General Revelation 4 – The Fingerprint of God (TFG) Examined

The Fingerprint of God (TFG) was written prior to Creation and Time and was more of a general statement of evidences (from 1990) concerning the age of the earth and the creation date controversy. It gives a considerable more scientific reasoning than does Creation and Time.

Chapter 16 of TFG is entitled: The Gospel According to Creation and it opens with the following summary:

The Bible is the only religious text that teaches a cosmology in full agreement with the latest astrophysical discoveries. The plan of salvation as stated in the Bible can be seen through observation of the universe around us. Thus, all human beings have a chance to discover it. The Bible is the only one of all religious writings which declares a message in full agreement with (and, of course, amplification of) the gospel message seen in creation. [1] The portion in blue is quoted in CAT.

CAT quotes the following 3 items from TFG (CAT-36-38)

As a dissection of this introductory quote, we can clearly see Dr. Ross is contradicting the general accepted view of general revelation. The key is that he ties the plan of salvation to observation of the universe. The authors of this blog believe this is a little bit of a stretch.

“The Bible includes an account of an ancient character, Job (Job 7-19) who without the aid of Scriptures, and in opposition to the religion of his peers, discerned all the elements of “the gospel,” the good news of how man can find eternal life in God.” [2]

We’ll grant Dr. Ross that Job did not have the scriptures, but it is not clear what revelation was afforded to Job. For all we know God personally appeared (a Christophany) to Job. However this is all speculation and where the Bible is silent, we will likewise. Speculation that Job arrived at his faith by only looking at nature is unwarranted. We would hope that future books by Dr. Ross would not utilize this argument.

“The creation, thus, reveals all the necessary steps to develop a right relationship with God. These steps are uniquely corroborated by the Bible” [3]

It is not generally accepted by conservative Christian scholars that ALL necessary steps can be fleshed out by the observation of creation. To look at this a little further, TFG gives a list of the elements of faith that can be discerned from nature (TFG-181,182):

A Creator Must Exist
It is a violation of the laws of logic (law of identity) that something can bring itself into being. Thus a creator must exist.

The Creator must have awesome power and wisdom
Absolutely. The complexity and precision with which the universe down to the smallest creatures operate is mind blowing and can not be truly accounted for by natural means.

The Creator must be loving
Ross continues, “the simplicity, balance, order, elegance, and beauty seen throughout the whole of creation demonstrates that God is loving rather than capricious.” While I as a Christian absolutely agree with this, I am not sure that the atheist or agnostic suppressor of truth would agree. They would probably look at predation, evil, natural evil, and other perceived inequities in nature and conclude otherwise. Thus I would relegate this item to a valid argument for the Christian looking at nature, but not as a general rule.

The Creator must be just and must require justice.
Ross continues, “inward reflection and outward investigation affirm that human beings have a conscience. When conscience is violated, guilt is incurred and shame is felt.” Once again, I believe this is only perceived by the regenerate Christian. The unbeliever will not grant this from creation.

Each of us falls hopelessly short of the Creator’s standard
Here again, (TODDL speaking) my family and I have recently been studying the evangelism outreach of Way of the Master (Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort). Very often when witnessing (on the WOTM show and my personal experience) when you take someone through the law of God – they invariably have transgressed this law and admit that they are liars, adulterers at heart (or worse), murderers at heart, thieves, ect. Yet when asked if they were judged by this standard, would they go to heaven or hell, they usually say heaven.

Because the Creator is loving, wise, and powerful, He must have made a way to rescue us. If we trust our lives totally to the Rescuer, we will be saved.
The problem with this is that the unbeliever does not believe that he needs rescuing.

In all of these assertions from TFG, I believe that Dr. Ross attributes a little more to observation of nature and the spiritual truths that can be gleaned from it than is warranted from the scriptures. However, this does not mean that the premise of dual revelation falters. I simply believe that Dr. Ross places too much faith in unregenerate man gleaning spiritual truths from nature.

However there is one scripture that seems at first look to support Dr. Ross’s assertians. It is Col 1:23 – we will look at this in the next article.

[1] Hugh Ross, The Fingerprint of God p. 179

[2] Ibid. p. 181 – emphasis added
[3] Ibid. p. 182 – emphasis added