Without Excuse: Classic Christian Exegesis of General Revelation

THOMAS C. ODEN*

The theme of general revelation is plagued by many controversies, hazards and potential misconceptions: Is Almighty God revealed clearly in creation and the providential ordering of the cosmos? Is this revelation intended for all and accessible to all? Is it saving knowledge? Does general revelation tend toward or lead to saving knowledge without further efficacious saving grace through the revealed Word? All of these questions were critically appraised in early Christian exegesis of Rom 1:18-22.

The purpose of this paper is to treat general revelation from a theological perspective with special reference to the Church fathers and ancient Christian exegetes. I hope this presentation might serve two modest purposes: to provide some ancient Christian exegetical guidelines concerning the substantive issues of general revelation, and to demonstrate a classic method of inquiry into general revelation.

I. INTRODUCTION: A CASE STUDY IN ORTHODOX EXEGESIS

1. Objective. My modest objective is to show textually that there is a well-defined, reliable, pre-European, classical Christian teaching of general revelation consensually received for a millennium before the Reformation that has been generally received and valued not only by the Lutheran and Reformed traditions but also by the evangelical and revivalist traditions, whether sanctificationist, Baptist or pentecostal, as well as by Eastern Orthodox and traditional Roman Catholics. This is a Spirit-led tradition of exegesis to which worldwide Christians of all cultural situations have a right to appeal insofar as it is accountable to Scripture.

2. Method. This teaching will be demonstrated by the method of orthodoxy-that is, by appealing textually to those consensual exegetical documents of the earliest Christian centuries that sought to interpret the mind of the believing Church-prior to its divisions-concerning those texts of sacred Scripture that pertain especially to general revelation.

3. Text. Arguably the weightiest text to which all Christian interpretations of general revelation appeal is Rom 1:18-22. No text on general revelation is more frequently or consequentially referenced by the worldwide ekklesia of all generations. No contemporary discussion of general revelation can ignore this paramount Scriptural locus. Orthodox, Roman and Reformation teachings and catechisms, and even pentecostal and charismatic teachings, are alike (and quietly attest their kinship) in appealing consistently to Romans 1 in any serious discussion of general revelation, so much so that there is no Christian doctrine of general revelation without this pivotal text, which epitomizes both the possibilities and the limitations of the idea of general revelation. Hence we focus on this text alone.

4. Consensuality defined. By classical exegetes I refer in this case to pre-Protestant, pre-European, premedieval exegetes of the first millennium during the era of the undivided Church. Who are these principal sources of classic Christian exegesis? Only those who gained the most general consent by both the Asian, African, and western Church traditions as universallyesteemed great doctors of the Church: Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom in the east, and Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Gregory the Great in the west. Among these Chrysostom and Augustine were most influential regarding perplexities of general revelation. In addition to these eight, there are a number of widely respected classic Christian teachers cited by various ecumenical councils as most generally reliable to the Church in all its eastern and western, African and proto-European varieties: Cyprian of Carthage, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo of Rome, and John of Damascus. To these we will add several key exegetes who have focused especially on the Romans text: Tertullian, Origen, Ambrosiaster, Theodoret of Cyr, Prosper of Aquitaine, an anonymous commentary of about AD 405, and the fragmentary commentary of Gennadius of Constantinople (d. 471).

By "consensual" I do not imply that there was no variety of interpretation under the vast umbrella of orthodox consent, or that all ancient Christian writers agreed or used the same language, but that a worldwide, intergenerational consenting community has had a thousand-year-old habit of freely receiving these exegetes as those who stand most faithfully within the east/ west consensus defined by the ecumenical councils of the first millennium, excepting those rare instances where some point of exegesis was specifically rejected. Ever since Harnack it has been easier for critics to see the discontinuities than the continuities in the apostolic tradition.

5. Thesis. There is indeed a textually-defined, consensual, classic Christian teaching of general revelation. This can be demonstrated textually by presenting the evidences of consensuality in the interpretation of those key sacred texts upon which all agree that a Christian doctrine of general revelation must be grounded. So what follows is a highly textual evidentiary presentation.