The Perils of General Revelation, 2

In the first post on this subject I talked about John Muir and the Romantic notion that nature has agency dependent of God. In other words, one of the category errors that we can make (and I have often been tempted to make) is one that goes back all the way to the fall of man: "exchange[ing] the truth about God for a lie and worship[ing] and serve[ing] the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever" (Romans 1:25). In this post I want to address another problem with relying on general revelation: forgetting that simply acknowledging God's existence has no power to save us from our sins.

Calvin begins his famous Institutes acknowledging that "true and sound wisdom consists in two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves." He goes on to make it plain that we all know at least something of God through our human nature which, while fallen, still maintains "an awareness of divinity." Even pagan idolatry is proof that we are born discerning God's existence even if we miss the mark.

Moreover, we do not merely discern God's existence and nature in the hard sciences but people who have "tasted the liberal arts penetrate with their aid far more deeply into the secrets of divine wisdom." Humans stand as the chief object of the glory of God's power in creation. Our creativity and powers of discernment and wisdom are unrivaled. Yet, for Calvin it is simply not enough. As Michael Horton points out, "the grandeur of our species measures the depth of our depravity." 

Because of the fall our knowledge of God is only ever partial. However, can this partial knowledge through general revelation lead us to saving faith in Christ? For Calvin, the answer is no. Horton distinguishes the function of general revelation in Roman Catholicism compared to Calvin's thought: "In Roman Catholic theology, general revelation is a stepping stone to redemption. In Calvin's view it, is the rope by which we hang ourselves." We hang ourselves by our slavery to idolatry, by the way we "flatter ourselves most sweetly, and fancy ourselves all but demigods," by the way we have "fashioned [God] in [our] own presumption," making him a deity to fit our needs.

Calvin argues that this process is deliberate. We know we are not worshiping God as he is, but God as we choose to make him and we don't care. We want our vision even if it's false. In our elevating ourselves to the role of demigod, we willfully obscure the actual God.

This is why general revelation inevitably falls short. We are too mired in sin and sunken in depravity to worship God as he is. Therefore, as Horton argues, the "fall requires special revelation both because we willfully misinterpret God and ourselves even in natural terms and because it is only in the gospel that God announces his saving purposes to sinners." In other words, we need a better witness than creation to the work of the Creator to save us. We have that witness in Scripture alone.*

*Incidentally, I had one brilliant student point this out immediately when we started talking about general revelation. He intuited right away that its main deficiency is that it leaves us without knowing we're damned and how we can be saved. I usually have to coax this out of students, but he jumped to it right away.

Theologian of Glory/Theologian of the Cross

I am reading Michael Horton's excellent volume Calvin on the Christian Life now and it has my mind spinning. In discussing Calvin's beliefs concerning what we can know about God, Horton draws on a distinction that I ashamed to say I am not sure I have come across before. I will quote him at length:

Martin Luther drew his famous contrast between 'the theologian of glory' and the 'theologian of the cross.' Climbing ladders of speculation, merit, and mystical experience, the naked soul seeks union with the naked God. As a theologian of glory, the monk tries to ascend to heavenly realms, away from this world--the body and its senses, in specific historical events. In such a presumptuous ascent, we miss God on his way down, descending to us in our world, in our flesh, lying in a manger and hanging on a cross. The theologian of glory judges by appearances: how things seem to look on the surface. However, the theologian of the cross trust the promise of God that he hears in God's Word, even if it seems to be contradicted by how things appear. . . We try to ascend to heaven, expecting to find God in glory, when he is only to be found in the small and even despicable things--like the cursed cross.

I love this distinction. The problem with works-based righteousness of whatever form is that it denies the incarnation and the efficacy of the cross. We no longer need to rise to God on our own steam; the work has been done for us in the descent of his Son. So many of my own errors in piety are this type of category error: forgetting that the theology I follow is one of the "small" and "despicable" and not the great glory and struggle I often imagine for myself.

Which, thank God, because if it were up to my own "heroic" struggle I wouldn't have the power to climb one rung on that ladder to heaven.