Introduction to SPECIAL REVELATION
In a previous post we looked at “Knowledge”, specifically how all knowledge comes to us from the outside in some form or fashion. What we know has been revealed to us. We know what we know because we learned it from some source other than us.
In the grandest scheme of things, the 20,000 foot view, if you will, there are two general categories of revelation: general revelation and special revelation. General Revelation is basically understood as every type of revelation that isn’t Special Revelation. General Revelation is nature, so to speak, the world, outer space, and everything that can be perceived with our senses.
So, you ask, what is Special Revelation? Special Revelation is any information that has to do with the truth about God or his work of redemption. Specifically, it refers to the Bible, because that is the only source of truth concerning God and redemption. We have to start with definitions, just like grade school. You can’t understand anything without defining what you’re talking about. What do we mean by redemption? It (redemption) isn’t a word that we use all the time, unless we’re talking about some kind of reward we’re redeeming from a retailer or credit card company. We’re not talking about that kind of redemption.
In the Bible, redemption refers to a lot of different things and different situations, but all of them point to the great work of God redeeming/buying his people through the work of Jesus Christ. God redeemed his people and made them his. They had to be redeemed because they were (like all mankind) sinful and forever doomed to be separated from God, from their ultimate purpose, and their final happiness. God’s redemptive work fixes those things. The Bible reveals this to us.
The Bible itself bears witness about its role in revealing truth to us. Deuteronomy 29:29 “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
Deuteronomy 29:29 makes a few things clear: 1) God reveals certain things to his people (“the things that are revealed to us”; us includes those people who are identified as God’s redeemed). 2) Those things he has revealed “belong to us and our children”, which means we should regard God’s revelation as a treasure and we should seek to hand it down from generation to generation. 3) Since it is a treasure, we should explore that revelation to its depths, heights, width, and every other way so as to apprehend as much about God as we can (he gave the Bible to us for this purpose). 4) God’s special revelation involves a moral dimension “that we may do all the words of this law”. Knowing absolute truth requires faith and obedience otherwise, you haven’t really known it at all. 5) Special Revelation is of utmost value, but it isn’t exhaustive, God has only revealed what he wished to reveal and no more, “the secret things belong to the LORD our God”. God is infinite and we, as finite beings, are incapable of exhaustively knowing God.