The Spectacles of Special Revelation

I’m in the process of rereading Roger Wagner’s very helpful book on preaching, Tongues Aflame. The brilliance of the book lies in its goal: develop a homiletic that is thoroughly “apostolic.” The author does this by surveying the sermons in Acts, giving special attention to the method and content of each sermon. A theme constant throughout the books is that the apostles were “men of the Word of God written.” They knew the Scriptures inside and out. Obviously, this is true when they explicitly recite (from memory!) large sections of Isaiah, or Micah, or the Psalms.  But it’s also true implicitly, as Wagner points out, when they are engaging a Gentile audience ignorant of the Scriptures. The apostles didn’t base their authority on the written word when talking to one audience, but on some other authority when talking to another. They weren’t “planting their feet in midair” as Schaeffer would say. To the contrary, whether to Jews or Gentiles, the apostles always had their feet firmly planted on God’s revelation of himself. Says Wagner:

“Much has been made of Paul’s differing approaches to Gentile as opposed to Jewish audiences, especially with respect to his use of the Scriptures. It is true that Paul could, and did, make a more direct appeal to the old covenant Scriptures when addressing Jews, for whom they were a well-known and acknowledged authority. But is it true that in speaking to the Gentiles he moved from special to general revelation as the basis of his argument and appeal? Did he preach ‘revealed theology’ to Jews and ‘natural theology’ to Gentiles? Not at all. Rather Paul simply makes a less explicit appeal to the Scriptures while continuing to use them as the subtext for his messages to biblically illiterate pagans. The fact that Gentiles did not acknowledge the authority of the old covenant Scriptures did not induce Paul to abandon them as the basis of his proclamation. Acknowledged or not, the Scriptures remain ‘God-breathed’ and for that reason they are ‘useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness’ (2 Tim 3:16).

Paul believed that God’s ‘general’ and ‘special’ revelation were ultimately one, and so he could find numerous parallels between what the Scriptures said and what nonbelievers, who are ignorant of the Scriptures, nevertheless know by nature. He did not proclaim a ‘natural theology,’ but rather a biblical theology which is evident (though distorted through man’s sinful misperceptions) in man’s own created nature and surrounding environment. Paul set forth his understanding of the natural man’s relationship to God’s revelation in the opening chapter of Romans. When the nonbeliever shows some awareness of the truth as revealed by God (within himself or in the world around him)—as the Greeks here did by means of their ‘agnostic’ alter—Paul draws attention to it as an evidence that the unbeliever knows God and is without excuse since he wickedly suppresses that truth (Rom 1: 18-20). But Paul always interprets that ‘natural’ revelation through the spectacles of special revelation …

The apostles were always men of the Word of God written. They knew and understood that the coming of Christ represented the supreme and final revelation of God (Heb 1:1-2; John 1:18; etc.). Consequently, they preached on the premise that all of God’s revelation has to be explained from the perspective of its fulfillment in Christ. Thus ‘general revelation’ was explained by ‘special,’ scriptural revelation, and Old Testament scriptural revelation was explained by the new covenant revelation which had been made in Christ. This explains their approach to the use of the Scriptures before various audiences. Where the Old Testament was known they used it explicitly and they expounded it as pointing to Christ. When the Old Testament was unknown (as here) the Apostle Paul simply used it without making explicit reference to it, focusing on those themes which are also evident in God’s general revelation to mankind. “[1]