Basics of the Faith: An Evangelical Introduction to Christian Doctrine

BASICS

of the

FAITH

an EVANGELICAL

INTRODUCTION

to CHRISTIAN

DOCTRINE

edited by Carl F. H. Henry

with an introduction by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Basics of the Faith: An Evangelical Introduction to Christian Doctrine

Best of Christianity Today

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CONTENTS

Introduction: The Greatest Generation and Its Legacy for the Future of Evangelical Theology

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

1General Revelation and Special Revelation

Addison H. Leitch

2The Saving Acts of God

George E. Ladd

3The Inspiration of the Bible

Philip E. Hughes

4The Incommunicable Attributes of the Triune God

Fred H. Klooster

5The Communicable Attributes of God

Anthony A. Hoekema

6The Holy Trinity

J. Kenneth Grider

7The Decrees of God

Geoffrey W. Bromiley

8Predestination

William Childs Robinson

9Creation

Harold B. Kuhn

10Angels

Bernard Ramm

11Satan and the Demons

G. C. Berkouwer

12Providence

Andrew K. Rule

13Miracles

Henry Stob

14The Origin and Nature of Man

John H. Gerstner

15The Covenant of Works

Oswald T. Allis

16The Nature and Origin of Sin

J. Oliver Buswell, Jr.

17Original Sin, Imputation, and Inability

Cornelius Van Til

18The Covenant of Grace

Herbert M. Carson

19The Person of Christ: Incarnation and Virgin Birth

F. F. Bruce

20The Person of Christ: The Kenotic Theory

Wayne E. Ward

21The Person of Christ: Death, Resurrection, Ascension

Ralph Earle

22Jesus Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King

Samuel J. Mikolaski

23The Atonement

Leon Morris

24The Intercessory Work of Christ

Robert Paul Roth

25The Work of the Holy Spirit

John F. Walvoord

26Common Grace

M. Eugene Osterhaven

27Effectual Calling

J. Norval Geldenhuys

28Regeneration

Otto Michel

29Repentance and Conversion

Julius R. Mantey

30Faith

Calvin D. Linton

31The Mystical Union

William A. Mueller

32Justification by Faith

H. D. McDonald

33Adoption

J. Theodore Mueller

34Sanctification

John Murray

35The Perseverance of the Saints

W. Boyd Hunt

36The Nature of the Church

James I. Packer

37The Government of the Church

Edward John Carnell

38Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

Merrill C. Tenney

39Other Means of Grace

Frank E. Gaebelein

40Death and Immortality

J. G. S. S. Thomson

41The Second Coming: Millennial Views

William M. Arnett

42The Resurrection of the Dead and Final Judgment

Walter W. Wessel

43The Final State: Heaven and Hell

J. A. Motyer

Subject Index

Scripture Index

Introduction

THE GREATEST GENERATION AND ITS LEGACY FOR THE FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY

KEVIN J. VANHOOZER

The essays in the present book originally appeared as a series of articles published in Christianity Today from 1961–1962. As such, they constitute a veritable time capsule of the state of the art of mid-twentieth century evangelical theology in the English-speaking world. To be precise, the essays all date from the time between two TIME magazine cover stories, featuring Billy Graham (October 25, 1954) and The Evangelicals: New Empire of Faith (December 26, 1977). What, then, can they tell us about the evangelicalism of the past, and what can we learn from them for the evangelicalism of the future?

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY: THE STATE OF THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY ART

In the first place, the essays represent a treasure trove of insights into the first years of what Harold Ockenga in 1947 termed the neo-evangelical movement.¹ In contrast to fundamentalists, who tended to engage neither in dialogue with theological liberals nor in action pertaining to social justice, Ockenga called for a new generation of theologically conservative evangelicals who were willing to engage with both the academy and society as an aspect of their witness to the truth of the gospel.²

From the start, evangelical theology represented a transdenominational gospel coalition. The roster of forty-three essayists in this volume includes Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Nazarenes, Methodists, Baptists, and Brethren. Moreover, the contributors come from a number of countries in addition to the United States, including Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Holland, South Africa, and Germany. Almost all the contributors received their doctorates from non-evangelical institutions, with four from Harvard University alone. Other universities represented include Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton, Edinburgh, USC, Johns Hopkins, Berlin, and Drew. Though all the contributors are white males, there is still considerable diversity of cultures and confessional traditions.

It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that these contributors represent the Greatest Generation of evangelicalism. This, of course, is the name given the generation of Americans who experienced and fought in World War II, and their evangelical counterparts faced a similar global challenge. C. S. Lewis called it that hideous strength (the title of the third book in his space trilogy), a poetic reference to the two towers of secularism and scientism or, in a word, modernity. Carl F. H. Henry mentions the modern bias against the reality of the supernatural in his introduction to the 1962 book publication of these essays (not included in the present volume).³ At the heart of Christianity, Henry insists, is the proclamation of "a new race, namely, the company of the gospel, those united by faith in the risen Christ through the Spirit. The welcome hallmark of neo-evangelicalism, says Henry, was a newfound interest in Bible doctrine: Our century has served theological skim milk to both churchmen and churchgoers.… One sure sign of theological renewal will be revived interest in a systematic theology that rests on the fixed norm of biblical authority."⁴ Against this backdrop, the essays collected here were a kind of doctrinal D-Day, an early beachhead on the continent of modern secularism.

The military metaphor is apt. The contributors to Basics of the Faith are all engaged in the project described by the apostle Paul as waging war against arguments and opinions that are against the knowledge of God in order to take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor. 10:3–5 ESV), the truth and life of God. And this is indeed the purpose of theology: to ensure that our thoughts correspond to revealed truth, and that our right thinking (every thought) leads to right action (obedience). A basic of the faith is thus a primary Christian teaching that orients our thought about God and the gospel in the right direction. Basic Christian doctrine is necessary at all times and in all places because, alas, false doctrine—idolatry and ideology—is pervasive.

Though the various contributors to Basics of the Faith represent diverse denominations and cultures, they are united in their acknowledgment of Scripture as the supreme norm for Christian thought and life. In his postscript to the original published edition (not included in the present book), Roger Nicole identifies the foundational principle of evangelical theology to be obedient recognition to the authority of the Scripture as the infallible rule of faith.⁵ According to Nicole, the hallmark of evangelical theological method is obedient listening to the voice of God: "Theology is basically and ultimately always biblical, and the evangelical is confident that in this affirmation he is in line with the great Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura, yea, with the attitude of the Apostles and of our Lord Himself, when they triumphantly rested their case on the note, ‘It is written.’ "⁶

Sure enough, in keeping with Nicole’s claim, the essays in Basics of the Faith appeal first and foremost to the Bible itself. Evangelical theologians march to the beat of a biblical drummer. Listen, for example, to Bernard Ramm: To speculate about angels apart from the concrete, historical, and specific character of revelation is like attempting to fly in a vacuum. We have no a priori principle to just this matter; we have no innate esthetic sense to assess its fittingness. We either rest upon the contents of revelation or we pass the question by. Again, the goal is to ensure that the church’s thinking about God and the gospel correspond to God’s prior word. In his essay on heaven and hell, J. A. Motyer admits that every sensitive person who thinks about the question of human destiny must surely long to be a universalist. Yet sentiment cannot be exalted into a theological norm, and if we would understand the love of God, we must do more than draw analogies to human love. Hence the necessity of basing Christian doctrine on the Bible: Only God can say what precisely are the facts.… What has the God of truth written for our learning?

Basics of the Faith opens with three different essays on the knowledge of God. Calvin, too, opened his Institutes with the observation that there is no knowledge of self without knowledge of God. For evangelicals, everything begins with God’s self-revelation in nature, Scripture, and history—particularly the saving history of Jesus Christ. As George Ladd says: The uniqueness and the scandal of the Christian religion rest in the mediation of revelation through historical events. It follows that the Bible is not simply a set of data or a system of concepts but, rather, a story of events: History is recorded because it embodies the acts of God. What is true of Israel’s history is supremely true of Jesus’ history, for he was God in the flesh. What makes these essays evangelical, then, is their conviction that God and the gospel belong together. In Ladd’s words: God’s word is His deed, and His deed is His Word.

WHAT MAKES EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY EVANGELICAL?

The essays in this time capsule are self-confessedly evangelical because, formally, each contributor adheres to the same objective cognitive principle of Christian theology, namely, the inspired word of God communicated by the prophets and apostles in the Scriptures. Doctrines are ways of identifying the actors and assessing the significance of their actions in the scriptural story of salvation—windows through which we may glimpse the biblical landscape and its ultimate horizon in God.⁷ Doctrines are basic when they teach us what we need to know in order rightly to make sense of the story, and the sayings, that communicate the biblical worldview. As G. C. Berkouwer says in his contribution: Doctrine is an attempt to set forth the interrelatedness of the Word of God. Whether the essays are united in material substance as well as formal method, however, raises an entirely different question.

Several critics have expressed over the years a persistent concern that there is no such thing as a distinctive doctrinal core to evangelical Christianity. On this view, evangelicalism (like life, according to Hamlet) is a term signifying nothing.⁸ There is a plethora of prima facie evidence: evangelicals often disagree over the particulars of many doctrines (e.g., the mode of baptism, the extent of the atonement, the gifts of the Spirit). Some scholars want to define basic Christian doctrines as a bounded set with clear boundaries; others are content to see it as a centered set, with doctrines closer or farther from the center, but neither in nor out. As David Bebbington notes: The conservatives specify what evangelicalism ought to be; the progressives explain what the phenomena is.⁹ The main challenge in defining the core of evangelical theology is that of deriving an evangelical ought from an evangelical is.

My own view is that most contributors to Basics of the Faith would not feel particularly beholden to the evangelical is, if this refers to the actual opinions of rank and file evangelicals. As we have already seen, the prime directive of our authors is listening to the voice of God, not to those who belong to a particular demographic. Everything thus depends on whether one treats the term evangelical primarily as a sociological or theological category. Ideally, the two belong together, for the term evangelical means of or according to the teaching of the gospel, and this is precisely the aspiration of true evangelicals. However, since those who call themselves evangelicals differ over a number of doctrines, it follows that evangelical theology necessarily involves more than taking opinion polls. I believe the deepest intent of the contributors to Basics of the Faith is to be not spokesmen for a sociological movement but faithful witnesses to what God has said and done.

Elsewhere, Daniel Treier and I have argued that evangelical theology is best viewed as an anchored set.¹⁰ The church (and evangelical opinion) is not the anchor but the vessel, the ark that the anchor keeps from drifting and making shipwreck of one’s faith (1 Tim. 1:19). What Scripture calls a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul (Heb. 6:19 ESV) is nothing other than God’s promise, his covenant of grace fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The anchor, then, is God’s faithfulness to his own word, as displayed in the way that the Father proves his steadfast love for sinners through the Son by the Spirit. The good news concerns how God the Father has set things right in God the Son, through the cross and resurrection, by the power of God the Holy Spirit. The Triune God himself is the sum and substance of the gospel: The Trinitarian shape of the gospel comes from the fact that God, by grace, gives himself to us by opening that eternal triune life to us.¹¹ Evangelical theology is thus anchored in the God of the gospel and the gospel of God.¹²

J. Kenneth Grider tacitly acknowledges this anchor in his essay on "The Holy Trinity: Although Jesus Christ is the proper magnetic center of our faith … we evangelical Protestants are sometimes prone to relegate the Father and the Holy Spirit to lesser importance. The mention of evangelical here refers to the people group, not to what is in accordance with the Scriptures." Grider’s essay goes on to give a robust defense of the equal dignity and majesty of all three persons, precisely because each plays a decisive role in establishing the covenant of grace, making good on God’s promise to share his own life with his chosen people.

Herbert Carson, in his contribution, also makes explicit the Trinitarian shape of the gospel: The Father chooses those whom He will call into covenant relationship.… It is [the Son’s] blood which establishes its basis. It is the Spirit who realizes the covenant in the life of the believer. J. I. Packer, similarly, calls attention to the church’s place in the triune economy of the gospel:

For the church is the object of the redemption which the Bible proclaims.… We cannot properly understand the purpose of God, nor the method of grace, nor the kingdom of Christ, nor the work of the Holy Spirit, nor the meaning of world history, without studying the doctrine of the church. Packer goes on to give a theological rather than a sociological account of the church as a divinely created fellowship of sinners who trust a common Savior, and are one with each other because they are all one with Him in a union realized by the Holy Spirit. Adherence to the word of the Triune God may be the formal principle that unites the contributors to Basics of the Faith, then, but it is their common confession of the gospel of the Triune God, and all that that presupposes and implies, that serves as evangelical theology’s doctrinal core.¹³

BEYOND THE BASICS: YESTERDAY’S LESSONS FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW

Why should evangelicals today study this doctrinal time capsule from the Greatest Generation?

First, it helps us understand how the first generation of neo-evangelicals understood their theological vocation in contrast to the liberals and modernists of their day. The authors neither ignore, nor vilify, nor worship modern thinking: they simply subordinate it to Scripture. Consider Ramm on science and the supernatural: "The serious question which confronts the Christian theologian in view of modern man’s squeamish attitude toward angels is whether or not there is a logical or theological justification for this attitude. Christian theology would be faced with a serious logical problem if angels and atoms competed with each other in natural law … but the angels are never part of the scriptural explanation of the order or ordering of natural things. Angels and atoms do not compete!" What is especially noteworthy in these essays, then, is their relative lack of rancor. It is not that the authors are soft on modern liberalism; it is simply that they are even more intent on setting forth the biblical teaching on their assigned topics.

Second, it is always worthwhile to retrieve valuable insights from the past, and this volume contains many precious theological gold nuggets. Stated differently: there are many cups of cold water in these pages for those who are parched with thirst due to a lack of doctrinal instruction in evangelical churches. For example, in an age where some make God’s love his primary attribute, it helps to be reminded by Anthony Hoekema that God’s holiness means that God is infinitely exalted above His Creation, and that the holiness of God is not so much a separate attribute as a qualification of all that God is and does.

Third, in an era of increasing polarization, it is good to be reminded of the unity-in-diversity that characterized the evangelical movement in the mid-twentieth century. As such, it provides positive proof that such a thing as mere evangelical theology, where the common theological core outweighs the secondary doctrinal differences, is indeed a possibility. Henry flags this very point in his introduction to the original volume: But what the various contributors share in common as committed evangelicals far outweighs their differences.¹⁴ However, he does not spell out exactly of what this basic agreement consists.

And this leads to a fourth possibility, namely, that these essays might encourage further exploration about what makes evangelical theology evangelical. After all, in the present context it seems clear that evangelicalism as a movement is in crisis, with many card-carrying members wondering what the term means and others wondering if they should find another means of self-identification. In light of our present confusion, might Basics of the Faith provide evangelical pastors, churches, and theologians with an opportunity to rediscover their theological center of gravity?

The current editor in chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, has recently argued that evangelicalism is a current expression of a venerable and unique way of being a Christian.¹⁵ He calls this unique quality Christocentrism, which is less a doctrine than an expression of a particular kind of piety that he finds in Augustine and the Puritans. This emphasis on a common piety links up with Mark Noll’s suggestion that, in addition to biblical authority, evangelicals have shared a conviction that true religion required the active experience of God.¹⁶ Jesus figures centrally in all forms of Christian theology, but evangelical theology is the most Jesusy, according to Galli. Whereas Pentecostals are known for their experience of the Holy Spirit, evangelicals are characterized by their Jesus-centered piety.¹⁷

How Jesusy are the essays, or rather the contributors, to Basics of the Faith? It is hard to say; only God knows the heart (Luke 16:15). Besides, as we saw above in connection to Grider’s essay, though Jesus is the center of evangelical faith, that center requires a Trinitarian magnetic field if it is to be truly evangelical. William Mueller’s essay on "The Mystical Union" articulates this well. The term mystical suggests the wonder of our communion with Christ. This accords with Galli’s emphasis on evangelical experience. It takes doctrine, however, to spell out what exactly is involved in experiencing the gospel, which is precisely what the doctrine of union with Christ does.¹⁸ As Calvin notes, justification and sanctification are the twin blessings that flow from our union with Christ. The gospel is the good news that, in Christ, we have fellowship with the Father, and with one another, through the Holy Spirit. This, I submit, is the Trinitarian conviction that binds together those who cling to the gospel under the authority of the Scriptures. It is therefore the implicit anchor that holds these essays together.

Finally, these essays are exemplars to which evangelical theologians today can aspire. It is true that there is a preponderance of white male Anglo-Americans among the authors, but the seeds of a more global and catholic evangelicalism which is sorely needed today are nevertheless here. In the aforementioned essay on "The Mystical Union, we find this statement: If American Christians, North and South, and Christians everywhere, could realize the impact of this word of the Apostle ["in Christ], racial pride and arrogance, antisemitism, and all non-Christian attitudes towards those of a different color from ours would be radically changed. Amen.

Some thirty years after the original publication of these essays, Mark Noll wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.¹⁹ It was a cri de coeur for cultivating two loves—for the life of the mind and for faith in Christ—in one person, the Christian scholar. No such problem exists among the evangelical contributors to the present book, for whom loving with all their hearts and minds the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is their daily bread. Written in a scholarly yet accessible manner, the essays included herein represent not the shallows of evangelicalism, marked off only by a common experiential denominator, but rather the deep end, composed of diverse doctrinal wells that plumb the depths of the Scriptures, as well as the various aspects of the length, height, and breadth of the love of God poured out in Christ, from which flow the springs of eternal life. Together, they explore the Father’s plan to sum up all things in the Son by the Spirit: in a word, everything presupposed, indicated by, and entailed by being in Jesus Christ—the ground, grammar, and goal of the gospel.

Chapter 1

GENERAL REVELATION AND SPECIAL REVELATION

ADDISON H. LEITCH

Addison H. Leitch (1908–1973) was a Presbyterian theologian who earned a PhD from Cambridge University and taught at Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, Tarkio College (Tarkio, MO), and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA). He is the author of Interpreting Basic Theology (1961) and A Layman’s Guide to Presbyterian Beliefs (1967).

It is the psalmist who sings The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, their voice is not heard. Men have known these things for generations. They have gloried in the glory of a God who manifests himself in his wonderous works. No speech nor language is spoken, it is not in the words of Greek or Hebrew or German or English; yet every day speaks and every night shows knowledge. The apostle adds in a later day 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; so that they are without excuse … Psalmist and apostle declare what no man can deny, that there is a God who can be known through his works and when we refuse to see him there, we are without excuse.

Such knowledge of God forced on us by the world around us has been recognized and accepted by believers in every generation. In some fashion it is the approach of Plato as he moves level upon level to his supreme Idea, an idea, which according to Plato’s thinking, necessarily has moral qualities which can be defined as an Ideal. In some fashion it is the approach of Aristotle as his system carries us from utter matter to perfect form or from the inanimate world to the high reaches of the Unmoved Mover. More specifically, in the Christian tradition, men have discovered in the world around them proofs for God, reasons for faith, necessities for believing, and, at least, in the direction of their thinking, they have been forced toward some knowledge of God. Arguments for the existence of God and in support of the nature of God are very old ones. They have been subjected to much criticism and therefore to considerable refinement in the history of thought. In spite of such criticism, however, they keep cropping up in one form or another, one argument, or one way of stating the argument, appealing to one generation more than to another; but none of the arguments ever quite disappears. That these arguments keep reviving is probably a reason for their fundamental strength; men feel under some duress to define what they know must be true about God from the evidence of the external world.

FROM EFFECTS TO THEIR CAUSE

Keeping in mind that these arguments say something about God’s attributes as well as giving reasons for his existence, we are justified in using them as supports in natural theology for our knowledge of God. In general, the arguments move under at least four titles: the Cosmological, the Teleological, the Anthropological, and the Ontological. These arguments all allow somewhat the same scheme, namely that an effect must have a cause equal to or greater than the effect itself. In the general scheme of things you cannot get something from nothing and, surely, one can observe a great deal of something in the world of nature; the question is, therefore, what is the source, the support, and the end of all these things about us? What is the explanation of their existence?

The easiest argument is The Cosmological. It argues from the existence of the Cosmos, the universe, what C. S. Lewis calls the whole show. Man does not need to be either clever or subtle merely to wonder about the world around him. How can one account for all these things he sees and experiences—the birds, the rocks, the trees, and the stars in their courses. This first argument in natural theology finds us unable to escape the belief that back of all this cosmos there is some thing or some one equal to bringing into existence (by what method we need not argue here) the universe within us, around us, and above us.

The Teleological argument is more reflective regarding the universe. Here our interest is focused on design and purpose as we discover the amazing intricacy with which all things are interlocked as if united in some grand mutual interdependancy, some basic design. These interlocked designs and purposes point to a designer, some intelligence with creative purpose. There are no isolated data, there is no item so small that it is not somehow interrelated with every possible other thing. Nothing ever just happens. You can never really say of anything that it doesn’t really matter. Butler in his Analogy, Paley in his Evidences, and in these latter days F. R. Tennant in his Philosophical Theology found this argument from design almost conclusive for the existence and the nature of God.

In his master work, Nature, Man and God, William Temple sets himself to examine the world of nature only to discover that nature includes man and that nature and man together point us to God. In some such fashion The Anthropological argument grows out of the Teleological argument, for nothing points more clearly to intelligence and design than the fact of man himself, man who is able to understand the design and to appreciate the designer. But beyond this is man as person. Man as a person has what we call personality. Will anyone seriously argue that personality can arise from some impersonal source? Will anyone seriously support accidents or material or both as sufficient to account for all the wonders in man? Since man is so creative himself, was the ground of his existence uncreative? Thus the argument runs. We cannot get something from nothing; we have something personal in man; we cannot believe that this personal end-product comes from impersonal sources.

The Ontological argument points to perfection or more exactly to the idea of perfection which we find inescapable in our ways of thought. To use our thinking about God as an example, how is it possible for us to talk about the perfections of God without some idea of perfection as a point of reference. Yet we are imperfect ourselves, we think imperfectly, we are surrounded by a world of imperfections. Since, once again, we cannot get something from nothing and since assuredly we have ideas of perfection which cannot be accounted for in the immediacies of our surroundings, the conclusion suggests itself that this idea of perfection must come directly from the perfect source, namely, from God himself.

It would appear from this brief treatment that we have at least four reasons for believing in God. (Some add the moral argument, that is, the inescapable sense of oughtness common to all men, Kant’s catagorical imperative. We believe that the moral argument which we have not here expanded can find a natural place in the Anthropological argument.) These tell us some very definite things about God’s nature—he is mighty enough to account for the universe itself, he is intelligent enough to satisfy its design, he is personal enough to account for man as person, and he is the ground of all our understanding and perfection. If we add creativity and morality as necessary to man as person, we may presume to have found as necessary a God who is almighty, intelligent, personal, creative, moral, and perfect. We are not far from the kingdom!

FROM NECESSARY PRESUPPOSITIONS

What has been said thus far usually comes under the heading of a posteriori reasoning, that is, reaching our conclusions inductively. There are others who prefer the a priori approach; this is, as a matter of fact, the approach of much of the theology of our day. Knowledge of God with this approach is not so much the result of our thinking as it is the starting place of our thinking. The starting place is always there, described sometimes as a first truth, and it is only in personal intellectual maturity or perhaps in the maturity of the race that man gets around to analyzing the nature of his starting place. Living as we do in an age dominated by scientific method, it is difficult for us to accept the fact that we operate even in science, even in our proofs, from the foundation of various presuppositions. For many, the fact of God is one of the necessary presuppositions.

All of us must accept some first truths about ourselves from the outset. We are alive and awake and sane; such truths about ourselves which we cannot prove objectively; we merely accept them as starting places. On a deeper level we base our thinking on the assumption that there are certain foundations of Truth and Reason from which we operate and to which we constantly return. We believe that truth has an interrelatedness in a universe (which is a single organizational principle of truth).

All serious thinking, especially the most objective scientific research, upholds the necessity of absolute honesty in methods and in findings, appealing therefore to a moral ground built into the structure of reality. In other directions our words betray us: it stands to reason or that doesn’t make sense. Thus we are insisting that our thinking, as well as our experimenting, demands a frame of reference that is sensible. Moreover, we appeal to one another on the grounds of a common acceptance of these necessary fundamentals. Notice the presupposition of this paragraph recently published in the Science section of Time magazine where the discussion has to do with the possibility of interplanetary conversations: "But what message would aliens send that could be understood by earthlings? Dr. Drake suggests a familiar series of numbers, such as 1, 2, 3, 4. Professor Purcell believes that a simple on-off signal would be more logical as a starter. After that the messages could progress to Mathematical relationships, which are surely the same in all planetary systems …"¹ Note how normal it is for scientists to assume an underlying rational system.

FROM SPECIAL REVELATION

From this a priori approach it is interesting to note that we are talking again about a Reality at the source of things showing attributes of Truth, Reason, and Morality. We are being pressed to the conclusion again, namely, that in what is called Natural Theology there are strong reasons for knowing that there is a God and knowing something of his attributes. But, can a man by searching find out God? Only is this possible when God is pleased to reveal himself and to answer finally and authoritatively man’s deepest questions. This is not Natural Revelation but Special Revelation. This is the Bible record of God’s mighty acts and his authoritative Word about the revelatory acts and about himself. This is the climax and fulfillment of God’s Word to us in the Living Word even Jesus Christ. Natural revelation gives us direction and confidence in our search for God; God’s Special Revelation gives us final authority and assurance regarding his own nature and his will for man. As Calvin suggests, in the Bible we have the divine spectacles which bring the truths of natural theology into focus.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to classic systematic theologies by C. Hodge, A. H. Strong, L. Berkhof, and others, we suggest:

R. Flint, Evangelical Theism (an old standard work)

J. Gerstner, Reasons for Faith (popular and sound)

S. M. Thompson, A Modern Philosophy of Religion

H. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics

K. Barth, Church Dogmatics (dialectical)

F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology (liberal but surprisingly firm in its objective approach)

Chapter 2

THE SAVING ACTS OF GOD

GEORGE E. LADD

George Eldon Ladd (1911–1982) was a Baptist New Testament scholar who earned a PhD from Harvard University and taught at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA). He is the author of numerous books, including The Gospel of the Kingdom (1959) and A Theology of the New Testament (1974).

The uniqueness and the scandal of the Christian religion rest in the mediation of revelation through historical events. The Hebrew-Christian faith stands apart from the religions of its environment because it is a historical faith whereas they were religions rooted in mythology or the cycle of nature. The God of Israel was the God of history, or the Geschichtsgott, as German theologians so vividly put it. The Hebrew-Christian faith did not grow out of lofty philosophical speculation or profound mystical experiences. It arose out of the historical experiences of Israel, old and new, in which God made himself known. This fact imparts to the Christian faith a specific content and objectivity which sets it apart from others.

At the same time, this very historical character of revelation raises an acute problem for many thinking men. Plato viewed the realm of time and space as one of flux and change. History by definition involves relativity, particularity, caprice, arbitrariness, whereas revelation must convey the universal, the absolute, the ultimate. History has been called an abyss in which Christianity has been swallowed up quite against its will.

REVELATORY HISTORY

How can the Infinite be known in the finite, the Eternal in the temporal, the Absolute in the relativities of history? From a purely human perspective, this is impossible; but at precisely this point is found perhaps the greatest miracle in the biblical faith. God is the living God, and he, the eternal, the unchangeable, has communicated knowledge of himself through the ebb and flow of historical experience.

The problem is well nigh insoluble for the man who takes his world view from modern philosophies rather than from the Bible. Yet there can be no doubt about the Bible’s claim for the historical character of revelation. This can be seen in the historical character of