What is Revelation?

Revelation through history and here we start moving from general revelation to a special revelation. The distinction between general and special revelation is that general revelation is given to all people, irrespective of time or location. God's creation revelation comes to all and it comes no matter what the date. But special revelation is not universal and that's why I actually prefer the term particular revelation. The term special revelation doesn't say it off a lot so I prefer the term particular revelation. Particular revelation is bound by time and space. We might think here of God walking in the garden with Adam. What did God say to Adam in the garden? Marked you know? Tracing you know? I don't either. No, none of us do. In order to know what's being communicated in particular revelation, what's necessary? You must be a party to the revelation, right? Or it must be recorded in such a way that it can be handed on, can be communicated, can be shared with those who are remote. In time or space. Again, let's pick up our Bibles and turn to Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. I'm still getting used to new glasses, Tracy, so if I could even see you from that distance, that was something much less know your name. Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2 says this, in the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times in various places. But in these last days he has spoken to us by his son whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the universe. Hebrews 1, verses 1 through 2 suggests a number of things to us first of all. It suggests that God has revealed himself throughout biblical history in a variety of ways. I'm not going to read the entire list to you, but you can read through it yourself. We see theothenies, visions, the yurum and thumum, lots, miracles, angelic messengers, audible speech from God, prophetic oracle, and events listed there. Now, all of those in that entire list can be categorized as a particular revelation, as the historical revelation of God. And sometimes it's called the mighty deeds of God. You'll note that this list includes speech, the words of God, whether communicated directly or by angelic oracle. In fact, if you recall from last week, we might best speak of God's historical particular revelation as a word and deed revelation. Do you remember that? The debate, long standing debate now, over whether revelation can be stated in a word, in words, propositions, or must be found only in events is a wrong headed debate. A spoken word is an event. Sometimes theologians speak about a spoken word as a speech act. We may also say that a deed is an enacted word. The biblical pattern is that its verbalized words are referential to God's acts to God's mighty deeds. And if you recall from last week, when we talked about your hardest boss on this issue, the pattern is the promissory word, an event which fills up that word or completes it, and then an interpretive word which explains or proclaims that event. But Hebrews 1 and 2 also suggests that while there's a rich diversity in God's revelation, it is finally a unified revelation because it is God's disclosure of his character and his will. And third, Hebrews 1 and 2 suggests that God's particular revelation is historical and is progressive. It's historical in that it's addressed to concrete particular situations. It's progressive in that it's not an all at once revelation. Rather, it addresses particular historical situations within the context, within the terms of the situation's place in a linear view of history. I'm going to skip some of these things here. I don't know what this is necessary. Romans 8, Revelation through an inspired speech. See how much of this we can get done in this evening. Revelation through an inspired speech. It's been common, or it still is common, to think of interpretation. Just getting my words all mixed up. I didn't get enough to eat before coming to class, to think of inspiration as being a thoroughly human phenomenon. It is the welling up within us of our subconscious human impressions, thus we speak of the artist as being inspired. We think of the poets as being inspired. But that's not the biblical conception of inspiration. When scripture talks about inspiration, it's not talking about an intra-human reality. What scripture refers to as the inspired word is a word which is crafted not by our device, not by our ingenuity, but rather a word which originates from and is commissioned by God. We see this clearly in the archetypical character of Baileum in Numbers 23 and 24. If you know anything about the Baileum story, he was commissioned by Baileik, the king of Cleveland. No, that's not right. Midian and Moab? Moab. By Baileik, the king of Moab, to prophesy against Israel. But when it came down to the events, he was unable to do that. He said this, must I not take care to say what Yahweh puts in my mouth? What Yahweh says? That is what I will say. It's very common in the Old Testament to attribute prophetic speech to the hand of God, to the mouth of God. There's always this sense of divine compulsion to prophesy, to speak what was instructed from God. Eamus, chapter 3, verse 8. The lion has roared. Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken. Who can but prophesy? I'd tick like this from Jeremiah, chapter 20, verse 9. Whenever I said, I'll call him to mind no more, nor speak his name again, then his word was imprisoned in my body. Like a fire blazing in my heart, and I was weary with holding it under and could endure no more. Biblical religion is prophetic through and through. That is to say, it's understood as a religion that has been given by God. It is not something that has arisen from out of us. Revelation is inspired utterance, and that idea, that conception stands at the very heart of biblical revelation. We're going to come back to a scripture. I just wanted to introduce the issue of written revelation here. Room number nine, the revelation of Christ. The revelation of God comes to climax, is summed up in Christ. He sums up. He's the completion of all other forms. He's the key to making sense of all other revelation. First of all, we see that Jesus is the prophet. He's the authoritative speaker of God's will, the fulfillment of God's promise. It comes to the prophet, but not just any prophet, not just another long stream of prophets, but as the prophet, par excellence. For instance, he says, and he says more than once, you have heard it said, but I say to you, interesting what Jesus is doing in those kinds of statements. What's he do right after that? He quotes the Old Testament, right? He's relativizing the Old Testament statement a bit, but he's doing so for the sake of pushing forward his authority. I am the authority. It's interesting that a Jew, a first century Jew, would do that. You have heard it said, but I say to you. A person who say that's either God or a nut. Also, the first century Christians were convinced that Jesus was the fulfillment. Not only of God's word, not only was he a prophet, he was the fulfillment of the Old Testament's expectation from Messiah. He talked about common statement for Jesus, a common statement for Matthew, the gospel of the Matthew was this. In order that was spoken, what was spoken to the prophet might be fulfilled. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise. What Isaiah had to say, he had to say about Jesus. What Hosea had to say, he had to say about Christ. He is the fulfillment. He is the climax of the story. Let's go on and on about that issue. But Jesus is more than merely the authoritative speaker of the word. He's more than merely another prophet, even the last and the greatest of the prophets. He is more than the providential fulfillment of expectation. He is also the authoritative revealer of God's very nature. He is the authoritative revealer of just who God is. Turn to John chapter 1, what do we find there? The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Verse 14, right? By the time you get to verse 18, John says, no man has seen God at any time. But the only begotten God has, with the only begotten Son, depending on your text, he has made him known. He has exegeded him. If you've got questions about who God is, what he does, what he likes, what he doesn't like, go to Jesus. Jesus is the key to God's character. Jesus is also the key to revelation. To see and know Jesus is to see and know God. That's the way John gets at this. The word has become incarnated in such a way that to see Jesus is to see God. The other testament writers get at the same reality. To the affirmation that Christ reveals God, the verb, fanarous thigh, to be manifest, to appear regularly has the connotation of manifesting what was previously hidden. When it's used of Christ, 1 Peter 1, Hebrews 9, 1 Timothy 3, the implication is that Christ is the incarnate disclosure of God's nature. You can't get more intimate or complete in a notion of revelation. Well, now let's take up the issue of Scripture in Romans 10 of our discussion here, the word of God written. I've just made the point that Jesus is the key to the revelational organism. God's particular revelation is instrumental. That's an important word, instrumental. God's particular revelation is instrumental to the extent that, to the effect that. It is an instrument to leading us to Christ. It has an instrumental function to bring us face to face with Jesus Christ. In other words, and Calvin will take this up and we'll get at it more too. The very purpose of Scripture is to bring us face to face with Jesus Christ. The Bible is instrumental in that sense. The Bible mediates this knowledge of Christ. Yet this instrumental, mediatorial function that the Bible has carries out across the entire spectrum of revelation. And it makes sense of that. We need to say something about human need here. As we've already indicated this evening, human beings were created with an inborn need to worship. And originally we had the capacity of God. But in our sin, that capacity of God has been defaced. And our need to worship is misapplied. We now worship things in the creation. We worship the creator. Excuse me, the created rather than a creator. And we do this according to Calvin, partly by ignorance, partly by malice. The product is that we no longer see the knowledge of God, which shines forth in the fashioning and the upholding of the universe, the governance of the universe. This means that the Bible is needed as a guide, a teacher. It's going to restore us to the knowledge of God, the creator. But all true knowledge of God, derives from one very important fact. We don't should not miss it here. It is only in his great mercy that God reveals himself. God does not have to reveal himself. He didn't have to reveal himself in creation. He does not have to reveal himself now in redemption. He doesn't have to reveal himself in scripture. He doesn't have to reveal himself in Jesus. Anymore than he had to create in the first place. It is only by his grace that he bridges the great distance between us and his heavenly glory. And to do this, God accommodates. We want to come back to that word here now. God accommodates his word to fallen human capacities. Now there are really two movements here in Calvin's articulation of the doctrine of revelation. God must republish his creational word. He must return us to a knowledge of God, the creator. And second, he must address our lack. He must fix the broken part within us. And thus bring us to a knowledge of God, the Redeemer. And scripture is related to both of these movements. So let's address the first one first. The accommodation of creation revelation to fallen man be in your outline there. Calvin actually spoke of the word or used the word accommodation in a couple of ways. First of all, accommodation, or should say the Bible is an accommodation to our creaturely finitude, just like creation revelation. Just like creation revelation. For who a slight intelligence does not understand that as nurses commonly do with infants, God is want in a measure to list speaking to us. Some forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. Here God is likened to a nurse who lists baby talk with infant. It's interesting here what Calvin's doing. The Bible is not an exercise in inner trinitarian dialogue. The father talking to the son in big God-long words. We sometimes treat the Bible that way. It's God's thoughts. And we just happen to be eavesdropping. Actually, Calvin's idea is that the Bible is closer to baby chatter. It's written right where we're rat. And when we read the Bible, what do we find is crude. It's earthy. It's not written... Well, remember the movie context. Remember the language that aliens used, the language that any respectable God would use, mathematics. Well, it's not written that stuff. It's written in human language. It's written exactly the kind of stuff that you can use that you need. As Calvin said, when we find God prattling to us in the Bible in an un-cultivated and vulgar style, we shouldn't be offended. We should be grateful since it's only by such condescension that we can know him at all. If the father was speaking to the son and speaking in father and son talk, we wouldn't have a clue. Again, Revelation is never a given. He crosses the Gulf. He spans the distance. He comes to us. He condescends. He accommodates. He draws us in. But second, on accommodation, the second way that Calvin used the word accommodation. Scripture is also an accommodation to our sinful corruption. Not only is it an accommodation to our creatureliness, it is also an accommodation to our sinfulness. And here Calvin compared the Bible to a pair of reading glasses. And what is certainly the most quoted paragraph in the entire institution, he said this. Just as old or blurry eyed men, that's me. And those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words. But with the aid of spectacles, we'll begin to read distinctly. So Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our blindness. Clearly shows us the true God. What is the Bible? It's eyeglasses for the spiritually near sighted. What do we see to these glasses? Calvin's conclusion is that we see God as Creator again. We might chart what we said here so far with Calvin's view of Revelation this way. That's just an eyeball from the side. And a Bible will make it open, so it's actually being used, I guess. And we'll make some little spectacles since he's just described this word as a pair of spectacles. Oh, what is the IC through these spectacles? Well, we see the creation. This is the world. You are here. But through this creation, we see God. This, remember what we started? This theater of his glory, this mirror in which we contemplate God. And the motive here for Calvin is Psalm 119. Your word is a light to my path. It's a lamp to my feet. Scripture is a restatement of divine knowledge. It's a restatement of divine norms for creaturely existence in the world. And through all of that, we see our Heavenly Father. To cram two of Calvin's metaphors together, the list being spectacles of Scripture. Bring us face to face with our Creator once again. We see the creation as the theater of his glory. Let's go to see here. It's not enough, however, that Scripture republishes, says over again this creation revelation. It tells us that God is our Creator. It's not enough that it republishes God's moral norms for man. In fact, one can't get to that republication without the other function of Scripture, a function which actually precedes its republication of creation revelation. In other words, we're not there yet. Our chart is a long ways from complete. There's a lot of stuff missing. Scripture is also a redemptive word. In letter to into Scripture is a promise of redemption. God's cure for our weak eyesight. Scripture doesn't merely give us a normative view on the world. Important as that is, it also tells us. It also promises that God's going to address the problem of sin. He's going to address the problem of our alienation from him. In that drama, that promise starts in Genesis 3, verse 15, and through a series of promises and fulfillment, it finds its climax in Jesus Christ, a redeemer, or if I can use this terminology, the eye doctor. But it's not that reading the Bible says, and please bear with me here for a second. The Bible doesn't say. Reading the Bible never saves anyone. No more in Scripture are we told that it is the appropriate object of worship. The greatest single, catacetical question ever asked, and it didn't come from Westminster, asked, what is your only comfort? The Hilbert question answer one. Whether we live or die, Jesus is our Savior. That's our only comfort. You see, we believe the Bible. We don't believe in it. We believe in Jesus. The Bible is an instrument to bring Christ home to God's people. We believe in Jesus. In other words, the Bible doesn't fulfill its primary function, unless we're brought to our redeeming faith in Christ by the internal working of the Spirit using Scripture. You see, there was a lot more of our charting. It's D in your outline here. At this point in the outline, I've just thrown a couple of things together, so I'll draw your attention to them separately. One of the abiding characteristics of a particular revelation is that it's bound to space and time. If God acts or speaks at a particular moment or locale, only those who are in attendance will be privy. The only way to offset that inherent parochial nature of particularity is to record the revelation so that it can be shared with persons and communities that are remote, temporally angiographic. By the way, it's that very reality that makes Christianity a missionary religion. That's why Christianity is a mission religion. God acts in space and time. Physical religion is not about universal mathematical principles. It's about Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, walking in Palestine in the first century and being crucified for us. The only way that can be communicated is by you and me, sharing it. But this reality also means that particular revelation being like this also means that Scripture is going to play a crucial role in mediating God's action. God's action, God's acts. But in point of fact, we find that the Bible becomes something of a locus, a focusing point for all of the revelation. This revelation in creation is still there, right? It's still there, but I don't take it. Even as a Christian, I don't take it up very good all the time. So what Scripture does is it declares God as Creator. It affirms His providential rule over creation. It gives us a clear affirmation of His creational norms. But beyond that, we find a promise of redemption, a record of God's redemptive historical action and a record and proclamation of Jesus Christ. Now, this revelation of God does move toward more concrete form and explicit interpretation in Scripture. This is e-near outline. But it reaches its zenith of concreteivity and explicitness in Christ. Both Hebrews 1, verses 1 through 3, and John 1, verses 1 through 18, link Jesus to the unfolding drama of redemption found in the Old Testament and the revelation found in creation. Jesus is not only a Savior, He's the ones through whom all creation is made in the first place, right? So He becomes the center not only of the redemptive act, but the creative act as well. I can put it this way, I guess. He's both the redeemer who sent to fix the problem and He's the model we are to follow in being obedient to God. If we want to know what God's original intention is, if we want to know what service He expects of His creatures, we follow Jesus. But Calvin insisted that our discussion of revelation, the Word of God, all things we talked about tonight, begins with Jesus. The rest of what we've said about revelation makes no sense outside of Jesus. See, even though God has revealed His fatherhood right within the stuff of creation, we can't know that outside of our experience of Jesus as our redeemer. And Calvin makes that point in the second chapter of Book 1 of the Institutes. While creation precedes redemption as a historical reality, in our human experience, the knowledge of God as redeemer will come before our knowledge of God as our creator. A couple of ways to get at this to make sense, my friend Al Walters, I remember him saying this once at a conference, he said outside of Jesus it's just dirt. It's right. If I don't know Christ as my redeemer, as my Savior, I can look at the world all day long and it will just be dirt. I will not know it as His creation outside of His Son. Another way to get at this is John gets at the issue in chapter 16 is that the only ingress to the Father is through the Son. You don't get to the redeemer, except to the creator, except to the redeemer, as the fulfillment of the Old Testament, as the subject of New Testament revelation, Jesus is the center of Scripture, but He's also the very center of revelation. In a sense we must start right there. Roman numeral, I flunk Latin, I've set 11, 11. What's the Bible about? Calvin at one point said, the Bible is a proclamation of God's Word in our world and our behalf. It's a declaration of God's redemptive activity in Jesus Christ faithfully inspired by the Spirit of God and illuminated in the people of God by the Spirit. Now with that you see that Calvin's understanding of revelation is thoroughly trainitarian. Did I talk about Herman Bobby last week? Well you'll hear me throughout the semester say a lot about Herman Bobby. My colleague Robert Peterson says that he has two patrons saints. One is Saint Anthony for Anthony Hookam on the other was Saint Louis for Saint Louis I guess. All Louis Berkoth, mine is Saint Herman for Herman Bobby. And Bobby said this, and I know I've given this quotation out more than once this semester, but it's good enough to give it out every semester in every course. The essence of the Christian religion, is this written down there on your notes? No, that's what I have to say a couple times, write this down. It's worth writing down. The essence of the Christian religion is this. Let me give you his name, too. B-A-V-I-N-C-K, first name Herman. The essence of the Christian religion is this, comma. That the creation of the Father, comma. I'll do it a couple times. Devastated by sin, comma. Is restored in the death of the Son of God, comma. And recreated by the Holy Spirit into the kingdom of God. I'll do it again just a second. The essence of the Christian religion consists in this. That the creation of the Father, Devastated by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God. And recreated by the Holy Spirit into the kingdom of God. Notice a thoroughly trinitarian understanding of revelation and a redemptive historical. See, creation, fall, redemption here. Well, what's missing on our graph? If Calvin and Bob think are right. The Holy Spirit, first of all, ran to where should I put him? You told me to put him on here, where should I put him? Let's put him right here. That's great. Because he's going to illuminate this word. We're going to talk about the Holy Spirit in the Word in just a second. These things are going to stay real close together. Now, what else is missing? It's a trinitarian word. The Father of the... Where's Jesus here? Where do we put Jesus in our chart? Where do you find Jesus? Let me do this all day long. Okay. Where did you first get him? To put him into your heart. This is going to be a fun semester with Rhonda, I can tell. In the Bible is Scripture. I don't know where it comes from. It's kind of turned into a cliché, but Jesus always comes to us, dressed in the robes of Scripture. Do you know another way to get to Jesus? Is there another medium of Jesus? That's faithful, that's truthful, that's reliable? No. So I think that's probably the best place to put him. And then we'll put Rhonda's heart right here as well. I get the right shape. I don't know. Being the authority of Scripture in the ministry of the Spirit. Now, Calvin develops his doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It's me of Scripture. Now I'm all miscombobulated. He develops his doctrine of Scripture in terms of the Holy Spirit. Spirit and word always go together. You can't separate the two of them. The Bible is the inspired word of God, revealed in human language, and confirmed to the people of God by the inner witness of the Spirit. When we talk about the authority of Scripture, we're coming very close to speaking of the inspiration of Scripture. We'll talk much more about that next week. But for his part, Calvin spent no time at all. He refused to take up the question of how the Bible is inspired. He simply asserted the divine origin of Scripture. For instance, in his commentary on 2 Timothy 3, 16, he said this, All those who wish to profit from the Scriptures must first accept this as a settled principle. That the law and the prophets are not teachings handed on by the pleasure of men or produced by men's minds as their source, but are dictated by the Holy Spirit. We owe to the Scriptures the same reverence as we owe to God. Since it had its only source in him and has nothing of human origin mixed within it. Has everyone had an opportunity to sign the du Hickey? So the du Hickey is complete tonight. Now that's a very high view of Scripture that we see in Calvin. But how does one know that the Bible is the Word of God? How are we to know that it is this kind of holy oracle, that it shows forth Christ and the way of life? Well, for Calvin, there is never anything like an independent platform that we can stand on from which to look down and by our reason past judgment upon the Word of God. In other words, we can never simply objectively decide for or against the Bible. Well, let's ask the question again. How can we know the Bible's Word of God? Calvin's answer is that such assurance comes only by the witness of the Spirit. The same Spirit who inspired the prophets and the apostles. The same Spirit who brings Christ home to us in regeneration. Not some other Spirit, the same Spirit as that. Calvin wrote that while some people demand a rational proof that the Bible is truthful or inspired, I reply the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than reason. For as God alone is fit witness to Himself in His Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men's hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit there for who has spoken to the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded. In other words, God doesn't simply throw His Bible out there and say, you figured out. That's the point here. He spent a lot of time. What are the details? In this revelation, He's going to see it through to completion. Divine revelation is not a skill acquired through academic study. Rather, it is a gift of God's grace. Just as the content of this revelation is about God's grace through His Spirit, so the understanding of this revelation is going to be by God's grace through His Spirit. I see a couple of hands here. I want to continue on and finish this point where I come back and take up your questions if I may. Calvin gave a very short shrift here to the different proofs that people have put forward for the Bible's authenticity. He stated, frankly, that those who wish to prove to unbelievers that the Bible is the Word of God are acting foolishly. For only by faith can this be known. Yes, Calvin was very well acquainted with the evidences for the Bible's credibility. It's antiquity, it's miracles, it's prophecy, the witness of the church, the history of the martyrs. He didn't deny any of that. He as a matter of fact, he approved it all. But he said, those things are secondary aids to our feebleness. They are secondary compared with the chief and highest testimony, quite simply. I can put it this way. We believe not because we recognize the Bible's authoritative. Rather, we recognize the Bible's authoritative because by the Spirit of God, we believe. Again, evidence, rationality has its place. Calvin is not an irrationalist. Not at all. But he says, when you make an evidentiary base, the base, you have fallen into a rationalism which makes man, not God, the final court of appeal. Now, that could make, I guess, Calvin sounded a little subjectivistic. And the Orthodox theologians have attempted to enlist him in their cause. Namely, the idea that it's our experience of the Bible, it's our experience of Scripture that makes it the Word of God. That revelation can't be locked up into a book because in its essence, it's a rather dynamic force. But to recalven that way is to misread him and to misunderstand his points. Calvin does say at one point, yes, that the Scriptures obtained full authority. The Scriptures obtained full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven. But he's not suggesting that the Bible becomes the authoritative truthful word of God only when we recognize it as such. Because in the very next chapter, he claims that the people of God do not render the Bible to be the Word. It already is. But for it to function with full authority, we must recognize it as such. As a matter of fact, what Calvin does here, it's instructive, he divides the issue of truth from authority. Authority is really a relationship. It's not an objective reality out there. Now, I'm going to stop here in just a second and take some questions. But what is Calvin doing here? He is seeking to place the authority of Scripture. He's seeking to place the entirety of Scripture where it belongs under the Holy Spirit, under the authority of the Spirit, rather than under the authority of a church. He is writing in the context of a polemical relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. As the Spirit gives the Word, as the Spirit creates the Church, he is the Lord over both. No ecclesiastical power, no ecclesiastical courts, no human reason has authority over the Word. Rather, the Spirit of God is sovereign over all. I saw some hints. I mean, pause here and address some questions. Question is, how does this emphasis upon the Holy Spirit relate to the question of canonicity? What books should be in Scripture? I want to suggest I think it's thoroughly consistent with Calvin that this relationship between the Spirit and the Word is consistent throughout biblical history. And the Church has undertaken the process of the recognition of the canon through the guidance of the Spirit. One of the ways this happened in the early Church, we all hope are aware that there were far more things written in the first century and into the second century than what we have in our canonical New Testament. But one of the realities of the early Church beginning in the 60s was persecution. It was sporadic, sometimes a whole generation would go by without any persecution, but it would sooner or later it would pop up again. And we oftentimes, we depict the Romans as a bunch of dunderheads. They really weren't. Certainly Christianity was declared illegal, but the Romans who weren't out there just kind of killing everybody. Oh, he looks like a Christian, get him. They actually had a system of jurisprudence. They had to prove that you were a Christian. And of course, what they would do is come to your house and they would look for evidence that you are a believer. So people had to decide very early on, what am I willing to die for? Did decay, the shepherd of Hermos, the gospel of Thomas, the answer in all those cases would know. I'm not willing to die for those. Very early, by the medium of God's Spirit, in His, in prophets, the Church came to an agreement over most of the books of the intestine. These four gospels that we have, there was never any doubt. These were not the only four gospels. There were many written there. But there was never a contest. These four were dying for it. It was worth having the gospel of John on your personal. It was worth having Matthew. Most of Paul's epistles, maybe 12 from the 13th. Look of James was some question for a while. Second, third John. But the vast majority of the Protestant canon is pretty well set very, very early. And what's interesting here is, it's not going to be officially set. The year is usually dated, 365, the moraterian canon. But it's mostly there, worth the memory again. And it's amazing how consistently that happened. Well, one could say by the accident of history. My own answer and the answer to the church's history has been by the providence of God's Spirit in history. That same spirit who generates the word is also going to work to bring it home to the people of God, illuminating it, interpreting it, protecting it, defending it. That's the consistent argument. Does that make sense? Other questions? Yes. The question was, how do we put together the statement about the knowledge of God as redeemer, preceding the knowledge of God as creator? How do you put that together with all of that you actually had said before? In my responses, I'm actually following Calvin's order here. He didn't actually start with Jesus, and then went on to other things. I followed him fairly closely. His point, he says, you have to start with Jesus here, is really to get it to punctuate the reality that the knowledge of God as our father, as our creator. Remember what Romans 1 will do? All it really can do is it says someone's there, and you're accountable. That's all it needs to do. Calvin has in mind, when he says the knowledge of God, the redeemer, the knowledge of God, the creator, is the fullness of redemption. He has the fullness of creation. It says this one, Yahweh, the God of Scripture is the creator. Does that help a bit? Again, we have had a tendency. Well, almost nutrition, we've put way too much on Romans 1. All Paul needs there is you are without excuses. Someone is there and you should have gone looking. And remember our discussion of Bar, in some sense, Barth does have a point. If we give too much space to a kind of creational revelation, we do make biblical revelation unnecessary. And that's not the direction Calvin wanted at all, right? Does that help? Sir, and I wouldn't use that language because Scripture itself is a mediator. We use the word instruments. A mediator would be a synonym. I would say that the Holy Spirit applies Scripture. Complete Scripture. I wouldn't see how Scripture is mediated through the Spirit. Scripture itself is an objective reality, an objective historical artifact. It doesn't need the Spirit to serve as a form of mediation. Come alongside, yes. And that's certainly part of Calvin's understanding that the word and Spirit can never be divided. We're not done here. We're going to have a lot more to say about this. Calvin is writing in the context of not either Roman Catholic church, but a kind of rationalism in his day, a kind of rationalist who said, well, all I really need is the Bible. I don't need the Spirit. And Spirit is some of the anabaptists who would say, all I need is the Spirit and not the Bible. So Calvin has a very firm interest in wanting to keep those two together, as we'll see. So we're a long ways from done in discussing Calvin and the Spirit. I forgot exactly we're going to end up next week when we talk about authority. It's looking at this whole issue of Calvin and the Spirit again. Camille, the question was, how would you respond to a Mormon who would say, well, using the same argument you have used, I can use it on behalf of the Book of Mormon, or the Muslim who, following that same process, would claim the Quran. Remember what Calvin's saying? He does say these other proofs, though secondary and feeble, are there. It is true that a revelation must do justice to the phenomenon that it is trying to describe. Nature of human need. The answer to that need. The historical precedence that are involved here. And it seems to me that the Bible does a much better job here than others have. The Bishop, Leslie Nubigan, in several of his books makes the point that the Bible is the only, not the Bible, Christianity, is the only major religion which has the guts to stand upon historical precedent.

I went to Harvard University and did my first Master's degree there. Harvard is not exactly a covenant seminary. And I went there on purpose. I figured as a new Christian, again, if this stuff isn't true, just prove it as quickly as possible so I can get out with my hedonistic lifestyle. That's not pretty good. If it's not true, prove to me as quickly as possible. And at Harvard, everyone's right but the evangelical Christian. Every revelation is true but the Bible. Back in the 1920s, the folks at Harvard University, they said the Bible is full of historical errors. And one of them was the thing about the Hittites. The Hittites were talked about in numbers and other places. But believe it or not, back in 19, I think it's about 1918, it's when they sent an archaeological expedition to Asia Minor. But at that time there was no extra biblical evidence for the Hittites. And I said, here's proof the Bible got it all wrong. It made up the Hittites. Well, if you've ever seen these statues, they've got the body of a lion. They've got wings of, eagles' wings, they've got a man's head, and then got a beard, and then kind of a Pope hat. Did you know? You know, if you could lift them, they'd say in the bottom made by Hittites. And there's two of them. There's two of them now at the Harvard Museum of Ancient Eastern Antiquities, which is shoved off in the furthest corner possible of campus. But anyway, they went over what they found was the Hittites. Well, okay, you guys got lucky. But the Bible got lucky. Look here. Look here. And I say that, it talks about this King Sargon II. Now, all of the really truthful, all of the really reliable ancient Eastern King lists don't say anything about Sargon II. All the Egyptian King lists say nothing about Sargon II, and the Assyrian King lists say nothing about Sargon II. Here's proof that there's the Bible's wrong. This guy's historical details false. So they go to Asher Banner Pole, which would have been the Assyrian capital during that time. And they start digging around. And they come across, you know, you get down to the next layer. And when you go to ruins, all you find is, you know, it's about the whole civilizations, this wide, right? Well, what they found was the bricks. And some guy printed his name on every brick on that layer. You know, you who Sargon II? Well, what happened, of course, was Sargon got eradicated from the other King list because no one liked him, because he was a bad guy. Now, there's a lot of that stuff. It happens over and over and over again, vividly. Now, does that prove the Bible is true and everything? No. But it creates, it helps to understand that the people who wrote here, the people who are generating this thing care about historical veracity. Now, that should concern us because, you know, we live in history. We're historical. We're not these existential minds that float in space. You know, I've got dates. I've got mortgages. I've got all the rest of that. And it seems that this revelation takes those kinds of things seriously. It's so seriously that it sweats some of those kinds of details. And I think on those kinds, on that level. Now, okay, you've got to jump from there to metaphysics. Okay, but if it's wrong there, there's no reason I should be caring about that leap. Does that make sense, Camille? And it's interestingly, in the Gospel and the Furloth Society, Nubian talks about when he first went to India as a missionary. He spent some 40 years in India. And he was talking to a very learned Hindu. And this Hindu says, I don't get you Christians. He says, here you've got this revelation that's about history. It's about God entering space and time. And then you guys come over here and talk like philosophers. Because I can get that in my Hindu. You don't understand the very, you don't understand the nature of your own religion. So it would be on that kind of, this is a revelation that does justice as a phenomena, both historically and personally, existentially. We have 2,000 years of folks kicking it around. And most of these others, they only pretend to operate on that level. Does that help? We still have a couple of minutes. I'm not going to say anything there about C in your outline. I think that's Mayor on page 18, Calvin's home. We don't quite have done any, to have time. We need about 25 minutes, so I better not try. Well, let's look at C and then take a few more questions. And then we're looking for him. Second, due to the dullness of our vision, there is no way, any other questions before we break off this evening. I'm not going to have time to come to the next issue of interrelationship. We will do that next week.