General Revelation Implies an Objective Natural Theology

In our first three critical questions about general revelation, specifically concerning Romans 1:19-20, we have moved from the least to the most controversial questions. We now make the jump from general revelation per se to what this tells us about the knowledge implied.

Question 4. Does this imply an objective natural theology?

In other words, is it only the natural revelation that is objective, and all of what we mean by natural theology is subjective? It may seem so at first glance. Did we not all agree that revelation was the divine act and the theology done was the human response? Yes, indeed. From that perspective, of the human action considered in itself, all such acts are subjective in that they are finite mental attempts to look outward to conform to the truth of things. Let us get at our fourth answer with this version of the question: Is that which is received by all mankind some real “set” or “unit” of knowledge or isn’t it? Our question is not whether sinful man does a single decent thing with it. The question is purely and simply whether that which is understood is an object of knowledge in its own right, and thus true knowledge of God.

Kruse remarks about verse 19 that,

“The word translated ‘known’ is found only here in Paul’s writings but fourteen times elsewhere in the NT, and in every case it refers to something that is known or being made known, not something that may be known.”1

This word γνωστὸν is not modified nor paired with a subjunctive verb, so I would add to Kruse’s remarks those of Hodge, that this “always in the Bible means, what is known, not what may be known.”2 The NASB rendering “that which is known” is therefore preferable to the inclusion of “may be” in the ESV, NIV, or even KJV. This is not a merely latent capacity, nor a hypothetical package of knowledge, which the Holy Spirit unpacks at regeneration. This is real knowledge wherever it holds sway, and Paul makes it a communication to the human reason as human reason.

Longenecker takes this view in saying, “we may conclude that Paul is not merely speaking of people having observed certain data having to do with God’s eternal power and divine nature — or, more minimally, that such data is available for all to see — but that ‘all people’ have also had, and continue to have … some appreciation or understanding of the significance of that data for their own lives.”3

To summarize, this knowledge of God must have the following attributes:

(1) It is an object of the mind.

(2) Its truth is first external to all finite minds: i.e. independent and antecedent of them.

(3) Each truth known by and in finite minds implies the conformity of such minds to that truth.

(4) No such truth can be true in one mind and false in another at the same time and in the same relation.  

(5) This (Point 4) must also be the case for all regenerated minds and unregenerate minds alike. 

An immediate objection to the method here may be anticipated. Why expand the circle from verse 20 to include 19? Why not verse 18 also? While we are at it, why not the rest of the chapter? Opponents of the classical view may have a particular interest in this given how Paul speaks of the same mankind suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (v. 18) and then exchanging every bit of that divine truth to form idols and commit all manner of sin (vv. 21-32). We agree wholeheartedly that all mankind, by nature, does indeed twist all such truth into a lie. However, he cannot do this unless that truth which he twists is consciously held up under suspicion. One example may help. 

When we are in a conversation with an unbeliever about morality, say, regardless of what occasioned the discussion, there comes that point in the conversation when the unbeliever becomes aware of “where things are headed.” He may have a number of ways that he wants to head us off at the pass—that is, he wants to undermine our contention that wrong implies right, and that right implies a transcendent obligation to a Person and so forth. Now how does the skeptic come to know that this is “where things are headed”? What exactly would he mean by this if he were wholly destitute of the knowledge of it? If he meant nothing at all, well, then no suspicion of it would ever arise. 

Coming back from examples to the text itself, Luther takes up the matter of the heathen’s idolatry: “They proved this by calling the idols which they made ‘gods,’ and even ‘God.’”4 What do pagan religions do but take the very attributes of the true God—his eternity and power—and isolate them from other divine attributes, or severely restrict them, so that (If we could make Luther anticipate Feuerbach and Freud and turn them on their heads), far from projecting human attributes to the superlative and calling that divine, the pagan actually did things in the reverse. But notice what this tells us about this revelation translating into objective knowledge. Luther continued,

“This demonstrates that there was in their hearts a knowledge of a divine sovereign Being. How else could they have ascribed to a stone, or to the deity represented by a stone, divine attributes, had they not been convinced that such qualities really belong to God! Manifestly they knew that God is mighty, invisible, just, immortal, and good. But they erred in ascribing to their idols the divine attributes (that belong only to the true God).”5

All of this drives us to be more precise in our language about general revelation and natural theology. Does Paul restrict himself to the idea that the knowledge of God is merely the occasion for the unbeliever’s guilt? Is it not precisely an object knowledge that is known? In other words, an object with a nature. However much reason may be deliberating on it, there is, at some point, an object of the mind that is at once 1. independent of all finite minds (it didn’t originate from any of them) and 2. beheld by finite minds (the idea got through to a degree of clarity sufficient for conviction). This is what I mean by “objective knowledge.” Now from this point, because of sin, all manner of subjective distortions emerge. On that there is no disagreement. But we beg to differ with all theologians or traditions that either conflate the objective with the subjective, or else cancel the objective by the subjective.

As for Barth’s commentary, there is no talk of the true God “back behind” Christ. Anyone familiar with Barthian theology understands his reasoning for this. After linking the wrath of God (v. 18) to falling nature, which “God” we make out of it is really “No-God,” he proceeds to define “that which may be known about God” (v. 19) to be the realization that we do not know Him—“the hidden abyss”6—and God’s “eternal power” (v. 20) to be that “which breaks forth in the resurrection.”7 Knowing is made unknowing and general is made specific. 

A statement by Van Til on Romans 1:20 is ambiguous at best and an absurd stretch in the name of fideism at worst. In his Introduction to Systematic Theology, he grants the traditional breakdown between general revelation and special revelation, the former communicating God’s existence and the latter revealing salvation in Christ. He then adds,

“On the other hand, it is also true that when man was created in paradise, he knew not merely of the existence of God, but he knew the nature of God as far as it had been revealed to him. It is for the loss of this actual knowledge of the nature of God that man, when he became a sinner, must be held responsible.”8 

Now Haines cites this passage to show Van Til denying actual postlapsarian knowledge of God through nature, so that Van Til saw Paul’s words in Romans 1:20 to refer to that knowledge with Adam had in his original nature and which he lost in the fall.9 There are two ways to read Van Til here. One is to note his previous use of the words “also” and “On the other hand,” as if this guilt was in addition to what is ascribed in the traditional view. The other way to read him is the way that Haines has, which can point to the fact that Van Til uses the descriptive “actual knowledge” as that which was lost in Adam’s sin, which would certainly tend to negate it in the present.

In the same book, Van Til republishes a response to William Messelink, who had charged his concept of an ethical antithesis to imply a total loss of the image of God that negates that natural knowledge. Van Til replied:

“All men, even after the fall, know deep down in their hearts that they are creatures of God, that they should therefore obey, but that they have actually broken the law of God. After the fall, therefore, all men seek to suppress the truth, infixed in their being, about themselves.”10

So Van Til is distinguishing between a metaphysical antithesis and an ethical antithesis. In one sense, this doesn’t really clarify things; but I quote it to show that the pushback against Van Til has been there from the start, as has the Van Tillian pushing right back. In one comment on Romans 1:20, Van Til comes very close to affirming all that we would ask of him:

“As psychologically self-active creatures they must see something of the truth. They hold down the truth, to be sure, but it is the truth that they hold down. Nor is it that this truth is objectively placed before them only in nature and in the make-up of man … But knowledge is also in man in the sense that his subjective reaction to that which he sees shows some acquaintance with the truth.”11

The classicalist can only reply Amen! But if this last statement means what it seems to mean, then Van Til should have amended so many other statements that restricted objective natural theology to a “redeemed” sort alone. The basic position of the presuppositionalist is that the sole end of natural revelation is condemnation. However, if what we have seen is true (including in that last admission by Van Til) then the formation of true knowledge, which is a good in itself, regardless of how it will sink the reprobate on Judgment Day, was also an end of this revelation. One may even call it a subordinate end if they wish; but it was still an end.

To solidify this point, let us ask three more questions about the wider-angle lens of verses 18 through 23:

(1) What exactly is being suppressed and how?

(2) What is the sufficient ground of inexcusability?

(3) What exactly is being exchanged in the acts of idolatry that follow?

Really, these are but three angles on one difficulty. It is a difficulty for any position that denies that this is objective natural knowledge of God.

Cranfield also denied that Paul intended or even allowed a natural theology by these words. Instead the meaning is that, “men ought to have recognized, but in fact have not recognized.”12 The question as to the ground of inexcusability seems not to have troubled the commentator. If by “recognized” Cranfield wanted to suggest a hearty agreement with the facts, then we could agree with him. But even the fullest denial of those facts by sinful man cannot be in denial of that which is wholly unrecognized.

J. V. Fesko remarked that, “according to Van Til, this natural knowledge was solely for the purpose of rendering sinners inexcusable, though Van Til does not adequately explain how this natural knowledge functions to bring about their inexcusability.”13 This is more intricately connected to essential Christian doctrine than we may realize. The same sufficient condition of the guilt we are driving at here also suggests a necessary condition to the gospel. In his book, The Clarity of God’s Existence, Owen Anderson argues for a “principle of clarity,” namely:

“that if the failure to know God (unbelief) is inexcusable (culpable ignorance), then it must be clear (readily knowable) that God exists. This means that it is necessary for God’s existence to be clear (readily knowable) in order to make sense of the Christian claim that unbelief is culpable ignorance and requires redemption.”14

Both classicalists and presuppositionalists will want to claim the clarity of general revelation in Romans 1:20 as making their particular case. The question may then turn on whether the clarity of the revelation (God’s action, remember) as knowledge is the same thing as the belief that would constitute knowledge. Surely the human agent would not be held guilty for God’s action but for his own response; but then how can the response in handling the knowledge be blameworthy (indeed how can it even be a distinct human action at all) if it is not known in some rational sense?

This treatment of Romans 1:19-20 ought to at least establish the exegetical credentials of the classical interpretation. The main commentators overwhelmingly take a classical position, and they help deliver to us the picture of a revealed, reasoned, objectively true knowledge of God in all mankind.

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1. Colin G. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 89.

2. Hodge, Commentary on Romans, 36.

3. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans, 208-09.

4. Luther, Commentary on Romans, 43.

5. Luther, Commentary on Romans, 43.

6. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 46.

7. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 46.

8. Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2007), 177.

9. Haines, Natural Theology, 37.

10. Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 45.

11. Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 166.

12. C.E.B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, I (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 116.

13. J. V. Fesko, Reforming Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019), 52, cf. 64-65.

14. Anderson, The Clarity of God’s Existence, 2.