Natural Theology in Romans 1?
In Romans 1:16 Paul speaks of God's faithfulness as it
comes to focus in Jesus Christ; but the background to God's faithfulness
is human faithlessness (1:18-3:20). Romans 1:18-32 is a description of
the moral darkness of the Gentile world and its condition under the
judgement of God. He's describing Gentile unfaithfulness (and he
will go on to describe Jewish unfaithfulness). Paul isn't making a
rational argument, such as, design to Designer or creation to Creator.
Nor is he saying that such an argument can successfully be made. That
isn't his point—it has nothing to do with what he is working with. He
isn't saying, "They could look at the heavens and reason from there and
know that idolatry is abominable." To isolate 1:19-23 from the rest of
that section is to confuse the issue.
These Gentiles suppressed (and suppress) truth. They
suppress truth that God had made known to them (1:18-19). God had
revealed himself as Creator and in their moral darkness the Gentiles
suppressed that truth and turned to idolatry. What a piece of nonsense
it was too, Paul indicates, since from the very beginning the creation
proclaimed God's everlasting power and divinity—animals indeed
(1:20-25)!
Given revealed truth, those that worship sticks and
stones and crawling things and even people (yes!) defy the very heavens
above them and the earth beneath them. Such people are inexcusable.
Their behaviour was not inexcusable because there was
"natural theology" available. Their inexcusable behaviour included the
immorality and unrighteousness that characterised them. These people knew the moral law of God (1:32) and they knew
that those who behaved as they behaved deserved God's judgement. You
can't—via unaided reason—come up with the moral strictures in this
chapter. These Gentiles didn't learn the essential content of the Torah
by inferring things from creation (see 2:12-14).
Some non-believers would like to think that we can
establish moral law independent of special revelation but others more
forthright (though inconsistent in practice) agree with Russell, Flew,
Sartre, Kaufmann and others who say that moral law is a question of
preference buttressed by prudence and self-interest.
Some believers become impatient when the issue of moral authority and content is raised. "Look, everybody knows
it's wrong to 'steal' or 'murder' or such." And how do they know? "They
just know!" But that's not good enough! I think we make a serious
mistake when he minimise our dependence on special revelation.
But does Paul not say that the works of the flesh "are
obvious" (Galatians 5:19-21)? Yes he did; but this is a man who has been
taught by God and he's speaking to people who have committed to God in
Jesus Christ. To such people we can generalise and say the evils that
rise from our inner evil "are obvious". But they aren't "obvious" to
all. [It hardly needs saying that even Christians have to be instructed
about what is evil ("Do you not know…?" or "Are you ignorant?" and such
phrases).] The truth about God's moral/ethical requirements are taught
and from the foundational truths other truths are learned by extension.
For those called by the gospel the situation is even more specific
since their ethical response is to be modelled on the life (Jesus) that
has been revealed to them.
This much is clear, the Gentile world of which Paul
spoke knew God's righteous decree and knew how God felt about flagrant
and impenitent perversion and ungodliness (Romans 1:32). Look at the
long (but not exhaustive) list of vileness—this is part of what Paul had
in mind when he said they were inexcusable (2:1). These weren't things
they could deduce from the design of the human eye or celestial
mechanics.
The central thrust of the above can be exposed as
inadequate if we can make an "unaided reason" argument stick. Maybe
someone will frame the argument without leaning on scripture; that would
do it.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.