Re: Romans 1:20

Bill and ASA friends,

This is my first foray into participation here after considerable lurking.
It's a privilege.

The tension in this verse for me has always been between understanding the
accountability that follows from this natural revelation and how vague any
natural revelation must necessarily be. How can "eternal power" and "divine
nature" leave us with no excuse, however defined?

This is one of the reasons I'm drawn to C.S. Lewis's way of dealing with the
tough question we continually get about the fate of the unevangelized (like
those early native Americans):

³... the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other
people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do
not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.²

I'm led to wonder if Brave Buffalo and Black Elk did indeed grasp enough of
God's eternal power and divine nature to become responsible to respond to
the limited light they had. God knows exactly what that response entailed:
simply giving Him credit for nature and their own lives, responding further
to the conscience He gave them (Romans 2) and making the connection between
their Creator and their accountability for their moral choices, perhaps even
seeking to worship Him and avail themselves of further knowledge wherever
that was available.

Bottom line, of course, is that if they (along with OT saints and innocent
infants) were saved without knowing the name of Jesus, it was still Jesus
who did the saving. But how much easier to respond to the light when you
can see it in all its glory in His person and through His work!

Bill, I'd really appreciate any references you have on those quotes -- and
the full quote for Black Elk, if you have them handy.

Thanks!

Fred Heeren

==================================
Fred Heeren
Day Star Research
903 E. Park Street
Olathe, KS 66061 USA
Tel: 913-768-9300; Fax: 913-768-9037
fred@day-star.org
==================================

> 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?
>
> Thanks for your time and input.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Bill Green
>
>
Received on Mon Jul 18 14:13:22 2005