Cornerstone # 1 - God's Revelation

This first cornerstone seems somewhat mundane. It's a simple question, really, but our view of its answer is fundamentally important to the Christian faith. The question is:

Has God revealed himself to us, or is he unknowable?

If God has decided to shroud himself from us, then any discussion about God, his nature and attributes, belief, faith and heaven are then just pure speculation. I doubt many people hold to a view of God being completely unrevealed. Atheists hold that God doesn't exist, so the question of revelation is moot. Theists may not be clear on the nature of revelation, but I suspect they hold that some degree of revelation has occurred.

The Bible tells us that God has revealed himself in four ways:

1. Through creation
2. In our hearts and on our consciences
3. In the written word: Scripture
   
4. In the person of Jesus Christ
   

Note: and of course the Bible has references to other less common forms of revelation, for example Moses and the burning bush; Paul and the road to Damascus.

Paul used the first two as the basis of an argument that all men stand convicted before God because through the revelation made evident in creation and their consciences, they can not claim ignorance of what God demands of them.

Note: That's an argument that won't win many converts down at the pub, I suspect. :-)

Still, it is interesting that almost all people experience on occasion some form of awe when gazing upon the vastness or grandeur of creation. Similarly, there are things universally accepted as "right" and "wrong" (though the idea is being eroded by post-modernist notions of relativism, and individuals may choose to ignore or violate them). These are the things written on our consciences.

Note: I found the book, "The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man" by J. Budziszewski a fascinating study in what happens when we try to replace God's law written on our hearts with our own. Budziszewsky (pronounced Bud-a-shev-ski) argues that our God-programmed concsciences will not be, over time, denied. When supressed for too long will exact its revenge in other ways. I couldn't follow all the philosophy, but I found the book interesting.

We could go round-and-round on the validity and nature of the first two revelations, but I'm not sure it's really the main thrust of this. In my mind those two go to the question of God's basic existence and a very, very basic guidance of how we live. But the Christian faith is not built directly on those two, but rather the third form of revelation (Scripture) and the fourth (Jesus Christ).

As I sit back and ponder this, one question keeps coming up in my mind: Why? Why has God chosen to reveal himself to us? The answer to this, I feel, is tied up in why God chose to create us in the first place: so that we may experience the blessing of seeking him, drawing close to him, and sharing his perfect love with us.

So we start these six cornerstones with a very basic assertion: God exists, he created us, and he has chosen to reveal himself to us. Take away any of those three things and the Christian faith falls apart:

• If God doesn't exist, then clearly the Christian faith is a fabrication
• If God didn't create us, then it the Christian story of reconciliation to our creator God through the sacrifice of his Son seems odd. (I'll admit this argument is not as strong as the first)
• If God has not revealed himself to us, then even if he does exist, and even if he did create us, we could not know anything about him and any religious construction would be, as I said earlier, complete speculation.

As there will be in all six of my cornerstones, there is an element of faith -- or trust -- that this is true. It can't be "proven" in the normal sense of the word. Rather, we as humans come to a point where we must choose to believe this.

My point in this post is simply this: the journey towards Christian faith relies upon this first cornerstone. The Christian faith cannot be supported if this first assertion -- that God exists, he created us, and has chosen to reveal himself to us -- is not true.

Next: a closer look at God's written revelation through Scripture.