God, Revelation and Authority: God Who Speaks and Shows (Vol. 1)

Carl F. H. Henry

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781433571084
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia cristiana

Part 1 in amonumental six-volume set that presents an undeniable case for the revealed authority of God to a generation that has forgotten who he is and what he has done.

GOD,
REVELATION AND AUTHORITY

VOLUME I

GOD WHO SPEAKS AND SHOWS

Preliminary Considerations

CARL F. H. HENRY

Dedicated to my wife

HELGA

and to our children

PAUL and CAROL

who helped and heartened in many ways

God, Revelation and Authority Volume I: God Who Speaks and Shows Preliminary Considerations

Copyright © originally copyrighted and published in 1976. This edition copyright © 1999 by Carl F. H. Henry.

This edition published by Crossway Books

A division of Good News Publishers

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

Published in association with the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. For more information concerning the Henry Institute, contact Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2825 Lexington Road, Louisville, KY 40280; or call toll free, 1-800-626-5525.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President, in helping to underwrite the publication of this new edition of God, Revelation and Authority.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law. Crossway^® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Hardcover design by: Cindy Kiple

Paperback cover design by: D² DesignWorks

First Crossway printing, 1999

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-58134-041-9
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7108-4
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7106-0
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7107-7

ISBN: 1-58134-056-7 (Set of 6 volumes : pbk)

Bible quotations from Revised Standard Version, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission.

Bible quotations marked KJV are from the Authorized or King James Version.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Henry, Carl Ferdinand Howard. 1913-

God, revelation, and authority / Carl F.H. Henry.

p. cm.

Originally published: Waco, Tex. : Word Books, cl976–cl983.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: v. 1. God who speaks and shows, preliminary considerations — v. 2-4.

God who speaks and shows, fifteen theses — v. 5-6. God who stands and stays.

ISBN 1-58134-081-8 (v. 1 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-041-9 (v. 1 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-082-6 (v. 2 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-042-7 (v. 2 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-083-4 (v. 3 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-043-5 (v. 3 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-084-2 (v. 4 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-044-3 (v. 4 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-085-0 (v. 5 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-045-1 (v. 5 : pbk)

ISBN 1-58134-086-9 (v. 6 : hc) ISBN 1-58134-046-X (v. 6 : pbk).

1. Evangelicalism. I. Title.

BR1640.A25H45 1999
230’.044—dc21	98-51637

Contents

1. Series Preface
2. Preface
3. Introduction to Theology
4. 1.The Crisis of Truth and Word
5. 2.The Clash of Cultural Perspectives
6. 3.Revelation and Myth
7. 4.The Ways of Knowing
8. 5.The Rise and Fall of Logical Positivism
9. 6.The Countercultural Revolt
10. 7.The Jesus Movement and Its Future
11. 8.Secular Man and Ultimate Concerns
12. 9.The Meaning or Myths Man Lives By
13. 10.Theology and Science
14. Supplementary Note: Science and the Invisible
15. 11.Theology and Philosophy
16. 12.Is Theology a Science
17. 13.The Method and Criteria of Theology (I)
18. 14.The Method and Criteria of Theology (II)
19. 15.Empirical Verification and Christian Theism
20. 16.Man’s Primal Religious Experience
21. 17.A Priori Explanation of Religion
22. 18.The Philosophical Transcendent A Priori (I)
23. 19.The Philosophical Transcendent A Priori (II)
24. 20.The Theological Transcendent A Priori
25. 21.The Philosophic Transcendental (Critical) A Priori
26. 22.Transcendental Religious Apriorism
27. 23.Reflections on Religious Apriorism
28. 24.The “Common Ground” Controversy
29. Bibliography
30. Person Index
31. Scripture Index
32. Subject Index
33. Back Cover

Series Preface

AUTHENTIC CHRISTIANITY is always rooted in a sense of God’s sovereign timetable. We cannot be indifferent to the past, nor to the future-embracing as it does the new millennium and, in due season, the Lord’s return. Likewise, we dare not be indifferent to the present-as each generation of Christians is responsible for its own spiritual decisions, and upon these, destiny revolves.

Having lived through most of the twentieth century, I have touched the course and conflicts of modern theology in a variety of contexts: first as an unrepentant churchgoer, later as a questioning newspaper reporter and editor, still later as an inquisitive seminarian, and eventually as an academician pursing the exposition of evangelical distinctives.

The six volumes of God, Revelation, and Authority represent my effort to challenge the course of modern theology. In 1978 Time magazine recognized that the series offered far more than mere commentary on religious events. God, Revelation, and Authority is a challenge to the fluctuating theological outlook of a century that lacked religious compass bearings.

My intention was to confront the vacillating liberalism that had overtaken the spiritual arena. In a plea for recovery from this directionless outlook, the project issued a call to reconsider and reevaluate the forfeited distinctives of the biblical heritage. Here was a serious attempt to state the scriptural revelation on its own terms-fully aware of the issues at stake both in the history of Western thought and in contemporary theology.

Just thirty years before the publication of the first volume of God, Revelation, and Authority, I had called conservative Christians to reenter the cultural arena from which most of them had retreated (see The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Evangelicalism, 1947). By the late 1970s, a growing army of disappointed modernists and apprehensive Barthians recognized that a comprehensive world-and-life view must underlay any recovery of Christian social activity and reaffirmation of a revelatory theology. The 1960s-when even some professing Christian theologians had insisted that “God is dead”-attested only that the surviving liberalism was built on quicksand.

By then it was evident that Barthianism-no matter how aggressive-could not sustain a permanent theological outlook. With its welcome of higher criticism and its marginalization of history and nature, Neo-orthodoxy lacked consistency and the power to prevent the degeneration of humanism to raw naturalism. In the end, Barthianism accommodated the collapse of modernism into postmodernism, and its vengeful repudiation of any objective conception of deity, truth, and goodness.

My ambition in God, Revelation, and Authority was not, however, merely to note the enfeebling weaknesses and costly consequences of modernized theology. I aimed to exhibit the logical power of truth and the permanent relevance of the scriptural alternative.

It is sometimes said that ancient philosophy grappled with the problem of being and becoming, medieval philosophy with the problem of guilt and redemption, and modern philosophy with the epistemic problem of probability and truth. The concerns of philosophy in the postmodern era are innumerable. Yet, the spirit of our end-of-an-era age longs for hope. Unfortunately, not all that passes for hope is genuine. The New Testament exhortation is for Christians to be always ready to defend our claims against anyone who asks a reason for the hope we hold (1 Peter 3:15). Hope without reason has little in common with the Christian hope-which is focused on Jesus Christ, who has come and is coming again. True Christian hope is always Christological in its foundation.

This is immensely different from modern liberation theologies that tend to view the Kingdom of God in terms of immanent evolution, and the eschatological millennium as a human achievement. In contrast, Christian hope anticipates the sudden and unpredictable transformation of all earthly values through the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in fullness.

The Christian hope is diluted whenever theology clouds the reality of humanity’s twofold eternal destiny. Among the ironies of our time is the fact that some quasi-evangelical theologians profess to honor the love of God by denying the divine justice. A distorted view of God’s character is made to excuse the most horrific evils. A loving God thus becomes indifferent even to monstrous wickedness.

Some theologians who acknowledge an evil reality akin to Satan nonetheless have no room for the doctrine of an eternal hell. God’s unconditional love is said to close hell’s doors from access. Yet, so violent have been the evils of our times-terrorist bombings and mass murder, chemical weaponry and nuclear warfare-that these are not reducible to the personified wickedness of our era. These evils cry out for God’s righteous justice.

The attempted assimilation of these evils under a comprehensive divine love and into a doctrine of final reconciliation and universal salvation is a direct subversion of the scriptural message. The Apostle Paul’s comments on God’s comprehensive rescue and redemption appear in a context in which he pleads for personal faith in Christ as the only alternative to doom.

It was gratifying that the six volumes of God, Revelation, and Authority were welcomed as a long overdue exposition of evangelical theology and its cognitive defensibility. At the time, most contributions to theology were variants of the current confusion.

Systematic theology had been neglected as much in evangelical circles as among non-evangelicals. Since then, perhaps under the stimulus of God, Revelation, and Authority, over a dozen systematic projects have appeared. Some are more worthy than others, of course. A few are concerned to exhibit a single denominational track. Some seek points of mutuality with non-evangelical theologies, thus conceding evangelical essentials through recourse to Narrative Theology and Postmodernism.

If I were writing God, Revelation, and Authority today, I would add material to address these new concerns. I did address those issues in Toward a Recovery of Christian Belief (Crossway, 1990), which was based upon my Rutherford Lectures delivered in 1989.

It is specially gratifying that God, Revelation, and Authority has retained its interest am...