Carl F. H. Henry at this best

Carl F. H. Henry at this best

“From whence, in the absence of revelation itself, are we to derive private information about God’s predilections? Surely human ingenuity supplies no creaturely capacity for charting God’s intentions, let alone ghost-writing his speeches or sending an advance guard to supervise his activities. However insightfully modern he or she may be, no theologian carries a reliable divinity compass among his or her possessions or is expert at prognosticating divine revelation. God is himself the Ultimate Benefactor of revelation. (Cf. Job 41:11, “Who has given a gift to him?”—that God needs to repay.) Divine revelation creates an unprecedented situation in human affairs. It does not operate on flight schedules charted by travel agents who traffic in domestic routines; rather, God’s disclosure overtakes its unsuspecting recipients unannounced like some low-swooping jet that on its way to the landing strip roars over a startled motorist below. Revelation is God’s free disclosure in deed and word and time, a voluntary divine determination.”

— Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 6 vols., Vol. II: God Who Speaks and Shows: Fifteen Theses, Part One (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1976-1983), II:49, s.v. Ch. 3, “The Hidden and Revealed God.” [1]

This paragraph is reminiscent of one that is even better occurring two chapters before. Dr. Henry is surely at his best when he begins the first chapter titled “The Awesome Disclosure of God” [2] in this volume with these words:

“Divine revelation palpitates with human surprise. Like a fiery bolt of lightning that unexpectedly zooms toward us and scores a direct hit, like an earthquake that suddenly shakes and engulfs us, it somersaults our private thoughts to abrupt awareness of ultimate destiny. By the unannounced intrusion of its omnipotent actuality, divine revelation lifts the present into the eternal and unmasks our pretensions of human omnicompetence. As if an invisible Concorde had burst the sound barrier overhead, it drives us to ponder whether the Other World has finally pinned us to the ground for a life-and-death response. Confronting us with a sense of cosmic arrest, it makes us ask whether the end of our world is at hand and propels us unasked before the Judge and Lord of the universe. Like some piercing air-raid siren it sends us scurrying from life’s preoccupations and warns us that no escape remains if we neglect  the only sure sanctuary. Even once-for-all revelation that has occurred in another time and place fills us with awe and wonder through its ongoing significance and bears the character almost of a fresh miracle.” [3]

— Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 6 vols., Vol. II: God Who Speaks and Shows: Fifteen Theses, Part One (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1976-1983), II:17.

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End notes:

[1] Highlighting and emphasis mine.

[2] In this chapter Henry develops the first of his Fifteen Theses regarding God Who Speaks and Shows: “Revelation is a divinely initiated activity, God’s free communication by which he alone turns his personal privacy into a deliberate discourse of his reality.” Op. cit. pg. 17.

[3] Ibid.