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You can find previous episodes of “The Stone Chapel Podcast” at Lanier Theological Library.
“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
Malcolm Yarnell
This is Malcolm Yarnell. I am Research Professor at Southwestern Seminary and teaching pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas. Glad to be with you in this cold part of the year here in Houston.
David Capes
Welcome, Dr. Yarnell. Welcome back to “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
Malcolm Yarnell
Well, thank you for having me back David. It’s great to be with you today.
David Capes
We’re going be talking about the second part of your book. And we want people to go back if they’ve not heard part 1, which is the part about God. They’ll hear today the part about revelation. Now, the title of the book is “God: Theology for Every Person” by Malcolm B. Yarnell. We’re so grateful that you’re here to teach a course for us entitled How to talk about God at the Lanier Theological Library. In particular, it’s part of our certificate program, the Lanier Certificate in Theology and Ministry.
Malcolm Yarnell
Thank you for having me.
David Capes
Oh, it’s a delight. It’s a delight. So we’re going to talk about the concept today of revelation. How would you define revelation?
Malcolm Yarnell
As a systematic theologian, of course, we have to overanalyze things, don’t we. But as a systematic theologian, what I think of first is the fact that Scripture refers to God as mystery. By that we mean that there’s something about God that we do not know that requires him showing Himself to us, for us to know these truths about him. As a matter of fact, because God is invisible, we cannot know him apart from his revealing Himself to us. Revelation is just another way to say manifestation or showing. He shows Himself to us. He lets us know that He is real and lets us know who he is and what he is like and what he does. That’s revelation. God taking the mystery away from us and by grace, displaying himself to us.
David Capes
The last book of the Bible is called Revelation.
Malcolm Yarnell
Yes, it is.
David Capes
It comes from a Greek word (apocalypsis) which means a type of unveiling. In a sense, God is. He’s there, but he’s unveiled himself for us. There are really two concepts that you describe here. One is the idea of general revelation. Let’s talk about that.
Malcolm Yarnell
God shows himself to us in two different ways. He shows Himself to all people, generally through nature and in the human conscience. And in these ways, every human being has some knowledge that there is a God, some knowledge about what he is like, and some knowledge about what He expects of us as human beings. That is to be distinguished from special revelation, which is God’s revelation of Himself through history and through words to the prophets of Israel and also in Jesus Christ, and therefore, through the apostles, we are pointed back to Jesus Christ.
Special revelation is particularly focused on Jesus Christ and on how we can be saved. General revelation gives us some basic information about the existence of God, the reality of God, some of the attributes of God, and particularly what he demands of us, and unfortunately for us, how we have failed him. And so that’s general revelation on the one hand, and special revelation on the other hand. I want to stress general revelation is available to everyone. Special revelation requires God through the prophets and the apostles to point us towards Jesus Christ, and today we have that special revelation
contained for us within the biblical text.
David Capes
When you speak about general revelation, I heard you say something early on about the idea that here’s a moral law. There’s a sense of which we know not only that there is a God, but that God requires us to act and behave in particular ways. Though we don’t have the 10 Commandments outside of the special revelation. But we all know there’s a difference between a straight line and a crooked line, and we can determine that.
Malcolm Yarnell
Yes, we can, and we do have this witness to us. According to Romans 2 has the classic text, 14, 15, 16, speaks of how every human being has access to law, even if we don’t have access to the revealed, written law of God that came through Moses and the prophets. We all have access to law via the conscience. And the conscience, if you will, is that part of us, where God is constantly allowing us access to the Divine Throne and the judgment that comes upon us. Judgment of freedom when we do well, and of condemnation when we do not do well. The conscience is located in every person. Now mind you, we can distort this revelation by bad teaching or by searing the conscience. By ignoring the conscience, we can pervert the conscience, if you will. And yet, there is that revelation.
Now mind you, theologians and philosophers have considered that this idea of general revelation through the conscience is the basis from where we get what is called natural law and the law of nations. So, every culture has the idea of right and wrong. Sometimes they define them in different ways. But all of us know that murder in some way is wrong, stealing in some way is wrong, bearing false witness in some way is wrong. We have the twinge of conscience to let us know that that’s wrong, and that’s why we end up writing laws in our nations. It is because human consciences are reflecting on what is morally right and morally wrong.
David Capes
In some Christian denominations, the idea of reason carries some authority. How does that fit in with conscience, the idea of reason?
Malcolm Yarnell
It somewhat depends upon your anthropology, but scripture tends to take these ideas of reason from an intellectual perspective and our emotions and our will and bring them together. For instance, under the category of the heart, the heart itself has several functions, if you will. One of them is to let us know things. Another is to prompt our will. The heart, that inner core of the human being is that which gives us motivation. And every human being has a heart. Every human being has some way to relate to God in general. Now you can’t be saved by the conscience, but you can know that there is a God, and you
can know that he has a will and that we have violated that will, and that therefore there is a judgment.
Billy Graham, a great evangelist of the 20th century, often pointed out how every human being deals with guilt. He just knew this as part of his proclamation, every human being deals with guilt and a sense of dread. Therefore, he was able to present the gospel clearly to people on that basis. Because God reveals Himself generally to every human being. He holds each of us accountable to him. This is also historically the basis of human rights for the first freedom, as it’s been called. In the United States of America, it is the liberty of conscience with regard to religion. Because we know we are responsible to God ultimately, and therefore our decisions have to be checked at that counter of the conscience. Each
of us have not only the right but the responsibility to listen to our conscience the best we can and to respect the consciences of other human beings. That, historically, has become the basis for what we know as universal human rights.