Without Excuse
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 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 1:18-20
Suppose we accept Paul's claim that creation reveals the "invisible qualities" of God. What would these qualities be? Of course we all see the world differently, and our religious beliefs influence our view of nature at least as much as nature influences our religious beliefs. It's hard to say what we might see if we looked at the world with fresh eyes, but we can make an educated guess by considering the beliefs of primitive religions, which are based primarily on observation of the world rather than supposed revelation. I'm not an anthropologist, but from my limited and perhaps inaccurate knowledge of the matter I have to following objections to Paul's claim:
1. The range of beliefs about among nature-based religions is vast. Thus the list God's qualities which are "plain" to everyone will be very short. Paul suggests that humanity in general has scorned the plain knowledge of God that nature provides, so someone may argue that those primitive religions which have very unbiblical understandings of God (the overwhelming majority) have intentionally ignored or distorted the natural evidence. I would reply that the unbiblical beliefs of nature-based religions make a lot of sense, and that belief in the biblical God is distinctly unnatural - that is, unlikely to result from simple observation of nature. This will be more clear in subsequent points.
2. Monotheism (belief in one god) seems to be quite unpopular in nature-based religions. Polytheism and pantheism are far simpler explanations for the immense diversity of nature and the plethora of forces (creation, destruction, nourishment, illness, etc.) at work in the world. Judging from nature, if there is only one god, he seems to be schizophrenic. I think it would be very difficult to argue that nature itself, apart from any religious, social, or scientific frameworks, points to a single God.
3. It seems to me that most primitive religions center around either appeasement or manipulation of the gods. The world is filled with suffering, which strikes seemingly at random. It is a basic human intuition that suffering is the result of the gods' displeasure, and the general brutality of nature suggests that the gods are easily angered. My understanding is that most primitive religions view the gods as either angry, vindictive beings who demand fear, strict obedience, and sacrifice, or as petty magicians to be bribed or manipulated for personal benefit. Although the biblical God does seem to have a vindictive streak, I think the God Paul is thinking of differs vastly in terms of both "his eternal power and divine nature" from the sorts of gods that are generally inferred from creation.
If you resist the idea that nature suggests a much crueler or much less powerful god than the Bible's, consider the first chapters of Genesis. The very first thing the Bible tells us is that the world we currently inhabit is not an accurate reflection of God's personality. Our world (according to Genesis) is full of suffering not because God is weak or sadistic, but because humans messed it up. Without this crucial information, you'd expect people to get a very different impression of God from nature.
4. A major theme in the Bible is the question of why a good God would allow the righteous to suffer and the wicked to go prosper. This is an excellent question, and it springs from the recognition that the world we inhabit does not seem to be governed by a powerful and just God. This puzzle eventually led to the concept of an afterlife (which developed between the Testaments, and not from divine revelation) in which we are finally repaid justly for our earthly works. The Jews, like all peoples, recognized that nature does not bless the meek, and from our worldly experience alone we have every reason to believe that the gods are indifferent to morality, or that they merely help those who help themselves. It may be true that all people have some moral code within them, but I don't believe nature suggests that the gods value this code.
It seems to me that the qualities of God that can be "clearly seen" in nature are in fact quite different from those clearly seen in the Bible. Paul, of all people, should know that the truth of Christianity is not self-evident, even to those with the benefit of familiarity with God's prior works.
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8 comments:
"Polytheism and pantheism are far simpler explanations ...". What's "simpler" about polytheism ? This is the usual blatant monotheistic lie we've heard for millenia, always without a shred of proof or evidence. But a lie is always a lie.
If anything is "simple", it's monotheism itself. Hey, let's just assume that all divinity is one entity (a man), and that all complexity is within this entity/man. Doesn't that point to simple worship and simple worshippers ?
As I said in my post, I think polytheism is a simpler explanation for diversity. Creatures, natural forces, the earth and the heavens, and so forth, are not only different in form, but they often seem to be in conflict with one another. I think it's more intuitive (thus the simpler explanation to arrive at, although perhaps not the least complex explanation) to believe that the diversity seen in nature is mirrored in the super-natural than to believe that everything we see is a product of a single will.
A couple comments, the first about this starting coversation in the comments section:
Perhaps, Jake, the simplest explanation would be an approach wherein a host of spiritual beings interacted and oversaw much of the natural (physical) world, each with a specific office and spehere of influence. That being said, one can also--as the good irenesson pointed out--come then to the conlcusion that there is one overarching mastermind of the whole gambit (heck, even the majority of polytheistic religions seem to have a head honcho in each one's respective panoply... [yes I'm using the word liberally]). A God of gods; a King of kings; a Lord of lords--so to speak. If one were to actually look at the Biblical account, the operational definition of "monotheism" goes only so far as allowing one being to be deemed as a god. The rest of the spiritual host necessarily become subordinate to the Almighty One. Our Bible makes no claims to absolute monotheistic reality. In fact, a multitude of gods are discussed--and even recognised--in the Bible. The distinguishing mark being, however, that the One is the only one of the many who should be recognised as God.
My second comment is largely covered in the first, but I will present it nonetheless. It saddens me to see such a post wherein the author claims (or seems to claim) to approach all subject matter with an unbiased, level-headed perspective, yet wherein the content is unaviodably skewed through lack of supportive documentation/research upon the post's subject. Mind you, this could be due to a possibility of you playing "devil's advocate" and looking for a readership response, or it could simply be a quick post without approaching the content with much consideration, etc. As it stands, it seems to be that the argument you use to back up your position is based largely on personal preference/speculation rather than upon external references. One could just as easily construct an argument for the opposing viewpoint using the same subjective foundation of personal opinion.
Now, although this isn't necessarily a problem, I myself have come to expect a more rational approach to the content of your blog posts over the course of your publishing. If I'm off base, let me know.
Sorry!
LE
Interesting post. Short time reader, 1st time commenter...;)
LE makes a good point about the usual tendency for pantheons to have a 'father of the gods' figure or a dominant god. Again, the Bible is pretty ambiguous (despite the efforts of Frank Peretti and others) as to the purpose and status of spiritual beings other than God himself. They're generally only mentioned in passing, so it's hard to gauge what role they play other than that they're subservient to God, but they could be considered a pantheon of sorts as it is indicated that they aren't simply generic copies, but actual individuals with names and, apparently, different assignments.
One of the questions that occurs to me is how did Paul himself view nature? I'm not sure if this could be ascertained from the writings of his we have, but if he's looking at nature and seeing the qualities of God, it's important to know what he's seeing there.
He references 'invisible' qualities of God, so it would seem there are some qualities he considers 'visible'. What those are he doesn't say. The qualties he does refer to - eternal power and divine nature - are, in a sense, without qualification. There is no statement of intent, purpose, or morality in them. All nature based religions look at nature and see a divine presence and generally attribute immortality to that presence, even it is only an eternal process of dying and rising again.
That said, I think that perhaps your problem with the passage is not that he suggests that nature reveals these two particular invisible qualities of God, but his statement that therefore all men are 'without excuse' and that what might be known about God has been made 'plain to them', suggesting that anyone who does not see God (as viewed and defined by Paul) in nature is being blind or delibarately obtuse.
Again I think it would come back to Paul's view of nature. I can't say I'm familiar with what the general Jewish or Roman view of nature would have been at the time, but it might be a place to start. It would seem in this case that Paul is looking at nature and seeing what he believes about God as opposed to looking at God and seeing what he has observed in nature, which would be more along the lines of what you're talking about in your post.
In the subsequent verses Paul criticizes the making and worship of images in the likeness of animals, birds, and man, and more specifically that they, in doing so, missed the invisible qualities he references ('the glory of the eternal God'), apparently instead viewing God as being something like themselves or what they were familiar with. In other words, these two particular invisible qualities of God - his divinity and eternality - can be seen from observance of nature, but He should not be mistaken for being like nature.
Whether the patrons of nature based religions are indeed mistaking God for being like or a part of the substance of nature is open for question. Certainly the use of nature as a simile or metaphor for aspects of God is quite Biblical. Paul's critique seems to be that they sacrificed the invisible qualities he mentions and took too literally the visible aspects of nature.
As to the question of whether any of this leaves all men 'without excuse', that depends on what Paul considers a valid level of belief before the coming of the Christ, a question he doesn't address here. Certainly to say that from the observance of the fact that there is a divine eternal presence, everyone should therefore have come immediately to a full understanding of the Judaic or Christian God is unreasonable. It's assumed by some in what Paul says here, but I don't see him saying it. It's at least another chapter and a bit before he gets into specifics of theology and the person of Christ.
LE: You make an interesting point about the multitude of recognized gods in the Bible. Parts of the bible seem to scoff at idols, but others suggest that "false gods" have a limited degree of power. I'm not sure whether it is simplest/most natural/most common to believe that there are a vast number of spiritual beings at work in the world with one supreme God over them all, but if there were a multitude of spirit-beings governing the various aspects of creation, I don't see why a Bible-style super-god would be needed.
Regarding your second point, I don't think I've ever claimed to "approach all subject matter with an unbiased, level-headed perspective", only to attempt to do so. Of course I recognize that I consistently lapse into bias, and I welcome attempts to correct my biases. I also recognize (and I stated in my post) that my knowledge of nature-based religions is quite limited. For this reason I tried to keep statements about what these religions teach to a minimum, and say "seems" a lot. If any of my readers are more knowledgeable, I invite them to confirm or correct my statements.
The point of my post was that nature alone seems (to me) to indicate a God who is much less consistent, less powerful, less loving, and/or less concerned with morality than the God we know, unless certain aspects of nature (eg. the prevalence of suffering) are explained by certain Bible stories (eg. the fall). Without the Bible, I argue, people can be expected to get a very different idea of God from looking at nature. (A point which, to the best of my knowledge, most nature-based religions support.) I thought that at least my third and fourth points (the more important ones, I think) are much more than speculation and opinion, but if you think I haven't made my case, we can certainly discuss this further.
But I think that even if my personal beliefs about what sort of god(s) can be inferred from nature are somewhat less popular than I think, I'm sure that there are at least some people who agree with me - at least some people for whom the biblical God's "eternal power and divine nature" are not clearly visible in nature. So unless we're being willfully blind (or I've missed Paul's point) I don't see how this passage makes sense.
Welcome, David.
My impression of pantheons (thinking mainly of the Greeks' and Hindus') is that the dominant god tends not to be significantly more powerful, nor of a different nature, than the lesser gods. I think Polytheists tend not to give special honor to any one god, except for those whose particular domain then inhabit, or those best suited to grant them a certain favor. The Judeo-Christian idea that there is only one true God, whom we must worship and pray to, is very different. In fact, God's wrath in this passage is directed towards those who "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images" representing lesser spiritual beings. My objection (point 2, somewhat revised) is this: how could people who have never read the Bible be expected to know from nature that there is one supreme, jealous God, who doesn't like graven images?
I agree that it's important to ask how Paul viewed nature, and similarly, what qualities of God he thought it clearly displayed. I understand "God's invisible qualities" to mean "God's qualities, that are invisible". (It seems to be very important to God that people not try to make him visible.) If even God's invisible qualities are "clearly seen", and those who ignore them are subject to His wrath, I shudder to think what might happen to those who reject his visible ones. But maybe his visible qualities are trivial things, like his uncanny resemblance to Morgan Freeman.
It's true that Paul's quite vague about what God's invisible qualities are (which really diminishes the instructional value of the passage) but from the context, he seems to be thinking particularly of God's omnipotence and His passionate distaste for immorality and idolatry. And I would agree that anyone who clearly understands that there is an omnipotent God who hates idols but who continues to worship idols kind of deserves what he gets.
You're right about my problem with the passage - I have no problem with Paul seeing whatever he sees in nature, but I don't like his claim that everyone else sees what he sees, and faces God's wrath if they disagree.
You may be right that Paul's objection to idol-worship is that it diminishes glory and eternality of God, and that some (but likely not all) idol-worshippers probably do this. Still, I have a hard time believing that this is evident in nature, and that those who deny it are deserving of God's wrath. (I also have a problem with God "giving them over to sinful desires" but that has more to do with my previous post.) This is particularly strange coming from a guy who believes that the fullness of God dwelt in a physical being. Not that an incarnation is quite the same thing as a depiction, but it's a narrow distinction. Another writer (say, a Muslim) might object to this sort of diminishment of God's glory and eternality just as strongly as Paul does to idols.
I know this is an oversimplification, but doesn't Paul list the qualities he figures should be known about God as "power and divinity"? The proper response to these qualities, I think, respect (or fear) and worship. This is what sincere followers of most religons offer to their gods.
Yes, but verses 23 and 25 suggest that the invisibility and transcendence of God must also be recognized. Apparently these attributes are also clearly visible in nature, and God really doesn't like people who don't acknowledge them.
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