General Revelation (Belgic Confession 2a)
Rev. Angus Stewart
Belgic Confession 2: By What Means God Is Made Known Unto Us
We know Him by two means: first, by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, His eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul saith, Romans 1:20. All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse.
Secondly, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation.
What Does the Universe Reveal About God?
What does the universe indicate about God or divine things? Here are six wrong answers that present various erroneous views. First, some claim that the cosmos teaches us that there is no God; just matter and time and chance. This is atheism. Second, others reckon that matter is evil and was created by a "bad god," while spirit or mind is good and was created by a "good god." This is dualism. Third, some think that the various aspects of creation reveal the existence of many gods. The Romans thought Neptune ruled the sea, Vulcan took care of fire, Vesta was concerned with the hearth, Venus with love, Bacchus with wine and Mars with war. The Nordic peoples and the Greeks also had their pantheons. This is polytheism. Fourth, others believe that all is god. The oceans, sunsets, trees, spiders, love, etc., all are the divine. This is pantheism. Fifth, some, with a shrug of their shoulders, ask, "Who can know about divine things? The universe is so complicated that it is impossible to make sense of it all. I don't know if there is a God" This is agnosticism. Sixth, others cop out completely: "I never really think about it. I'm simply concerned with just getting by in life." This is irreligiosity and burying one's head in the sand.
The truth is that the universe declares the glory of the one true and living God (Ps. 19:1). Thus Belgic Confession 2 begins, "We know him ... by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, his power and divinity ..." This is the same God set forth in Belgic Confession 1. Belgic Confession 2 mentions two "books:" general revelation in the creation (Book 1) and special revelation in the Bible (Book 2).
General Revelation and the Unevangelized Heathen
Let us consider general revelation (Book 1) and the unevangelized pagans. What is the key passage in Scripture in this regard? Romans 1:18-32. What does Romans 1 teach that the universe reveals about God? It mentions the following attributes or perfections of God as being revealed by the creation: eternity (v. 20), power (v. 20), glory (v. 23), incorruptibility (v. 23), truth (v. 25), blessedness (v. 25) and justice (v. 32). This passage also states that God's works as creator (v. 25), governor and judge (v. 32) are declared by the creation. Everybody, even the unevangelized heathen, know this from the creation (vv. 18ff.).
What ought everyone do in the light of God's general revelation? Glorify and thank Him (vv. 21, 25)! What does unregenerate man do instead? He suppresses and holds down the truth of God (vv. 18, 28). He substitutes idols in the place of the true God (vv. 23, 25). The pagans engage in various sexual sins (v. 24), some of them even descending to sodomy and lesbianism (vv. 26-27), by God's just judgment (vv. 24, 26). The Almighty also gives them up (v. 28) to a whole host of other iniquities (vv. 29-32). Not only do the ungodly do these things, but they also "have pleasure in them that do them" (v. 32), which is why worldly drama on TV and in the cinemas is so popular.
What is God's purpose with His general revelation in the creation? Romanism teaches that from it pagan man can forge a true natural theology, believing which he can be saved (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 36). Arminianism holds "that the corrupt and natural man can so well use the common grace (by which they understand the light of nature), or the gifts still left him after the fall, that he can gradually gain by their good use a greater, namely, the evangelical or saving grace and salvation itself. And that in this way God on His part shows Himself ready to reveal Christ unto all men, since He applies to all sufficiently and efficiently the means necessary to conversion" (Canons III/IV:R:5; cf. I:R:4). Anabaptists, Quakers, Open Theists, Amyraldians and hypothetical universalists, like hymn writer Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), also believe that unevangelized heathen can be saved through the right use of God's general revelation in creation. Sadly, many evangelicals believe this too.
This is false doctrine, first, because Book 1 (general revelation) does not reveal the truth about Christ and His cross, the only way of knowing the forgiveness of sins. Second, man is totally depraved and the unevangelized heathen, with wills in bondage to sin, always suppress the truth of God (Rom. 1:18, 28). Third, Romans 10:14-15 affirms the necessity of the preaching of the gospel for salvation, for how can people believe and call upon the Lord unless they hear the Word proclaimed by one sent by God?
The purpose of God's general revelation in creation is not to save the unevangelized pagans but to leave them without excuse. This is the express teaching of Romans 1:20: "so that they are without excuse." This is echoed in Belgic Confession 2: "All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse." Besides our Belgic Confession, the Reformed creeds unitedly confess the impossibility of the salvation of unevangelized heathen.1
Here we see, first, the necessity of general revelation for leaving the unevangelized heathen without excuse. Otherwise they would protest, "But I never knew!" We learn, second, the sufficiency of general revelation to leave the unevangelized heathen without excuse; otherwise they would be able to object, "But, Lord, Thou didst not tell me enough to know that Thou art the creator and governor of all things!" We also see, third, the clarity of general revelation, for the unevangelized heathen cannot claim, "But Thy revelation of Thyself in forming and ruling the universe was too hard to understand!"
No wonder Romans 1:18-32 stresses the necessity, sufficiency and clarity of God's general revelation, which leaves the unevangelized heathen without excuse! In especially six of its verses, it states that, even though they worship idols and live wickedly, they all know that God is the creator and Lord who must be thanked and served (vv. 18, 19, 20, 21, 28, 32).
All of this is important, first, regarding God Himself for He must be and is righteous in judging and punishing the unevangelized pagans for their ingratitude, idolatry and manifold iniquities. Second, this is an important truth for the witness of the church. It underscores the necessity and urgency of mission work to unreached people for without the gospel they cannot be saved.
The Abuse of General Revelation With Respect to Creation
There are many ways in which Book 1 (general revelation in the universe) is wickedly abused by those who profess to be Christians so as to contradict Book 2 (special revelation in Scripture). Let us consider this with respect to the creation. Theistic evolutionists believe that the fossil record, erosion, sedimentation, etc., indicate that the earth is millions and billions of years old. Therefore, they "modify" the Bible. However, Scripture teaches that the world is a few thousand years old and that there was a global flood, which explains much concerning fossils, erosion, sedimentation, etc.
From similarities in bone structure and chemical make-up, etc., between man and the animals, theistic evolutionists claim that man evolved from the primeval slime. Out go Genesis 1 and 2! Scripture teaches that Adam was formed by the Most High out of the dust and Eve was fashioned from his rib. Besides, why wouldn't there be some similarities between man and the beasts given they have a common creator who formed both us and them for the same world?
Theistic evolutionists also believe in the "big bang," that our orderly world is the product of a gigantic explosion. All this denies the inerrancy, authority and inspiration of Genesis 1. "Through faith [not unbelieving evolutionism] we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Heb. 11:3).
Do you see what the theistic evolutionists are doing? They view Book 1 (general revelation in the created universe) with evolutionary spectacles to "reinterpret," that is, contradict, Book 2 (special revelation in the Bible). This is dead wrong! The Christian Reformed Church in North America's Synod of 1991's report on creation abused Belgic Confession 2 and appealed to the false doctrine of common grace to do precisely this.
The Abuse of General Revelation With Respect to Providence
As an example of another abuse of Book 1, this time with respect to providence, which Belgic Confession 2 refers to as God's "preservation and government of the universe," we shall consider the Nazis and their dupes in the churches, the so-called "German Christians." Building upon evolutionism and their idea of the Aryans as the master race, the Nazis claimed that it was the will of God that Adolf Hitler was the German führer or leader. They did not simply mean by this that Hitler became the German chancellor according to God's decree and providence (and wrath). They meant that God approved of Hitler and raised him up in His favour and grace. In this sense, too, they claimed that the Almighty willed a vast expansion of German land (for Lebensraum or living room), the exaltation of the German race and people or Volk, and the establishment of a German kingdom, the Third Reich (to last a millennium!).
The German church (both Roman Catholic and Lutheran) was to be subservient to the Nazi state so that it would not oppose but promote Nazi ideology. Its doctrine was the so-called "Positive Christianity" declaring one German führer for one German people in one German kingdom with one German land. Biblical virtues such as humility and meekness were despised as merely "passive." "Active" virtues were to be preached and inculcated, qualities befitting an industrial and militaristic people whose destiny it was to conquer and rule—the survival of the fittest!
Read carefully the following four quotes from Nazi apologist and theologian, D. Cajus Fabricius, in his Positive Christianity in the Third Reich, as he perverts Christianity by making Nazi history a source—even the main and determinative source!—of God's (gracious) revelation.
First, "It is true that Christendom is not of opinion there is no other Divine revelation except through Jesus Christ. On the contrary we know that God's hand is to be traced in history and in Nature."2 "History" as the Nazis interpret it!
Second, "... our German Volk is a part of the Aryan race; German blood courses through our veins, and we live on German soil. We love this Volk with all the surrender we are capable of, and we love precisely this people of ours today, raised as it has been from out the depths of direst need by an overwhelming act of Divine Providence. And in this great happening we look upon the fact that the Führer, Adolf Hitler has been given to us as a very special mark of God's mercy towards us. We shall never be weary of thanking God for this special ordering of our history in the great happenings of the world."3 God's "mercy" is seen in His providential raising up of a Nazified Germany and the elevation of Hitler! Common grace with a vengeance!
Third, "One fact in this struggle for existence has become to them an overpowering reality: the Führer. In him they have experienced the incontestable fact that all great happenings in history do not originate in the universal but in the particular, not in crowds but in some great personality. In him too, they have experienced that great historical deeds are not only planned in the magnificence of royal palaces, or at the official boards of parliaments and ministries, or even in the buildings of large banking-houses, but may have their source in one simple life that started in modest circumstances, having to struggle onward through poverty and privation, and after much hard fighting finally reaches the height, and even on the height thinks only of self-denial and sacrifice."4 In his exaltation from a lowly beginning to great heights, the noble Hitler still "thinks only of self-denial and sacrifice" for his German Volk!
Fourth, "The Führer himself belongs to those who fulfil the will of God and realize the life of Christ in this life in an extraordinary degree. The Führer in uniting the nation and helping it to rise from the laxity and neglect into which it had fallen, to a sense of moral discipline, fulfils the law of Christ respecting love in a way few mortals could ever hope to emulate ... And when he [i.e., the Führer] himself in the strength of his trust in God places the destiny of the whole nation in the hands of the Father, he manifests the Spirit which through the coming of Christ has become a living power in the world."5 Hitler is a Christ-figure who trusts in God, fulfils God's will and law in "love," and manifests God's Spirit!" Thus he unites the nation "in the hands of the Father!"
Can you see what is happening here? A false view of providence (Book 1) is used to contradict and subvert the truth of the Scripture (Book 2). Instead of the biblical and Reformed faith, an idolatrous worldview is substituted with Hitler as the Christ-like man and a Nazified Germany as the church which he saves by his self-denial and sacrifice and consecrates to God. This is evil! The so-called confessing church in Germany opposed Nazism. The neo-orthodox Swiss theologian Karl Barth, because of the Nazi perversion of general revelation, even went to the length of denying general revelation altogether!6
Belgic Confession 2 is crucially important and must be understood, maintained and confessed by us and our children in this present evil age. The "creation, preservation and government of the universe" points us to the true and living God. This "most elegant book" of creation and providence leads us, as believers, to "contemplate the invisible things of God" and to thank and praise His glorious name!
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What is general revelation? What does it declare about God's perfections and works, and our calling? What does it not reveal about Him?
2. Do you think that the abuse of "science," as if it were general revelation, is a big threat in the church in our day?
3. How would you analyze and critique Fabricius' Nazi theory of history in the light of Belgic Confession 2?