The Media of General Revelation

Having now discussed the audience and the content of general revelation, we must turn to the media. In other words, by what means or through what channels does God communicate those invisible things through such that the human mind may receive the message?

Question 3. What are the modes, or media, of this knowledge?

This question has multiple dimensions. It immediately splits into a double-question: 1. Is it innate, acquired, or both? and 2. Is it immediate or mediate? The whole idea of innate ideas is a controversial one in the history of philosophy. It was most famously critiqued by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690. As always with the Enlightenment philosophers, there is always the context of which “brand” they are criticizing; and one need not agree with Locke’s empiricism to at least agree with the critical element.

To put things simply, the basic problem with an “innate” idea is that it is not much of an idea at all. We do not have to rewind the clock to our infancy, as Augustine purported to do in his Confessions, in order to see the problem. We simply have to think vicariously through the infants that we observe, and consider what their ideas must be. However we describe them, not many of us would dare to say that any of these ideas are consciously about God, nor about logic, nor about moral principles. To be sure, the building blocks of all of those are starting to form. But that is the whole point, this process is always a posteriori reasoning if considered over time.

Our concern here is not with Locke’s criticism (or criticisms of Locke), but with whether Paul could have meant anything like innate ideas in Romans 1:20. I think not. Again, let us review the content question. Would anyone say that God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature” are known to a small child, much less to an infant?

Turretin denied “innate knowledge” and the tabula rasa by name before Locke.1 But it is important to note that this is a denial concerning knowledge and not (a) principle and (b) potency. In other words the faculties of reason, in general, and conscience, in particular may be granted. Later he seems to grant intuitive knowledge coming with the faculty — a “twofold inscription on the heart of man: the one of God in the remains of his image and the natural law; the other of the Devil by sin.”2 The “conscience exerts itself both in observation … and in consciousness.”3 Religion, like sin, is not merely imitative. Its basest forms demonstrate that there is a natural instinct.4

So is general revelation immediate, mediate, or both? In other words, let us grant that what is innate is merely the capacity. Once the human mind begins consciously forming its view of things, is the knowledge of God revealed only in the soul or out in the world? If it is internal and immediate, what do we mean by this? Do we mean only the first principles of rationality and morality? If it is external and mediate, do we mean something like “data” or “sensation” that we observe? It should not take us too long to analyze either of these tracks before we understand, in some way, that they are both insufficient as “ideas,” and all the more so as ideas about God. Can any of these “make up” what we would recognize as objects of knowledge?

There is a kind of paradox in Paul’s words, or as Michael Middendorf calls it “something of an oxymoron”5 in his commentary. It is simply that mankind can see (figuratively) the unseen (literally) through things seen (literally). I think that is basically correct. However I will be challenging placing that third category of “thing seen” as entirely literal. It is certainly true of the physical world outside of us. Are there not also logical and moral realities which are (a) unseen and (b) not merely principles? Later on, we will investigate the nature of logical relationships and metaphysical truths which are objects of the mind and yet acquired by reason precisely through the act of reason.

Since the Apostle is setting before us quite the collection of verbal puzzle pieces, we may be too exhausted by the time we get to the participle form he uses for “being understood” (νοούμενα). This word is related to the root for “mind” (νοῦς). Shall we think about “noumenal” matters the way Kant did? I would think not. If Kant was right, then Paul was wrong; and vice versa. God himself has communicated the “thing in itself” (ding an sich) so far as it relates to his attributes in general. Do we then fall back on Locke’s empiricism? That too is a dead end. The puzzle pieces of “empirical data” are scattered unintelligibly across the table of nature without a box top that shows the finished picture.

So what are we left with? Paul tells us.

Fallen man would not hold the box top. He looks away in horror. Nevertheless, the puzzle pieces do not strike him as they would a dog, or some other irrational creature. The pieces are recognized. So are some of the pictures and patterns of a few put together. When he sees the imagery of a completed tree or a house coming together, he may throw the pieces down in disgust; but he cannot say in the end that he did not see.

In short, Paul is saying that he understood. Being understood means that man did not just get a biff in the side of the head with revelation. He understood. He thought thoughts. His reason reasoned. He could not work so hard at that suppression in verse 18 if he did not. 

At any rate, do the majority of the great commentators and theologians at least see a mediate and immediate communication working together? Luther is very concise in saying, “that from the beginning of the world the invisible things of God have always been recognized through the rational perception of the (divine) operations (in the world).”6 Calvin speaks as if an a posteriori approach is not so unique to Aquinas after all. He commented,

“By saying, that God has made it manifest, he means, that man was created to be a spectator of this formed world, and that eyes were given him, that he might, by looking on so beautiful a picture, be led up to the Author himself.”7

But this being “led up,” is it all at once or a process? Calvin couples this with the act of “looking.” It seems forced to imagine these commentators always constraining such human actions to a passive receptivity. 

Hodge seems to have embraced both sides:

“It is not of a mere external revelation of which the apostle is speaking, but of that evidence of the being and perfections of God which every man has in the constitution of his own nature, and in virtue of which he is competent to apprehend the manifestations of God in his works.”8

However, he then examines more directly the terms κτίσεως, ἀόρατα καθορᾶται and νοούμενα. The first “is the act of creation, and not the thing created.” The latter words are used to make the point that these “invisible things clearly seen” are perceived by each and every person precisely with, or in, the mind, or “understanding.”9 So although Hodge includes both the media and the immediate communication, he clearly wanted to stress the latter.

Murray’s approach is the reverse, also allowing both that this knowledge is manifest “unto them” and “in them,” but he wants to guard against reducing this to something a kin to that knowledge inscribed on the heart in 2:14-15. We must make way for that revelation of knowledge external to man, though it is because we are rational beings that it is also internal to us.10 On the one hand, “‘The things that are made’ are obviously the created things which are observable to our senses.” On the other hand, “what is sensuously imperceptible is nevertheless clearly apprehended in mental conception.”11 Murray seemed consciously to be reversing Kant by concluding, “Phenomena disclose the noumena of God’s transcendent perfection and specific divinity.”12

Hendriksen simply describes the medium of this revelation as “nature, history, and conscience,”13 such that the revelation is “in” all of these; though “Not as if men, acting on their own initiative, could have discovered God.”14 Putting together our second and third questions on the content and the means of communication, he continues that divine omnipotence “is evident in all God’s works (Ps. 111:2; 118:17; 119:27; 139:14; 145:10).”15

General Revelation’s Mode and Human Reasoning

The reader will recall our introduction to reason in the first chapter. Discursive reason was seen to be problematic to include as part of “true natural theology” for many because it seems to suggest that reason is foundational for faith in apologetics, and that “truths of reason” are foundational for “truths of faith” in the order of dogmatics. So the question of mode is really the linchpin at the heart of the controversy. Therefore, before taking that next step toward how the immediate and mediate forms of this revelation can go together and constitute knowledge, it may be a good place to consider further that the kind of “seeing” suggested by Paul (what so many commentators, theologians, and philosophers will call “apprehending” or “perceiving”) is actually neither strange nor overly-technical.

We might recall where Jesus used the concept of “seeing” for what cannot possibly mean that the physical eyes are seeing visible objects. I am thinking especially of John 14:9. Matthew 6:22 arguably could have a similar meaning. Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” As the Father has no human form, no body, we are left to infer that this can only mean a “sight” of those things which are invisible. But that would mean a different kind of sight. When Jesus elsewhere says that “The eye is the lamp of the body,” he surely does not mean the physical eye, but what we often call “the mind’s eye,” that is, reason. We might even say that this is both a rational eye and an aesthetic eye.

Stott commented,

“The creation is a visible disclosure of the invisible God, an intelligible disclosure of the otherwise unknown God. Just as artists reveal themselves in what they draw, paint and sculpt, so the Divine Artist has revealed himself in his creation.”16

Commentators and theologians who would not have discursive reasoning yield any of this knowledge will tend to view Paul’s descriptive to be of intuitive revelation only. So it may not be innate as knowledge, but as a capacity from birth, so that the divine communication can be manifest immediately to each soul over time. For example, Richard Allen Young concludes that this knowledge is what he calls an “unthematic awareness.” Using the analogy of being thrown into a lion’s den and having the “immediate awareness” of the danger, so in a similar way, all mankind has such a “passive and spontaneous mental activity based on observation. It is not a deliberate rational process.”17

One question that should be asked of Young is: What precisely is not a deliberate rational process? Does he mean that first awareness in a child? We agree. Would he add the many occasions throughout one’s life that seem to smack one square in the soul with divine majesty, such as wondrous images from the Webb telescope last year? We agree again. But do we really mean to exclude any information passing through inferences made about such first “encounters”? What would this imply about translating any of these (intuitions?) into propositional form? Would such a proposition be true for a believer but not for an unbeliever? If not, why not?

There is an either-or fallacy operating when we pit the knowledge of God gained through intentional acts of reasoning against that knowledge already possessed (leaving aside the matter of innate ideas). Knowledge of God is knowledge of God. Wherever it exists, it functions as a ground for guilt. If it increases via discursive reasoning, then it intensifies. But who would ever suppose that the increase of that knowledge via discursive reasoning somehow undermines that knowledge already possessed? 

In an article entitled, “Is There a Reformed Objection to Natural Theology?” Oliphint writes in summary of the aforementioned Michael Sudduth’s work by that title as follows: “Sudduth points out that, with respect to the Reformed, the classic text in discussions of this sort, Rom l:18ff., was rarely taken to affirm theistic arguments. Rather, the text is typically taken to affirm that all men have true knowledge of God by way of natural revelation. That natural knowledge may be ‘confirmed, clarified, and developed by theistic proofs’ (p. 52).”18

Let us consider what exactly would have to be claimed by the advocate of natural theology in order to need this correction. He would need to claim that Romans 1:19-20 is teaching not about God’s communication of Himself through nature, accessible to reason, but that Paul is speaking about the performance of that human reason in the form of argumentation. I can honestly say that I have never once heard any expositor of Scripture, nor any advocate of classical apologetics, make that claim about this text. What we do see are a great many commentators heading to the other extreme, pitting the revelation per se against reasoning on the basis of it.

Typical of that either-or thinking here is Schreiner who writes, “Neither is Paul suggesting that knowledge of God’s existence and power is the result of careful deduction and reasoning”—He should have stopped there and there would be no disagreement. Thus far Schreiner is correct. Paul restricts himself to a knowledge that all have, and thus a knowledge requiring no sophisticated argument in order for them to have per se. However, his next words actually make an additional and quite unwarranted inference that conceals further presuppositions: “so that the text can be used to encourage sophisticated argumentation as an apologetic for God’s existence.”19

According to Schreiner:

(Premise) Since this knowledge of God requires no sophisticated argumentation,

(Conclusion) Therefore this knowledge ought not encourage any.

This seems to assume that the only warrant for sophisticated argument about God from nature is to produce such knowledge to begin with, a sort of placing the rationalistic cart before the revelational horse. But why should we accept this either-or logic? Why should establishing the sufficient natural knowledge of God as the ground for inexcusability to emerge (which both Classicalists and Presuppositionalists deny is our task) be the lone reason to construct arguments from general revelation for God’s existence, or from God’s existence for that matter? We maintain other good reasons for natural theological reasoning: both in apologetics and in the rest of our theology. But it does clarify part of the problem.

When critics evaluate the classical view of natural theology, it often seems that what they are hearing is that natural theological arguments bear the burden of establishing man’s inexcusability—i.e. whereas such would not have been present without such argument. I know of no classical theologian who has ever expressed anything remotely resembling that. Let me be clear, then, that natural theological arguments intensify an inexcusability already present without them. Now such arguments happen to perform other valuable tasks, as we will see. But this straw man does need to be removed from our field of inquiry if we are to make any progress.

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1. Turretin, Institutes, I.1.3.11.

2. Turretin, Institutes, I.1.3.11.

3. Turretin, Institutes, I.3.3.5.

4. Turretin, Institutes, I.1.3.8

5. Michael Middendorf, Romans 1-8 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2013), 127.

6. Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1976), 43.

7. Calvin, Commentaries, XXV:70.

8. Hodge, A Commentary on Romans, 36.

9. Hodge, A Commentary on Romans, 37.

10. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 37-38.

11. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 39, 38.

12. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 40.

13. Hendriksen, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 68.

14. Hendriksen, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 69.

15. Hendriksen, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 69.

16.  John Stott, The Message of Romans (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 73.

17. Richard Allen Young, “The Knowledge of God in Romans 1:18-32: Exegetical and Theological Reflections,” JETS 43 (2000) 695-96.

18. Oliphint, “Is There a Reformed Objection to Natural Theology?” Westminster Theological Journal 74 (2012) 174.

19. Schreiner, Romans, 86.