How does God’s speech in creation relate to his speech in Scripture? In putting such a great emphasis on general revelation, are we not in danger of minimizing special revelation? Do we not thereby compromise the Reformation’s great principle of sola Scriptura?
This is a legitimate concern. . . . The analogy with ‘guidance’ can be helpful. It is certainly true that a preoccupation with ‘the leading of the Spirit’ in determining God’s will for decisions of everyday life can result in an undervaluing of Scripture, but that is not at all a necessary consequence of an emphasis on seeking God’s will in our daily lives. A sound approach to guidance will always stress the primacy and indispensability of Scripture as well as the exercise of ‘sanctified common sense,’ bit it will not thereby downplay the reality of a knowable and specific will of God for our personal lives. In fact, the Scriptures themselves by their insistent teaching of God’s lordship over all of our lives continually drive us to consider questions of guidance. Suppose John, a college senior has to decide whether // to go on to seminary or to pursue graduate studies in philosophy. Scripture does not decide that question for him. Instead it gives him certain indispensable guidelines: he must seek the Lord’s will in all things, he must be a good steward of the gifts God gives him, he must do all to the glory of God, God has a plan for his life and has been guiding him since childhood, he must subordinate his own wishes and desires to God’s, and so on. But these guidelines press him on to a consideration of what God’s will is in this situation, what gifts he has to be a steward of, what is most glorifying to God in this particular case, what God’s plan and guidance have been in his life to this point, what personal preferences must be downplayed, and so on. In considering all these individual questions he must continually check back with Scripture to make sure his bearings are right, but he would be foolish and irresponsible if he let a stray text decide the matter for him without considering available graduate schools, his own talents and temperament, specific historical needs, and so on.
Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 36-37