LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Scripture as Divine Revelation
Submitted to Dr. James Sulfridge
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
DSMN 500
Discipleship Ministries
By
Anthony Bean
Definition
Scripture is the written form of God’s special revelation for his people, both the Old
Testament and the New Testament, which provides them with an enduring, permanent witness
through which the Spirit brings them into union with the resurrected and ascended Christ.
Summary
Divine revelation, which is a remarkable and gracious gift of God, comes in both general
and special ways. General revelation is given to everyone everywhere is broad (though far from
empty) in what it says about God. This kind of divine revelation is found in creation and in every
person’s conscience. Special revelation, on the other hand, is specific in its content and
omnipotent in its effect. Through this revelation, God communicates the mysteries of the faith
and personal knowledge of Christ to his people. Scripture is the written form of special
revelation, providing God’s people with an enduring witness to the work of God in Christ. This
Scripture has been “breathed out” by God through his Spirit, carrying along the authors of
Scripture as they wrote.
Divine Revelation is Extraordinary
As Christians, we take God’s revelation of himself for granted. But if we think about who
God is, it is nothing short of remarkable that he has spoken. This is true for a number of
reasons. To begin with, he is the infinite, eternal, and incomprehensible Creator. We, on the
other hand, are finite creatures. God is not merely greater in size, as if he is bigger but
nevertheless still within our sphere of creaturely experience. No, this God is immeasurable in
essence; he is a different type of being altogether. This fundamental distinction between the
Creator and the creature pervades the storyline of the Bible because, as the prophets
repeatedly point out, it is what distinguishes Yahweh from the created gods of the surrounding
nations. Idolatry is a confusion of the creature with the Creator. All that to say, there is an
infinite distance between God and man because God is not a created being.
How incredible it is, then, that this incomprehensible Creator would stoop down to make
himself known to us brittle creatures, so that in turn we might know him truly, even if never
comprehensively. As John Calvin said with such eloquence, God is like that nurse who lisps to a
new born babe. Such accommodation is supernatural, but also fitting since God chose to make
us in his own image.
But there is yet another reason divine revelation is extraordinary. His holiness not only sets
him apart as the infinite, transcendent One, but his holiness also sets him apart as the righteous
One. That, however, poses a problem. For we are not righteous but sinners, guilty and
corrupted, stained by sin in every component of our being. If it is not astounding enough that
the infinite, eternal God created and spoke to those whom he made, he continued to do so
even when they fell into sin’s grip. He would have been right to remain silent when Adam and
Eve rebelled, and his silence would have resulted in total separation and condemnation. But he
did not remain silent; he spoke, and he spoke a redeeming word. Ultimately, that initial word of
promise in Genesis 3:15 reached its culmination in the Word made flesh (John 1:1, 14), the
revelation of God personified. That Word was none other than the Lord Christ Jesus himself, the
eternal Son of God made incarnate for us and our salvation.
For these reasons, revelation is a gift, and an extraordinary one at that.
The Heavens Declare the Glory of God: General Revelation
We should distinguish, however, between two types of revelation. First, there is general
revelation. It is called general because it (1) is given to everyone everywhere and (2) is broad
(though far from empty) in what it says about God. General revelation, for example, does not
communicate the mysteries of the Trinity or the person and work of Jesus Christ, but it does
reveal God as Creator of the cosmos and manifests many of his divine attributes
(transcendence, majesty, power, sovereignty, etc. (see Pss. 198:3–4; 29:4; 93:2; 104:24; Acts
14:15–17; 17:24–27; Rom. 1:20, 32; 2:15–16). And it does so not to a specific people only but to
all people in all times. The reason for its universal scope is found in the medium itself.
So, by what medium does a person receive this general revelation? There are two ways: (1)
through man’s internal conscience, and (2) through the created order (e.g., nature). Man is
created in God’s image (Gen. 1:27), which means the divine imprint marks him. In “our minds,”
says Calvin in his Institutes (1.3.2), lie the “seeds of religion,” so much so that man is
characterized by a sensus divinitatis, a sense of the divine. Man cannot escape, no matter how
hard he tries, the morality embedded within his very makeup as a creature made to reflect his
Creator (Rom. 1:32; 2:14–16).
Yet creation, too, bears witness that there is a Creator. Listen to David in Psalm 19:1–2:
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
One should also consult Psalms 8, 93, and 104, which make similar statements. Paul, too,
says this much. God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have
been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made”
(Rom. 1:20).
The problem is that as sinners we suppress this general revelation, which means it may be
sufficient to condemn us (see Rom. 1:20–21; 2:14–16), but it is not sufficient to save us. What is
needed, then, is a special revelation, one that is not only specific in its content but omnipotent
in its effect, taking root in a particular people through faith. We know God as Creator and Judge
due to general revelation, but unless there is special revelation, we will never know this Creator
as our Savior.
From Creator to Savior: Special Revelation
Being gracious, God has provided special revelation in a variety of ways. A brief look at how
God reveals himself to his people, Israel, in the OT demonstrates that God’s special, saving
revelation is rich, communicated through a mosaic of mediums, including theophanies, dreams,
visions, angels, direct speech, miracles, and ultimately Christ himself. In fact, all previous
revelation pointed to the revelation of God which was none other than the Son of God himself.
Jesus not only came, like the prophets of old, to communicate a revelation from God, but Jesus
himself is the revelation from God because he is God incarnate (Heb. 1:1; John 1:1). He does
not merely bring a message; he is the message.
But as important as each of these mediums may be, God determined—in his wise
providence—that his enduring, permanent witness to himself should come through a written
word, namely, the Scriptures, what we Christians call the Bible. Even Christ ascended into the
heavens after his resurrection from the dead. Scripture, however, is the Spirit’s enduring, ever-
present gift to God’s people, and one through which the Spirit brings us into union with the
resurrected and ascended Christ, our Lord. We do not know Christ apart from the word of
Christ inscripturated; it is through this inspired text that the Spirit makes Christ known to us in a
saving way. So, although Scripture may be but one form of special revelation, it is the
permanent form God intends his people to possess and live by for faith and practice.
The Inscripturated Word: Inspiration
However, we should not forget that this written word from our triune God did not fall from
heaven all at once. Rather, it was revealed progressively over the course of history and through
human hands. God’s plan of redemption was revealed through the Scriptures, but at first only
in seed form. It then blossomed further as God chose to reveal how that plan of redemption
would eventually culminate through the death and resurrection of his Son. This occurred within
the context of God’s saving covenants. For example, it was at Sinai that God entered into a
covenant with his people, Israel. The constitution of that covenant—the treaty by which Israel
was to live by—was given to Moses, written with the very finger of God on tablets of stone
(Deut. 9:10).
As the story progresses, God provides further written revelation through his prophets. Not
only do they speak the word of God to the people of God, but at times they are told to write it
down, serving as prosecutors of the covenant against a people bent on covenant infidelity (see
the book of Jeremiah, for example). It’s little surprise, then, that when the promised Messiah
arrives—the one the Old Testament Scriptures promised and prefigured—this Messiah intends
to pass on the good news of the gospel to his disciples. As his ambassadors, they will spread the
good news of salvation about Jesus through their proclamation (see the book of Acts) but also
through the writing of letters, letters inspired by the Spirit and for the instruction and
edification of the church.
To clarify, these Scriptures, which we now call the Old and New Testaments (Testament
meaning covenant), were not typically produced unlitarerally, as if, for example, Zechariah or
Peter had to ascend Sinai like Moses to bring down God’s written word. Actually, Sinai would
prove the exception, not the norm. God often worked in ordinary ways through ordinary
human beings whom he set apart for his work of inspiration (e.g., David, the shepherd boy
turned king wrote Psalms; fisherman turned disciples wrote letters to churches).
That word “inspiration” is key. It does not mean the human authors of Scripture merely
recorded their religious experience, as if they saw what God did and were so excited that they
wrote it down only for God to come along and adopt it as his own. That may be the common
use of the word “inspired” today but that is not what the Bible itself means by the term. For
example, consider Paul’s words to Timothy about Scripture, and not just some parts but all of it:
“All Scripture is breathed out (θεSπνευστος) by God…” (2Tim 3:16). In other words, the
Scriptures do not originate with the human authors but with God himself.
Inspiration as Concursus
How did God breath-out the Scriptures? That may be something of a mystery, but Peter
gives us a glimpse into that mystery when he says, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the
will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet.
1:21). B. B. Warfield called this concursus, meaning there is a simultaneous operation between
the human author and the divine author, though the divine author is primary. That much is
apparent when Peter indicates that it was the Spirit that “carried along” the prophets of old.
Much like a ship at sea driven along by the wind (e.g., Acts 27:15, 17), the Spirit worked in and
upon the human authors in such a way that what they said was exactly what God himself said
and intended.
Peter is not alone in this belief, but it can be seen in Jesus’s own teaching whenever he
refers to the OT author and the Spirit synonymously (see Mark 12:36-37 for example). The
assumption across the New Testament is that the Scriptures of Jesus and the apostles (the Old
Testament) is none other than God’s inspired word to his people. And they assume the
Scriptures are inspired not just in its overall message but in its totality, down to the very words
(inspiration is verbal and plenary).
Assurance of Inspiration: The Gospel
While Paul may say this much explicitly (2 Tim. 3:16), Jesus and the Gospel writers indicate
the same but by his constant refrain that the Scriptures have been fulfilled in his person and
work (e.g., Luke 4:21; also see Matthew’s Gospel which is full of this “fulfillment” language).
The covenant promises of God in the Scriptures have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and that is
the greatest testimony to their divine origin. Should one seek assurance that the Scripture is
nothing less than divine revelation one need look no further than the gospel itself. God has
come through on his word.
Notes
B. B. Warfield, Revelation and Inspiration
D. A. Carson, ed., The Enduring Authority of Christian Scripture
E. J. Young, Thy Word Is Truth: Some Thoughts on the Biblical Doctrine of Inspiration
Matthew Barrett, God’s Word Alone: The Authority of Scripture. See an author interview
here and here.
Matthew Barrett, Twenty-one lectures based on God’s Word Alone.
Matthew Barrett, Ten videos on the doctrine of Scripture.
Matthew Barrett, Canon, Covenant, and Christology: Rethinking Jesus and the Scriptures
of Israel, New Studies in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A. Carson (InterVarsity Press).
Peter Williams, Video interview: Why is divine authorial intent so important for biblical
interpretation?
