CHRISTIANITY AND REVELATION
Benjamin B. Warfield
Christianity
is the one revealed religion. That is to say, while the tenets of other religions
are the product of human thought, the doctrines of Christianity are
communications from God. Christianity thus stands fundamentally in contrast
with all other religions. Nothing could be less true, therefore, than
Sainte-Beuve's declaration that "Christianity is only the perfection of
the total body of universal beliefs, -- the central axis that fixes the sense
of all deviations." If what the Christian Scriptures contain is nothing
but "all that the sages have said," and what Jesus has done may be fairly
summed up as only "confirming with his own impress, the common law of
righteousness," then Christianity also is only a "natural
religion," possibly the purest product of human thought on religious
themes, but essentially nothing but a product of human thought. It is on the
contrary, however, the one "supernatural religion."
It is very
possible, to be sure, to overpress this contrast. Christianity does not stand
in an exclusively antithetical relation to other religions. There is a high and
true sense in which it is also their fulfilment. All that enters into the
essence of religion is present in them no less than in it, although in a less
pure form. They too possess the idea of God, the consciousness of guilt, the
longing for redemption: they too possess offerings, priesthood, temples,
worship, prayer.
It is very
evident, thus, that the term "revelation" bears more than one sense.
In one of its senses it must be said to underlie all religions, as the
essential condition of all knowledge of God. In another of them it is the
characteristic of Christianity alone, "the only revealed religion."
The word means, actively, the act of God by which he communicates to his creatures knowledge of himself; and, passively, the
knowledge resultant upon such acts of God. It is currently employed in a wider
and in a narrower sense. These are commonly distinguished as
"general" and "special" revelation, or as
"natural" and "supernatural" revelation: though, perhaps
the terms "cosmical" and "soteriological" would better
express the real distinction. In its wider sense, it includes all the acts of
God by means of which he makes himself known to his creatures as such; or,
passively, all knowledge of God, however attained, inasmuch as all knowledge of
God is the result of acts of self-expression on God's own part. In its narrower
sense it is confined to those special acts of God by means of which,
intervening in the natural order of things, he makes himself known as the
revealer and regenerator of a lost world; or passively the whole body of the
knowledge of God derived from the series of his redemptive acts. It is in this,
its narrower sense, that Christianity, inclusive of its preliminary stage of
Judaism, is said to be the only revealed religion. It is in its wider sense,
that all religions are said to be based on revelation.
We may
conveniently divide all the religions which have existed among men into two
broad classes: (1) the primitive religion, before sin had broken men's
continuous access to and communion with God; and (2) the religions of sinful
men. The religions of sinful men again part into two broad classes: (a) those
which are the products of man's own efforts to renew his communion with God,
the "natural religions"; and (b) that which is the product of God's
gracious activities looking to the renewal of communion with man, the one
"supernatural religion." The real difference between Christianity and
other religions turns thus precisely on their diverse initiation: in the ethnic
religions men are seeking after God if haply they may feel after him and find
him; in Christianity God is seeking men and finding them. "Special revelation"
is, of course, limited to this latter religion, while "general
revelation" alone - the revelation that God has made to his creatures as
such can find a place in what we, therefore, call the "natural
religions." It is not to be supposed, of course, that God is not active in
both spheres of religious development, and active in both for his one great end
of building up the
There is little
occasion nowadays to defend the reality or investigate the methods of
"general revelation." Its reality is disputed by no one but the
anti-theist and the agnostic, the one of whom denies the existence of a God to
make himself known, and the other doubts the capacity of the the human mind to
read the vestiges which God, if there be a God, has left in his handiwork.
Revelation is today practically universally acknowledged to be an implication
of theism and a necessary postulate of religion. Even a human spirit can be
known only as it expresses itself: much less can the Divine Spirit be known
against or apart from his will. God does nothing unconsciously or
inadvertently: he does all he does purposely and purposefully. Revelation is,
therefore, never an unconscious emanation or an involuntary reflection of God
in his works: it is always a conscious, free, intentional making of himself known, a purposed self-expression. That God may be
known at all from his works, is due, therefore, to his designed expression of
himself in his works, with the end of giving knowledge of himself and so of
awaking and nourishing religion in his creatures. The scope of this revelation
is coextensive with the works of God: it began with creation and it will cease
only when God ceases to be. Its proximate end is by making himself known to his
creatures to bring them into relation with himself: its ultimate design to fill
the intelligent universe with the blissful vision of God.
With respect to
special revelation the case is very different. Here, too, doubtless the
controversy is ultimately with anti-theistic presuppositions, whether deistic
or pantheistic. But it is proximately with numerous types of thought which seek
to mediate between deistic and pantheistic conceptions and those of a truly
Christian theism; and in meeting the subtlety and variety of these Christian
apologetics finds today its chief task. In the eighteenth century the debate
was chiefly with Deism and the compromising schemes which grew up in the course
of the conflict with Deism. In the nineteenth century it was rather with
Pantheism and the compromising schemes which have sought to find a middle
ground between Pantheism and Christian Theism. Thus it has come to be no longer
necessary to prove that God may and does speak in men: it is admitted on all
hands that he reveals himself unceasingly through all the activities of
creaturely minds. Instead of denying the intrusion of the supernatural into the
affairs of men, men are now more prone to deny the formally natural. All
thought is conceived as the immanent work of God. The task has accordingly come
to be to distinguish a revelation separable from this universal revelatory
action and capable of recognition as "special"; and to vindicate for
it a supernaturalism of a more immediate order and of a more direct kind than
is freely attributed to all the thought of man concerning divine things. When
the natural is defined as itself supernatural, there is no place left for a
distinguishable supernatural. This insidious undermining of the idea of supernatural
revelation by means of definition can be successfully met only by still more
precise definition. All knowledge of God is recognized to be supernatural in
source: it is only as God frames knowledge of himself in the human mind that
man comes to know God at all. Emphasis must, therefore, be laid, in defining
distinctively supernatural revelation, not merely on the supernatural origin of
the knowledge so communicated, but also on the supernatural mode of its
communication. As it is technically phrased, distinctively supernatural
revelation differs from natural revelation, not because its origin is supra hanc naturam, but because it takes
place not per but praeter hanc naturam.
It is of the
utmost importance, however, that we should not misconceive the relation between
"general" and "special" revelation. This relation is not
one of contrast and opposition, but rather one of supplement and completion.
They do not stand as two systems, each complete in itself, over against one another;
but together they form one organic whole. The purpose of special revelation is
not to correct, much less to set aside general revelation. General revelation
needs no correction -- God has not revealed himself falsely or misleadingly in
it. And it cannot be set aside, -- what it reveals of God is eternal and
necessary truth. It might even be fairly pronounced inexact to speak of the
purpose of special revelation as to supplement and complete general revelation,
if the matter be conceived too abstractly. In itself, general revelation is
neither imperfect nor incomplete -- God does all things well. The occasion of
special revelation is extraneous to the organism of revelation itself, and lies
in the necessity of meeting altered circumstances. Sin had entered in; and,
speaking after the manner of man, the new conditions induced by sin required a
new method and a new content for revelation. The modes of revelation adapted to
sinless man would not suffice to make sinful man know God; the substance of
truth revealed to sinless man would not suffice for the needs of sinful man.
That sinful man might know and that he might know what sinful man needs to
know, therefore, what we call special revelation entered in, not to abrogate
general revelation as no longer useful, but to adapt the great organic process
of revelation to the changed conditions and thus to conduct it surely onward to
its originally contemplated end. It is not to meet any failure in general
revelation that special revelation is introduced, but to meet failure in man to
whom the revelation is addressed. It is not the power of nature that it seeks
to break, but the power of sin: nature it is its end rather to restore and to
fulfil. The great organism of revelation thus includes all that God has done,
looking towards the communication of knowledge of himself:
and this includes the totality of his operations, in nature and history and
grace. That portion of this organic process which is included in
"grace" we call special revelation, which, therefore, has the same
occasion and the same end as the dispensation of grace itself, of which it is a
constituent element, or rather a specific aspect.
If we inquire more
closely into the nature of the alteration in the great organic process of
revelation occasioned by sin, we shall perceive that at least three things
require emphasis. Sin had brought mankind under the condemnation of God: a
special revelation of God to sinners must needs lay
its stress therefore, on a new aspect of God's character: God the redeemer of
sinners must become its central disclosure. Sin had destroyed man's natural
communion with God: a special revelation of God to sinners must needs,
therefore, institute a new channel of communion between man and God: its method
must necessarily become mediatorial. Sin had dulled man's consciousness and
blinded his perception of divine things: a special revelation of God to
sinners, therefore, must needs include an immanent
movement of God's Spirit on man's heart, restoring his capacity for the
reception of divine knowledge. All this, it is obvious, is supernatural to the
core. Sin, in one word, had destroyed man's natural relation to God as his
creature: all that remained natural hereafter was a dispensation of punitive
infliction. If any other relation was to be induced: if God's purpose to be
known, in the deep sense of that word, which involves thorough communion, was
to be fulfilled: nothing remained possible but a supernatural dispensation of
grace. And this supernatural dispensation of grace becomes accordingly his special
revelation, his peculiar making of himself known, his particular
self-expression, to sinners.
According to the
Scriptures, therefore, special revelation is a historic process, an organic
system, a continuous divine activity directed to destroying the power of sin,
to the building up of the
from Selected Shorter Writings
of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 1, Edited by John E. Meeter,published by
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1970. originaly
from The Bible Student, V, 1902
pp 123-128