science and Theology come. When Science and theology are at odds, it is only because one or the other has misinterpreted and misunderstood the data.

[Read more…]

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Along with the earth, God created mankind.

Ever since, mankind has been trying to figure out how God and creation fit together.

For many thousands of years, most people thought that somehow, God and creation were intimately connected. You could learn about what God thought or felt by observing the weather, by succeeding or failing in business, or by being victorious in war.

About 2000 years ago, a man began to question some of this. His name was Aristotle. He argued that a wiser course of action to learn about the gods was through reason and logic. He and his followers argued that if the gods made us, and if the gods love us, then the gods would have given to us the means by which we could figure out what they wanted from us.

Not too long after Aristotle, Jesus lived and died, and His followers struggled with what to do with the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Aristotle. In many ways, they seemed to agree. But in many other ways, they disagreed. Should the ideas of Aristotle, Plato, and philosophy be rejected outright, or was it okay to learn from philosophy only in the areas of agreement, or was it possible to find a way to reconcile Greek philosophy with the teaching of Jesus?

[Read more…]

How would you say God “speaks” to mankind?

If you started asking people, you would get answers ranging from Scripture, prayer, and angels, to nature, dreams, and inner voices. All of these, and numerous others, are aspects of “Divine Revelation”—ways that God has revealed Himself to humanity throughout history.

The dangerous thing about divine revelation is that it’s hard to prove or disprove. As a result, people have been known to say and do some of the most outlandish things, all because “God told them to.” Wars have been started, and whole nations of people slaughtered, all because someone, somewhere thought God was telling them to do so. (Yes, many such accounts are found in Scripture. We’ll deal with that later.)

A Hierarchy of Revelation

Somewhere along the way, some people got tired of arguing about what God really said, and who really was “hearing from God” or not, and so they decided to organize and categorize all the various forms of divine revelation, and create a hierarchy. Typically, out of all the various forms of revelation, Scripture is placed at the very top. When it comes to hearing from God, Scripture is the “king of the hill.”

[Read more…]