This article is the third installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith". Find the whole series here.
How we think about God is the most important thing about us. We must know God as he truly is and not as we suppose him to be. So how can we know God? The Bible’s answer is revelation; God reveals himself to us.
The doctrine of revelation guards us against several errors. Agnostics claim that we cannot know God. The position may seem humble and careful. But it is not pious to ignore God’s self-revelation. By a different error we make God whatever we want him to be. But our opinions about God do not change who he is.
We would not know God if he did not reveal himself to us. But since he has revealed himself, we must study his revelation to truly know him.
The two ways God reveals himself are described, by the Belgic Confession, as two books. In the book of general revelation, God reveals himself through his works. In the book of special revelation, God reveals himself “more openly by his holy and divine word.”
The Idea of General Revelation
Through the things he has made God reveals to everyone the “invisible attributes” of his “eternal power and divinity” (Rom. 1:19–20). God is like a painter whose work hints at his life. Think of Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.” A ghastly character on a bridge presses his hands against his open-mouthed, hollow-eyed face. Clearly, the artist was not well. In fact, Munch was recording a moment of terror. He later wrote, that he sensed “an infinite scream passing through nature.” Munch’s “invisible attributes” colored his canvas.
Likewise, God’s character is imprinted on this world. Themes of beauty, order, purpose, and vibrancy spring from God’s canvas. Nature reveals God’s righteousness and justice (Ps. 36:6). “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). Every square inch of creation declares God’s greatness in every language twenty-four hours a day. David highlights the majesty of the sun (19:5, 6). A sunrise is like the beauty that lovers experience when they see each other on their wedding day. A sunset on the western horizon is like a long-distance runner crossing the finish line. I once stood on the shore of Lake Michigan as the sun began to dip into the water. When it disappeared, people clapped as if God were closing the curtain on another majestic performance. How appropriate.
Nature, writes Timothy Keller, “is nonverbal communication that there is a God, that the world is not an accidental collocation of molecules but the meaningful work of an artist’s hands.” The world God made, sustains, and rules tells us something about him. So we sing, “Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.” People created in God’s image are wired to recognize their maker in all of his works.
The Importance of General Revelation
Believers with a high view of Scripture sometimes lack a corresponding high view of nature. Regular Bible reading is non-negotiable. But Scripture gives sound reasons to deliberately and intelligently study God in creation.
General Revelation Contributes to Human Wisdom
The pursuit of excellence in every subject is how we live well before God and practically love our neighbor. John Piper explains: “To be obedient in the sciences we need to…study nature. To be obedient in economics we need to…observe the world of business. To be obedient in sports we need to know the rules of the game. To be obedient in marriage we need to know the personality of our spouse. To be obedient as a pilot we need to know how to fly a plane.” You can’t only know Scripture and be a good steward of your mind.
General Revelation Can Help You Worship
Paul quotes Psalm 19 (in Rom. 10:18) to prove that nature preaches God and calls us to glorify him. We should listen to its sermon! Isaiah likewise declares, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Is. 6:3). Nature calls us to worship the God of our salvation. Only keen observers will heed its call. Some people love nature because it is their God. Christians should love nature because its sights, smells, and textures remind us of the God we love.
General Revelation Can Strengthen Your Witness
You can use the beauty and intricacy of nature to introduce the designer of the universe. You will better engage the world on issues like evolution, abortion, and transgenderism if you are a disciplined student of God’s world. More fundamentally, your witness to the gospel will have more credibility if you are well-informed about how reality works.
Bottom line: If nature is a “beautiful book,” we need to read it.
The Insufficiency of General Revelation
We must read God’s world. But we must also understand the limitations of general revelation. Nature can fill a believer’s heart with awe for its creator. It can render an unbeliever without excuse for rejecting the God everyone truly knows (Rom. 1:20). Still, the “certain light of nature remaining in man after the fall, by virtue of which he retains some notions about God… is far from enabling man to come to a saving knowledge of God and conversion to him.” Nature reveals only “vestiges or traces” of God’s attributes, like the worn characters found on ancient grave markers. The stones note a meaningful life. But the inscription lacks the ability to help us truly know the person. Sin has taken a toll on God’s general revelation. All of creation has been marred by the fall and groans to be remade (Rom. 8:20–23). The mind of fallen man has also become dark so that he cannot read this book clearly. We are like blind visitors to an art gallery.
To savingly know God we need something more. “The wonders of the gospel…are so immeasurably great that neither the eye (from nature) nor the ear (from history) or even the brilliant brain (in philosophy) can by itself conceive and understand it.” To receive God’s truth we need new hearts (1 Cor. 2:10) to read him through the lens of his holy word which works in us real power. If our vision is poor we can “scarcely read two words together,” writes John Calvin. But with proper glasses, we can “read distinctly,—so the Scripture, collecting in our minds the otherwise confused notion of Deity, dispels the darkness, and gives us a clear view of the true God.”
Nature reveals God generally. Scripture reveals him specifically in Christ (John 5:39). Apart from Christ general revelation only condemns. In Christ, believers are assured that the God who created, preserves, and governs everything is also our Father. We can’t know everything that God is. But through general and special revelation we can know enough to trust and obey.
Footnotes
Timothy Keller, The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms (New York: Viking, 2015), 32.
Thomas O. Chisholm, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/thoughts-on-the-sufficiency-of-scripture
Canons of Dort, III/IV.4
Comment on Romans 1:20 in the Statenvertaling, the first Bible translation from the original languages into Dutch.
Comment on 1 Corinthians 2:9, 10 in the Statenvertaling.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.6.1.