...... the apostle Paul, speaking in the context of the very same altars to unknown gods in Athens, said, . . . . Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you [Acts 17:23]. And again, writing to the Corinthians not far away, However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived' but God has revealed it to us [I Corinthians 2:9, 10]. This claim is common to the whole Bible. God has not waited for us to stumble to Him in the dark (which would be impossible anyway), but has revealed Himself to us. The word revelation in Greek is apokalupsis which means literally “unveiling”; so God has “unveiled” to us the things we could not know because of our finiteness and sin.



This revelation or unveiling to finite and sinful people is the Bible as the written Word. This is the claim of the whole Bible. Moreover, through the Bible we learn of the life and teaching of the Second Person of the Trinity, who became man at a point in history and so became the Living Word of the Godhead: For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form [Colossians 2:9].



In this claim the dilemma of all humanistic systems is overcome at a stroke. The infinite God has spoken. None of the many finite attempts to define truth, doomed to failure as we have seen, is necessary. God has communicated to man, the infinite to the finite. God has communicated, in addition, in words that are understandable to us. The One who made man capable of language in the first place has communicated to man in language.



Francis Schaeffer, in his book Whatever Happened To The Human Race?



The powerful Evangelical voice and founder of L'Abri Fellowship was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1912.