It's Revelation, Not Deduction

It's quite common for religious people to act as though they have to convince friends and loved ones to believe in God and in Jesus Christ. Persuasion. Arguments. Proofs.

Also common is a sort of mocking triumphalism. Unbelievers, apparently, are stupid for not seeing the Gospel. "The truth is obvious! Written in the sky and in every human heart!"

And those of us who find belief already within us, we can easily imagine we deduced it all. God's existence. His moral order. Salvation through the atoning death of Jesus.

It's also a foundational premise of "justification theory"—the common reading of Paul and the common understanding of Christianity that this blog is dedicated to undermining. People are "without excuse" because they can see that God exists and holds us morally accountable, but choose to ignore it.

But I call nonsense to all of the above.

Paul Did Not Deduce God or Jesus . . .

We don't know what Paul's childhood was like, exactly. His family came from Tarsus, but they were Roman citizens. They were also Jewish. Hold onto that thought.

According to some people, God is obvious. If we are intelligent, we should reject atheism, polytheism, pantheism, and any belief other than monotheism. There is even a verse in one of Paul's letters that seems to affirm this idea: "that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them" (Romans 1:19 NASB).

Hint: Romans 1:19 is not what Paul believes. It is what his opponents believe. In a future essay, I will discuss how Romans 1:18-32 is an example of "speech in character" and not indicative of Paul's belief.

So, did Paul look at the stars one night and say, "Someone must have made those!"? Nope. Paul did not deduce the existence of God. Faith in God through Moses and the Torah was passed on to Paul with his mother's milk.

In a similar way, Paul did not deduce Jesus or the Gospel: "For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but [I received it] through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12 NASB).

Paul belonged to a militant wing of the Pharisee party. According to Acts, he studied under a famous rabbi. Anyone who is well-versed in the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Jewish writings and traditions surrounding these writings) can see that Paul is an expert. In my opinion, Paul is a Torah genius. I will undoubtedly write about that someday here.

But he did not reason out the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus. What actually happened is that Paul was traveling and a heavenly voice spoke to him (according to Acts and probably confirmed in Galatians 1). Any religious Jew in the first century, hearing a heavenly voice, would assume it was God.

Imagine Paul's trepidation when the voice claimed to be Jesus, the one he was persecuting!

Paul knew God through what had been revealed to the Israelites long before he was born. And he knew Jesus by means of a direct revelation from Jesus himself.

Consider Abraham . . .

People have often asked, "Why Abraham?" There is a Jewish legend about Abraham—apologies for the lack of citation here—that partially speculates on why God chose Abraham as his friend. According to the legend, Abraham saw a house in the distance and reasoned that someone governed that house. If that is so, he reasoned, someone governs this world we live in.

And in that moment, God said to Abraham (Abram): "Go from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you" (Genesis 12:1 NASB).

Now, in the Jewish story (not in the Bible), Abraham began to deduce God's existence and then God revealed himself to Abraham. This story reflects rational people trying to guess why God would choose a random person for such a monumental initiative to make himself known to the world.

But rational people cannot fathom mysteries.

As far as we know, Abraham did not deduce God. God spoke to Abraham.

Paul's Gospel Is Revelational . . .

But we have more to go on that merely the example of two great Biblical personalities. We have multiple statements in Paul's writings claiming that the Gospel can only be known by revelation.

Before I share examples, I want to clarify what I mean here by "revelation." I am not talking about the Bible as revelation. I do not mean "if there are words in the Bible that seem to say a certain thing, this comes directly from God." There are many, many problems with a statement like that. I'll pose just one: whose interpretation of the Bible?

When I talk about revelation, I mean something hidden, something between the Spirit of God and an individual soul. Invisible to all but the person who experiences it. And one person's revelation is not going to convince another person. Each person can have their own revelatory experience. Very rarely would such revelation involve a Paul or Abraham experience of a voice from heaven. In my case, I know I simply went from unbelief to belief on an evening in September of 1987.

What did Paul think about the issue?

Therefore I make known to you

that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says,

"Jesus is accursed";

and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord,"

except by the Holy Spirit.

—1 Corinthians 12:3

How does a person come to believe in Jesus? "By the Holy Spirit" is Paul's answer. He says elsewhere:

So faith [comes] from hearing,

and hearing by the word of Christ.

—Romans 10:17 NASB

He does not say that faith comes by deduction or philosophy. It happens more mystically, when a person hears about Christ and something invisible happens inside them at the same time.

Paul explicitly denies that philosophy (and by extension, human reasoning) can bring someone to know God:

For since in the wisdom of God

the world through its wisdom did not [come to] know God,

God was pleased

through the foolishness of the message preached

to save those who believe.

—1 Corinthians 1:21 NASB

People who are outside of our community think our beliefs are foolish. This should not upset us or cause us to mock or denounce them. We are not smarter or more spiritually attuned than other people. We are simply the fortunate recipients of a gift we do not deserve.

Sure, there are "proofs of God's existence." They have some value. We can argue that God is real from the existence of the universe (the cosmological argument). We can argue that he is the one who made the laws of physics and the order we see in the universe (the teleological argument). We can argue that God exists because we know there is a right and wrong and someone had to make us with a conscience (the moral argument). And there is an abstract philosophical argument—since we can conceive of an Absolute Being, this Absolute Being must exist—that is difficult to understand (the ontological argument). There are other arguments as well.

But none of these are "proofs." Philosophy cannot prove anything really.

Philosophy is "the art of asking the right questions," says Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. It is "a kind of thinking that has a beginning but no end." And he also says, "In it, the awareness of the problem outlives all solutions" (God in Search of Man, chapter 1). Philosophy is endless questioning and definitely does not lead to faith in the God of the Bible or in Jesus Christ. (Please note, I am not saying philosophy is bad or worthless, but rather that it is inadequate to solve issues of belief).

According to Paul, faith in Jesus comes by a personal, individual revelation to each person via the Holy Spirit. Now, this happens through human relationships usually and not random divine appearances. But even so, the definitive cause of belief is not reason, but revelation. You may have received it from your parents, but they were not the efficient cause of your faith. They were a vehicle, perhaps, but the magic happened invisibly between you and the Spirit.

Some Other Apostles Weigh In . . .

When Peter answered Jesus' question, "Who do you think I am?" he said: "You are the Christ" (Mark 8:29 NASB). And Jesus said something pertinent to our discussion:

Blessed are you, Simon Barjona,

because flesh and blood did not reveal [this] to you,

but My Father who is in heaven.

—Matthew 16:17 NASB

At the end of his "High Priestly Prayer," Jesus says:

I have made Your name known to them,

and will make it known,

so that the love with which You loved Me

may be in them,

and I in them.

—John 17:26 NASB

Jesus makes it known to us. He specifically says in the prayer that he is not talking only about the Twelve but also all who "will believe" in the future.

And I will go to another text from John for my final example. It is a text that was opaque to me for the longest time until I came to believe that the Gospel is revealed, not deduced:

And [as for] you, the anointing

which you received from Him

remains in you,

and you have no need for anyone to teach you;

but as His anointing teaches you about all things,

and is true and is not a lie,

and just as it has taught you,

you remain in Him.

—1 John 2:27

The issue in this letter is rival teachers who have caused arguments and division in the Asia Minor communities. John tells the recipients that they have an "anointing." I am well aware that miracle-minded groups have used the word "anointing" to refer to some special and rare gift from God for preachers and leaders. But this is not how John uses the word.

Anointing is a concept from ancient times, having perfumed oil poured onto the skin. John is making an analogy to the Holy Spirit who is poured out onto Jesus-followers. But the anointing is not rare. All Jesus-followers receive it. So what does John mean by it?

My conclusion: John says all Jesus-followers were shown the truth at the beginning of their faith journey and that revelation he calls "the Anointing." And in later times, when people began to wonder of they needed to believe a different Gospel, John says, "Believe the anointing." In other words: look back to the realization you came to when you first believed, because that was the truth.

We were not taught the Gospel by flesh and blood. Even if it came from parents, a friend, a priest or pastor—they were simply the vehicles. God himself, God the Spirit, revealed it to us invisibly and that is why we believed.

Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? . . .

In Paul's day, philosophers were the celebrities of the Greco-Roman world. Stoics. Epicureans. Pythagoreans. And more.

So when Paul challenges the congregants at Corinth concerning their admiration of rhetoric and philosophy, he is speaking to current issues of his day:

Where is the wise person?

Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age?

—1 Corinthians 1:20 NASB

God has made the wisdom of the world foolish. Paul understands that the message of Jesus crucified sounds unsophisticated to sages and philosophers. But he points out something important:

The world through its wisdom

did not come to know God.

—1 Corinthians 1:21 NASB

If philosophy could find universal truth, wouldn't philosophers conclude that Jesus Christ is Lord? But no one can conclude that except by the invisible working of the Holy Spirit. While the wise in Greece and Rome had fancy rhetoric and brilliant conceptions of the nature of life, the universe, and everything, Paul had some preposterous claims about a voice from heaven and a Jewish sage who was resurrected after being crucified by the Romans.

But those preposterous claims are our joy and delight!

We speak God's wisdom in a mystery,

the hidden [wisdom]

which God predestined

before the ages

to our glory.

—1 Corinthians 2:7 NASB