And he must win the battle. And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us. The Prince of Darkness grins. We tremble not for Him, His rage we can endure, For lo, His doom is sure, One little word shall fell Him. That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them applyeth. The Spirit and the gifts are ours, through Him who with us sideth. Let good and kindred go. This mortal life also. The body they may kill. God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. It's not every day that we have a hymn writer in our class, but Luther is right here. I wanted to see if you were awake. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day that you've given to us. We pray that you would help us to focus our attention upon the learning, the lectures. May we not just fill our heads with knowledge, but may it impact upon our whole lives, everything that we think and do. May every thought be brought captive to the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray for our friends and family this day. We pray all this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. And you may be seated. I didn't realize standing up here in the middle of the front would be like performing on stage with these spotlights. Before I forget, today we do have another one of our Q&A sessions scheduled for one o'clock in room two, from one to two o'clock, and that will, we will also have pizza provided as the last time. So I believe there was an email sent out where you had to respond, so we had some idea of how many of you would be attending. Just to give you a little bit of background about myself, my name is Jeff Waddington. I am a adjunct professor of systematic theology here, as well as your teaching assistant for this semester. I'm an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I serve as stated supply at Knox OPC in Lansdowne, which is down by Upper Darby. And I am the stated clerk of the Presbyterian of Philadelphia. And also the happy husband of 28 years to my wife, Ruth, and I have two daughters, Susanna, who's 26, and Carolyn, who will be 22 at the end of this month. I came here 22 years ago and have never left. was not my plan, but that's how the Lord has worked things out. So this morning I wanted to talk with you about the relationship of special revelation to natural revelation or the mutual interrelation or interpenetration of natural and special revelation. I don't think there's anything I'm going to say here this morning that's original or spectacular. I'm simply building on the work of Gerhardus Voss, Cornelius Van Til and William Dennison. Three works that are helpful in particular, Biblical Theology by Voss, Nature and Scripture in the book The Infallible Word by Dr. Van Til, and then Dr. Dennison's chapter, A Reassessment of Natural and Special Revelation in the book In Defense of the Eschaton. Those are the three sources from which I am working this morning. To start off, I wanted to point out that God is in a covenant relationship with the human race, as well as more particularly with his people, so that our functioning in this world must take into consideration, beloved, one unified philosophy of history that reflects God's comprehensive plan for the universe, for creation, and for redemption. So behind natural and special revelation, you will find one unified philosophy of history. That's our way of putting it. God's one plan that takes up creation, providence. Last week we learned about natural revelation involving providence and history and nature. So all of those things we can presuppose Scott Doherty's lecture as we begin our look at the relationship of natural or general revelation and special revelation. Natural and special revelation, in other words, are not two different revelations, but two modes of one revelation from the triune God. One revelation from the one triune God to man, to the human race. And if you have questions, folks, feel free to raise your hand, and we'll try to answer those questions. So we understand that as a general introduction to what we're going to look at this morning, is that there is one unified philosophy of history. That's the language of Dr. Van Til and his work, Nature and Scripture. And it appears in other writings as well. We often, why I am stressing this is that in the broader Christian community, these two forms or modes of the one revelation are often understood almost to be two different, totally radically different forms of revelation. In the medieval Roman Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, there is no natural revelation at all. And those who are influenced by him, both within Roman Catholicism and within Protestantism, while they may not share that particular view, Very often their understanding of natural revelation is colored by Thomas's view, what Dr. Van Til would call neutral or an autonomous view of nature. I'm not quite sure when in the history of the church the idea or the concept or the term natural revelation first came into existence, But it does reflect the teaching of God's word. Now, yes, both natural and special revelation are mutually interpreting, mutually reinforcing, mutually interrelated, inextricably intertwined. And so to treat them as if they were hermetically sealed or vacuum sealed off from one another is, I believe, an error. So let us begin with natural revelation while I peel off this layer here. I once knew a preacher who used to take off his blazer and flip it like so because it had a fancy inside and throw it over the chair just so. That same man also had a lighted painting of himself behind his desk in his office. Seriously, it was. He wasn't egotistical. So with regard to natural revelation, let's state up front that God has addressed and is addressing, so the past, and I probably should say will be addressing until the Lord returns, human beings through what he has made. We learned about this last week, right, in Scott's class. I was about to call him Dr. Dougherty, but he's not that yet. So we learn that God addresses us through what he has made. Natural as well as special revelation, of course, we need to remember is colored by the pre-fall and post-fall condition of man and his environment. In other words, in the Garden of Eden there was both natural and special revelation. In the garden there was what is called pre-redemptive special revelation. Right now I want us to focus on the natural revelation mode. So we see the natural revelation in the pre-fall context will be colored slightly differently than post-fall. Pre-fall, there's no curse upon nature. There's no wrath of God against the human race. There's no attempt to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now, after the fall, all of those things are in fact the case. But before we get to the fall, let's consider natural revelation in itself. Natural revelation is implanted in us by God as well as that it can be augmented by acquired knowledge. It's implanted in us by God and can be augmented by acquired knowledge. Again, Scott Doherty mentioned this last week. It's a debate in the history of the Church, especially the Reformed wing, as to what exactly natural knowledge of God is prior to the fall. But the Apostle Paul in Romans, chapter 1, verses 18 to 32, where he is giving us a rather long list of the sinfulness of the fallen human race, says that knowing God, they did not honor him as God. Knowing God, not having known God, but knowing God. So natural revelation is implanted in us. This is sometimes referred to as content, innate-ism. And it can be augmented by learning, that is, by looking around and thinking about what God has made. And that acquired knowledge is what we would call capacity in natism. That is, God has built into us the ability to learn about him from the things that he has made. But he is also, and this is the important point, that God has implanted in us natural revelation. He has implanted in us natural revelation of himself. That is, it's not merely that we have a capacity to know God, it's not that we might know God, it's not that we can know God, but that we do, in fact. No God. I'm sorry? Oh, content and natism. I think that those two expressions, content and capacity and natism, were coined by Dr. Lane Tipton. Dr. Tipton and I used to work at the seminary bookstore back in the day when it was on campus. And so we used to, as we were shelving books and doing other sorts of things, we used to talk theology. That simply means that when Paul talks about human beings having knowledge of God, we actually have. knowledge of God impressed upon us, implanted in us, not just the ability to come to an awareness of God, but that we are, as soon as we become aware of our surroundings, we know God. So that's a content in Atheism. As well as we can learn about God through the other things that he has made. Remember that when we think about God revealing himself through the things he has made, that includes you and me. That is, he has made us, and his revelation comes to us through our own consciousness and conscience. Natural revelation reveals to us the triune God, It comes to us through what He has made. And as I just said, He has made us. Our consciousness and our conscience reveal God. Now in pre-fall condition, that would have meant that obedience to God would have been intuitive. It would have, because we were created in righteousness, holiness, and knowledge. Paul in Colossians 3.10 and Ephesians 4.24 tells us that we are being renewed in the image of God or after the image of God in righteousness, holiness, and the true knowledge. And following John Calvin, the reformed tradition has understood that what is being renewed presumably was what was lost when Adam and Eve fell. That is, that they were created upright. That's Ecclesiastes. Yes. It's as soon as they are aware of their surroundings. It's implanted. So yes, if as a Reformed Christian, I believe that a baby can be regenerated, I don't have any problem with saying yes, a baby has. Now, can that baby write it down and articulate it? No. But yes, I do believe that that knowledge, because it's implanted in us, it's not, we become aware of it, and yes, as we grow older and as we mature, that knowledge also matures with us. It develops. The point, though, is that when God creates us, he creates us to have fellowship with him. Therefore, he's not going to leave it up to hit or miss, haphazard, trial by error approach. That's, if you follow Thomas Aquinas, that's the mode you have to have. That's the mode you have to follow. So our conscience and our consciousness reveal God. Now remember, we cannot read back into that pre-fall situation our own experience, because we are fallen creatures. As soon as we are aware of God, and the God we are aware of is the triune God of scripture. As soon as we become aware of that, now I'm not saying we know that God is triune. But the God of whom we are aware by virtue of the implanted knowledge in us is the God who is triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God does not evolve from a monad, from the equivalent of a billiard ball. or a marble into the triune God. There are some folk who seem to talk as if that were the case. God does not evolve. So natural revelation is also non-verbal and indirect. That is, it is mediated through creation. Nevertheless, what God reveals in nature or through nature is true and sufficient for its purpose. Natural revelation also needs to be, is necessary as the backdrop or the stage or the playground on which special revelation is given. I'll have more to say about that. Dr. Van Til, in his chapter, Nature and Scripture, points out that natural revelation, in fact, shares the four perfections of special revelation because it is the first mode of the one revelation of the one triune God. In other words, it shares the four perfections that we typically think of when we are discussing scripture. It shares those because it's the same revelation. It shares those because it's coming from the same God. So we're going to look at briefly, hopefully, the four perfections of natural revelation. First, necessity. Natural revelation, we would say, is necessary as the backdrop to Adam's probation or prohibition, since the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not look any different from any other tree in the garden. We would say, put it slightly differently, that In order for Adam to recognize the tree of life on the one hand, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on the other hand, he would have to be able to distinguish them, not in the sense of how they appear, but in terms of there being different trees from all the other trees in the garden. Remember, God had said, from all the other trees of the garden you may eat. do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. So that ability to distinguish one tree from another without suggesting that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for instance, looked evil, that establishes the arbitrariness of the test to which Adam and Eve were put. That is, if the tree doesn't look any different than any other tree, if God doesn't give them the reasons why they cannot eat from that tree, other than if you eat of it you will definitely die, This is what we call an arbitrary test. Arbitrary doesn't mean without reason. It means without those reasons being indicated. Those reasons are not shared beyond God saying, I've said it. That's all that matters. just like a parent, although human parents usually find that that doesn't work with their children, and of course Adam and Eve themselves went on to disobey God. It demonstrates God's intent The necessity of natural revelation demonstrates God's intent that our knowledge is and should be recognized as avowedly dependent upon God in all areas of life. That is, not merely with the one command, the prohibition, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In order for that, of course, to have any meaning or significance, we must recognize the fact that God is telling Adam and Eve through him and us through them, telling us that we are dependent upon God for every aspect of our thinking. Every aspect. Dr. Van Til has the, I think we heard this illustration mentioned, was on a train one day and he saw a man holding up his grandchild and she was on his lap and she's slapping him in the face. And that's an example of fallen human beings in how we relate to God. What we're saying here is prior to the fall. So this is not because we're fallen, that we're dependent upon God for everything that we think as well as do or feel. It is we are dependent upon God because that is the way he has made us. We are dependent creatures. Now after the fall, natural revelation necessarily must manifest that nature is now subject to futility because of man's disobedience and then followed by the resulting divine curse and wrath of God. So there are changes, as I've already mentioned, that occur because of the fall. Before the fall, Adam and Eve, were dependent upon God, they knew it, they did not, at least until the serpent shows up, they did not despise that. But after the fall, involved in the fall, is the questioning of God's character and concern for Adam and Eve. But after the fall, the necessity of natural revelation reveals to us that we in fact are under God's curse and wrath. Now let's switch to the authority of natural revelation. God speaks to us in nature through the things he has made, and the revelation that comes through nature is authoritative since it comes from God. We might say that this is the self-attestation of natural revelation. By self-attestation, we mean there is nothing higher to which it needs or can appeal. God is behind his revelation, so in effect, it's God speaking. It is God speaking. We might put it this way, that all over creation, we find that God has his ownership signs posted. Perhaps you've walked around the city and you come across the fence that says this property belongs to so and so, do not trespass. Or you've been out in the country and you go hunting and there's a sign saying do not hunt on this property. I see signs like that. Well, God has signs all over his creation. Notice I said his creation. It belongs to him. He has the authority and the right to tell us what he wants to tell us. The authority of natural revelation reveals our obligation to study nature in obedience to God. and to study nature in obedience to God. That was true before the fall. It's still true after the fall. The difference, of course, is now we resist, as falling creatures, we resist that. Now, as those who are united to Christ by faith who are saved, that we're in the process of being restored. But of course, you know, we still have the war against sin, the traces of sin that are still remaining. The dominion of sin has been broken by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we still have the mopping up operation. Years ago, a New Testament scholar by the name of Oscar Kuhlman wrote a book or two or more talking about what we call the already not yet aspect of reality. And he compared the time between Christ's first and second coming. He compared it to two things, a chess game, where a move is made, say, in the middle of the game, which actually has determined the outcome. But you still have to play the rest of the game. Or the Christian life between Christ's first and second coming is like D-Day, when the Allies landed on Normandy and basically sealed the fate of Nazism. Yet they still had almost another whole year in which they had to clear out France and then go into Germany. And of course, you may remember they had that little fight in Belgium called the Battle of the Bulge. But the point is, sin has been defeated, in principle and yet we still wrestle with it. Well, the obligation to study nature and obedience to God was true in the garden before the fall. It's still true in the garden after the fall. So that's the authority of natural revelation. Then we go on to the sufficiency. As Dr. Van Til points out, natural revelation by itself was never sufficient for God's intended purpose. However, it was historically sufficient. So there's a way, and if we treat natural revelation in abstraction from its relationship to special revelation, it becomes insufficient. But if we treat it as it was meant to be treated, that is, in mutual interrelationship with special revelation, then it is sufficient because it's God's intent. It's not as if he made a first attempt through natural revelation and found out that that didn't work, so he communicates through special revelation. That's not the biblical understanding. Dr. Van Til refers to natural revelation as an inherent limiting notion to supernatural revelation. Have you come across that expression, limiting concept? That's simply Dr. Van Til's way of talking about how one doctrine impinges on another doctrine. We ought never to interpret one doctrine so that it conflicts with another doctrine. Now having said that, because we are finite creatures as well as sinful creatures in ourselves, there will be times when revelation appears paradoxical. There is no real contradiction But we are not able, for various sundry reasons, to untie the knot, so to speak. The favorite example would be divine sovereignty and human responsibility. I do believe that the scriptures are clear that both of those things are true. But how they are true, we can work on that for a long time. And we ought to work on that, but it is a challenge. Natural revelation provides the background for the historical action of man as a covenant personality. That is, natural revelation provides the context in which Man goes from a state of innocency to a state of sin and misery, to a state of salvation, to a state of glory. Natural revelation is sufficient for that. Natural revelation is now, post-fall, sufficient to condemn man before the throne of a holy God. That's typically the thing that we talk about when we say, is natural revelation sufficient? And we say, yes, specifically to condemn a sinful man, a sinful creature, before a holy God. Natural revelation is sufficient as the playground of special revelation. Or if you don't like that language, we could say the theater. of special revelation, and it is the context in which the gradual distinction between the elect and the reprobate occurs in history. So history is real. It is under God's sovereign plan. It is enabled to function because of the sufficiency of natural revelation. But that gradual distinction that occurs between the separation out of the elect and the reprobate does happen in the context of the natural revelation serving as the playground. Now, also related to that is that natural revelation enables the gospel to go out into all the world so that all those who are among the elect will hear and respond, will believe, will be baptized and brought into the church, and from that time forward will be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of this is shared territory with a consideration of the doctrine of common grace. So if this sounds familiar and you've heard it talked about under that category, that is the case. Are there any questions? Yeah, okay, let's see. Okay, go ahead. No, no, no, I said, no, yeah, okay, that was not my intent. We're looking at natural revelation right now, but don't confuse looking at it, because we're focused on it, To say that it's acting by itself, it's not. It's insufficient if we were to subtract special revelation. But because it meant to function as an integrated whole, it is sufficient. Because to say it's insufficient, without saying anything further, would suggest that God didn't know what he was doing. It's insufficient to lead someone to salvation. although it is absolutely necessary in order for someone to come to salvation. It's what's sometimes called a necessary but insufficient condition. It needs to be present, but it isn't the sufficient cause of something. That help? And so the thing that you just said about it being like common grace, natural revelation, enables the gospel to go out to the nations, you're saying the gospel as a special revelation operating within the general revelation? Correct. Can you elaborate on how it would be presented as a backdrop for glorification, too? Backdrop for glorification? Well, insofar as there's a new heavens and a new earth. Well, I mean, that's how I would answer that. Again, if we're not separating out, it's one thing to focus on natural revelation and not have special revelation in our, under the microscope. It's another thing to say that they don't relate, interrelate. So we need to, I know it's easy to do that because we're not looking at it. Although some of my comments presuppose the interrelatedness. But yeah, the gospel goes out and is heard despite all of the problems that we face as the people of God to get to proclaim the gospel, you know, in other words, the harassment, persecution, death, et cetera. It's still God is enabling us to go out under the power of the Holy Spirit. in the context of natural revelation and common grace. And in fact, they may be the same thing from different angles at this point. So we've looked at the first three perfections. Now we come to the last, which is perspicuity. As I heard it said once, the one perfection which itself, the word does not convey what it is intending to say. So we're talking about the clarity of natural revelation. It is perspicuous, it is clear, because there is one triune God behind it who knows and understands all things in their relations to him and each other. There is nothing that is not a part of God's comprehensive plan. Now, if you don't think God has a comprehensive plan, or he cannot have a comprehensive plan, then, of course, you would have trouble with this. But the scriptures, I think, are pretty clear that he does, in fact, have a comprehensive plan. He knows the end from the beginning. Natural revelation, along with special revelation, provides certainty to our thinking about anything. Man thinks dependently everywhere about everything. Everything that we think about is dependent upon God and his revelation in nature and, of course, special revelation as well. Everything. There's nothing that we think about that isn't dependent upon God. Even if we didn't think about what we call the epistemological basis for this, just think about the fact that God upholds all of creation. He upholds the processes. He put them into place and he upholds them. If he removed his sustaining power, we would disappear in an instance. In an instance. Natural revelation is clear even in light of the fall. In other words, the problem is with us, our attempted suppression of the truth. The problem is with our subjective condition, not God's ability to communicate himself in either nature or scripture. Now, you've heard the name of Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher from the 18th century, lived almost the whole of it. And he, in reaction to the radical skepticism of the Scottish philosopher David Hume, developed a critical philosophy which divided the world into the noumenal and the phenomenal realms. called, sometimes we refer to it as dimensionalism, and that's what we're referring to, the noumenal and the phenomenal realm. The noumenal realm, or the phenomenal realm, is the world of facts. It's what the human mind can explain. The world of appearances, how things appear to us, how they look. The noumenal realm is the realm we do not have access to. That is the world of values, ethics, the world of God, of His revelation, if there is such a thing, of the human soul. Think for a minute about that. Does that square with the Christian faith? No. That's the basis of liberal theology, historically. Classical liberalism, as it came to be known, was a theology built upon the philosophical insights of Immanuel Kant. That's certainly true of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Oh, and the other thing that's in the noumenal realm are things in themselves, or the thing in itself, the ding on zick. That is, we can't know, I can't know what this is in itself. I can tell you how it appears to me. I can tell you it's kind of reddish brown variegated with some black in there. It's hard. It's got certain dimensions. It extends in space. All of that simply to say that that is also, so we could say that Immanuel Kant and his critical philosophy is the grandfather of postmodernism. See, God either cannot communicate in nature or in scripture, or if he did, he couldn't get through to us. Or if he did, we would mess up the message. as if God were somehow hand-tied or handcuffed because of the way the world is made or because of the fall, forgetting, of course, that God himself is the one who created this world. Natural revelation's clarity is also consistent with God's incomprehensibility, which may sound strange, It may sound strange, but it is in fact true, because God's incomprehensibility is actually the flip side of God's knowing himself fully and exhaustively. God is infinite. We are finite. By definition, we cannot know as God knows, either quantitatively or qualitatively. God is triune, three in one. We cannot know that way. God knows exhaustively. We can't know that way. God knows because he creates. We know because we discover. And this is what, of course, leads to what we call analogical thinking, thinking God's thoughts after him. That's why we say our thinking is dependent upon God. Absolutely. Now before the fall, man knew all this about natural and pre-redemptive special revelation. Subsequent to the fall, man fights against and hates natural as much as special revelation. Regeneration is required for fallen man to embrace either of the two modes of the one triune God's revelation. Fallen man fights against it. Now, here and there, a fallen man has to accept the truthfulness of some aspects of natural revelation because it's the way that things work in the world. Think of the book of Proverbs. Think of the book Song of Solomon, all the wisdom literature. It talks about there being a way that things work in the world, that wisdom is learning how to live in consistency or in conformity to the way things work. Well, the way things work is the way God set them up to work. The way things work is the way God has decided they would work. because of the fall, in order to properly understand natural as well as special revelation, regeneration is required. Again, that's not to say that fallen man can't understand some things. He has to in order to live in God's world. Remember, we live in God's world. We are surrounded by God's natural and special revelation. We live in a realm of common grace. And of course, we have the influence of the gospel. So it's not possible. And of course, when we say that a fallen man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, we don't mean to suggest that he or she is successful in doing that or that they really do that. It's that they are attempting to do that. We are attempting to do that when we want to go our own way. Note well, beloved, that we need to pay attention to the distinction between natural revelation and natural theology. The one is what God reveals about himself through what he has created, and the other is fallen or redeemed man's attempt to reflect upon it. It's just like the difference between scripture and commentary, or scripture and theology. But when we talk about natural theology, we often forget to make the distinction between God's revelation in nature, which is infallible, which is necessary, authoritative, clear, and sufficient, and to denote that, Those perfections ought not to be transferred necessarily to our reflections upon that. I say necessarily. It could be that we are reflecting accurately upon natural revelation or special revelation. But note the difference between the two. Often that is not recognized. And by the way, Dr. Van Til is accused often of rejecting natural theology. He in fact is not. If you've read or you will read Nature and Scripture, the first half is what I've covered here. The second half is about going after false forms of natural theology, but embracing a reformed understanding of natural theology. So he doesn't reject natural theology, he just rejects certain attempts at it. Greek philosophical attempts, Roman Catholic Thomas Aquinas attempts, Arminian attempts, those kinds of, that's what, so he doesn't reject natural theology. The reform scholastics about which we have learned an awful lot due to the research of Dr. Richard Muller, used to classify natural revelation done by unregenerate people as false theology. Pure and simple. Only Christians, according to the Protestant scholastics, reform scholastics in particular. Only Christians could do true natural theology. So I'm wondering if this lecture maybe provides a theological response for the headlines that showed up yesterday or the day before that suggest that the climatologists are telling us that we have 12 years to correct climate change problems. Well, there is a difference between the information conveyed and our attempts at interpreting it, right? Without getting into tipping the hat as to what I think, and I do have an opinion on such things, but that's... Well, I'm not convinced of climate change. But that's because I have a somewhat skeptical view of how science is practiced. So it's not science that's the problem, it's certain scientists. And that's true in all areas of human learning, right? So we don't want to become anti-science, but we want to do science to the glory of God. So that gets into the apologetics class. My major was apologetics, so it will show through in what I say. Although all of this here is based upon the work of Dr. Gerhardus Voss. So Van Til was a student of Voss. In fact, I learned this past weekend that when he was a student at Princeton, he and a friend of his were the only students of Dr. Voss. So if you read in various places that Van Til was a student of Voss, remember that he was virtually, at that period of time, the only one in the class. You know what they say about being the only one in the class? The likelihood of your being called upon increases drastically. But in that case, he appreciated that. So to answer your question, I think there is conflicting information, and I don't know enough to speak with any authority on that, other than that I'm skeptical of the climate change. I've read enough that I'm skeptical about it. Well, the other thing that occurs to me is that it may well be the height of humanity's arrogance to suggest that in some way, shape, or form, we truly have the ability to step into first Well, that's true, right? The idea that they can pinpoint 12 years, right? That shows a sign of assumed omniscience. And that's stepping, again, that's going beyond science to scientism. So yeah, as Christians, as we are studying God's word and thinking about these things, it will cause us to question a lot of what is out floating out there. So this can be a very practical course in that way. Yes. So just for clarity, you're saying that natural revelation is infallible, all this different perceptions, but our understanding of it may be flawed in that, so our natural theology has its limits. It's basically natural theology reflects what we, at this current moment, can understand of natural revelation. That would be true, except I don't want to be heard to be saying that it's necessarily the case that our particular natural theology is erroneous. I'm not suggesting that every form of natural theology is erroneous. I'm simply saying that it's possible that various – in fact, it is the case that various forms of natural theology are unbiblical. When you read the second half of Nature and Scripture, that's Dr. Manfield's point, but the whole argument of his chapter is that the Westminster Standards, which he believes are an excellent exposition of the Bible, that they have a particular natural theology, and that's what he's seeking to explain. I guess a semi-final question is, you talk about perspicuity and incomprehensibility of God. That is an excellent question to which I will not give an answer. But because it's... Give another example from the reform scholastics. They often talked about, you know, what was the minimal amount of knowledge one would have to have in order to be saved? Or, you know, what was the minimal one would have to profess or confess in order to be saved? And they would never answer that question because it's a dangerous thing to do. And so in this instance, the answer is that you're right in your asking the question. You're raising the question. It's absolutely right. And it's something that I wrestle with. What is the difference between arrogance and attempted omniscience as over against not being lazy? You see, there are times, I think, that we use the limitation of human knowledge as a cover for being lazy. So that's the, but on the other hand, we do need to recognize that there are limits. Give one example from the history of Reformed theology. Hermann Basing, I believe, argues in his Reformed Dogmatics and in Our Reasonable Faith that the debate between supra and infralapsarians was a debate that goes beyond what the scriptures allow. So, that would be an example in the least of that limitation and failing to recognize it. So, it's good to keep that in mind. That's always a question that you should have in the back of your mind. If I'm struggling with this, is this a result of the limits of human knowledge period? So that's a good question to keep in mind. Now you had a question. Well that's an interesting question to which I don't have a subtle answer. It's complete in the sense that God reveals himself through creation. I suppose I'd have to say yes, in the sense that there's nothing new that we don't create out of nothing. Only God can do that. And of course, if you know Hebrew, you know that the scriptures use the word bara, I think only for God and only for creation, ex nihilo. He uses other words for human creation or what we call fabrication. So in that sense, yes, then natural revelation is as complete as it will be. It would have to be complete in order to actually fulfill its functions. Well, thank you for asking that question. It makes me think through. We can talk more about that at the lunch break, if you want. Yes? I just had a question. You mentioned how Natural Revelation is the theater for differentiation in history, working towards reparation and redemption. Right. I know Van Til talks about that. I was just confused. I don't understand what the point is trying to get at there, how Natural Revelation is working towards differentiation. It's the context in natural revelation that's the context in which the distinction occurs. In other words, it's the stage upon which the play of the gospel going out. And using that word gospel in its comprehensive whole Bible sense, in other words, including Old Testament saints coming to faith in Christ in the Old Testament context, in an Old Testament way. And if there was no natural revelation or common grace, then there would have been immediate physical death. upon the eating of the fruit. That's what God said. There was spiritual death immediately, and then bodies began to dissolve, if you will, fall apart. Now, it took many years for that to happen, but it did happen. If you read chapters four and five of Genesis, you have the genealogy, right, of the Cainite line and the Sethite line. But you'll see, even though these folks lived for many years, eventually they died. That's a result of the fall, not part of creation. So, that's what I mean, that God stays his hand in terms of executing judgment and enables the fallen creatures who are yet elect to come to hear the good news of the gospel and to come to faith in Christ in time. In other words, common grace and natural revelation creates the context in which history is real. History is real, but it's under God's direction. It's not open-ended, it's not contingent in the absolute sense. I often will say, talk and say, well, such and such is the case from a human point of view. We often talk about young people who die as being taken before their time. Well, actually, they're not taken before their time. If God whatsoever comes to pass is determined by God, we're speaking from our point of view. Does that help at all? Again, that's helpful. Okay, it's now 20 of, so why don't we take a five-minute break, be back here at, hold on here, seven-minute break, be back here at quarter of. So are you saying that natural evolution is perfectly clear from God's perspective? Well, it's objectively clear. But we misunderstand it because of the fall. So, what college campus do you work at? I used to work at Christopher D. Ford, not anymore. Oh, okay. Oh, that's what it says right there. Not anymore. Well, you're here, right? I'm assuming you maintain some ties. I do. So I'm actually a church planner. Me and another pastor are planning a church in West Philly. Oh, good. Yeah. I started seminary as well, because I don't need free time. But yeah, I am still maintaining some ties with the crew of the Philly team. I'm actually going to be emceeing their fall retreat this weekend. I figured once you're in, you're kind of in for life. Very good. So what denomination? It's Southern Baptist. Southern Baptist. Very good. Did you have any connection with Southern Seminary in Louisville? Personally, no. The other pastor went to Southeastern. Oh, okay. Where is it, Wake Forest? Wake Forest, yeah. Good school. Great, I'm glad to hear. I had a friend who was involved in some sort of church planning work from St. Louis. Obviously not as good a friend as I am. He used to listen to the Reform Forum, of which I'm a part. He used to, I had him come over and he was sharing with me the church plans, Southern Baptist Church planning effort. How long has your church been in plant mode? Like a month and a half. Okay, so it's a new, it's a different work. We've been in the process for about a year, over a year. And we've been here for about a month and a half. Nice. It's exciting. Do you have folk already? Yeah, so we had a launch team that came with us of about 15 people. 21 if you count the children. Lots of little kids. Do you, okay, that's what I was going to ask you. Do you normally start from scratch? Yeah, so our, the group, the training that we went through, the cohort that we're working with advised that you start with a launch and you have people move with you. Right. And so we started with like 15, 15 people. Okay. We're right now meeting in the other pastor's home. Now, West Philly, so... Yeah, so we're really more in Overbrook as where we're living. Okay, I know Overbrook. So you're not far from Lancaster Avenue? I live on Lancaster Avenue. Okay, well you're actually not far from the church I pastor. Oh, really? What church? Knox OPC in Lansdowne. Okay, yeah. You're Overbrook. I used to drive through Overbrook to get to the church. Yeah, great. Now I live in a different part of, I live in East Northern, so I don't have to pass through Overbrook to get to the church. But there's a big PCUSA church there on the corner of Main Street and Lancaster Avenue. Overbrook, PCUSA. Oh, okay, all right. So it's in that neck of the woods you're planting. Very good. I'll be praying for you. I appreciate that. You're welcome. We have a minute. May I ask you a question? Sure. You made kind of a passing comment about something, I'm trying to remember what it was, something about Aquinas not having natural theology or natural revelation. It does not appear to be. And a friend of mine who did a course at Villanova says that's true, that's correct, because for Thomas, revelation is connected with grace. So I would not want to talk about grace prior to the fall. I know that there are theologians in the Reformed tradition who have talked about grace, but what they mean is going to be condescension, not saving grace, because there's no need for saving grace. Well, that's what I that's a question that I'm wrestling Clearly if you sat him down to Thomas, do you believe that God created the universe? Yeah, but it doesn't seem to filter into his So there's there's nature And then there's revelation. And you can see that in his own understanding of the image of God. Yeah, because it's also tied in with this whole epistemology, which is Aristotelian, which is sense-based. So he's very empirical. It's interesting though, why would he point to nature? Well because, but remember, the belief that God that he's pointing to is not yet the trident God of Scripture. Now he would say it is, in the sense of it, we're pointing at that, and it's God. But we can't say that from nature. We can only say that based upon Scripture. Give an example, you may be familiar with his saying that by thoracify, that is by natural reason, we would think that the world was eternal. But because of scripture, I can't believe that. See, that, I would say, no. Well, that may be Aristotle's view, but it's not a deliverance of that theory of God and nature. So there's some things, of course, that he says that are perfectly fine. It's a project that I'm personally going to work on probably for the rest of my life. Because it's a brilliant mind, I disagree with him in all sorts of ways, both in large picture ways and in detail. But it's a beautiful thing to watch, a brilliant life. But I am not a reformed Thomist. If you've been watching the web, you know that I was part of a conference where we talked about that. So it's fresh on my mind. But it was a hunch that I had from my reading, but then my friend confirmed it. He said, yeah, for Thomas, all revelation is grace, type of grace. Now, it may be that, again, if we were able to sit down, he would distinguish between saving grace and what we call quintessential goodwill. He, in fact, now I haven't read everything. He's got such a large body of writing. I'm working through the Summa Theologia. I've read portions of it before. I've read through portions of it. I've read his commentary on Coasius' epitaphs. What are epitaphs? Axioms. Logical axioms. So I've done enough reading to have some views settled, not settled views, but pretty clear. My goal will be to try to read it. See, the thing is, not everything's written in Latin. So you have to read Latin, which I am an amateur in Latin, but I can read it well enough to get the sense. So, I mean, that's it. Well, because the Vantillians are accused of using a broad brush, I figured I should, someone needs to go in and do the detail work, and it's valuable in itself. It's worth doing. Okay, thank you. Oh, you're welcome. All right. Any other questions before? Yes, you had that look on your face. Sure. Give me an example. Well, that's it now. I'm not sure I would consider that natural revelation. It is, because it's both. Because it's the ocean, the Red Sea, or the Jordan River, depending on which story you're referring to, or both, right? They're dealing, that's in the midst of redemption. But it includes, see there is a, you proved the point, is that natural and special revelation go together. Because when you have special revelation, it's using or it's interacting with what God has created in nature. Does that make sense? They interpenetrate, like so. All right, well, let's move on and hopefully shed some more light. We're going to talk of pre-redemptive and redemptive special revelation. By talking this way we are, when we talk about pre-redemptive special revelation. There is a divergence of views on whether there is such a thing as pre-redemptive special revelation. I do. And I believe it's in the Westminster standards. We will find that as well. We will talk now what is pre-redemptive special revelation, you may ask. Have you ever heard of the covenant of works? When is it given? Before the fall or after? Before the fall. Is God speaking? It's verbal. What did we say earlier about natural revelation? It's non-verbal and indirect. We have in the Garden of Eden prior to the fall an instance of pre-redemptive special revelation. Now, this is an insight of Gerhardus Voss. And you'll find that on pages 22 and 23 initially of biblical theology. And then there's a whole chapter dedicated to it, I think, pages 27 to 40 or thereabouts, where he unpacks it. And that's what my discussion. My discussion is dependent upon specifically Dr. Voss. So the covenant of works or covenant of creation, covenant of life, covenant of nature, all referring to the same thing. According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 7, it is an act of God's special providence. It's an act of God's special providence. You also see that in Shorter Catechism 12. and larger catechism 20. For those of you who are planning to go on for licensure and ordination, those are good things to study. So the covenant of works is an act of God's special providence. By that, what the divines mean is that it is distinguished from creation but not separated from it. Distinguished but not separated. That's, by the way, that's a theological way of thinking that you would do well to master or to memorize. It's called the Chalcedonian It's in the Chalcedonian formula about the two natures of Christ in one person. Okay, and it talks there about the two natures being undivided but not mixed. So this is what we mean. It's distinct yet inseparable, the coveted works. It's a form of pre-redemptive special revelation. It assumes the reality of natural revelation. We've already gone over that. The covenant of works points to the fact that man is created in and for fellowship with God. That's why we put the stress on the fact that this is a pre-redemptive form of special revelation. It is not natural revelation. God created Adam and Eve, the human race, to have fellowship with us. That's why the fall is so horrendous, because we are now out of fellowship with God by nature. We are alienated from him. We think of the story or parable of the prodigal son. We are not children of God by nature. That's the idea of liberalism. We can be children of God by adoption. Dr. Garner is an expert on that topic, theologically speaking, on the topic of adoption. You know he's published that book, The Son and the Son. Worth reading. However, so we are, Adam and Eve were created in and for fellowship with God. That means, as I said earlier, it's not likely that he would leave that relationship up to the trial and error, well not error, but you know, the indirect process of natural revelation. If God created us for fellowship with him, then neither God nor man, that is neither Adam or Eve, would be satisfied with non-verbal indirect revelation. God would establish his relationship with us through face-to-face communication. As Dr. Voss says, as a friend holds fellowship with friend. That is intimate fellowship. We're not far, actually, from the Song of Solomon. And, you know, the relationship between a husband and wife. The sexual bond is one that actually, Paul tells us, mirrors the relationship between Christ and his church. And we actually see this before the fall in the Covenant of Works, the command, and we'll talk about that momentarily. The Covenant of Works was, so it was given in order to establish the context for fellowship between God and Adam and Eve, and presumably for their children thereafter. It was also given, in order to firm that up, if you will, for the advancement of man from open-ended probation and possession of unconfirmed righteousness to a state of confirmed righteousness or felicitous fellowship with the triune God. So Adam, when he's created, is created upright. He's created righteous and holy. and knowledgeable, as is Eve, but they are changeable. The Westminster standards talk about being mutable. That's what mutable means, changeable. How do we know it was possible for Adam and Eve to fall? Anybody want to take a guess? Because they did, right? That's how we know. So what Dr. Voss is talking about is in the garden when God says to Adam, do not eat, you can eat from any tree in the garden, but do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When he's putting Adam to the test, It's for the advancement of Adam from a state of unconfirmed, losable righteousness to a state of confirmed, unlosable righteousness. That was offered in the garden to Adam before the fall. Now you may say, where does it say that? Well, think about this. Adam is told to don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. If a temporal sin, a temporal disobedience, leads to an eternal punishment, The flip side is that temporal obedience leads to eternal fellowship. That's the logic. In other words, any other understanding of this, any other understanding of what's happening in the Garden of Eden, will usually, almost inexorably, lead to salvation being understood as a return to the garden. I don't know about you, I have no desire to return to the garden. Because Adam and Eve fell, and this is a mystery, this is a mystery, it's a limit to our human knowledge, what we were talking about earlier. They fell without a sinful human nature. You and I have a sinful human nature. We are fallen. If we go back to the garden, we're fallen still. So how we understand what happens at the beginning at creation will impact how we think about salvation. It will impact how salvation results in glorification and so on and so forth. As Voss points out, if man had been created already with an entitlement to confirmed righteousness, he most likely would have had knowledge of this naturally given. That's the distinction between creation and covenant. I said it was distinguishable but inseparable. That's the reason for the distinction. Because had the entitlement to advancement to confirmed righteousness been tied in with creation, most likely we would have known about this through natural revelation. And that's on page 23 of the biblical theology. Dr. Voss notes that this revelation is given in symbolic form. Symbolic because typological. not because it is simply a literary feature of the text of scripture. That is, when we're talking about typology, yes, it's a literary feature, but it's a historical feature. That is, God builds into nature types, what Jonathan Edwards referred to as shadows and types and figures. What the Westminster standards refer to, that way that the Old Testament points forward to Christ is through ceremonies, laws, and types, and shadows. These are built into history. They're not merely literary devices. They are not the result of the figment of the imagination of the reader of the Bible. They are actually built into history and reflected in the Bible. They are built into history by God's intent. These symbols of pre-redemptive special revelation are, to use the language of Dr. Voss, sacramental prefigurations. that convey assurance of the future realization of the promises made. If that sounds something like the Lord's Supper, in baptism it's meant to. Let me unpack that. There are four principles revealed in pre-redemptive special revelation that reach their full realization in redemptive revelation and in the life of the Christian in the church. The principle of life is symbolized in the tree of life. There is a long history in the Christian church of understanding the two trees as sacramental. the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And that's what you see that we'll be spelling out in a little bit of further detail. You'll see that, for instance, if you want to see it in detail, you can read Francis Turretin's treatment of creation and the disputes surrounding that in his ellenctics theology. Paradise is the habitation of God and symbolizes the height of the joy which is the eternal felicitous fellowship with the triune God. So the garden, the garden is a miniature temple or tabernacle, a copy of what is in heaven. That sounds familiar, that's because Dr. Beal has written on the subject extensively, in particular his book, The Temple and the Church's Mission. where he talks about how the Garden of Eden is meant to be a copy of the heavenly tabernacle. And the tabernacle is meant to be a copy of the heavenly tabernacle in the temple, of course. And that reaches its fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ, who said he was the temple, and by extension, we, who are united to Christ by faith, are the temple. of the living God. We are living stones. You see how that has a ripple effect. So paradise is the habitation of God and is meant to symbolize the height of the joy which is eternal felicitous, that is enjoyable, fellowship with God. Access to the tree of life conversely is cut off and blocked by the cherubim and the flaming sword subsequent to the fall. Remember, that's when the scriptures tell us that they left the garden and lived east of Eden. Note how this is, the tree of life appears throughout the Old Testament as a tree planted near water. In the garden, it's a tree planted near the four rivers that are described. Tree occurs and this resonates with the account of creation and the fall. And of course in Revelation 21 and 22, the tree of life reappears with the river of life. the tree of life on both sides of the river of life that's flowing from the throne of God. And there's an awful lot of typology going on there, including references back to Ezekiel and the river that flows from the temple in the last eight chapters of the book of Ezekiel, chapters 41 through 48. The tree and the water symbolize eternal life originally offered to Adam, but after the fall only accessed through Holy Spirit-wrought faith-based union with Christ. Holy Spirit-wrought, worked that is, faith-based union with Christ. Those who are united to Christ are they who have come out of sorrow and great tribulation and have washed their robes white in the blood of the crucified and risen and reigning Lamb of God. You see, we've now passed through pre-redemptive special revelation and have come into the province of special revelation. The saints gain what Adam was offered, but had been denied him because of his disobedience and sin. We get that. Remember what Jesus says to those who overcome, you will have access to the tree of life. Now, we only overcome by way of union with Christ. We also have the principle of probation. We've just looked at the principle of life. And the principle of probation is symbolized by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the second sacramental tree. The tree symbolized God's test of Adam in the garden, by which he could transition from a state of probation to one of eternal life by obedience to God's command. By nature, that is by creation, we as creatures are obligated to obey God personally, perpetually, and perfectly. forever, that's what perpetually means, the three Ps, or what Dr. Tipton refers to as entire and exact obedience. God, you see, was under no obligation to offer life to Adam for his obedience. And so this was a manifestation of divine benevolence. Sometimes you'll find theologians who refer to this as grace, And as long as we understand that to be not saving grace, but God's kindness, that's okay. But you want to make that clear. I prefer not to use the word grace in the pre-fall state, but it's in the history, so you have to deal with it. God's prohibition to eat from the tree, as we've already noted, was arbitrary. There was nothing as to appearance to suggest that the tree was evil, nor did its power magically reside in itself. There was nothing poisonous about the tree considered naturalistically. The arbitrariness of the prohibition was a test of Adam's loyalty and trust in his God. The emphasis on his God. And God offers to Adam advancement, as I've already said, from perpetual obedience to eternal Sabbath rest with him in glory. That doesn't mean that, well, once he gets it, Adam can now be disobedient. Because the whole point of confirmed righteousness is that you are in a state where you're not under probation. You're not worried about losing him. You're all familiar, no doubt, with being on probation when you start a new job. Say the first three months, you're on probation. You can be terminated for no cause. And so you're often wondering, am I going to last in this job? If you go for licensure within the OPC or the PCA, within a reform context, you are under probation for at least a year. so that the church can test you to see if you have the gifts. And that's something that we all must go through if we're going to serve Christ in those denominations. Jesus himself, of course, had to be tested to be the sympathetic high priest that he indeed is. Adam was, from the beginning, created to experience this confirmed righteousness. He did not possess it, but he was created in order to enjoy it. That's a distinction that's significant if when we look at the Roman Catholic understanding of the image of God, they have a very different view of that matter. We don't have the time to go into that, but if you want to ask that question during the question and answer period at one o'clock, feel free to do so. After the fallen banishment from the garden, another would have to eat from the rotten fruit of sin. and pierced his hands with the thorns of disobedience. Of course, you know who I'm talking about. The second Adam, on another tree, took on Adam and Eve's punishment and the punishment of the other elect who would believe in him. Again, we see where we've gone from pre-redemptive to redemptive revelation. And so we come now to the principle of temptation, symbolized by the serpent and sin. And there's a lot of material that Dr. Voss goes into here dealing with alternative theories, which I'm not going to take the time to go into. But as you have opportunity, please read that. Even though the book is 70, 80 some years old, it's still very contemporary. Like temptation in our own experience, here in the garden temptation involved the same symbol as probation. That is, what God intends as a test, Satan through the serpent intends to trip and cause Adam and Eve to fall. And this is often the case with regard to temptation. What is from God's side a test, is often taken up by Satan. Under God's authority, it's not like God's fallen asleep and doesn't know what's going on. Under God's authority, Satan takes that and uses it as a temptation. That's just an observation, really, about how things seem to work in this fallen world. and before that. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was both a test and a temptation. A test on God's part and a temptation on Satan's part. There was a real serpent involved here and Satan was truly using the serpent as his instrument. The temptation involves planting a suggestion in the mind of Eve that God was not to be trusted and did not have Adam and Eve's best interests at heart. when he said, has God really said such and such? Has God really said that? And you will remember that when Eve answers the question, and remember Eve was not present, she was not yet created when this command was issued by God. So presumably that command was conveyed to her by her husband. She adds to that God's limitation. He says, don't eat. She says, and don't touch. Not what he said. Just as an observation, those who feel free to add to God's word will often feel free to subtract from God's word as well. Satan has created a context wherein Eve will grow to think that she can function as an impartial judge of the truthfulness of God's word over Satan's word. Let me see. I've got two words. I've got the word of the serpent, and I've got the word of God. Right from the start, by setting herself up as an impartial judge, she's already stacked the decks, as it were. You cannot be impartial in the presence of God. That's not right. That's disobedience already. So you see, the first sin didn't begin with the taking of the fruit. The first sin began with the mulling over the idea, the looking at the tree and seeing that it was desired, it was good looking, it was attractive, it was desired to make one wise. Eve then begins to examine the tree and she discovers that it's extremely attractive. Now you know that the text says that Adam was with her. She took from the tree and ate of the fruit and gave it to her husband who was with her and he ate. Now the text doesn't say he was with her the whole time, but it doesn't say he came upon the scene after the fact. So we see there Adam has failed in his job as the prophet, priest, and king in the Garden of Eden, and that's a whole other subject. Later, the second Adam will overcome Satan and sin and death by dying on another tree. Jesus, unlike Eve, will trust in his father. and unlike Adam, will be obedient to the very end, which involved an excruciating death. One horrid tree trumps another horrid tree, and in the process becomes a tree of life. Indeed, it could be said that Jesus is the tree of life himself. Then we have the principle of death, symbolized by the dissolution of the body. Death was not a part of the original creation. There is debate over whether animal death was a part of the creation. I personally do not believe that. God promised that when Adam ate from the tree, he would surely die. He would dyingly die. That's a more literal translation of the Hebrew. Death is a just judicial sentence passed by God on a sinful human race. It's hard to say that. I'm part of the sinful human race, but that's what God's Word tells us. Adam and Eve were not created with an expectation of death. Now, what I mean by that is from the human perspective. Obviously, God is not surprised at what happens. He's in control. But if you're looking at from the beginning, does God reveal that this is the way things are going to go? Well, it happens in the explanation of the fall. Death reigns over the human race because of sin. We see that in Romans 5, 12 through 21. However, death is decisively defeated by Christ through his resurrection from the dead. We see that in Romans 6. The human curse is reversed in Christ who became a curse for us by dying on the cross. That's what Paul says in Galatians 3.13. The resurrection manifests God the Father's approval of what his son had accomplished in his life and death. The death of death occurs in the death of Christ, to echo the title of John Owen's famous Treatise on the Atonement. And by his resurrection, he brings new life for those united to him by faith. Or to put it another way, as 1 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 has it, his justification brings with it our justification. Seen on the world, when we look at 1 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, vindicated by the Spirit, that word is justified by the Spirit. That is, by his resurrection from the dead, the curse on Christ gets lifted. If he had remained dead, he'd still be under a curse and we'd be in our sins. As Paul says, we would be the most pitiable of all people. What Jesus accomplished in his life and death and applies to us in time and space by his Holy Spirit will be completed at his appearing. Special revelation is not a super added overlay upon an otherwise completely comprehensible nature. That is, it's not as if nature could be understood without special revelation. Natural revelation was given in order to provide a canvas on which to paint pre-redemptive revelation, and it is the theater of God's glory. And of course, it's also the canvas on which redemption is painted. The theater of God's glory is often thought of in terms of nature and providential history revealing God, and it is that. It is also the theater for the manifestation and working out of God's ultimate glory in his son, Jesus Christ, who is the culmination of God's work of redemption in history. God began the work of redemption with the people of Israel, but concludes the work of redemption with the saints from every language, people, tribe, and nation who gather in the New Jerusalem around the throne of God and the Lamb. Pre-redemptive and redemptive special revelation is given so that we may have fruition of our great and glorious triune God. That's how the Westminster divines put it. That is, Adam and Eve were created and placed in the garden so that they might have sweet fellowship with God. That initial fellowship was subject to personal, perpetual, and perfect obedience. During the probation, God came and went, but didn't remain with Adam and Eve. Think about that. If you were thinking about a difference between pre-fall fellowship and what was offered as confirmed righteousness, think about that. God came and went but didn't remain. But God offered our first parents the opportunity to advance beyond this to perpetual probation through the means of the test. Adam and Eve failed to obey God and cast us all into an estate of sin and misery from which we needed to be rescued. The rescue from the estate of sin and misery involved the sending of God's Son, the eternal Son of God, entered into history by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul. This really happened, just as Adam and Eve really existed, just as Moses and Israel really walked through this world. Redemption occurred in real space and time over which the triune God of Scripture has absolute and ultimate authority. God acts in nature and providence in ordinary ways, which we usually call the laws of nature, and he works extraordinarily in redemption within and throughout this nature and providential history. What Jesus accomplishes for us is nothing other than what God offered to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, if they would but obey his command. The beginning and end of history as we know it are tied together like bookends, and in between is revealed one philosophy of history comprised of nature and providence that reveals the triune God and redemption which manifests his love for his own. These two aspects of revelation are mutually reinforcing and inextricably intertwined. Nature and history begin with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it ends with the fellowship of the saints in the new heavens and earth with this same triune God. And I'll finish with this quote. Here, then, is the picture of a well-integrated and unified philosophy of history in which revelation in nature and revelation in scripture are mutually meaningless without one another and mutually fruitful when taken together. And that's Cornelius van Til from his book Christian Apologetics. And I think, what time does the class end? 1025, we have four minutes. Any questions before we break? Dan, I'll do you. So, but it's coming through nature as opposed to verbal, direct, face-to-face communication. That's what the difference between, yeah, it's not mediated in the sense of one's coming through means and the other isn't, but one is face-to-face, so to speak. so to speak, because God does not have a body until the Son is incarnate. As I think Scott already said last week, terms are sometimes fuzzy. So yeah, asking for clarification is a good idea. So it's not meant to, when I say unmediated or direct, I mean it's not something that's already implanted in us or we discover through looking at the creation. God speaks directly. That make sense? And you had a question. So Edwards said that in nature there's shadows times figures. Yes, that's what he meant. He has a whole book which in the Yale edition of the works of Edwards is the volume typological writings and he talks about, see he has a somewhat unique understanding of typology that includes Old Testament pointing forward to the new but also includes signs and shadows in nature and history. Now we might not agree with everything that he says but there's something to it. It's worth at least thinking about that he would say we look at the sun that is in the sky and we think of the sun of God. And we are the son of God. There's the sun itself, and then there's the rays that come forth. That would be the Holy Spirit. Again, we may not agree with everything he says, but he wouldn't be the only one who talks that way. He picks that up through the Augustinian tradition. All right, so remember we do have a question and answer period at one o'clock in room two and pizza and presumably soda and other beverages will be offered for you as well. Thank you and God bless. Oh, yeah.