The Rationality of Revelation

ARTICLE GUIDE

At a Glance

Logic serves the reception of revelation without becoming a standard above God. This study distinguishes mystery from contradiction and rationality from rationalism while locating valid reasoning within the Logos and the biblical promise-plan.

What This Study Explores

The essay considers valid inference, the order of being and the order of knowing, secular and theological objections to logic, Trinity and incarnation, and the limits of a rigid Hebrew–Greek contrast.

Does Logic Stand above God or Serve Revelation?

The study grounds the laws of thought in God’s rational, self-consistent character. It distinguishes that ontological grounding from logic’s epistemic priority for human understanding: readers need coherent reasoning to receive revelation. This does not require reducing Scripture’s narrative tensions to isolated propositions.

Key Claims

• Logic is treated as the normative discipline of valid inference and avoidance of fallacy.
• The order of being and the order of knowing answer different questions about priority.
• Mystery need not entail contradiction.
• Hebraic narrative juxtaposition is distinguished from logical absurdity.

Interpretive Context

The essay qualifies accounts of Hebraic “block logic” with James Barr’s warnings about a rigid Hebrew–Greek binary. It also avoids reducing Kierkegaard’s project to a slogan of blind irrationalism, while defending reason’s role in interpretation and apologetics.

Selected Scholarship

• Geisler, N. L., & Brooks, R. M. (1990). Come, let us reason. Baker Book House.
• Wilson, M. R. (1989). Our Father Abraham. Eerdmans.
• Kaiser, W. C., Jr. (2008). The promise-plan of God. Zondervan.

Scripture Connections

John 1:1–18; 1 Peter 3:15; Genesis 3:15; 12; 15; 17; Exodus 19:4–6; 2 Samuel 7; Jeremiah 31:31–34; Ezekiel 36:25–27; Romans 11

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