Revelation as Doctrine

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Well, we are in our second week of looking at the subject of Bibliology, and you'll remember Bibliology is the study of the Scripture as it relates to theology.
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It's one of the subsets of systematic theology, and Bibliology, of course, a book, the Bible, the Holy Bible, and what do we think that it is? What do we believe that it is? How does it define itself to us, and how is it related to how we exercise our faith? I've been listening to the Dividing Line with Dr.
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James White, and he just happens to be right now in a series on Sola Scriptura.
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Sola Scriptura is one of the five tenets of the Reformation.
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If you remember there's Sola Gratia, we are saved by grace alone, Sola Fide, we are justified by faith alone, Solus Christus, we are saved in Christ alone, and Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory, but the fourth one, the one that typically falls into the five, the fourth one is Sola Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone.
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It was one of the arguments coming out of the Reformation that our particular faith is not to be based on the teachings of Rome, or under the magisterial authority of Rome, but that everything that we believe ought to be derived from and tested by Scripture.
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Sola Scriptura, if you wanted the simple definition, is that the Bible alone is our sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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The Bible is our sole infallible rule for faith and practice, and the reason why that's so important is because Sola Scriptura is often attacked and maligned, particularly by those who are apologists for Roman Catholicism, those who make the argument that Roman Catholicism is the true faith, and that Rome is the true church, and that those who have divided from her have divided from that which Christ has established, and they'll argue, well, Sola Scriptura just means some guy and his Bible out under a tree somewhere, or some guy, you know, individual interpretations abound, and that's where they argue there's 30,000 denominations, and the reason why there's 30,000 denominations is because of Sola Scriptura, which is untrue.
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Number one, there's not 30,000 denominations, that's a completely inflated number.
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Now, there may be 30,000 churches in a way, you could define them, but to say that there's 30,000 individual specific denominations that have been well-defined and have a historical background in any type of history whatsoever, in a tradition, a statement of faith, things like that, that's just a ridiculously inflated number.
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But the argument that they make is that, well, if you don't have the church to tell you what the Scripture means, the Scripture is absolutely just un-understandable, not understandable.
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You have to have the magisterium of the church, you have to have the pope, you have to have the authority of the church, or else you can't know what the Scripture means.
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And so that's what the whole issue has been going on, I've been listening to, and it's how Rome views the revelation of Scripture is much different than how we would view the revelation of Scripture.
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In some ways the same, they do believe that it is God-breathed, they do believe that it comes from God, but they believe that it in and of itself is in need of clarification, it's in need of someone to interpret it for the people.
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It's not by itself sufficient, and yet even though it claims its own sufficiency.
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So that's just what I've been sort of dealing with in my own study and listening to Dr.
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White deal with some of the arguments of Rome.
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And it's just interesting because when we look at revelation, we look at the Scripture, we can see different people treated different ways.
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And the reason why I'm mentioning all this is because as Reformed theologians, as a church that teaches Reformed theology, we have a very specific definition for Sola Scriptura, we have a very specific definition for what we believe the Bible is, that we believe it's God-breathed, we believe it's the final revelation of God, and that there is no further revelation happening today.
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If you remember the last time we talked, we said there's a difference between what we would call revelation and illumination.
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We would say revelation is that which is specifically given by God to an individual or to a group that is specifically revelatory of his nature.
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And we believe that specific revelation ended with the apostles, and this is why we don't believe there's any more books of the Bible that have been written, we would deny things like the Book of Mormon and things like that.
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And yet, that's what they would argue.
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The Book of Mormon is argued, well, there was more revelation, it came through Joseph Smith.
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Islam would say, well, the revelation came through Muhammad.
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So there are those who believe in more revelation after the New Testament.
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We believe that the revelation ended at the close of the death of the final apostle, which was the apostle John.
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But after, after revelation ceased, that doesn't mean that God stopped interacting with his people.
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We're just talking about direct, specific revelation, which we noted started in the beginning.
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God specifically revealed himself to Adam, he specifically revealed himself to Noah, he specifically revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all the way down to Moses.
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But it wasn't until Moses that we get the first bit of written revelation, and out of that written revelation comes a new way that God identifies with his people.
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He says, my word is written down, and Jesus assured us that that was the truth because he held men accountable to that word.
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Have you not read what was said to you by God? You know, he specifically referenced what was written as God speaking, and later the apostle Paul would say the same thing.
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So we no longer have revelation from God.
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We have illumination, which means we can be studying, or we can be being taught, or being in a group and learning, and God can illuminate us to something we didn't understand before.
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When I first became a Christian, I was very, very ignorant of most everything to do with the faith.
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The only thing that I realized was that I was a sinner, I was lost, and I needed Jesus, and that was pretty much it.
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I didn't understand.
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I couldn't have...
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If somebody had said, can you define propitiation, I would have said, propitiate what? I don't know.
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I wouldn't have been able to define or articulate well the definitions of the faith.
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But God has, by his grace, put teachers in my life, sent me to Scripture, I've learned these things, and it is by his grace that these things have been learned.
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But I remember specifically, early in my Christian walk, I was so ignorant that I was trying to imbibe everything I could, listen to everything I could, and one of the things, TBN, it was Christian teaching, and I didn't know how incorrect so much of it was, so I would listen to it.
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Hm? I'm sorry? Jimmy Swaggart.
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Yeah, you've got guys like Swaggart and others, but I would listen to these guys, and I kind of already knew guys like Benny Hinn were off the rails, I mean, it didn't take a lot for me to realize they were kind of out there.
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But there were guys who were seemingly very knowledgeable, and the word faith movement really has a hold on so much of that.
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And I remember specifically, and I repent of it to this day, but I use it as an example.
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I remember this, I remember specifically, we were living at Island Point Apartments, and Jennifer kept getting sick, and I don't know what it was, but she has tremendous allergies, she gets sick in her face, and she gets stuffy and everything, and she's just always sick.
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And I said, well, you know, if you just believed better, if you just believed more, you wouldn't get sick.
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That's how ignorant I was.
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Yeah.
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You know, it was within a few months of me being saved.
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I was hearing these guys on television, that's what they were saying, you know, if you believe you won't get sick, you'll be healthy, wealthy, and wise, you know, and so that was how, just how ignorant I was.
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And, you know, later I, of course, repented and apologized to my wife for my, yeah, yeah.
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So when we talk about illumination, we are talking about partly the work of sanctification in the life of the believer, because part of sanctification is God illuminating us to the truth, and this is why oftentimes I'm very, I try to be, I'm not always as good as I should be, but I try to be very gracious with people who aren't where I am when it comes to things like theology.
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You know, not everybody is a reformed person, not, a lot of people have never even heard of that.
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They don't even know what that means.
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They only know what they've been taught.
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And so when I meet somebody, if I immediately hit them with the rock of Calvinism and just pow, you know, number one, it's not usually very gracious.
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There's something called cage stage Calvinism, have you ever heard that phrase, cage stage Calvinism is when you first become a Calvinist, I ought to put you in a cage for a year, so you don't, yeah, because you're dangerous, you know, and the reality is we can become very puffed up by what we know, but we have to remember the only reason why you know anything is because God has illuminated you.
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The only reason why you understand anything is because God has, and by his grace, sent you to the scriptures and given you teachers and people who have, who have helped you learn.
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And so it's, it's, it should always be very humbling.
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You know, I had a guy this week call me and ask me for Greek tutoring.
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He's in a seminary and the seminary, he called the seminary and said, is there anybody who can tutor me? And they gave him my phone number.
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So he called me to tutor.
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So now I have a new pastor, he's, I think he's a little older than I am, but he's still in seminary and we're going to be doing Greek studying together, which is nice to have that opportunity.
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But, but I don't know where he is on the theological spectrum.
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We sat and talked for about an hour and he, I know he's Baptist and I know that, but I, but I didn't sit there and, you know, well, tell me your position on predestination.
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I didn't do that because I, at this point I want to learn with him and learn about him as we go.
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I, I didn't, I didn't put him through the rigors of a theological examination.
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I want to know, and I will know eventually where he is on these things, but, but there, you know, I don't know where he is in his walk.
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I know he's teaching.
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So the first, you know what I did talk to him in our first meeting, how do you prepare for a sermon? That was what I asked him, you know, versus, you know, what your theology is here or there.
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How do you prepare for your messages? Because you're supposed to be feeding God's people and you're actively preaching the Word.
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How do you go and draw from God's Word and, and teach your people? So that, again, just all getting back to here, illumination, God is teaching us and he's bringing us, he's putting people in our lives and putting us in other people's lives to be used to help in that process of sanctification where we go from a baby believer, like the Apostle Paul said, to being able to feast on the meat of the Word, and that's a process of growth.
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We don't, no child is ever born ready to feast on meat, except for I think maybe J.J.
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He was ready for steak his first day, but, but, but, but, you know, you have to grow teeth and then you have to grow the ability to digest, and this is a part of the process, you know.
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So, anyway, kind of took a little time on that.
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We are going to look today at this sheet.
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So do you have your book or do you need a copy? There you go.
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Tiffany, do you need one too? Carly, here you go.
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We're just going to look this over.
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We're not going to read...
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I do not, dear, I'm sorry.
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Is it? Oh, yeah, right here.
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I'm sorry.
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No worries.
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Pencil's broken anyway.
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But we looked, we asked the question last week, what is Revelation? Revelation is God revealing himself in, and there's different ways that he reveals himself.
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He reveals himself physically, verbally, but he also reveals himself through his Word.
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One area that I didn't get to, and we are going to get to it later, we're not going get to it today, is what we call general revelation.
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General revelation is something we didn't really talk about, but you need to at least understand God reveals himself to all men in a general way.
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One through creation and two through the conscience.
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The conscience in creation is how every man knows that God exists.
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So I didn't mention last week, I just want to at least mention it this week.
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But looking at models of revelation, you'll see on the left side panel, it says revelation is doctrine, and revelation as historical, revelation as inner experience, revelation as dialectical presence, and revelation as new awareness.
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And you'll see the next list is the adherence to those things.
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If you look at the adherence beside the first one, you will probably see some names that you are familiar with.
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The patristic fathers, the patristic fathers are those we would call the early church fathers.
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The ones who were the second third generation after the Apostles.
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The medieval church, you say was that Roman Catholicism? Yes, but as far as how we see revelation as doctrinal, that would be the same.
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The Reformers, obviously we know who the Reformers were.
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B.B.
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Warfield, I'm familiar with him, Francis Schaeffer, and the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy.
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And how do these see revelation? Well, revelation is divinely authoritative, is conveyed objectively and propositionally through the exclusive medium, or words, of the Bible.
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Its propositions generally assume the character of doctrine.
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Let's just stop there for a second.
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We're going to look at the different models, but at the beginning I just want to say we, as a church, would see the revelation of God as divinely and authoritatively conveyed propositionally through the Word of God.
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Later we're going to see that some do not see it as propositional truth, or exclusively held within the Scriptures.
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And so this is an important thing to sort of, if you want to say, well where are we? Or at least where's the church? Where is the teaching here? We would see revelation as doctrine in that revelation is meant to convey truths by which we live.
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It's not just merely meant to provide an emotional experience, neither is it meant to provide some type of individual basis upon which men are able to interpret their own lives, but revelation itself provides standards.
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It provides a foundation upon which to build our faith and our life.
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I've told this story a thousand times, but I think it's important.
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When I met that young man who told me he wanted to go to seminary, it was just over this church over here, and we were talking.
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He said, I want to go to seminary.
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I said, well you should go to this seminary.
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I was giving him some ideas.
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I said, you can go to this seminary.
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I said, they're really good.
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They're very doctrinally sound.
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And he said, well I hate doctrine.
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And I said, I said, what? I said, son, doctrine is what divides the false teacher from the true teacher.
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I said, you can't possibly have a desire for ministry without, with hating doctrine.
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You're hating that which separates you from the from the one who's an error.
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I just was just dumbfounded and I tried to explain to him.
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I think what he meant, and even this is wrong, but I think what he meant was he likes to just teach Jesus.
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And you'll hear people say that.
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Well, I don't teach doctrine.
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I teach Jesus.
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And I remember I met a lady so mad one time.
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I said, lady, I said, Jesus is doctrine.
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And she said, no, no, no, he's a person.
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I said, I know that.
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I said, but what do you know about the person? Well, he's a son of God.
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I said, that's a doctrine.
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What does it mean? What does it mean when you say he's a son of God? What does it mean when you say he's God in the flesh? What do you say when you say he's God incarnate? Each one of those are doctrines.
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And if you don't understand them, you don't understand him.
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And you can't love a person you don't understand.
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So don't tell me you hate doctrine and you love Jesus.
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Because that doesn't jive.
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Right? So, so I do, you know, I do think that this is an accurate representation of how we would understand Revelation.
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Revelation provides for us the doctrines upon which we build our faith.
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And the purpose of Revelation, I just want to go across the board here, the purpose of Revelation in this schema is, or this schema is to elicit saving faith through acceptance of the truth as revealed ultimately in Jesus Christ.
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That's what we're doing when we go out to the fishing hole.
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We're providing people with things that they should believe so as to be saved.
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We're seeking to elicit saving faith.
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How is a person saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.
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Well who is Jesus Christ? Then comes the doctrine.
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Then comes what you have to believe.
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Because if you, if I say just believe in Jesus, Jesus who? You know, there's a lot of Jesus's.
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Jesus is the, is another way of saying Joshua.
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A million Joshua's in the world.
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Is Jesus the Christ? What's the Christ? The Greek for the Messiah.
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What's Messiah? You know, there's all kinds.
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You know, so when we go out and share the gospel, we're seeking to elicit faith in a particular set of teachings.
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And see, for some people that's outrageous.
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Faith isn't about what you believe, it's about what you feel.
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Faith isn't about what you believe, it's about your experience.
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In fact, so many churches now, that's all they talk about is experience.
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One of our, Jennifer and I were on the way back from the hurricane and we were trying to, felt kind of bad we canceled church last week, but we felt like it was necessary because so many people were out of power and things.
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So we didn't have church.
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One of the first times ever we've not had a Sunday morning something.
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And we looked at the local churches around here.
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So went to their websites just to see how many were closed.
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And one said, we're limiting ourselves to one worship experience this week.
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And I just remember thinking, why is it like that? Everything's experience.
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It's all experience.
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And you know, revelation is not so much about what you experience, but about what is propositionally true.
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Because your experience doesn't change the truth.
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Yes.
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Exactly, exactly.
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It begins with renewal of the mind.
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There was a, years ago they talked about the 18-inch gap.
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I know you've heard that before.
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There's an 18-inch gap.
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You've got Jesus in your head, but not in your heart, right? But I think it's become the opposite now.
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I'm gonna preach a sermon eventually called the opposite 18-inch gap, where everybody has Jesus in their heart, but they don't know anything about him.
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They don't have him in their head.
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How many people you talk to at the fishing hole, yeah, I know Jesus.
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Well, what do you know about him? I don't know.
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You know, absolutely.
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The idea of having a living, active faith that changes you now.
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Just say a prayer, you know, tip your hat towards Jesus, go get wet, and you're all good.
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And depending on what church it is, it depends on how much you got to get wet.
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Hooked on a feeling, that's right.
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Well, the rest of these, as I said, sort of blend together for me, but I will mention them.
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Historic is, revelation is historical.
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A lot of these guys are people that even I have not heard of.
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You may have heard of some of them.
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But as historical, this is, just looking at the names there, William Temple, Ernest Wright, Oscar Coleman, and Wolfhardt Penenberg.
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It says, revelation is the demonstration of God's saving disposition and capacity as witnessed by his great deeds in human history.
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Thus, the scripture is a historical testimony to what God has done, but it's not necessarily intended as doctrinal.
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It's testimony, it's not necessarily intended to be seen as binding.
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And we say, okay, well God did this, he's going to work in the future, thus it instills hope and trust in the God of history.
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So revelation scripture then becomes more about what God has done, more so than what God is doing or will do, and it just simply instills a trust that he will do something.
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The next one is inter-experience, which we've mentioned a few times.
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Slyermiker's here, Ng, Dodd, and Rainer.
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Revelation is the self-disclosure of God by his intimate presence in the depths of the human spirit and psyche.
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Revelation is individual, it's experiential, and the purpose here is to impart an experience of union with God that equates with immortality.
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This becomes, again, it's an experience versus a propositional teaching.
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It's each man has, and this is very popular among a lot of groups where they'll just read a verse of scripture and they'll say, what do you think that means? And what does that mean to you? What does that mean to you? And everybody gets their own opportunity to make it mean something to them.
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Revelation is the dialectical presence.
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This one is a little more heady.
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This is Barth and Brunner and Bailey, and it's revelation is God's message to those whom he encounters with his word in the Bible and Christ in Christian proclamation, and this is to generate faith as the appropriate meta-revelatory completion of itself.
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This is a little hard to understand, but essentially God's Word becomes God's Word when it becomes God's Word for you.
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It's not objectively God's Word, it's subjectively God's Word for the individual.
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Again, revelation is seen quite differently than a propositional thing.
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It still becomes very subjective.
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And then revelation is new awareness.
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This is quite a bit of names there.
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You see Paul Tillich being one that some of you may have heard of.
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This is revelation is one's arrival at a higher level of consciousness as one is attracted to a more fruitful sharing in the divine creativity.
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Sounds very interesting.
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It's a fruitful sharing in the divine creativity.
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Yeah, whatever that means.
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But the purpose of it is to achieve the restructuring of perception, experience, and a concomitant self-transformation.
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That one is a little beyond me as far as what they're trying to say.
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Yeah, I like that.
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But I do want to move right to the next page because you'll see that it continues.
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I think this will help us clarify some of what is being said here because this next line shows us the general view of the Bible, and this will really help.
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The first one is the Revelation's doctrine.
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The Bible is a word of God, both in form and in content.
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That's what we believe.
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Very simple.
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But the next one, the Bible is an event.
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The historical view.
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It's a conjunctive with God's self-revelation is disclosed indirectly through the totality of his activity in history.
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It's never extrinsic to either the community or particular of that history.
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This is just, it's God's history.
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It's an event.
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The inner experience, the Bible contains the Word of God intermingled with human elements of error and myth.
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The Bible is a husk wrapped around the kernel of truth.
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The truth can be apprehended, experienced only by personal illumination.
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Again, that's the person that would say, yes, the Bible is true, in so much as what it says is true.
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But when it talks about how many Israelites went into the wilderness, or even if the Israelites went into the wilderness at all, well, that's up for debate.
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Archaeology and history and things like that may tell us different, and so we don't have to trust the Bible in every area, but where it speaks of things that matter most, we're sure pretty much it's correct.
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The dialectical experience, the Bible becomes the Word of God to us.
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As I said before, revelation is not static, but dynamic has to do with the contingency of human response as it is empowered by the Holy Spirit.
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It's the Word of God when it becomes the Word of God to you.
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And then the new awareness, the Bible is a paradigm, a mediator through which self-transformation and transcendence may be achieved, but the Bible is only a human effort using limping language pursuant to this end.
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I've heard that many times, the Bible is our attempt to limp toward the truth of God.
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In relation to history, going back up to the top and going down, revelation is trans-historical under the doctrinal view, our view, revelation is trans-historical.
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It is discrete and determinative with regard to its contiguity with history.
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So the issue here, it doesn't matter when it is in history, it's true no matter what.
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In relation to history, John 3.16 is as true now as it was then, and it isn't affected by history.
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The next one down, revelation is historical, revelation is intra-historical, the Bible reveals itself within history.
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The inner experience, revelation is psycho-historical, it relates to history as a mental image of human continuity.
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Revelation is a dialectical presence, revelation is supra-historical, the Bible reveals history beyond history, and revelation is new awareness, revelation is ahistorical, history is rendered practically irrelevant as it is subjected to ongoing reinterpretations of personal transcendence.
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Last but not least on this list, actually no, we have a whole other list, but on this particular one is the means of human apprehension.
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This is where I was trying to get to because we talked about earlier, illumination.
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How is it that you know what the Bible says, the Holy Spirit must, even if I teach you something perfectly, which I'll never do, but even if I teach you something perfectly, you were not necessarily apprehended without the Spirit's help.
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That's what is believed.
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When you believe that the Scripture is the God's Word, then God is the one who's going to teach it to you, and while a teacher may be used as a means by which to enlighten your mind, the Spirit will be the one who illuminates your soul.
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Yeah, exactly, it's got to be there for the light to be shined upon it.
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Yeah, blinded him with illumination, didn't he? Revelation is historical, would see the means of apprehension is reason.
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How do you understand the Scripture? Well, through reason.
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Well, the problem with that is, well, we're sinners, our reason is completely tainted.
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Well, it's tainted by our sin.
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Any man who says he reasons perfectly is unreasonable, but also things like this.
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Is it reasonable to say a man rose from the grave? I mean, from a naturalistic perspective, no, it's not reasonable.
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Is it reasonable to say a man raised other people from the grave, or that he was able to touch leprous people and make them be healed, or that he was able to cast the demons from a demoniac into pigs? So when we talk about reason, whose reason? An atheist would say all that's unreasonable.
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So there is a sense in which that the illumination spirit must be there, for if we are going based solely upon what we see, and that's where our reason is derived, then we don't see those things happening, and thus we can't really exercise the right kind of faith.
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The next one is intuition, and again, because it's inner experience.
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The next two are a little again, a little more difficult.
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Transactional reason, that's interaction with faith intrinsic to revelation.
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Again, it becomes the Word of God when it becomes the Word of God to you.
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It's transactional.
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And the last one is rational and mystical meditation.
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You arrive at those truths through the rational, again, reason, but also through a sort of mystical, almost like a Gnostic perspective.
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Last but not least, let's look at this last sheet because I did want to get through this today, and I know we're pretty much out of time, but we're not going to belabor everything.
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But the key to this last part, you know what? It's after 1015, and I do want to deal with some of this more because I want to look at the strengths and weaknesses, and then we are going to look at this last page that I gave you, and we'll do this next week because this is how Aquinas, and Calvin, and Barth, and others saw revelation.
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And so we're going to read part of this next week.
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So we'll end now, and hopefully that was not too confusing.
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Hopefully there was some of that that was helpful to you.
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All right, let's pray.
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Lord, thank you for your Word, for the opportunity to study about the Word, and how the different views of it are.
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And yet Lord, to not abandon the simple view that in the Word of God is the doctrine of God, and in the doctrine of God is how we know about you.
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And we thank you for giving us these truths.
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In Jesus' name, amen.