Today I turned in my Confession of Revelation and Scripture. It is for my Systematic Theology 1 class and will be used for my future ordination. It is theological in substance, but not in language as much as possible. So you will not find words like inerrant, verbal plenary, inspired etc… nor will you find some traditional “flag” terms to peg me as either a liberal or conservative. Though I’ve already turned it in, I’d appreciate comments and thoughts.

Prolegomena

I believe the Nature of Revelation should be understood as divine self-disclosure. God, through his own will, decides to purposefully unveil Himself to Humanity. These God-revealed things belong to Humans, allowing them to understand what is real about God and His Reality. (Deuteronomy 29:29)

I believe we understand what is real about God and His Reality through two sources: General Revelation and Special Revelation.

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Creation—General Revelation

I believe General Revelation is God’s self-disclosure to all of Humanity through the Created Order in three purposeful acts of unveiling: Nature; an internal, created awareness of the Divine; and the participation of God in History. (Romans 1:19)

I believe all that God Created in the Natural World reflects the purpose and attributes of God, and is a means by which Man can both know of and about Him. (Romans 1:20)

I believe all of Humanity has access to God and His Reality through an internal awareness of an “Other” that is beyond and above themselves. (Romans 1:21)

I believe God’s participation in the History of His Creation through purposeful acts of historical penetration reveals a Creator who is intimately involved in the affairs of His Creation through deliberate acts of disclosure, human involvement, and redemption. (Psalm 140)

Sin—Effect on Understanding of General Revelation

I believe, in spite of God’s purposeful act of self-disclosure, Humans struggle with properly understanding what is real about God and His Reality. Though Humans are crafted after the Image of God and poses an understanding of God’s unveiling, that Created Image is broken because of Sin, resulting in a distorted misreading of God’s self-disclosure through nature, human conscience, and history. (John 12:40)

Redemption—Special Revelation

I believe, while God’s self-disclosure through General Revelation helps us know God through transcendence—a Creator who is above His Creation—Special Revelation gives us an understanding of God through immanence—a Creator who is intimately involved with His Creation.

Function of Special Revelation
I believe this second act of Divine Unveiling corrects the distorted and misunderstood views of God broken Humans experience because of Sin and more fully discloses God in light of his partial disclosure through Creation. Because Humans are holistically broken, they need a more complete unveiling to understand God and His Reality. God is more fully unveiled through the Holy Scriptures, Jesus Christ, and continued acts of divine self-disclosure.

Types of Special Revelation
I believe, while the ultimate standard for understanding what is real about God and His Reality is found in Jesus and testified to by the Holy Scriptures, God, through the Holy Spirit, continues to aid Human understanding through continued acts of divine self-disclosure. Through lesser forms of unveiling—including visions and dreams, miracles, movements of God in Creation, prophecy, and personal encounters with the Creator—God continues to paint what is real about Himself and His reality. This “painting” never conflicts with the Person of Jesus Christ nor does it stand above and against the Holy Scriptures.

I believe, through the second act of Special Revelation, God and His Reality is fully unveiled through Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Ultimately, the fullest expression of what is real about God’s nature, character, intentions, and desires, and His Reality are entirely revealed through the Person of Jesus, and only properly understood by observing, understanding, and listening to Him. Though we have a textual understand of God and His Reality through the Holy Scriptures, even this piece of revelation must be interpreted through the Teachings, Way and Person of Jesus Christ. (John 14:9; Hebrews 1:3)

I believe one of God’s primary acts of immanent unveiling is through the sacred writings of the children of Israel and apostles of Jesus. These collections of writings in their respective testaments are compiled in a Sacred Text we call the Bible. While it is not God’s ultimate act of self-disclosure, the Holy Scriptures is the standard by which we measure our understanding of what is real about God and His Reality. (2 Timothy 3:16)

I believe the textual unveiling found in the Holy Scriptures accurately helps Humanity understand what is real about God and His Reality. Through this textual self-disclosure God beckons Humans to relationship and worship, calls them live according to a Way of Life, and restores them to the way He intended them to be at the beginning of creation.

I believe the Sacred Text God gave to Humanity is composed of the traditional 66 book Holy Scriptures that have been recognized for millennia. This Sacred Text includes the 27 historically recognized New Testament texts and 39 Hebrew texts of the Jewish Testament. These books were fully authored by humans under the guidance of their Jewish Spiritual Tradition, Culture, and the Breath of God.

Marks of the Holy Scriptures
I believe God’s textual self-disclosure, as found in the Holy Scriptures, are marked by six distinctions: Authority, Power, Unity, Sufficiency, Perspicuity, and Contemporaniaty.

I believe the marks of the Holy Scriptures are understood by the following: it is authoritative on how to restore the God-Man relationship and Creation-Society, and what it means to live restored in these relationships; it unveils the power of God to restore the God-Man relationship and Creation-Society to the way He intended them to be at the beginning of creation; it is an ancient document of great unity that reveals God’s one continuous Story from beginning to end and to properly understand God, a reader and listener of this particular divine self-disclosure must sit in this grand, unified Redemptive Narrative, which includes four Acts: Creation, Rebellion, Redemption, and Consummation; it sufficiently testifies to everything we need in order to understand how the God-Man relationship and Creation-Society is restored, and how to properly relate to God and others; it is perspicuous, meaning the Message of Restoration it carries is clear and can be plainly understood by all Humans; finally it applies to contemporary problems and provides contemporary solutions, because while God was speaking to specific people at particular times, He was still speaking through the prophets and apostles to those people with us in mind, too.