Monday, August 10, 2015

I was intrigued by an article written by Duane Litfin, former President of Wheaton College, in their Alumni magazine. He was writing about the integration of “faith and learning” at the college, based on 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. In these verses Paul refers to the seen and the unseen. Litfin describes the seen as “all that for humans is independently discoverable, all we can learn on our own through the application of our own faculties.” The unseen then would be that which is “not discoverable for us.” If it’s not discoverable it raises the question, “Can we get to know it?” Litfin points out that Paul’s answer would be “Yes.” How? “Through special revelation, the testimony of God. The world of the unseen represents all we know is the case because God has told us it is so; otherwise we might not know it. In fact, central to this revealed knowledge, knowledge of the unseen, is insight about how we are to construe the seen. Through revelation we discover what things look like from the perspective of heaven. We learn what otherwise would be unavailable to us: namely, how things appear to God. From His revelation we gain ‘a view from above, expressed in language from below.’” The point that Litfin is making based on Paul’s statement is that though we might not know all that God is doing in and through our momentary situation, especially when we are suffering, we can know, based on God’s revelation inscripturated in the Bible, that our “momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all.”