The Audience and Object of Knowledge in General Revelation
Recall that we have to ask four crucial diagnostic questions about Romans 1:19-20 in order to get anywhere in the debate over whether general revelation implies a universally true natural theology. We will address the first two of those questions here, concerning audience and content (or object of knowledge).
Question 1. Who all is included in the audience of this knowledge?
Thomas Schreiner makes note of those who have questioned “whether the Gentiles are the object of Paul’s polemic,”1 on the grounds that ἀνθρώπων is used rather than ἔθνη. It should be stated that most of these commentators do not deny that the Gentiles are in view, but deny only that it is exclusive to the Gentiles. In other words, Paul’s target is already all of mankind before one ever gets to the specifically Jewish rebuke in Chapter 2.
That said, Schreiner lists five reasons that the more natural reading is the Jewish eye toward the guilt of the Gentiles in particular. I will summarize these: 1. language typical of Jewish condemnation of the nations, 2. overt idolatry (vv. 21-23), 3. overt homosexuality (vv. 24-27), 4. the worst sins championed rather than condemned (vv. 28-32), and 5. two Old Testament texts on idolatry (Psalm 106:20 and Jeremiah 2:11) applied uniquely to the Gentiles (v. 23).2 Aside from that negligible minority of commentators who want to argue that this was either just describing Adam or only the Jews, both of which are utterly fantastic conclusions, this is our smallest section because it is our least controversial question.
An important common sense clarification is in order before moving on. To say that “all mankind” gets the message is not to suggest that all human beings know the same exact “set” of information. All that is required here is that all receive what would make each one inexcusable. This will be an important element to remember when we approach the matter of the mode of that knowledge. From the equitable distribution of general revelation—i.e. sufficiently equitable to condemn—it simply does not follow that each and every human being must receive the same amount of real knowledge “above and beyond that,” so to speak.
A few examples of the revelatory inequality may help. A solar eclipse or rare comet or meteor shower will only be witnessed by some and not all. Some will live closer to the majesty of mountains, and others never see snowfall. Some will witness three or more major social revolutions in their lifetime, others none. Many will be mentally incapacitated. Even if we grant that the conscience offers the same “stockpile” of moral principles in all, still, the levels of social freedom and status experienced across time and circumstance are so diverse as to create very different levels of complexity in moral scenarios. In short, before we ever get to the subject of reason’s response, the diverse riches of divine communication already presents a difficulty for any view of the knowledge of God that attempts to restrict it to (1) the innate and / or (2) the principle level.
Question 2. What is the exact object of this knowledge?
Let us begin with the least controversial answer anyone could give, namely, with the exact words of the text: the invisible things of God. Case closed, right? Of course no one doubts that something about God is in view. The question of what exactly is not quite that simple. While “his eternal power” (ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις) may certainly have reference to the attributes of eternity and omnipotence, there is something unsettling about this meaning. In the first place, the other two terms that surround it—invisible attributes (ἀόρατα) and divine nature (θειότης)—are most certainly non-specific. Each is a single adjective, “invisible” and “divine,” to which the translators must decide what word to add for the substantival use—an already tricky thing when not dealing with descriptions of God. The only term that really can be speculated further on is “eternal power,” at least in terms of the exact words that are used in the text. Perhaps there are good reasons for speculating on a list of such implied attributes, and there is no shortage of commentators who have taken that route.
For one thing, the expression is more likely generic than it is a specific restriction. John Murray made this very point:
“It is not by any means probable that the apostle intended these terms to be a complete specification of the invisible things of God made manifest in the work of creation.”3
Some like Robert Haldane have noted that what is mentioned is indeed specific, but so as not to divide the attributes. In other words the language “does not refer to all the Divine attributes,” yet “It is only intended to mark the different attributes of Deity, which, although one in principle, are yet distinguished in their objects, so that we conceive of them as if they were many.”4 So in a sense, divine simplicity simplifies our need to know all the attributes that Paul has in mind.
If we expand the lens of our text, we will note that divine wrath had already been mentioned as “manifest” in verse 18. Should anyone doubt that this contains any content to the mind of unbelievers, verse 32 ought to be consulted: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” This seems to at least be saying that unbelievers know that God would be just to judge them. Things get thicker here because this seems to include in natural knowledge not only wrath but also justice. Further confirmation for this will come when we examine 2:14-15.
What sort of lists of implied attributes have the commentators come up with? Taking the whole of 1:18-32, Ambrosiaster placed the knowledge of God under two heads: “God, who they knew existed and provided for their welfare.”5 Hodge comments,
“The knowledge of God does not mean simply a knowledge that there is a God, but, as appears from what follows, a knowledge of his nature and attributes, his eternal power and Godhead, ver. 20, and his justice, ver. 32.”6 He goes on to report the opinion of Theodoret, “creation, providence, and the divine judgments,” and that of Theophylact, “his goodness, wisdom, power, and majesty.”7
For Hendriksen, this “indicates the sum of all God’s glorious attributes, in the present connection especially those attributes which make and leave an impression on everybody’s mind: the exhibition of God’s power, wisdom, and goodness in the created universe.”8 Boice listed sovereignty, holiness, majesty, will, wrath, righteousness, omniscience, immutability, and infinity as those understood by man.9 Bruce A. Baker adds that God’s personal nature is implied even by the inclusion of “his” (autou), twice used in the verse.10
Note that the attributes, even on a minimal list, are known both in natural theology and specially revealed theology. Grant Osbourne comments, “These invisible things are his divine attributes, for God cannot be seen (Jn. 1:18), is ‘spirit’ (Jn. 4:24) and so is ‘invisible’ (Col. 1:15, 1 Tim. 1:17).”11 True concepts of divine invisibility may emerge either from this field of nature or else from passages in Scripture such as those examples. Propositions may be formed either in those exact scriptural forms or else in paraphrased forms, or even (advancing us a step toward the thesis) in ways that draw out further truths, whether assumed by the invisibility or else implied by it.
We may understandably busy our answer with textbook attributes. In doing so, we may easily neglect that unlike the stars, the mountains, the momentary sight of historical figures, and empirical dimensions of the natural orders of the plants and animals—unlike these, in order for the content to be “the things of God” described by Paul as invisible, then that invisible dimension in us is going to have to graduate to a different kind of “sight.” While we are not yet to the question of mode, it must be remembered that this content is irreducibly abstract by comparison to the media through which they are communicated. Mountains are not the content. Their relative immutability is. So by analogy and by abstraction, a higher order of content is known.
Along those lines, Calvin’s opening comments on this verse are unmistakably Platonic. He links the author of Hebrews and his comment here.12
“God is in himself invisible; but as his majesty shines forth in his works and in his creatures everywhere, men ought in these to acknowledge him, for they clearly set forth their Maker: and for this reason the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews says, that this world is a mirror, or the representation of invisible things.”13
So he sees the many “particulars” of this world as expressions of divine things. And Matthew Henry’s view was equally suggestive:
“The power and Godhead of God are invisible things, and yet are clearly seen in their products … They could not come by natural light to the knowledge of the three persons in the Godhead (though some fancy they have found footsteps of this in Plato’s writings), but they did come to the knowledge of the Godhead, at least so much knowledge as was sufficient to have kept them from idolatry.”14
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1. Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 81.
2. Schreiner, Romans, 81.
3. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1997), 39.
4. Robert Haldane, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1966), 58.
5. Ambrosiaster, in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: VI, Romans (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 39.
6. Charles Hodge, A Commentary on Romans (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), 36.
7. Hodge, A Commentary on Romans, 37.
8. William Hendriksen, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 70.
9. James Montgomery Boice, Romans, Volume 1: Justification by Faith, Romans 1-4 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books 1991), 146.
10. Bruce A. Baker, “Romans 1:18-21 and Presuppositional Apologetics,” Bibliotheca Sacra 155 (1998), 289.
11. Grant R. Osbourne, Romans (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004)
12. Although it may seem from this comment that part of Calvin’s rationale is that “the Apostle” who wrote one letter wrote the other—i.e., that Calvin believed that Hebrews was written by Paul—but, in fact, he is using “the Apostle” generically, as one can see from the commentary on that book. It is all the more remarkable then that the Reformer took two separate Spirit-inspired authors to have expressed themselves in ways so reflective of this philosophical truth. Of the authorship of Hebrews, Calvin says, “I, indeed, can adduce no reason to shew that Paul was its author”: Calvin’s Commentaries, Volume XXII (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1979), xxvii.
13. Calvin, Commentaries, XXV:70.
14. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 2195.
