General revelation is a form of revelation that’s kind of an odd duck. Some Christians teach it’s a type of natural revelation (i.e. nature), which directs us towards God. Others teach it’s a form of special revelation that intentionally tells us about God. The idea is that it’s revelation to everybody in general: Everybody has, built-in, something which indicates to us that there’s a God in the universe.
Our consciences, for example: We instinctively know the difference between right and wrong, even from infancy. How’d we learn that? Notice also how every ancient human civilization figured out the basic rules for social order, and they all resemble one another: We don’t have one civilization where murder or theft are simply permitted—there are always some social customs that regulate how it’s to be done. Again, how’d we learn that?
Conscience and learned behavior.
Sociologists have an answer… and I agree with it: Conscience is a combination of learned behavior and logic. It’s not instinctive.
Fr’instance people realize they do not like to be robbed. So they get others to agree to a social custom whereby nobody gets robbed, and there are consequences, sometimes very harsh ones, for theivery. Thus they won’t be robbed. (However—since humans are inherently selfish—they will spend the rest of their lives searching for loopholes in the social custom which permit them to rob others.)
Because this social custom is so practical, we enforce it in all sorts of circumstances. And we enforce it on the young. A little boy says, “Mine!” and, provided it’s his, we accept that. He takes his sister’s property and says, “Mine!” so adults correct him—no, that’s not yours; this is yours; that belongs to her. We teach property rights from the very youngest ages. And since people don’t remember their infancy, they assume they always believed in property rights. They’ve been programmed so well that it’s become, as far as they know, instinct.
And when people don’t know where something came from, the catch-all answer tends to be God. How’d I get my sense of right and wrong? “Hmmm… must’ve got it from God. Can’t think of where else it came from.”
We all know of exceptions, of conscience-deficient people. It’s because some children were poorly raised. They never learned about property rights in their infancy; their parents didn’t care if they snatched their siblings’ toys, and let them fight it out, and whoever won the fight got the toy. So they grew up with that “instinct”: Survival of the strongest. And, if there are laws against theft, just don’t get caught—survival of the smartest.
We might call them sociopaths, because we expect people to have proper morals installed in them. We presume their consciences are defective—“God didn’t make me that way”—and figure it’s because of a character flaw in them; something that’s their fault. We go to other countries, where the morals are different—where property rights are looser, or stricter—and can’t understand what’s wrong with everyone. Some folks presume it’s a national character flaw. Some bigots call it a racial deficiency.
Some Christians call this a “generational curse”—a character flaw in their parents, which has been passed down to their descendants. That’s a lot closer to the truth. Intentionally or not, parents pass their values—their true values, not the things they only claim to believe—to their kids. Sometimes that’s great, and sometimes it is a curse.
My point, though, is that whatever’s embedded in your conscience is not what God put in there. If anything of God is in there, it’s put there secondhand by God-fearing parents. Or—once you get older and take over the development of your own conscience—it’s put there because you are God-fearing and want to conform your conscience to his thinking. But again, it’s put there secondhand.
In the end, your conscience is not a form of revelation. It may have been shaped by God’s revelation, but that all depends on who’s been shaping it.
Conscience and Christian philosophy.
The problem is that this understanding of the conscience and how it works, is not an ancient idea. It is a modern one. Most of the ancients believed we were born with some built-in knowledge. Aristotle was one of the few who didn’t, but Aristotle was never popular among Christians till Thomas Aquinas’ work in the 1200s. Before that time, Christians went with Plato’s idea that we were born with something—maybe not as pre-existent souls, as the Greeks assumed, but our minds were certainly more than a blank slate (Latin, tabula rasa).
But Christians didn’t take our cue from Plato; we took it from Paul.
For when Gentiles, who do not have the Law, by nature do what the Law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the Law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
—Paul, Romans 2.14-16 ESV
Of course, I take some issue with that translation.
The by nature, I believe, refers to do not have—in other words, shove that comma over and the Gentiles “do not have the Law by nature.” The reason they’re a law to themselves is because they don’t have the Law. Instead they have a law—their society’s values. It resembles God’s commands because our societal values, which were deduced by logic and practicality, should resemble the commands of a logical, practical God. It’s this law that’s written on their hearts; it’s this law that God judges them by. Because, as I’ve said, people are selfish: We know what our values are, but we’re always looking for loopholes so we can be the exception.
So can we conclude that Paul was talking about a pre-existing Law embedded on our consciences? Well, we will if we’re Platonists. We will if we agree with St. Augustine that “Lord, you’ve made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.” (Confessions, 1.1) We will if we’re C.S. Lewis fans: The entire premise of his Mere Christianity (and for that matter The Abolition of Man) is that general revelation is proof—logical, non-biblical proof—that God exists. Everybody has a conscience; everybody knows there’s a right and a wrong; and that’s because God built that instinct into us so we’d think so.
Yeah, I just disagreed with Augustine and C.S. Lewis. That ought to alienate half the apologetics fans who have read thus far. Oops.
The only instinct that we have built-in—that we biologically have to have—is self-preservation. As a result of original sin, this instinct has been warped into self-centeredness and selfishness. That is what lies at the back of the human conscience. Not the Law. The Law has to be learned. It has to be taught by obedient followers of God. It isn’t built into our culture, as it was with the Jews; we do not have it by nature. If we did, we’d naturally believe in God and seek him. But we don’t.
And it’s for this reason that I don’t consider general revelation to be a valid form of revelation. Morality doesn’t automatically point to God, nor does it automatically point to the one true God. For atheists, morality is necessary because they believe in no God: If life doesn’t mean anything, you have to make it mean something, and you do this by determining what is good and what isn’t, and invent a morality. Christians might argue that ultimately an atheist's standards of good and bad are grounded in God, but—again—that’s only because if we’re being logical and practical, our values will automatically resemble those of a logical and practical God.
Right and wrong, like nature, are a clue to how the universe works, and how its Creator made it. But if you want specifics, you have to go with the things God intentionally told us about himself. In other words, actual revelation.