Divine Revelation

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     It is our conviction that God has revealed himself in nature, in word, and in a Son. In these three he has demonstrated his power, his purpose, and his personality. Our conviction is not shared by all. We live in an age which challenges the authorship of the first two, and the paternity of the last. For that reason we propose to discuss the grounds of our belief and much as we would like to deal with all three, we will be forced to confine our attention primarily to the unfolding of the divine thought in word. It will be our thesis that the nature of God and man makes such a revelation imperative.

     Man has limitations imposed upon his acquisition of knowledge by time and space. What is true of the individual is likewise true of mankind in the aggregate. The cumulative wisdom of the past has been achieved within these limitations so it can never become infinite. Death is always the terminus of personal research. It removes man from the arena of investigation and cuts off avenues of study. We can apprehend truth by the testimony of our senses, that is, by experience, or by rational deduction. But our perceptiveness is limited in its processes to known facts which form the bases for arrival at conclusions. The intellect can be projected by imagination into the sphere of the unreal but can only frame new combinations of thought from the elements already in possession. Reason and imagination differ in object and operation. Reason ascertains what is true, imagination what is possible. The first enquires, the second creates. Reason is exercised within the limits of what is known and actual, the domain of imagination is that of the conjectural and conceivable. But in any communication of its concepts, imagination must employ word images of the real. The unknown can only be explained in the terms of the known. Man is constantly thrown back upon his intellectual resources consisting of a deposit of his previous observations of phenomena, or of the historical record of such observations by his ancestors.

     Since man is by nature powerless to transcend his temporal and spatial limitations, any adequate concept of the infinite must come from without and be derived from a source other than mere rationalization. It must be dispensed, that is, passed out to man, rather than dug out by man. He cannot climb up to it and reach it by experience of his own faculties but it must be handed down to him. To believe in God--as God--one must accept that the ways and thoughts of God are not the ways and thoughts of man. Moreover, he must conclude that no man, by searching or researching, can find out God or fathom the mind of God. As the heavens are higher than the earth so must the thoughts of God be higher than the thoughts of men. To have it otherwise

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would be to elevate man to the status of God, or to reduce God to the status of man. The ultimate of this would be a denial of God altogether, by a postulation that the infinite can be contained in and confined by the finite.

     If man cannot by his own resources and faculties apprehend the thoughts of God, it follows that, if those thoughts are to be made available unto him it must be the result of a gratuitous act of God, and by means of revelation. But revelation cannot take the place of research nor be a substitute for it. That which man is capable of learning for himself he must be allowed to discover, for any other procedure would destroy the incentive for study and stifle initiative. It must be assumed that revelation from God will be for the good of man, and the affording of revelation which would be detrimental to man's development is unthinkable as an act of God. Revelation must be outside the perimeter which can be reached by experience and deduction, and there must be such a perimeter seeing that man is what he is.

     There is no indication that man could not grasp or understand these concepts once they were made available to his intellect, but simply that he could not ascertain or discover them by his own power. That which is incapable of apprehension by the mind when given, is not a revelation at all. It remains a mystery. Revelation has to do with ideas and thoughts. Words are merely the packages in which they are delivered. If we have no way of opening the package, the ideas will still be hidden, and we will have no revelation, but only neatly packaged mysteries. It is obvious then that revelation is uncovering by the divine mind of those things which man cannot discover for himself.

     This definition is sustained by etymology. The Greek original for revelation is apokalupsis. This is a compound of apo, away from; and kalupsis, a veiling. It thus means literally, to take a veil away, that is to uncover, lay bare, or make naked. It was used of the unveiling of a statue which had been swathed in a covering until the day of presentation to the public. It was also used of the explanation of any fact which had been hidden in obscurity. When we talk of the revelation of God we refer to the disclosure of truth which had previously been unknown and remained inaccessible unto man.

     We are now ready to examine a much abused and misunderstood scriptural passage, I Corinthians 2:9, "But, as it is written, 'What no eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him." Men who are ignorant of the context sometimes use this as the basis for a funeral discourse. They think it has reference to the eternal realm and the joys of heaven which none of us can fully anticipate in this life. But the very next statement demonstrates the fallacy of this. "God has revealed it to us through the Spirit."

     Isaiah was speaking of the coming Messianic age, the gospel dispensation, the era in which we now live. He points out the limitations of man and the need for revelation. There are some things we cannot discover by visual perception (eye has not seen); there are some things we cannot discern by audible testimony (ear has not heard); there are some things we cannot learn by human rationalization

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(the heart has not conceived). It is these things which we cannot discover by use of our senses and mental capacities which God has revealed unto us. We live in the age of the world to which all other previous ages were tributary, and in which the deep things of God have been revealed unto us.

     Once a divine secret, mystery, or previously hidden truth, is disclosed and written down, all others may grasp it by reading and study. So we learn from Paul that, "the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit." The purpose of the direct revelation to some men was "to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things." The task of the apostles and prophets was to transmit the divine thought to all men in language they could understand. Paul says, "For we write you nothing but what you can read and understand. I hope you will understand fully."

     What the apostles saw directly they simply recorded as eyewitnesses; what they heard firsthand they simply recorded as earwitnesses. But what they did not experience because of human limitations was made available to them by revelation. Thus Peter affirms, "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty" (2 Peter 1:16). The words "cleverly devised" are from sophizo, and in this case mean "to play the sophist," that is, to employ specious or fallacious reasoning. The apostle emphatically denies that the testimony concerning Jesus Christ was a cunningly contrived piece of fiction intended as a hoax. That he positively believed what he said is evident from the fact that he died rather than renounce it.

      Not only did he see Jesus but he affirmed that he heard the voice of God announce the identity of Jesus. "For when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, 'This is my beloved Son with whom I am pleased,' we heard this voice borne from heaven for we were with him on the holy mountain." "We were eyewitnesses...we heard this voice." No one at this late date can deny the fact of Jesus. He can only attack the credibility of the witnesses. He must prove that they were either deceived or deceivers. If he takes the latter course he confronts men who preferred death to denial, an utterly improbable thing in twelve men; if he takes the former he must first postulate a position based upon a presupposition which will make it impossible for him to believe anything which happened before his day or prove himself to be utterly inconsistent and prejudicial. We have never yet read an attack upon the chosen witnesses that did not result in a verdict of inconsistency upon the part of the attacker.

     But the apostle does not stop with that which was visually and audibly experienced. "And we have the prophetic word made more sure...First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of

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scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." Here it is affirmed that men who received revelation were spokesmen for God. The message originated with God and it was delivered to the human spokesmen by the Holy Spirit. The word "moved" is from phero, to bear or carry. W. E. Vine comments of its use here, "They were 'borne along,' or impelled by the Holy Spirit's power, not acting according to their own wills, or simply expressing their own thoughts, but expressing the mind of God in words provided and ministered by Him." Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God-- this is revelation.

     Note that this constitutes "the prophecy of scripture." The word "scripture," from graphe, refers to that which is written, but it is apparent that it has a specialized meaning. The prophecy of scripture makes up the scripture of prophecy, the accepted or canonical scripture, that is, the scripture which measures up (to the test of divine origin). Here is an affirmation that the scriptures regarded as holy did not originate by the impulse of man. They compose a revelation from God in writing.

     Let us note the word "interpretation" because a false emphasis upon the expression, "No scripture is of private interpretation," led to the evils resultant from the Romish authoritarianism over the sacred scriptures. On page 92 of his book, "The Faith of our Fathers," James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, cites the statement as proof that "the Church is the divinely appointed Custodian and interpreter of the Bible." But it will be observed that the apostle was not talking about those who read the scriptures but about those who wrote them. The question with which he deals is not that of understanding the scriptures or what they teach, but of their origin.

     No scripture is of private interpretation "because no prophecy ever came by the will of man." The prophets did not see events and write down their personal interpretation of them; they predicted events and the events happened in fulfillment of the prediction. The sacred scriptures are not made up of human interpretation based upon cause and effect, but holy men of God spoke as they were directed and motivated by the Holy Spirit. We accept the fact that the sacred writings contain God's message to mankind.

     This will be a good place for us to notice a modern tendency to undermine the authority of the sacred scriptures as being a revelation from God. Once this was done by agnostics and skeptics who attacked the word of God from outside the church of God. Now it is being accomplished by those who are regarded as leaders of thought from within the fold. There is a difference in the nature of the attacks; one being an openly declared war of aggression, the other disguised revolt or rebellion. Both are part of the age-old conflict between the wisdom which is from above and "the wisdom of this age" (I Cor. 2:6). One demonstrates itself in the words of the Spirit, the other in "plausible words of wisdom."

     Every such attack proceeds from a motivation which becomes the guiding genius behind all that is said or written. One needs to look behind the curtain and see what it is hoped to adopt or eliminate, which first makes necessary the undermining of the sacred scriptures. For instance, if one desires to promote a restructuring of the organization or polity of the church among those who have always looked to the scriptures for guidance in such matters he must first remove the

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scriptures from a position of validity in determination of such factors.

     In a discussion on unity held in 1965, a brother speaking under the heading, "The Tradition of the Church Gave Rise to the New Testament," made this statement: "When seeking for a Churchly structure it is an easy assumption to say that the New Testament--or even the Old Testament--gives a perfect record of what kind of structure we should have. Such an assumption seems to overlook the fact that the Scriptures as we know them in their canonized form did not make their appearance prior to 320 A. D. Of course, there were many letters, collections and writings available; but the Scriptures as we know them were not in anything like their present form for more than three hundred years after the birth of Christ. This means that the Church not alone preceded the Scriptures; but the Bible is the result of the work of the Church."

     It is not our intention here to enter into the controversy which gave rise to this statement but simply to examine the merits of the argument adduced. It is typical of a form of reasoning being adopted by scores of Protestant scholars in our day as the means for preparing the way for various changes in form, liturgy and government--changes which are essential in order to make possible the merger or coalition of various divergent groups. We mention "Protestant scholars" because Rome has always used the same argument but with a different design. Rome employs this reasoning to establish the absolute authority of the church; Protestants use it to deny that there is any absolute authority for the church.

     Our interest here is not whether the New Testament "gives a perfect record of what kind of structure we should have." That is indeed a profitable field of investigation, but the origin and nature of revelation must never be confused with its design. Our purpose is to examine, without reference to the use made of it or intended by it, the argument of our brother, and if it is invalid, it cannot be used by any person justifiably to further any goal. We believe that his postulate is "an easy assumption" which overlooks two facts.

     If the question deals with the matter of structure, it rightly resolves itself into the problem of whether there is a structure provided in the letters to the congregations, and if so, whether it was regarded by those who received the letters as the will of God and authoritative on that account.

     The letters of a father detailing the responsibility of his several children in separate cities of the world do not depend upon the future act of others in collecting and validating their genuiness before they become authoritative to the members of the family. Nor can future generations logically conclude that the family had no special order, form or structure, prior to the publication of the letters in one volume. The authority stems from original authorship and not from subsequent arrangement of the material.

     However, purely from a historical standpoint, we must recognize that the Scriptures existed before they were collected. Each letter became scripture the moment it was written, and if it was inspired of God it was holy, or sacred scripture. The collection of these into a volume called "the holy scriptures" added not one thing to their holiness or to their authority. It simply signified that all doubts concerning the rightful place of any of them had been abrogated by that

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time. Every student knows that long before the compilation of the books into a single volume, quotations were made from all of them by various Christian saints, both in their confirmation of the believers and the confrontation with schismatics. And these appeals were made to the writings as authoritative.

     Did the tradition of the church give rise to the New Testament? That all depends upon what one means by tradition. Like most words which have been used for generations this one is now susceptible of several different definitions and even more implications. If used here as "an inherited culture or attitude," to imply that the scriptures grew out of a human seeking or searching for an ideal, and represent the conclusions reached by a trial-and-error method, we emphatically deny that this is so. If the statement means that need grew for a collection into compact form of the writings regarded as sacred, and this need resulted in the scriptures as we now have them, we accede to this as partially so. If "the tradition of the church" refers to conditions existing in the various congregations which required a revelation from God to exhibit what the response of the divine nature should be under such circumstances, we readily accede to it.

     At this point we may well study the implication of the word "canon" as applied to the scriptures. It is a scriptural word, being translated by the terms "line" and "rule". (Cp. Gal. 6:16; 2 Cor. 10:13, 15, 16). The Greek kanon is akin to the Hebrew word for reed, and originally signified a rod used for measuring. It is, then, a standard for measurement. But a thing used to measure must first be measured itself, and is then used to measure other things. There must be first established a rule for measuring the validity of those books accepted as sacred writings, and then those writings must become the rule by which all else is measured as to its holiness or sacredness.

     On what ground was the rule established to determine the right of admissibility to the sacred canon of any writing? It could not have been on the basis of antiquity, or literary structure, or mere content of truth. The answer is found in the word "apostolicity." The church recognized that the apostles had been chosen, called and commissioned by Jesus himself. They knew that he said unto them, "He that receiveth you, receiveth me." They were aware that he promised that the Spirit of truth would guide the apostles into all truth. They were ambassadors, ministers plenipotentiary of the King. That which they wrote or sanctioned had the authority of Jesus to give it weight. They were the human agents selected to reveal and convey the divine will. It was made known "to the holy apostles and prophets."

     The general acceptance of the authority of the apostles motivated the acceptance of that which they wrote, or of that which was written by their associates and under their personal sanction or endorsement. It is here that the brother to whom we have alluded may create a false impression by the statement, "the Bible is the result of the work of the Church." The Bible was not written by the church. It was written to the church. The books were not accepted as canonical because the church had produced them but because it had received them. The authority stemmed not from their acceptance but from their origin. Canonicity did not create authority nor increase it, but simply recognized it. It was in the giving and not the gathering of the books that the authority resided.

     We have no desire to be tiresome or boresome. We do not wish to belabor a point. But it is our prediction that we will be treated to increasing disregard and irreverence for the sacred scriptures as men continue to confuse liberty with license. For this reason it becomes necessary to emphasize certain distinctive truths, and the truth about certain distinctions. Increasingly we are being treated to the idea that the new covenant scriptures simply grew out of the experience of the church, and that there was no adequate guide until the canon was completed in the fourth century. The conclusion of this is expected to be that

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the primitive saints had no certain structure, polity or norm. Certainly this would render any thought of restoration an impossibility and would make any reformation limit itself solely to ethical and moral behavior of those involved in it. You cannot restore that which never existed.

     Now the apostles either wrote under the guidance and impulse of the Holy Spirit or they did not. If they did not, Christians have no distinctive sacred scriptures at all, and if they do not, any appeal to the new covenant scriptures for testimony about Jesus, or anything else, is useless and senseless. This is obvious when one realizes that Jesus promised that the Spirit would teach them all things and bring to their remembrance all that he had said unto them, and the apostles testified that the things they spoke were received from the Spirit. "We impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit." If Jesus and the apostles misrepresented the origin of the apostolic message, we cannot rely upon the content of it.

     If they did speak and write by revelation, the authority existed before the revelation and the revelation became authoritative when given. Canonicity conferred no authority! It created a book not a revelation. It gathered up and compiled authoritative documents and created a volume out of them, but each of these was authoritative before the collection took place. Canonicity did not multiply the authority, it simply added the books together.

     The authority does not reside in a volume but in a revelation. The Bible is not an authorized collection of books, but a collection of authorized books. The books were accepted because they measured up to the rule of the canon, they contained a revelation from God. They were sacred writings, holy scriptures. They were not holy scriptures because they were accepted in the canon, but they were adopted into the canon because they were holy scriptures.

     Let it never be forgotten that there were many letters and treatises written by those within the body of believers at the same time as those which compose the new covenant scriptures. If the new testament scriptures were produced solely by the church out of her tradition, why were these others in that same tradition not included? On what basis was the selectivity governed? If, as is implied, the sacred canon was not closed until 320 A.D., why were the letters of some of the more recent "church fathers" not included as authoritative, seeing that they spoke directly to matters of controversy then current? Did the Holy Spirit guide the apostles into all truth and protect that truth from admixture with that which was deduced rather than revealed. We can never escape the question as to whether the sacred scriptures constitute letters written by the church or to the church!

     Perhaps we will now be asked to what "theory of inspiration" we subscribe. This question is always injected when one accepts the scriptures as a revelation from God. Of course the theory one holds does not in any sense affect the issue of whether or not the scriptures are given by inspiration or revelation. One could be quite mistaken about the nature or means of revelation without affecting the fact of it. An error as to the kind of tools employed in making an automobile does not affect its use or function. The truth is that I hold no exclusive theory about the how of revelation. To do so would be to limit God to a special method and a set form. But nothing seems to be clearer than that God has revealed his will in various ways to his chosen witnesses.

     I do not doubt that the Spirit sometimes spoke in exact terms. "Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith" (I Timothy 4:1). The word "expressly" is from rhetos, which means "in stated terms." But the "now" indicates that upon other occasions the Spirit did not thus communicate the divine message. By whatever means, and through whatever channels, it was conveyed by the

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Spirit to the apostles and prophets I accept it as a revelation from God and propose to implement it as God's will in my life. God does not need to follow my blueprint to get me to acknowledge his word. My motto is, "The sum of thy word is truth; and every one of thy righteous ordinances endures for ever" (Psalm 119:160).

     A concrete example may be found in Time Magazine for October 22, 1965, in which is reported the thinking of the "God is dead" ecclesiastics. Typical is the statement made by Gabriel Valhanian, Associate Professor of Syracuse University. The writer says, "He argues that God, if there is one, is known to man only in terms of man's own culture, and thus is basically an idol. 'Theologically speaking, any concept of God can only be an approximation,' he says, 'Only God can have a concept about God.'"

     This whole skeptical position is based upon one presupposition, and while the learned professor talks with such dogmatic assurance it must not be forgotten that all he says is based upon assumption. If God has given man a revelation his entire "house of cards" comes tumbling down. It is true that if God has never revealed himself there can be no real assurance that he exists. Of course human reason, kindled by imagination, could project the idea of God, and man could react as if he had assurance, but this would not constitute proof. And it must be admitted that if God is known to man only in terms of man's own culture, he would be basically an idol, a cultural creation of human beings.

     But if God has revealed himself and man has accepted that revelation and developed a culture as the result of his acceptance, it is at once plain that God has influenced that culture rather than the culture creating God. Moreover, under such conditions, to know God in terms of the culture would not be to interpret God through the culture but to interpret and evaluate the culture through the terms of God. It is not true that "only God can have a concept about God" if God can reveal himself to rational beings. That concepts can be conveyed from one mind to another by communication must be admitted by even Professor Valhanian, for if such were not the case he is obtaining money under false pretence by "professing" to teach at Syracuse University. When he reveals a concept to a student and the student receives it, does not that student then have that concept? If God reveals himself to rational beings capable of receiving concepts, on what ground is it argued that only God can have a concept about God?

     Notice that the statement has to do with "a concept about God." His contention is that any concept of God can be only an approximation. By this he apparently intends to convey the thought that the finite mind cannot fully grasp the infinite, a point which appears rather ridiculous. If one could enter fully into all that is implied in the concept of God he would be infinite and thus be God. But if God has revealed himself to man, certainly man may grasp the concept of God to the extent of that revelation, and this is not an approximation at all. An approximation is an approach to a correct estimate or conception, but one who believes all that God reveals has a correct estimate or concept, and when he acts upon the basis of that revelation he is not

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guided by an inferior or approximate rationalization.

     The concept about God is in the world. It is as well-nigh universal as any concept can be, except perhaps, that of one's own existence. If only God can have a concept about God, whence came this concept in the minds of men? How did man first receive it? Even Professor Valhanian talks about God and he either talks about something of which he has no concept, or he denies his own dictum. Seeing that "only God can have a concept about God" he must either admit that he is arguing about something of which he has no concept, or affirm that he is God! Actually he simply provides one more witness that there is a certain amount of proof that God exists in the fact that the mind of man is able to entertain the concept that there is one God.

     All of the "God is dead" theorists begin by denying that God has revealed himself and then proceed upon that denial predicated upon assumption to spin their webs of sophistry. To do this they must conclude that God has not revealed himself because he is nonexistent, or because he is either powerless or indifferent. If the conclusion is based upon the first they sail under false colors when they claim to be "theologians," because theology is a knowledge of God and the supernatural, and no one can claim to possess a knowledge of that to which he denies existence. If these men are not theologians then they should not be respected or quoted as experts in the field of theology. One would be a poor instructor in geology who began his course by asserting that the earth did not exist and was merely a phantom in superstitious minds, or a product of our culture. On what ground can one qualify as a theologian who intimates that there may be neither a theos nor a logos?

     By the same token, to postulate that God exists but has not revealed himself unto man, is to turn about and reason God out of existence. If God could reveal his will but would not, he would not be God; if he would reveal his will but could not he could not be God. We concur with Rabbi Eugene B. Borowitz, of Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, The New York School, that "A theologian stands in great jeopardy when he makes his fundamental methodological decisions." Any survey will be affected by where the surveyor plants his Jacob's staff. We have planted ours on the ground encompassed by the sentence with which this article begins. If you would know where we stand turn back and read that initial statement.

     (This is the third in a series of articles being presented under the heading "Deep Roots." The series will continue through 1966 and will then be gathered into a book of 192 pages under the same title. Advance orders are being taken for this book to be billed on delivery, March 1, 1967, at $2.49 per copy. We urge you to share these messages with others).