- GENERAL REVELATION 'dʒɛn(.ə).rəl rɛv.ə'leɪ.ʃən noun. The universal, natural knowledge about God and divine matters. (Also called universal revelation, or natural revelation.)
- 2. What the universe, nature, or the human psyche reveal to us about God.
A number of Christian apologists love, love, LOVE the idea of general revelation. And I always wind up on their bad side, because as a theologian I have to point out it’s a wholly unreliable form of revelation. It’s so useless it actually does pagans more good than Christians.
This, they really don’t wanna hear. Because they’ve pinned so many hopes on it.
Y’see, apologists love to debate nontheists—people who don’t believe there’s such a being as God, and therefore are mighty sure he’s never interacted with them. Apologists try to prove God has so interacted with them. If the nontheist can’t remember any particular events, the apologist will often point at nature and claim, “See, that’s a way God interacted with you!” God created a really impressive sunset! Or God not-all-that-supernaturally cured ’em of a disease. Or God created one of their kids. Or they had any sort of warm fuzzy feeling which kinda felt divine.
Or, if we’ve got a more philosophically-minded apologist, they’ll try to argue certain cultural or scientific beliefs in a westerner’s brain can’t properly work unless there’s a God-idea somewhere deep in that brain. Absolutes of right and wrong supposedly can’t exist unless there’s an absolute authority (like, say, God) to define these absolutes. Or the unfulfilled desire for a higher power has to be based on an actual Higher Power out there somewhere.
Apologists like to regularly tap the idea of general revelation, then use it to springboard to special revelation—the stuff God has personally revealed about himself, particularly through Jesus.
Me, I figure all this general revelation stuff is quicksand. That’s why I prefer to leapfrog it and straightaway talk about Jesus. Apologists waste way too much time trying to argue in favor of God’s existence by pointing to nature, reasoning, and the human conscience. And while they’re busy trying to sway skeptics—often unsuccessfully—you realize we coulda just prophesied over the skeptic, proving there’s a Holy Spirit who knows all and empowers prophecy, and suddenly we’re talking about the Jesus the Spirit points to. While the prophesied-upon skeptic’s head is spinning from this unexpected, dumbfounding new revelation of a God who loves her… the apologist is still trying, and failing, to convincingly explain why intelligent design isn’t merely wishful thinking.
Why is general revelation quicksand? Because every religion does general revelation. Every religion says, “Look at the universe!—how beautiful and complex it is! Surely it proves there’s a creator behind it!” Then they try to point to the being they consider the creator—but they’re not talking about the LORD. They’re not talking about Jesus. It’s a whole other god. Ọlọrun, perhaps. Or Ahura Mazda, Brahma, Amun-Ra, etcetera.
Likewise people try to deduce God from creation. We begin with the assumption creation kinda resembles its creator; that it has his fingerprints all over it, so we can sorta figure out what God’s like. Look at the people he created, and the way we think and reason. Look at the intelligence which had to go into some of the more complex things in the universe. Look at the attention to detail, the intricacy, the mathematical and scientific precision, the way everything all neatly fits together. Tells you all sorts of profound things about the creator, doesn’t it?
Well… not if you’ve read your bible. You forget this universe isn’t as God originally created it. It fell.