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Henry espoused a Reformation-inspired voluntarism in the best sense of the term.

He stressed the absolute dependence of human knowledge upon divine disclosure,

whether natural or particular. In other words, according to Henry, we know what we

know, because God wills both the possibility and the content of that knowledge. Henry

came to these views early on in his theological career, and never wavered. Defining "the

Christian Revelation-Claim" Henry wrote,

In a sense, all knowledge may be viewed as revelational, since meaning is not
imposed upon things by the human knower alone, but rather is made possible
because mankind and the universe are the work of a rational Deity, who fashioned
an intelligible creation. Human knowledge is not a source of knowledge to be
contrasted with revelation, but is a means of comprehending revelation. . . . Thus
God, by his immanence, sustains the human knower, even in his moral and
cognitive revolt, and without that divine preservation, ironically enough, man
could not even rebel against God, for he would not exist. Augustine, early in the
Christian centuries, detected what was implied in this conviction that human
reason is not the creator of its own object; neither the external world of sensation
nor the internal world of ideas is rooted in subjectivistic factors alone.

Thus God circumscribes and determines what can be known. Nonetheless, the

world remains knowable because God himself is an intelligent Deity. Contrary to the

trajectory of rationalism, no autonomous standard for reason can be offered since reason

itself loses meaning apart from the divine character. Since the Divine discloses himself

as person, revelation is personal in nature and can therefore speak to all of humanity.

Consequently, revelation both coheres and corresponds to reality because God is one. It

is not a truism to say therefore that divine revelation is communication which we can

trust. Thus, as Henry declares, "Only the fact that the one sovereign God, the Creator and

Carl F. H. Henry, The Drift of Western Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 104.