Re: Romans 1:20

----- Original Message -----
From: "wgreen8" <wgreen8@god4science.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2005 9:30 PM
Subject: Romans 1:20

>
> Dear friends at ASA:
>
> Romans 1:20 says that God's "eternal power and divine nature, have been
> clearly seen, being understood through what has been made... (NASB)." Two
> questions arise: What exactly does "divine nature" refer to, and how are
> these attributes of God made manifest in nature?
>
> I think that it is clear that humans have always had a tendency to believe
> in
> God or gods. In 1911, Brave Buffalo, a Sioux Indian wrote: "When I was
> ten
> years of age I looked at the land and the rivers, the sky above, and the
> animals around me and could not fail to realize that they were made by
> some
> great power."
>
> Black Elk also said that it could be seen that the Great Spirit was in all
> nature, and "most importantly," He is above or greater than all of these
> things (the sun, streams, all nature).
>
> Is this because humans perceive design in nature? Or is there some other
> rational perception? Or is this perception not rational, not based on
> reason, but mystical?

19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon
the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those
things which have actually happened. [Rom.1:20]

             20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who
comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering
and the cross.

                                                                             
                                                 (Luther)

Paul's point is not that people actually do know God from their experience
of the world but that there is sufficient evidence for God to be known in
that way. But in fact people distort that evidence and produce idols, as he
goes on to say in the following verses. Our tendency to "believe in a God
or gods" is what Calvin meant when he said that the human mind is "a factory
of idols." Thus in the real condition of humanity in the world God must
first be known in Christ (as Paul finally says in 3:21 ff after dealing with
the universal problem of sin) before our experience of the world & reason
can tell us anything about God. That is why Luther says that anyone who
tries to understand God by starting with "those things which have actually
happened" (or "the things that have been made"), echoing Rom.1:20, "does not
deserve to be called a theologian."

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Mon Jul 18 07:26:09 2005