Started reading a book by Pastor Ganger’s older brother. Focusing on Genesis 1-3.
“This purpose of general revelation is well stated in the second article of the Belgic Confession:
By What Means God is Made Known Unto Us We know Him by two means: first by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, His eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul saith (Rom. 1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse.
Secondly, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word; that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation.48
Note that the Belgic Confession does not say general revelation “is a book” but “as a most elegant book.” Notice also that it does not speak of any verbal communication except through the things God has made. In the Bible, God makes Himself “more clearly and fully known.” The first book leaves men without excuse for not believing in God, who is the Creator. The second is meant to lead us to salvation.”
Or this portion …
Since There Are So Many Interpretations of Scripture, How Can We Know the Truth?
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) maintained that our normal method of knowing by reason and empirical research never can take us beyond the phenomenal world. It can never take us into the realm of God. Therefore, we can know nothing about supernatural things by the scientific method.
Kant argued in his Critique of Pure Reason that God therefore cannot be known by theoretical thought. But there is in man a moral sense of “ought” from which we have to presuppose the existence of God to give us a basis for morality.
This led to skepticism—whether we can know anything about the world beyond ours. We do possess in the incarnation of Christ the infinite God entering our space and time, our world which He created. Therefore, we do not need to know by the scientific method what is already supplied by the Word of God. This philosophy led to doubting whether we can know anything for certain about the other world, since it was not open to the scientific method.
Kulikovsky notes, “In the nineteenth century, Soren Kierkegaard, although a deeply religious and pious man, proposed that true knowledge was completely subjective, and that absolute certainty was impossible. In other words, it is not possible to express absolute truth in propositional form.”
This opened the door to regarding various interpretations of Scripture as being equally valid, though contradictory to each other. It is manifested in the way many today study Scripture. They no longer ask what the text means, but rather, what it means to them. This has led to relativism in our thinking about Scripture.
Rainbow Trout 