Reply from Dr. C. re: my post on general & special revelation

Before I paste in Dr. C.'s reply, let me take this opportunity to say that I emailed both Dr. F. and the professors a week ago that I was talking about them on my blog. I didn't wish to say anything that I would not tell them to their faces. However, I had not spoken to Drs. C. or N. about their article in the Source before I posted. They were annoyed at me at first, but they don't seem to be any more... At any rate, here is the reply Dr. C. sent me. I do wish to continue debating with certain points of it, but I will not. I admit my ignorance and that I was ambiguously writing without definition about Schaffer's "true truth," or the essentials from which all else may be derived. For a single example, take Dr. C.'s "If you shoot yourself in the head you will die." General revelation gives the observational cause and effect, but special revelation gives the meaning behind the event. What are "you?" What is "death?" A Christian and a Hindu will see two very different meanings. But here I have descended into a fascinating philosophical discussion rather than any sort of ideological disagreement - which is exactly where an intellectual handling of the article would have ended up.

"You should understand that what Dr. Noe and I wrote was, in large part, little more than a paraphrase and expansion upon Calvin, Bk II, Ch. 2, especially Sections 14-16. In addition, since the article was published we have consulted numerous systematic theologies, monographs, etc. on the subject of general revelation in an honest search to discrern if anything we said was out of line with orthodox Christian theology in general, and Reformed theology in particular. If I can suggest one article for your studies, it would be Cornelius Van Til's article, "Nature and Scripture," in The Infallible Word, ed. N. B. Stonehouse and Paul Woolley, in which Van Til argues that the terms applied by the Westminster divines to Scripture -- necessity, authority, sufficiency, and perspicuity -- can and should be applied to general revelation. Furthermore, both of our respective sessions have read the article and found nothing troublesome, and the article has been referred to both our presbyteries. All of which is to say that, while we might phrase a few things differently today, our arguments are sound and biblical, well within the larger Christian tradition, the small sub-set of Protestantism, and the even small sub-set of Reformed writers. Perhaps if we had had 4 or 5 times longer in order to qualify and subqualify every statement we would not have been misunderstood, but I doubt it.

We wrote as Christians to Christians. We did not feel the need to defend our views of Scripture since our topic was general revelation itself, not special revelation. And given our public subscription to school’s Statement of Faith and Biblical Worldview, and our public subscription to the Westminster Standards, a much more rigorous standard, it never entered into our minds that anyone would question our fidelity to Scripture.

My intention, speaking for myself, was to put on paper what I had been mulling over for the last three years as a result my interactions with on-campus and DL students. If our words sounded unnecessarily combative, it was a result of trying, as academics, to provoke dialogue and discussion, not controversy or censure. As far as the “line in the sand” goes, I did not think of our article in that way, except insofar as that I believe that a good understanding of general revelation in necessary for the Christian liberal arts enterprise. Without a sophisticated understanding of general revelation, it will be hard for a Christian liberal arts college not to be reduced to merely a Bible college because all knowledge outside the Bible is viewed with suspicion. In short, if PHC truly adheres to the notion that the Bible is the source of all truth, then it will be a place that is hostile to the liberal arts and a place I have no interest in.

A fine article on the subject of how one should think about general and special revelation in relation to education is R. C. Sproul’s “Does Christian Education Compromise Excellence?”: http://www.alliancenet.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID307086%7CCHID560462%7CCIID2066498,00.html

Sproul’s categories – syncretism, antithesis, and synthesis – are excellent. While Noe and I have been falsely accused of syncretism, our real argument is that antithesis is too narrow for true education and synthesis is the correct position for the Christian scholar.

The point we were trying to make is that the average evangelical lives a schizophrenic life, acting upon what he learns from general revelation but often saying that special revelation alone has any authority. How do you know that water, ice, and steam are three forms of the same substance? From Scripture? Our point was that much of what goes on in academia is informed by general revelation rather than by special revelation, and sometimes by both.

In order to illustrate these points, I will comment on some entries from Sarah’s blog for the 14th:

"General revelation alone, however, gives nothing that special revelation does not provide."

So, did you learn organic chemistry from the Bible? Is the Bible now a textbook for Calculus? Did you learn how to cook from the Bible? Well, of course not.

Throughout your post you do not differential moral and philosophical truth from any other truths. In addition, you muddle general revelation and natural theology (they are not the same thing).

One last example:

"To prove Obj. 1 [Political philosophy is not in the Bible. The Bible does not address the question of the best regime.], a person must be able to show that political philosophy demonstrates truths that are outside of the Bible. He cannot, because we determine if something is true by seeing if it agrees with the Bible."

Again, according to your reasoning, are you saying that only that which the Bible says is true? So since the Bible does not say "if you shoot yourself in the head you will die," are you agnostic on this point? Since the Bible doesn't say, "if you enrich plutonium in a certain way you have the materials to make an atomic bomb," do you doubt that it is true? Surely these statements do not "agree with the Bible," so are they false?

The point Dr. Noe and I were trying to make was that all truth is God's truth because he is the creator and sustainer of all. So whether we learn something as mundane as the properties of chemical fertilizers through general revelation or something as sublime as substitutionary atonement from Scripture, God is the source of all truth. Let me emphasize again: God, not the Bible, is the source of all truth. To be sure, both general and special revelation, properly understood, convey the same message when they overlap. So we see no need to say something as silly as the aphorism: "special revelation trumps general revelation." No doubt, in those areas of overlap, special revelation is clearer than general revelation, but they are never, when truly understood, opposed to one another, since both come from the hand of God.

On this subject, I suggest you read St. Augustine, On the Teacher. In his ending statement Adeodatus affirms to Augustine:

"I have learned that it is He alone who teaches us whether what is said is true -- and, when He spoke externally, He reminded us that he was dwelling within. With His help, I shall love Him the more ardently the more I advance in learning."

Peace be with you,

Dr. Culberson  ¶ 8:15 AM