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3. GENERAL AND SPECIAL REVELATION.
The Bible testifies to a twofold revelation of God: a
revelation in nature round about us, in human consciousness, and in the providential
government of the world; and a revelation embodied in the Bible as the Word of God. It
testifies to the former in such passages as the following: “The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmanent showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night
showeth knowledge,” Ps. 19:1,2. “And yet He left not Himself without witness, in that He did
good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and
gladness,” Acts 14:17. “Because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God
manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and
divinity,” Rom. 1:19, 20. Of the latter it gives abundant evidence in both the Old and the New
Testament. “Yet Jehovah testified unto Israel, and unto Judah, by every prophet, and every
seer, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes,
according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my
servants the prophets,” I Kings 17:13. “He hath made known His ways unto Moses, His doings
unto the children of Israel,” Ps. 103:7. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten
Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him,” John 1:18. “God, having of old
time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at
the end of these days spoken to us in His Son,” Heb. 1:1,2.
On the basis of these scriptural data it became customary to speak of natural and supernatural
revelation. The distinction thus applied to the idea of revelation is primarily a distinction based
on the manner in which it is communicated to man; but in the course of history it has also been
based in part on the nature of its subject-matter. The mode of revelation is natural when it is
communicated through nature, that is, through the visible creation with its ordinary laws and
powers. It is supernatural when it is communicated to man in a higher, supernatural manner, as
when God speaks to him, either directly, or through supernaturally endowed messengers. The
substance of revelation was regarded as natural, if it could be acquired by human reason from
the study of nature; and was considered to be supernatural when it could not be known from
nature, nor by unaided human reason. Hence it became quite common in the Middle Ages to
contrast reason and revelation. In Protestant theology natural revelation was often called a
revelatio realis, and supernatural revelation a revelatio verbalis, because the former is
embodied in things, and the latter in words. In course of time, however, the distinction
between natural and supernatural revelation was found to be rather ambiguous, since all
revelation is supernatural in origin and, as a revelation of God, also in content. Ewald in his
work on Revelation: its Nature and Record[p. 5 f.] speaks of the revelation in nature as
immediate revelation, and of the revelation in Scripture, which he regards as the only one
deserving the name “revelation” in the fullest sense, as mediate revelation. A more common