What is Special Revelation? - J I Packer

The Bible teaches about two different kinds of revelation.

There is the revelation in nature, which is usually called general
revelation, and there is a more specific revelation, revealed, not in nature, but in Scripture, which is usually called special revelation.

What is Special Revelation?

J. I Packer talks about special revelation, occurring the three phases:

First, there is revelation in history.

God is a God who acts.

This truth, perhaps more than any other, clearly distinguishes Christianity from other religions of the world.

Christianity is not, as Eastern religions would say of themselves, essentially a discipline by which we direct our thoughts and so order our lives that we progress in the direction of truth and eventually merge with the Eternal.

Christianity is not so much a way of life as it is the intervention of God in history.

We read in Genesis that God "created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

"God created man" (Genesis 1:27).

God called Abraham to create a special nation through whom a Deliverer would come.

God acted in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, to die and rise again for our salvation.


Second, there is revelation in writing.

We can see at once how essential this is. Because when we speak or write, as I just have, about the revelation of God in history  --  about God's creating the heavens and the earth, creating man, calling Abraham, and eventually sending Jesus Christ to die for our sin --  we want to ask, But how do we know that God has done these things?

We know through the Bible God has given us.

First, God acts. Secondly, He reveals Himself in inspired writing that we might understand what He has done.


Third, there is revelation to the individual mind and heart.

This is the work of God's Holy Spirit by which our minds are opened to understand and receive what has been written.

As a result, we are changed so that the Bible's teaching becomes no longer merely an academic thing but the actual point at which we hear God speaking.

But again, notice the centrality of the Bible.

We talk about the revelation of God in history, in writing, and in the personal illumination of the mind by the Holy Spirit.

But the Bible is at the center of the process.

The only way we know about God's acts in history is through the Bible, and the only point at which we hear the voice of God speaking to us personally is , again, through the Bible.

The whole process of God's work is centered in the record of it in God's Word, the Bible.