General Revelation 6 – Current RTB position

What follows is my own self transcript of a call that I made in to RTB's Creation Update Show on September 25, 2007. This show had Jeff Z, Dave R, and Ken S in studio (no Dr. Ross). For those that want to listen its in the Creation Update Archives here or if you have a real-player streaming program you can stream it directly here. The timestamp is from 1:09:23 to 1:17:04 of the show.


I did not transcribe every "uh" and duplicate words that sometime occur in speech - and neither did I transcribe some of the jokes and unrelated comments. This I hope will give the current RTB understanding of the issue and help us put this to rest.


Coloration -
TODD = blue
JEFF Z = RED
KEN S = GREEN
DAVE R = BLACK

TODD: Hello Gentlemen ... I called in about a month ago ... and we talked about GR, andI've been researching this some more for a blog entry that I'm working on with some other RTB Dallas Chapter folks... (Ken/Jeff/Dave: good good) What we are doing is we are taking the Book VanBebber/Taylor Creation and Time - the plagarism of title book... we are taking it point by point and giving rebuttal. There is actually a part where I actually agreed with this other book -> It seems to me like Dr. Ross or RTB in general may be taking the concept of GR a bit too far in saying that general revelation is sufficient to discover the full gospel of Jesus Christ. So I was wondering... is there a general statement that you could give from the ministry perspective of just how far does GR take you and at what point do you really need the special revelation of the bible or other special revelations in order to receive the gospel.

JEFF: can I make a comment - I know you (Ken) will give a far more technically accurate description than I will, but this is a conversation I've had with a good friend of mine that just completed some seminary training, and we sit around and yak about some bizare things that come up... There is an interesting example I have that kindof lends a little bit of credence to Hughs position that there is a missionary out of my parents church who grew up somewhere in Africa... his testimony is that through the course of his life he grew up with no Christian influences around him, yet at some point in time he was out working in the fields or at night for whatever reason and basically came to a saving knowledge of crhist Now he didnt know the names and everything and then in subsiquent time people have come and given him that information, but it appears that at some level his conversion to christianity did derive solely from his observation of what was going on in nature, and obviously in God's work in drawing that to him, But that eventually the full details were revealed to him So it may be that the general revelation may be what appears to be the first part of that stepbut at the end of the day you'll have G and SR working in concert with one another...

DAVE: Now lets hear the theologian present:KEN: (now the correct view......ha ha)

KEN: Todd, I'm going to encourage you to take a look at chapter 3 of Without a doubt cause I have a discussion of GR the title is How does God reveal himself
I would say that historic Christianity has a clear consensus that GR lays a foundation for SR - I see that in the book of Isaiah - Isaigh communicates to Gods chosen people - you can have confidence in God's saving power becuase look at the power in creation -> BB Warfield said that GR shows again that foundation "God is the creator" and that then allows God then to work from the standpoint of redemption, so G and S revelation work in concert with each other they are compatible with each other.and I would make it very clear that I dont think that GR can get all of the gospel. I have heard people relay things like my collegue Jeff here has communicated but I would argue that some of that is anecdotal and we have to be careful about building a biblical doctrine on anecdotal statements -> I think however those statements are important and should be analyzed But I would say that GR can not reveal the kind of detail about redemption that we find in SR and probably its true (now I don't like to speak for my boss Hugh Ross) but I think its probably true that Hugh leans a little more of the direction of giving GR more of a robust element than I would - so even here at RTB we go back and forth on types of issues, But I must tell you I don't think Hugh would ever say that special rev isn't absolutely necessary and plays a critical role - I think its really a matter of degree its not an either or but a matter of degree, and I'd say that GR lays the foundation then special revelation gives us all of the kinds of detail And I think Hugh would probably readily agree with what I've written in Without a Doubt it might just be differences in degree.

DAVE: would it be fair to say that GR could communicate to you the need of a savior but special is giving you information about that savior? Would you go so far as to say that?

KEN: I certainly think Romans 2 says that we know there are Gods laws written on our heart and we know we violate them, and so I think the kind of information that Jeff has shared is very consistent with that I would say however its the gospel that tells you who saves you and what and how... and that is very critical so I would agree I think you can push general revelation too far, but let me also say you can minimize it (give it too little) you can diminish it and I think some of our young earth friends diminish it.