Carl F. H. Henry - God, Revelation and Authority

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GOD,
REVELATION AND AUTHORITY

VOLUME I

GOD WHO SPEAKS AND SHOWS

Preliminary Considerations

CARL F. H. HENRY

CROSSWAY BOOKS WHEATON, ILLINOIS

A DIVISION OF GOOD NEWS PUBLISHERS

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.

Hardcover design by: Cindy Kiple

Paperback cover design by: D2 DesignWorks

First Crossway printing, 1999

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 1-58134-080-X (Set of 6 volumes : hc)

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, cl976cl983.

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.

15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99

15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

AUTHENTIC CHRISTIANITY is always rooted in a sense of Gods 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 Lords 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.