A faithful use of the imagination by Christians must begin with recognizing and upholding the historic theological distinction between two types of God’s revelation: special and general.
Many Christians today seem to recognize only one type, special, (which they often don’t realize even has a name) and only one exemplar of that type: the Bible. Negatively, nothing can be true that contradicts something found in the Bible, and positively, the Bible has something definite to say about pretty much everything with which human beings might have to deal.
Yet this is actually a reduction of the category revelation which is not supported even by the Bible. The Bible, in fact, though the only example of special revelation, itself teaches us pretty clearly about the other type, general revelation.
The classical passages from Scripture that outline the existence and operation of general revelation are two:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19:1-4
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Romans 1:18-20
The reader will note that these biblical descriptions of general revelation are themselves pretty general. Insofar as the words of the Bible itself go, we aren’t told exactly what are the contents of this mode of revelation to all mankind. We are only told a description of the contents, namely: “the glory of God,” “knowledge,” “what may be known about God,” and “God’s invisible qualities.” In the Romans passage, the last of these items does break down into the dual category “his eternal power and divine nature,” but even so, no further elaboration comes.
The clincher, it seems, is the precise way in which Paul tells us that people know these things and so are without excuse: His invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, are all “understood from what has been made.” It is by observing with our senses the created world and pondering with our minds what we observe in the created world that Paul says clearly show all human beings everywhere and at all times certain general truths about God. No special revelation (like the Bible) is needed for this general knowledge about God, and this is exactly why all human beings everywhere and at all times have no excuses for denying God.
As it turns out, the substantial difference between the nature, content, and mode of reception of these two types of revelation is crucial for the proper use of the human imagination. Arguments from special revelation must marshal specific texts of Scripture to support their points, after which the complex process of textual interpretation begins. By contrast, arguments about the implications of general revelation must take place on the grounds of setting forth observable features of the created world and then drawing from them philosophical and theological inferences.
Of course the question begs to be asked: What might these inferences be?
The Apostle Paul was not, of course, writing in an intellectual vacuum. For several centuries Greek philosophers had gradually articulated a broad and deep systematic understanding of the created world as rationally ordered and governed. Some of them even came to call this rational principle the Logos – which certainly ought to interest us since the first chapter of John’s Gospel articulates the incarnation of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, in terms of “The Word (logos) became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Though none of the Greek schools of thought came to full knowledge of the truth, the broad outlines of a metaphysic and epistemology that was at least not simply inconsistent with special revelation existed, and it is clear that Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, appealed to these things in many of his theological arguments.
Not merely in Romans 1 do we see this appeal, but in Romans 2 also (“the law written on their hearts”) and in the justly famous Areopagus sermon of Acts 17, in which Paul deals directly with several ideological descendants of Socrates, the Stoics and Epicureans. In this latter passage, indeed, we find Paul noting, quite interestingly, that the philosophers, not having special revelation, nevertheless didn’t get everything wrong, and that is why God rightly now calls them to repentance and belief in Christ.
The Knowable Truths of General Revelation
Later generations of Christians (Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages) developed these premises and implications further, refining propositional expressions of the specific contents of general revelation. For the sake of space, I will only refer to one such later Christian treatment, that of John Calvin at the time of the Reformation.
In his Commentary on Romans, Calvin explains the contents of what all men know about God from observing and thinking about the things that have been made with these headings:
- Eternity – God, having no beginning or end, is the uncaused maker of all things
- Power – God at all times actively upholds all of existence
- Wisdom – God providentially arranges and governs the world
- Goodness – Nothing outside God constrains Him to create or preserve the world
- Truth – God is immutable and unchangeable; therefore truth doesn’t change
- Righteousness – God punishes the guilty and defends the innocent
- Mercy – God, who is slow to anger, bears with the perversity of fallen men
Given a list like this, we may certainly say that the contents of general revelation are not at all vague, let alone difficult to understand. Obviously, each one to be “unpacked” and exposited in much detail – a task which has already been done for us by numerous Christian authors of the past (necessitating that we will take the time to read those authors.)
We may certainly say, also, that all people everywhere at all times have this knowledge, whether they have ever encountered a Bible or a Christian – and also no matter how vehemently they may deny having any knowledge of God. And again, it is their actual possession of this very substantial and clearly seen knowledge about God that renders them “without excuse.”
All of this really should be uncontroversial for the biblically literate and reasonably historically informed Christian. The knowable phenomenon of general revelation, inclusive of at least the above list of clearly knowable truths about God’s nature, ought to be just “givens” of our approach to unbelievers.
When we are asked a reason for the hope that is within us (1 Pet,. 3:15), there is no need for us to play the skeptics’ game, granting them that the basic truth about God is really quite hard to find and there are just so many legitimate reasons why a person might not see it. Let alone is there any reason for us to retreat to subjective appeals to our own private devotional contemplation of the Bible and our own personal spiritual experiences.