Revelation in Nature
The universe as a product of divine creation is one of the important means of divine revelation to man. According to Romans 1:20, “The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.” The universe in its immensity, complexity, design, and beauty testify to the God who created it; and as Romans bring out, it is a testimony to the power of God and to the personality and deity of God. This revelation of God in nature, which is perceivable by man in his normal intelligence, is stated in Romans to be so clear that according to Romans 1:20, “they are without excuse,” that is, all men should worship the Creator. This is the ground of condemnation of the heathen world. Scripture frequently calls attention to the wonder of the created universe as a display of the glory of God. Psalm 19 is an excellent illustration of this, beginning with the familiar statement, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy work.”
The revelation of God in nature is such that even man in his fallen condition is held accountable for this display of the perfections of God. Christians who are aided by the indwelling Holy Spirit can appreciate more than others how beautiful and significant the natural world is. However, even an unsaved person should be able to recognize the testimony of nature to its Creator. It is an illustration of the utter sinfulness of man that, although he finds evidence of human personality behind anything that man makes, too often he is willing to ignore the evidence that God created the world. This blindness of man is held in Scripture to be without excuse and a proper basis for divine judgment of man.
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The Spirit at Work in Revealing Truth
The twentieth century has been a period of rapid change. The advent of the atomic bomb, rapid communication and travel, and multiplied social and economic problems have set the present age apart from any similar period of history. The modern mind accordingly is asking new questions about what God is saying to our generation. In theology especially, the leading questions are, How does God speak to man and What is He saying today?
In discussing the nature of divine revelation to man, one is approaching the central questions of theology and philosophy. The problem is first of all related to the nature of God. If God is infinite in His wisdom and is the Creator of all things, He is obviously greater than what He created. The question must be faced as to whether such a Creator would desire to communicate to His creatures. Those who believe in God as Creator generally believe that He created for the purpose of revealing Himself and to display His infinite perfections. This explains how God has revealed Himself in nature.
In the creation of man, God deliberately made a being with intellect (mind), sensibility (feeling), and will (power of moral choice). Man, although on a finite plane, was made like God, and therefore was the kind of creature to whom God could communicate. Under these circumstances—God being what He is and man being created in the image and likeness of God—communication between them would seem possible and reasonable.
Into this picture, however, came the problem of sin with its dulling of man’s sensitivity to divine revelation and a natural blindness to truth about God. It is because man is a sinful creature that a need arises for a special work of God to make divine communication to man effective. This introduces and makes necessary the role of the Holy Spirit as the divine Communicator of truth to man.(Courtesy JFW)
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The Call of Moses
OF ALL countries upon the face of the earth Palestine seems one of the least likely to have produced anything striking or world shaking. Nevertheless, in Palestine there appeared a phenomenon the like of which the world has never seen elsewhere.1 The present day Bedouin of Palestine can hardly be regarded as the bearers of advanced thought and culture and there is not much reason to believe that they differ markedly from some of Palestine’s earlier inhabitants.2 Yet in Palestine the most sublime ideas of God and, his love to mankind appeared, and in Palestine alone did the truth concerning man and his plight make itself known. What is the explanation of these facts? How are we to account for the large body of prophets, with their teleological message, their declaration of a Redeemer to come, forming a mighty, ever growing stream that culminated in the person and work of Jesus Christ?
If we accept the Scriptures at face value we find that they are filled with references to Moses whom they regard as the human founder of the theocracy. It was Moses whom God used to bring his people out of Egyptian bondage and to give to them his unchanging law. "He made known his ways unto Moses", we read in Psalm 103, and this is only one of the testimonies that attributes to Moses the claim that Moses received his commission by divine revelation. Can we today, however, simply accept the plain testimony of the Scriptures as they stand?3 Modern scholarship very largely denies that we can, and we must give some attention to its claims.
The Sinai "Tradition"
In the discussion of these questions Professor Gerhard von Rad of Heidelberg University has taken a prominent part. The last one hundred and fifty years of critical historical scholarship, he tells us, have destroyed the picture of Israel’s history which the church had derived from its acceptance of the Old Testament. According to critical historical scholarship we can no longer regard it possible that all of Israel was present at Sinai or that as a unit the whole nation crossed the Red Sea or achieved the conquest of Palestine. The picture given to us in Exodus, to be frank, is unhistorical.4 The account of Israel’s origin given in the Old Testament, we are told, is extremely complicated, being based upon a few old motifs around which a number of freely circulating traditions have clustered. Both these ancient motifs and the separate traditions were pronouncedly confessionalistic in character.5 We thus have two pictures of Israel’s history, that which the faith of Israel has reconstructed and that which modern historical scholarship has reconstructed. It is this latter which tells of "the history as it really was in Israel", for this latter method is rational and "objective" in that it employs historical method and presupposes the similarity of all historical occurrence.
Yet historical investigation has its limits; it cannot explain the phenomenon of Israel’s faith, and the manner in which Israel’s faith presented history is still far from being adequately elucidated. It is this question with which the work of theological investigation is primarily to be concerned. In the second volume of–his work, as a result of criticism, von Rad somewhat dulled the alternatives. In the English
translation this particular section is omitted, but it might be well to call attention to the most significant sentence. "The historical method opens for us only one aspect of the many layered phenomenon of history (Geschichte). This is a layer which is not able to say anything about the relationship of the history to God. Even the best attested event of the ‘actual history’ remains dumb with respect to the divine control of history. Its relevance for faith can in no wise be objectively verified."
It is upon this foundation that von Rad proceeds to consider the early history of Israel. In his penetrating work The Problem of the Hexateuch von Rad had already directed attention to what he called the "Sinai tradition".8 In this treatise he made a study of Deuteronomy 26:5b-9 which he regarded as a liturgical formula, the earliest recognizable example of a creed. This summary of the facts of redemption,
he held, could not have been a freely devised meditation founded upon historical events. Rather, it reflected the traditional form in which the faith is presented. (continue)
(Courtesy- EDWARD J. YOUNG)
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