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Kevin DeYoung
Hello, I'm Kevin DeYoung, pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and you are listening to Doctrine Matters. Each week on Doctrine Matters, we explore the rich doctrine of the Christian faith. We'll pull from the church's long history, complex debates, and over the course of the year, the hope is that we'll begin to frame out what is a clear, accessible, systematic theology, be looking at different Christian doctrines and their relationship to each other. And the hope, Lord willing, is we will grasp more and more the riches and the beauty of God's Word. Thanks for listening. Let's turn to this week's Doctrine Matters. Last week on Doctrine Matters, we looked at the relationship between faith and reason, that those two are not enemies when it comes to Christian theology, but they're allies. You just have to have them in their right place. Faith and reason. Well, similarly this week we want to continue to think about how we know God, because the Bible from start to finish is a book about the God who makes himself known. Now, we don't know God as God knows God. He alone has complete knowledge of himself. So there is an aspect we talk about the incomprehensibility of of God, or maybe it's better to say inexhaustibility of God. We can't know everything about God, but we can know him truly and savingly because God makes himself known. So how then do we know God? Well, let's give some wrong answers. One common wrong way, and we hinted at this last week, is rationalism. Rationalism is different from being rational or reasonable. The problem with rationalism is not that it values reason or that it finds truth about God in nature, but rather that it considers reason the highest source of truth. And rationalism often becomes anti supernatural and it finds itself tied to the latest whims of science, tossed to and fro by the latest intellectual fad. So not rationalism. Here's another wrong answer. Another ism is mysticism. Now again, let's be clear. Mystical there are things in the Christian faith that are mysteries. And if mystical we simply mean a transcendent experience, then that's true. But we're talking here about an epistemological approach, that word epistemology is how we know things. So mysticism assumes that God, by a kind of immediate communication with us through feelings and intuitions, that he reveals these things to us. And here's the key. Independently of the outward teaching of the Word, that's what Charles Hodge explains in his Systematic Theology. Mysticism should not be confused with the Spirit's work of illumination we do believe in the. The necessity of the Spirit to illumine the Scriptures and even to testify to us about the reality and the truthfulness of the Scriptures. So if it's not mysticism and it's not rationalism, how do we know God? Well, the answer is by way of objective revelation. We can know God because God tells us things about God. You may have heard that old doggerel poem before about the six blind men and the elephant. And it goes through these blind men. And one touches the elephant and it touches his side and thinks it's a wall. Another grabs his ear and thinks it's a fan. Another grabs his tail and thinks it's a rope. And the point of the bad poem is that this is what people are like in religion. We're all grasping after God. None of us really see God. We're all just blind men in the elephant. And therefore, you know, every way has its own measure of truth. But the problem among many with that analogy is that the whole thing breaks down if the elephant speaks. If the elephant says something. If the elephant reveals himself to us and says, I am not a wall, I'm not a fan. I'm not a rope, I'm not a crocodile, I'm not an enigma. I'm not. I am an elephant. Then if we don't know something about the elephant, it's because we're not humble enough to receive it, or we're hard of hearing. So God reveals truth to us. He reveals Himself so that we can know God. There's some other theological terms that we need to understand. Natural law and natural theology. These are related to this same question. They're sometimes confused, but they're not identical. Natural law refers to the rule of right and wrong implanted by God in the minds of all people. See this taught in Romans 2. Sometimes it's been called the law of nature, the law of nations, the divine law, the eternal law. The important point is that natural law is God's law. It's God's law ascertained by reason and observation and by conclusions deduced from those principles rather than from the study of Scripture. So in saying that God reveals Himself to us, we're not saying that there aren't things that can be known according to nature. Now, related to this idea of natural law, knowing something about the obligations we have, is the idea of natural theology. Natural theology is the philosophical study of what can be known about God apart from special revelation. This is a biblical idea. The Bible teaches us that we can know that he exists, what he Is like to some degree what he requires. Think of Psalm 19, Acts 14, Acts 17, Romans 1. All of this can be known, and let's underline this. It's imperfectly known and it's not sufficient for salvation. And yet there are things that we can know because God reveals such knowledge to his creatures by way of natural revelation. This is often misunderstood when we're talking about natural theology. Turreton makes this very clear, and so does Junius and the whole reformed Scholastic tradition, that this is a species of revelation. Sometimes we use the word revelation, really just meaning the Scriptures, but technically speaking, there is natural general revelation, and then there is the special revelation that we have in Scripture. So natural theology is what we can be known, what can be known about God by reason and by the light of nature. Typically, theologians have argued that this natural knowledge is both innate meaning it's implanted in us by God as a seed of divinity. Calvin said eternity written on our hearts. Ecclesiastes puts it so it's innate and acquired. So that is, it can be deduced from rational observation. Acquired knowledge can be further divided into three parts. We know something of God and his ways by investigating creation, by studying human nature, and by observing the works of Providence. So creation, human nature, providence. We can know things because God has chosen to reveal things to us in this way. Natural theology has sometimes been held in suspicion by some Protestant theologians. But from the classical tradition of Augustine, Anselm Aquinas, to early Reform thinkers, Calvin Bullinger, Junius, William Perkins, to Westminster divines like Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Goodwin, and we could go down the line, the whole old Princeton tradition, John Witherspoon, Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, A.A. hodge, B.B. warfield, they've all had a place for natural theology, that is that God can give, even to the unregenerate, some knowledge of Himself. Now, let's wrap this up. We've already mentioned these terms and they're related to this idea of natural theology. But the more familiar terms might be general and special revelation, overlapping categories, but the terms are a little different. God makes himself known in the works of creation and providence by a general revelation. So general revelation is what God does. And then natural theology is what we receive through that general revelation that God has given to us. Again, imperfectly, not savingly, but often preparatory to understanding more about God, or maybe to convict us in some way, or even as an apologetic tool or to show the inconsistency of non Christian belief. There are things by general revelation that can be ascertained and known. Natural theology, rightly conceived, is not Our attempt to work our way up from bare reason. This is not Rene Descartes. I'm going to empty my mind of everything and then just I think, therefore I am. So it's not that natural theology is what man derives from God's initiative to be known through general revelation. General revelation is itself a gracious act of divine condescension, but it does not make known the way of grace. In order to be saved, therefore, we need a special revelation. Romans 1 teaches we can know these things about God in general revelation, but it is only sufficient to condemn us because we suppress the truth and unrighteousness. But we need, in order to be saved, a special revelation. There's a phrase, light of nature, that occurs five times in the Westminster Confession of Faith, three times in the Westminster Larger Catechism. The phrase is used in contrast to the light of the Word. It's shorthand for the sense of God. All humans are born with so light of nature, general revelation, light of the word, special revelation. Both of these things are taught in the Westminster standards. Supernatural theology is necessary for man to know how to be justified, how to be reconciled. In other words, our knowledge of God is twofold, and here's the famous Latin way of putting it, the duplex cognition dei, just the twofold knowledge of God. We can know God as Creator by natural theology, but we know him as Redeemer only by special revelation. You see the distinction? General revelation can impart a natural theology to us, and we can know God as Creator. Romans 1, Psalm 19. But in order to know him as Redeemer, be reconciled to him. We need a special revelation. The heavens may declare the glory of God, but the law of the Lord is perfect. The testimony of the Lord is sure, and the word of the Lord is more to be desired than gold. A Christian understanding of revelation provides a basis for science because things can be known about the external world and at the same time it limits science. That is, there are truths that are higher and surer than the supposed assured results of science. And anyone who pays attention in our world realizes that. We're very grateful for what science teaches and the many advances from science. And yet science, capital S, is not some infallible truth. People are refining and changing. Their minds and theories come and go, but God's word remains the same. There are some truths, truths about God's will for us and how to be saved, that require God to speak more clearly. So science is good, science is necessary, but it is not final, it's not absolute. To know God and his ways we need the Bible, which is the surest and clearest word and the last word concerning every subject on which it means to speak. Thanks again for joining us on Doctrine Matters. I'm your host, Kevin DeYoung. Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you as you look at Scripture and try to understand the best of our theological tradition as Christians. Please consider subscribing to Doctrine Matters. And if this has been encouraging, consider passing it on to others. If you'd like to learn more about this week's doctrine, you can ask your pastor for good resources or check out my year long mini systematic theology book called Daily Doctrine. It's available in print or audio from crossway. Org. The Doctrine Matters podcast is produced by Crossway. To learn more, visit crossway. Org.