Whether a Verbal Revelation Was Necessary

Whether a verbal revelation was necessary

This question is more focused than our refining the lens from general to special revelation. There are several ways that God could have communicated on a more specific level. In fact, some of those, the Bible tells us, He did—dreams, visions, signs, symbols, or even something like the “leading” of the Spirit, or simply impression, or “sense,” taken in its most inward connotation. These are all included in those “many and various ways” of Hebrews 1:1. However, it is a principle that follows God’s goodness and wisdom that grace always perfects nature. God never goes back on His own designs. Since God created human nature good, His redemption and restoration of fallen humanity will also redeem and restore those essential aspects of that nature. One such aspect of this good design is human communication. 

Human beings are verbal beings. More than that, we are propositional beings. Words make meaning clearer. If we do not understand the actions of others, words explain them. When people speak different languages, that shared experience breaks down. This is not only a pragmatic reality. Human beings are creatures of the word. There is something about verbal communication that gives shape to life. Some deeper theology to the “word” of God has often been cited, as, for example, in an essay by D. A. Carson: 

“The importance of God’s speech as a fundamental means of his self-disclosure cannot be overestimated. Creation itself is the product of God’s speech: God speaks, and worlds leap into being (Genesis 1). Many of God’s most dramatic deeds of revelation would not have been understandable apart from God’s accompanying speech. Moses views the burning bush as a curiosity until the voice tells him to remove his sandals and assigns him his new responsibilities. Abraham would have no reason to leave Ur were it not for God’s revelation in words. Again and again the prophets carry the burden of ‘the word of the LORD’ to the people. Verbal revelation is essential even in the case of the Lord Jesus: during the days of his flesh, he was, first of all, a teacher.”1

If we think only in terms of creation and fall, God’s relation to man in Genesis 2 and 3 is bound up in speech; and both the curse pronouncement and first gospel promise are known to us because God first spoke them in the human language of Adam and Eve. 

Suppose our question became more skeptical: from whether a verbal revelation was necessary to whether it is even possible. The Bible itself is clear that God does speak in a way ordinary enough for those biblical authors to understand: “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Ex. 33:11). But this is an objection that is not unheard of, the notion that God could not speak to human beings. This is very different from the objection that He would not. It has been argued that divine communication, if there could be such a thing, is as infinite as God is, and human beings are not fit recipients of such information. We will have to return to this when we come to the subjects of inspiration and inerrancy.

More crassly, it may be objected that if God is spirit, then He does not have a voice box or emit sound waves.2 This is easy enough to refute when we consider how the mind is always forming concepts without the aid of any words at all. It may be countered that even these are owing to an original shaping of concepts by the words that our own cultures (e.g., families and early schooling) have given to them. 

Our next question to the skeptic is, Why may God not be the ultimate causal Agent through all such human speech? In fact, the more crass form of the objection about voice boxes and sound waves turns out to depend upon the more sophisticated form of the objection. One must ask whether an infinite Mind, exerting causal influence over—and through the agency and form of—human language and concepts may communicate in an intelligible manner. As the Lord said to Moses, 

“Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak” (Ex. 4:11-12).

So we say to this particular misgiving.

___________________

1. D. A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 21-22.

2. cf. R. Douglas Geivett, “Can and Would God Speak to Us?” in Steven B. Cowan & Terry L. Wilder, ed., In Defense of the Bible (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013), 18-30.