Denying the Reality of Natural Revelation
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20
‘For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made’ (1:20). The God who in Himself is invisible and unknowable – at least to the average man or woman (Galatians 4:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:5) – has made Himself both visible and knowable through what He has made. The ‘natural’ world, the creation, is a visible disclosure of the invisible God. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ (Psalm 19:1) and ‘the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Isaiah 6:3). Paul preached to his pagan audience in Lystra that ‘God has not left himself without testimony’ (Acts 14:17) but had given them rain, crops, abundant food and joy as signs of His grace to them (Acts 14:17). God’s ‘eternal power and divine nature’ constitute something of His ‘glory’ (1:23) that humanity has rejected.
God’s wrath is His settled and righteous antagonism to evil. It is directed against people who have some knowledge of God’s truth through the created order, but deliberately suppress this knowledge in order to pursue their own self-centred path. And it is already being revealed, in a preliminary way, in the moral and social corruption which Paul saw in much of the Greco-Roman world of his day and which we can see in the permissive societies of ours.
Natural revelation makes humanity even more accountable and so even more guilty, ‘so that men are without excuse’ (1:20).
The truths of God revealed in ‘nature’ cannot, of themselves, bring anyone into a full and true knowledge of God but they can help an honest seeker and certainly illustrate that knowledge once we have found the true God through Christ. In Acts 17:22-34 Paul uses natural revelation as a stepping stone in the presentation of the gospel to intellectuals in Athens; so natural revelation has a real though limited purpose. The intricacy of the world can help people understand that there must be a Creator.
It is important to hear what Paul says explicitly about natural revelation in this passage. Paul presents the reality of natural revelation to justify his assertion that people ‘suppress the truth’ (1:18). He is vindicating God by proving that He is perfectly just in inflicting His wrath on people. They had some knowledge of God but they turned away from that knowledge. This means they are ‘without excuse’ (1:20) before God when He pours His wrath out.