I am calling “major supporting texts” three passages that tend to be the second most cited next to Romans 1:19-20 when it comes to either general revelation or the use of it in apologetics. This refers to Psalm 19:1-6, Romans 2:14-15, and Acts 17:26-29. The first sets general revelation to Spirit-inspired poetry, the second gives a ground for natural law in the conscience of all, and the third models an apologetic method that moves comfortably between this data and the gospel, even quoting from pagan sources. 

The Heavens Declare Objective Things About God — Psalm 19:1-6

Psalm 19:1-6 is often coupled with Romans 1:20 as “the” principal general revelation passages. In the case of the Psalm, however, one has to be mindful of how many genuine believers are simply taking the words of these verses as mere poetry—inspiring about the same subject matter, to be sure, yet void of any specific content. Here are the inspired words.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.”

In his Answer to Eunomius, Gregory of Nyssa argues from the obvious poetic sense of Psalm 19 to the conclusion that God did not “speak” in the physical sense of having a mouth or projecting sound waves. This was to refute a wooden literalism about Genesis 1 set forth by his opponents.1 Conversely the words of the Psalm cannot be reduced to “mere poetry” that could lend themselves to an innate knowledge of God alone. Declarative speech is always communicating content, so that to begin thinking about it at all is to consider it by discursive reason. This is true whether or not one has written it in standard propositional form. 

One would think that this is especially true about the kind of truth spoken of by the Psalmist. Would anyone seriously defend that there is either innate (from birth) or intuited (later on) knowledge about God in the stars or a mountain range or a baby’s cry? In and of themselves such phenomena contain no “data” that could intelligibly count as theologically conclusive. Rather there is a reason.

The reason is what one would give to anyone who asks: “But why does the brilliance of that star suggest anything about your God?” And likewise with the endurance of the mountains or the new life of the infant. No one (unless they were being belligerent or obtuse) would answer, “False—that is the reason!” in reference to the bare phenomena itself, as that would be no reason at all, but more like a reason that one doesn’t have to have a reason. 

According to Calvin, the Psalmist here is giving us the logic of a design inference, and that via discursive reasoning: 

“David shows us how it is that the heavens proclaim to us the glory of God, namely, by openly bearing testimony that they have not been put together by chance, but were wonderfully created by the Supreme Architect. When we behold the heavens, we cannot but be elevated, by the contemplation of them, to Him who is their great Creator.”2

Henry adds to this some examples of how natural theological reasoning is immediately suggested:

“What that is which the creatures notify to us. They are in many ways useful and serviceable to us, but in nothing so much as in this, that they declare the glory of God, by showing his handy-works, v. 1. They plainly speak themselves to be God's handy-works; for they could not exist from eternity; all succession and motion must have had a beginning; they could not make themselves, that is a contradiction; they could not be produced by a casual hit of atoms, that is an absurdity, fit rather to be bantered than reasoned with: therefore they must have a Creator, who can be no other than an eternal mind, infinitely wise, powerful, and good. Thus it appears they are God's works, the works of his fingers (Ps. 8:3), and therefore they declare his glory. From the excellency of the work we may easily infer the infinite perfection of its great author. From the brightness of the heavens we may collect that the Creator is light; their vastness of extent bespeaks his immensity;, their height his transcendency and sovereignty, their influence upon this earth his dominion, and providence, and universal beneficence: and all declare his almighty power, by which they were at first made, and continue to this day according to the ordinances that were then settled.”3

Here we have a commentary that takes for granted the normalcy of thinking about what one is beholding in general revelation. Natural theology is not some forced appendage to the boundaries of natural revelation; it is simply the currency of doing any business with it. 

Natural Law as a Function of Natural Theology — Romans 2:14-15

This other text in the early part of Romans reads in this way.

“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.”

One option about this text ought to be ruled out right up front. Unlike in the case of those who have attempted to see a different audience for 1:19-20, in the case of 2:14-15 there is proof text that alternative views can seem to hang their hat upon. Cranfield and Barth had both insisted that Paul’s allusion to this law being “written on the heart” can only be a recall of that promise in Jeremiah 31:33.4 In short, this would be speaking of the New Covenant revelation of law rather than a natural law to all mankind. The way that chapter ends can seem to support this. There is one who “keeps the law” (v. 27) and is a Jew “inwardly” (v. 29).

Moo, who rejects this view, nonetheless states it more concisely and simply that its proponents did: “Those who think that the Gentiles to whom Paul alludes are Christians generally connect vv. 14-15 with v. 13: Paul now explains that Gentiles, like Jews, can be ‘doers of the law’ and hence justified.”5 So to put things most plainly, there are two basic ways to ground verses 14-15 in the larger context. We can ground the statement in the question: “How are the Gentiles transgressors of the law if they have not the law?” Or we can ground it in the opposite: “How are the Gentiles doers of the law if they have not the law?” Since the justification statement (v. 13) is closer than the statement about the Gentiles’ guilt (1:18-32), the latter reading may seem more plausible—on the surface, that is.

If Paul already has this “law-doers” contrast in mind in verses 14-15, then the promise of Jeremiah 31 can fit here. However, the trouble is that the contrast in 2:14-15 is still universal. As 1:18-32 was universal about all mankind, so now the contrast is between all Gentiles and all Jews.6 The prospect of the “true Jew” is secondary and added as a rebuke. For Bruce, “written on the heart” can indeed be an “echo of the prophecy of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:33,” and yet the notion that it refers to Gentile Christians “scarcely suits the context.”7

Dunn’s evasion is less obvious at first glance,8 but the clearest he comes to it is that,

“Paul is not asserting the existence of a natural law as such; the law in question is still the Jewish law. He is simply noting that there are Gentiles who, despite their ignorance of the law, give evidence of a moral sensitivity which one would sooner expect to find in the people of the law.”9

This commentary is one piece of evidence among many that we need to spend some time defining natural law. We might ask Dunn why the Gentiles possess this “moral sensitivity” or else, what exactly is this moral sensitivity? It is nothing other than natural law. The failure to see that signals that the contemporary commentators do not have an accurate understanding of what natural law is to begin with.

For example, other commentators will insist that verses 14 and 15 should be in parentheses, as “verse 15 does not seem to link naturally with verse 16.”10 Now what is it about verses 14 and 15 that would strike some as so “unnatural” in the context of the rest of the chapter? It is exactly the same as the problem my thesis seeks to address at the front end. In the course of the decline of natural theology and natural law, the meaning of each has been entirely reduced to the subjective sense of nature.

So in the case of natural law, it is 1. what sinners can do with it, or 2. what pagan cultures have done, or 3. what pagan ethicists and philosophies say is right, and so forth. If such poor definitions had never arose, it would not be strange in the least that Paul is highlighting the reality of the law among the Gentiles in this place. The whole of Chapter 2 puts the Jews in the same dock as the Gentiles. One can hardly do that in a single courtroom with two legal systems in an utterly incommensurable relation to each other. So Hendriksen gives the perfectly reasonable explanation:

“The objection might be raised, ‘But is this fair to the Gentile? After all, he does not have the faintest notion about God’s law. Why, then, should he be punished at all? As shown in verses 14, 15, this objection is not valid.”11

In the simplest of terms: Paul is anticipating and invalidating the “fairness” objection.

Having dealt with wrong surface readings, we are ready for a better angle at what this passage reveals concerning natural law. Haines points out that Romans 1:32 and 2:14-15 “really need to be read together.”12 The moment one looks at these texts, the reason is evident. If the Gentiles know that those who do such things deserve God’s judgment, then this is yet more reasoning precisely about God; and it is true as far as it goes.

In short, natural law is a function of natural theology in that the objective moral natures pressing upon the Gentiles in 2:14-15 are a subset (divine justice) of the wider circle of objective theological natures pressing upon all mankind in 1:19-20 (divine attributes). The link between 1:18-32 and 2:14-15 is also important in remembering the medium through which this knowledge of God is communicated. Murray adds, “‘By nature’ is contrasted with what is derived from external sources and refers to that which is engraven on our natural constitution.”13 

Analysis of the content of this knowledge is often straightforward, yet also minimalist. Ambrose simply says, “There is therefore something like the law of God which exists in the hearts of men.”14 Luther cited the Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12 as a supporting text for the fact that the Gentiles had the same “spiritual law” or “moral sense” which “the Mosaic Law represented.”15 After all, why would Jesus appeal to “as you would be done to” — a principle too universal to be summarized by any one commandment, or set of specific commandments, in the law of Moses? That brings up the matter of what exactly this law is. It is not conscience itself, but conscience testifies to it. The expression “written on the heart” suggests moral knowledge, or content. 

About the exact verbiage, Van Til says,

“Paul does not here say that the law is written in the hearts of men. It is true that they have the law written in their hearts … But here we deal with man’s response as an ethical being to this revelation of God. All men, says Paul, to some extent, do the works of the law. He says that they have the works of the law written in their hearts.”16

Murray says the same almost verbatim, “Paul does not say that the law is written upon their hearts,” but instead “the work of the law is written in their hearts.”17 What is in view in distinguishing “the works of law” versus “the law” itself as that which is “written” on the heart? “He refrains from this form of statement,” Murray says, “apparently for the same reason as in verse 14 he has said that the Gentiles ‘do the things of the law’ and not that they did or fulfilled the law.” So both Van Til and Murray wanted to maintain a distance between 1. the forms of law (that which the Jews received versus that received by the Gentiles) and 2. the reality of conformity to it (both the Jews and Gentiles fell short). On these points, the classicalist and presuppositionalist readers of Romans 2:14-15 can agree. 

What can we say about conscience here? The word is used directly after the imagery of the writing on the heart, “while their conscience also bears witness.” This does not come across as a parallelism; there is distinction. Shedd weighs in here, first on the “writing” itself: “The apostle has in mind, here, the understanding and not the heart; the intellectual perception of law and not the affectionate love of it.” This dichotomy is what caused Shedd to emphatically reject that Paul would mean the promise of Jeremiah 31:33, which is not merely the promise of information, even clearer information, but also of a love for the law. Instead, this “conscience co-testifies with the prescript of the law.”18

So there is an object of moral knowledge, and then there is a subjective moral sense. Recall that the same was true of the relationship between reason (in its subjective apprehension) and nature (the objective unit of knowledge) when it came to natural revelation and natural theology in general. So here, if conscience “co-testifies,” then something moral in us “agrees with” some objects of moral knowledge that stand over all. Murray seemed to have the same view: 

“Conscience must not be identified with: ‘The work of the law written in their hearts’ for three reasons: (1) Conscience is represented as giving joint witness. This could not be true if it were the same as that along which it bears witness. (2) Conscience is a function; it is the person functioning in the realm of moral discrimination and judgment, the person viewed from the aspect of moral consciousness. The work of the law written in the heart is something integrated in our nature, is antecedent to the operations of conscience and the cause of them. (3) The precise thought is that the operations of conscience bear witness to the fact that the work of the law is written in the heart.”19

I would only add to Murray’s list the implications of passages like Romans 14 or 1 Corinthians 8-9 about matters of indifference, over which it is precisely stronger and weaker consciences that are at odds. Yet Paul clearly teaches that in spite of Christian liberty and charity and the rest of the lessons in those texts, there is nevertheless a more correct position on those matters (cf. Rom. 14:14). What follows? This leads to the consequence that stronger and weaker consciences exist on a spectrum of being nearer to and further from the actual substance of the law. Conscience can conform to the law and deviate from it. It cannot be God’s law itself. Nor can it be that objective knowledge which Murray and others stress is “the work of the law,” since that is still the source of guilt and thus an objective communication from God. 

Two final misconceptions remain, and they are roughly the same as in 1:19-20 with natural theology: 1. Has not everything changed from the prelapsarian to postlapsarian state? 2. Is not natural law the exaltation of moral autonomy as natural theology is the exaltation of rational autonomy? To the first, Brakel gave a concise version of the standard Reformed position: “Man, in the state of perfection, had all this perfectly impressed upon his nature, and after the fall this impression remained in all men, although imperfectly.”20 Brakel further presses down on the human autonomy question: “the foundation for being obligated to the law is not because reason teaches that something is either good or evil; for then it would not be the law of God, but a rational statement.”21 Note that he is not denying that any such statement ought to be rational, but that what he is calling “the foundation” not be human reason. So God, by his command, is the same Author in the law of conscience as in the law to Moses. Of course reason processes both; yet it is not reason that prescribes. Again, reason discovers, but does not determine, as Brakel makes even more plain in the following words:

“Our reason even originates with God and He declares by means of it what His will is. Thus, the heathen must judge as to whether a matter is evil, not because their reason affirms it to be so, but because God wills it and makes His will known to them by means of their reason, that is, by means of the light of nature.”22

This is, after all, the meaning of the phrase “light of nature” in the Westminster Confession,23 so that all Reformed ministers who affirm such standards have presumably been in agreement with such phraseology. C. John Collins even makes the argument that three expressions in 2:14-15 are “echoes of Aristotle” in Paul’s mind.24 I mention this only in passing, as no part of my argument hinges on it. However, it brings up something worth considering. If we have no trouble with Paul quoting pagan poets in Acts 17:28 or Titus 1:12, then it is unclear to me why an allusion to Aristotelian reasoning (whether consciously borrowed by Paul or else only by resemblance) would be problematic.

Sourcing the Pagans — Acts 17:26-29

“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.”

This is the classic narrative text in the New Testament. Beeke and Smalley say of this, “Paul asserts truths held in common with Greek Stoic philosophy.”25 The operative idea here is common notions. It is not simply that there was a common ground somewhere “out there,” but that the Holy Spirit inspired what seems like an approval of the truth they recorded. The point is not simply that he is speaking with Greeks in their categories, nor even only that he is quoting their sources—though both points are important. More than that, Paul is cultivating in the Athenians a particular train of discursive reasoning, from common notions to a conclusion about what God must not be like. 

Calvin seemed to agree with this in an extended commentary on this passage. He takes issue with Jerome’s understanding of Paul as attributing “that to one God which was written of many,”26 but he does not fixate on this to conclude that a general theism cannot entail “true natural theology.” On the contrary, he discusses the point mentioned earlier about Romans 1 and idolatry. True knowledge is a prerequisite for false worship to be blameworthy. We must remember how embarrassing this question would be to Calvin if we must simply equate matters of reason and nature always to soteriology. The Genevan Reformer was always keen in his commentaries to take a dig at Rome when it was suitable to the context, and he certainly does not miss that opportunity with this text. Yet he composes himself and says, “I answer, that Paul doth not in this place commend that which the men of Athens had done; but taketh from their affection, though it were corrupt, free matter for teaching.”27

But in order to teach who? Why, the very pagans he was speaking with! In other words, Calvin recognized that Paul was taking true knowledge that these pagans both (a) possessed as lines of reason and (b) twisted as idolatry—and he further used it as grounds for commending right belief. It can all go together if one keeps the epistemological question and the soteriological question distinct. Calvin went so far as to ascribe to Paul the apologetic method one can only recognize as classical: 

“If any man will intreat generally of religion, this must be the first point, that there is some divine power or godhead which men ought to worship. But because that was out of question, Paul descendeth unto the second point, that the true God must be distinguished from all vain inventions. So that he beginneth with the definition of God, that he may thence prove how he ought to be worshipped; because the one dependeth upon the other.”28

Now as to the words cited from the Greek poets, Calvin says that these “came from no other fountain save only from nature and common reason,”29 and yet here is the Holy Spirit inspiring their use through Paul. Although that first poet, Aratus, “spake of Jupiter,” yet “Paul, in applying that unto the true God … wrest it unto a contrary sense.”30 Then the most pertinent inference made in the commentary: “For because men have naturally some perseverance of God, they draw true principles from that fountain.”

Nothing more is being claimed or needs to be claimed, as the classical argument has never been that such knowledge saves.31 It is only that such knowledge—if knowledge, as knowledge—is true in itself. In summary, this text presents two tremendous difficulties for the position against the classical view of natural theology: 1. Paul is modeling with approval extra-biblical antecedents concluding in true knowledge about God; 2. Paul is quoting from pagan (unregenerate) sources as if the relevant proposition in those sources constituted true knowledge of God.

____________________________

1. Gregory of Nyssa, Answer to Eunomius, cited in Haines, Natural Theology, 94-95.

2. Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms, I:309

3. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 767.

4. The way that Barth comes to this is by his normal winding path of pressing paradoxes past their usefulness. Nonetheless, he seizes especially on the clause “in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ” in verse 16. In short, this is a preemptive hint Paul gives of justification in Christ’s righteousness that Barth links to that “law unto themselves” (The Epistle to the Romans, 65-70).

5. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 149.

6. cf. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 73.

7. F. F. Bruce, The Letter of Paul to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 86.

8. Dunn seems to acknowledge in the end that this is “of a ‘natural’ sense of responsibility, consequent upon what is known of God,” but he spends a good deal of ink getting there after rejecting that these are shades of Jeremiah 31, and wanting to stress that Paul’s whole point is to show that the Jews did not have exclusive claims on “the” law. So Dunn wants to avoid this being about a “universal” law, and yet comes full circle to begrudgingly come to the traditional interpretation: Romans 1-8, 98-102.

9. Dunn, Romans 1-8, 105.

10. Hendriksen, Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 96. It should be said that Hendriksen himself does not take this view but makes mention of this opinion. Likewise for some the problem has to do with grammatical structure, for which Hendriksen offers the solution of Denney and Ridderbos, which is wholly consistent with the classical natural law reading. Even here, however, definition can determine what grammatical options do and do not make sense to the interpreter.

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

12. Haines, Natural Theology, 40.

13. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 73.

14.  Ambrose, ACCS, VI:67.

15.  Luther, Commentary on Romans, 58.

16.  Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 184.

17.  Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 74.

18.  Shedd, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1980), 48.

19.  Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 75.

20. Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:37.

21. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:53.

22. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:84

23. Westminster Confession of Faith, I.1, 6

24. C. John Collins cited in Haines, Natural Theology, 92-96

25. Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, I:217.

26. Calvin, Commentary, XIX:156.

27. Calvin, Commentary, XIX:157.

28. Calvin, Commentary, XIX:158.

29. Calvin, Commentary, XIX:169.

30. Calvin, Commentary, XIX:169.

31. Calvin, Commentary, XIX:169.