What Do Christians Believe About Divine Revelation?

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God makes Himself and His will known to humanity only by way of self-disclosure, or revelation. This is necessary for human beings as creatures to know God because God as Creator is transcendent and distinct from His creation. Human beings cannot know God unless He chooses to reveal Himself. They cannot acquire knowledge of Him by their own reason, experience, or effort apart from His self-disclosure. Because of this, God’s self-disclosure graciously accommodates and condescends to the finite capacity of human beings as creatures. In this way, all human knowledge, both of God and His purposes in creation, is to be a creaturely analogy to God’s own knowledge of both Himself as Creator and His creation.

We can distinguish two ways that God makes Himself and His will known to human beings. These two ways are complementary to each other and work together. The first is typically referred to as general revelation, where God reveals Himself universally to all people through His works of creation, providence, and the human conscience. The natural order and cosmos display God’s power, wisdom, and divine nature (Rom. 1:19–20). His administration of history and human affairs reflects His justice and goodness (Matt. 5:45; Acts 14:17). Human beings exhibit in their typical behavior a divinely implanted moral awareness of objective right and wrong that reflects God’s moral law (Rom. 2:14–15). All these continually, clearly, truthfully, and authoritatively disclose to human beings who God is as their Creator and what their obligations are to Him as creatures made in His image. They are persistent and unceasing witnesses, making human beings at all times accountable to God.

While this general revelation is sufficient to make all human beings accountable before God, it is only foundational and not sufficient for the salvation of human beings. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1.1) puts it the following way:

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation.

This is not because human beings are admittedly finite and thus limited in their capacity as creatures to take in the fullness of God’s self-disclosure. God always accommodates Himself sufficiently in His self-disclosure to human beings. Rather, the insufficiency arises from the reality of sin and its effect on the intellect and will of human beings. Every aspect of the human being as made in God’s image was designed to both depend upon and reflect His divine being and character. Sin has corrupted the mind and the motives of human beings, leading them to suppress and distort the knowledge of God they have received through general revelation. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, people are bound to misinterpret, distort, or reject what is plainly revealed.

God makes Himself and His will known to humanity only by way of self-disclosure, or revelation.

Special revelation is the second way that God makes Himself and His will known to human beings, and it both interprets and adds to what He reveals in general revelation. It discloses who God is as Redeemer, the purposes of His saving acts in history, His covenant relationship with His people, and His ultimate plan of redemption through Jesus Christ. This special revelation was administered through various means throughout redemptive history, including dreams, visions, angelic appearances, theophanies, and prophetic utterances. However, it reached its climax and fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ, through whom God has definitively spoken (Heb. 1:1–2) and who is the perfect revelation of the Father (John 1:18; 14:9). The primary, final, and sufficient form of special revelation that authoritatively and infallibly bears witness to all of this is Holy Scripture. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1.1) speaks to this as well:

[It] pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary.

It is this special revelation that is made effectual by the Holy Spirit for human beings to have that knowledge of God necessary for salvation, faith, and godly living, and it works in tandem with general revelation as a unified whole to provide God’s self-disclosure to human beings.