(A) We shall not attempt to give an exegesis of this most difficult passage [Romans 1:18-21]. It may suffice to call attention to the following matters. In the first place we observe that Paul says that men do actually in some sense see the truth. We do not do justice to this passage by merely saying that all men or most men believe in a god or believe that God probably exists. Paul says that the revelation of the only existing God is so clearly imprinted upon man himself and upon his environment that no matter how hard he tries he cannot suppress this fact. As psychologically active self-conscious creatures they must see something of the truth. They hold down the truth, to be sure, but it is the truth that they hold down. Nor is it that this truth is objectively placed before them only in nature and in the make-up of man. It is, to be sure, on this that Paul does lay the emphasis. But knowledge is also in man in the sense that his subjective reaction to that which he sees shows some acquaintance with the truth. The invisible things of God are perceived (kathoratai). Knowing God (gnontes ton theon), they have not glorified God.

In the second place, it is primarily in this fact that men know and do not live up to what they know that Paul sees the greatest folly. Though they knew God, yet they glorified him not. They hold down the truth that is in them as well as round about them. It is in this immediate connection that Paul speaks of the revelation of God's wrath. He says that God's wrath is displayed on men just because they hold down the truth in unrighteousness. It is true that God's wrath is displayed on whatever form unrighteousness may take, but it is specifically mentioned here that God displays his wrath because men hold down the truth. . . .

As far as the intellectual aspect of the matter is concerned, we have now the following factors: In the first place, the body of man is, since the entrance of sin, in a weakened condition. In the second place, the functions of the soul are weakened. In the third place, and in spite of this, the invisible things of God, that is the nature of God, his power and divinity, are still displayed in man as well as round about him, in the fact of the self-conscious activity of his person, in his own negative moral reaction to the revelation about and within him, in his sense of dissatisfaction with all non-theistic interpretations, and in a measure of involuntary recognition of the truth of the theistic interpretation as the true interpretation of the origin of the world. In spite of all this, man has not accepted for himself what he himself must admit to be the true interpretation of the origin of the world.

In this respect man's knowledge is characterized by the same folly that marks Satan's knowledge of God. The first act of man's antitheistic interpretation consisted in the attempt on his part to be something that he knew he could not be. It is this folly that man has carried on through the ages, and it is this that still makes sin so foolish. And it is upon this foolishness that Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed.

This revelation is (a) partly objective to man in the narrow sense of being outside his person, as is the case with revelation in nature, (b) partly subjective to man in the narrow sense of consisting of his psychological constitution, and (c) partly subjective in the sense of consisting of his own involuntary ethical approval or disapproval (conscience). Over against that which is thus objective (1. outside man, 2. within man psychologically, 3. within man as involuntary ethical relation) we call that "subjective" which gives expression self-consciously, even if not with full consistency, to what that sinner as sinner does with that which comes to him objectively. As sinner, he seeks to suppress the objective revelation of God within him. . . . 

We can readily see that all these matters, taken together, produce a very complex situation. There are three main things to be taken into consideration. In the first place, we must think of what was the original situation in paradise and what remained of this after the fall of man. In the second place, we must think of the wrath of God and the great complexity that this introduced into the situation. In the third place we must think of non-saving grace and, especially, of the great civilization that has flourished by it as a means.

Under the first head, we have the fact that man's rationality is, as a matter of fact, a creation of God. When man tries to make of himself an ultimate instead of a proximate starting point in knowledge, he somehow feels that he is doing something that he cannot do and that he ought not to try to do. Under the second head, we have the fact that man's mind is, as a matter of fact, now that sin has entered into it, abnormal. When man acts as though his mind were normal, he frustrates himself, and he senses something of this self-frustration. He somehow feels that his ideal of absolute comprehension in knowledge is a false ideal. Under the third head, we have the fact that, in spite of the fact that man has tried to set himself up as a metaphysically ultimate starting point, and in spite of the fact that he considers his mind to be normal, he has been able to do as much as he has. He ought to recognize the fact, says Calvin, that he lives by grace.

The highest point of revelation outside of Scripture as it is found after the entrance of sin is just this point, that, together with the objective clarity of all these matters comes the fact that men, in some sense, at bottom recognize them to be true. The truth, as it were, penetrates into men's minds against their will and in spite of themselves.

(B) The Reformed apologist, on the other hand, would compromise what he holds to be of the essence of Christianity if he agreed with Taylor. [A. E. Taylor and his book, Does God Exist?] For him the whole of created reality, including therefore the fields of research with which the various sciences deal, reveals the same God of which Scripture speaks. The very essence of created reality is its revelational character. Scientists deal with that which has the imprint of God's face upon it. . . .

To change the figure, compare the facts of nature and history, the facts with which the sciences are concerned, to a linoleum that has its figure indelibly imprinted in it. The pattern of such a linoleum cannot be effaced till the linoleum itself is worn away. Thus inescapably does the scientist meet the pattern of Christian theism in each fact with which he deals. The apostle Paul lays great stress upon the fact that man is without excuse if he does not discover God in nature. Following Paul's example Calvin argues that men ought to see God, not a god, not some supernatural power, but the only God, in nature. They have not done justice by the facts they see displayed before and within them if they say that a god exists or that God probably exists. The Calvinist holds to the essential perspicuity of natural as well as Biblical revelation. . . .

Disagreeing with the natural man's interpretation of himself as the ultimate reference-point, the Reformed apologist must seek his point of contact with the natural man in that which is beneath the threshold of his working consciousness, in the sense of deity which he seeks to suppress. . . .

Now it is this fact that Rome is always and everywhere committed to the idea of brute fact as such, to eventuation apart from the counsel of God, that is all-determinative on the question of its conception of the relation of reason to authority. Rome simply has not the materials with which to build a really Christian concept of authority. A truly Christian concept of authority presupposes that in all he does man is face to face with the requirement of God. But how could man be face to face with the requirement of God if God does not control all things? How could God face man with his requirements there where he has no power to rule? It is only on the idea of the comprehensiveness of the plan of God that a true concept of authority can be based. And this is to say, in effect, that only on the idea of the covenant as all-comprehensive with respect to every phase of human life can the idea of authority find a footing. . . .

Secondly, man has round about him the clearest possible evidence of the power and divinity of God.

In attestation of his wondrous wisdom both the heavens and the earth present us with innumerable proofs, not only of those more recondite proofs which astronomy, medicine, and all the natural sciences, are designed to illustrate, but proofs which force themselves on the notice of the most illiterate peasant, who cannot open his eyes without beholding them. [Institutes, 1.5.2.]

Thus the knowledge of God is inherent in man. It is there by virtue of his creation in the image of God. This may be called innate knowledge. But as such it must be distinguished from the innate ideas of idealist philosophy. For the innate knowledge as Calvin thinks of it is based upon the idea of man's creation in the image of God. And as such it is correlative to the idea of revelation to man mediated through the facts of his environment which are also created by God. In contrast with this the innate knowledge of Descartes and idealist philosophy is based on the idea of the autonomy of man.

Following Calvin, then, Kuyper did not tone down the clarity of the revelation of God to man. In this respect he is in agreement with Warfield. Both men are equally anxious to follow Calvin as Calvin simply followed St. Paul in the idea that God has never left himself without a witness to men. He witnessed to them through every fact of the universe from the beginning of time. No rational creature can escape this witness. It is the witness of the triune God whose face is before men everywhere and all the time. Even the lost in the hereafter cannot escape the revelation of God. God made man a rational-moral creature. He will always be that. As such he is confronted with God. He is addressed by God. He exists in the relationship of covenant interaction. He is a covenant being. To not know God man would have to destroy himself. . . .

Everything in the created universe therefore displays the fact that it is controlled by God, that it is what it is by virtue of the place that it occupies in the plan of God. The objective evidence for the existence of God and of the comprehensive governance of the world by God is therefore so plain that he who runs may read. Men cannot get away from this evidence. They see it round about them. They see it within them. Their own constitution so clearly evinces the facts of God's creation of them and control over them that there is no man who can possibly escape observing it. If he is self-conscious at all he is also God-conscious. No matter how men may try they cannot hide from themselves the fact of their own createdness. Whether men engage in inductive study with respect to the facts of nature about them or engage in analysis of their own self-consciousness they are always face to face with God their maker.

Having taken these two, revelation in the created universe, both within and about man, and revelation by way of supernatural positive communication as aspects of revelation as originally given to man, we can see that natural revelation is even after the fall perspicuous in character. "The perspicuity of God's revelation in nature depends for its very meaning upon the fact that it is an aspect of the total and totally voluntary revelation of a God who is self-contained" (Idem, p. 269). . . . [Van Til's "Nature and Scripture" in The Infallible Word, ed. N. B. Stonehouse and Paul Woolley (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1946).]

Calvin argues that as created in God's image every man, of necessity, has a knowledge of God. This "innate knowledge" is correlative to God's revelation in man's environment. And try as he may the sinner cannot efface this knowledge. He can only seek to suppress it. Without first knowing God he could not seek to deny it. He must be originally in contact with the truth in order to love and propagate the lie.

(C) As made in the image of God no man can escape becoming the interpretative medium of God's general revelation both in his intellectual (Romans 1:20) and in his moral consciousness (Romans 2:14, 15). No matter which button of the radio he presses, he always hears the voice of God. Even when he presses the button of his own psychological self-conscious activity, through which as a last resort the sinner might hope to hear another voice, he still hears the voice of God. "If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou are there." It is in this sense that we must, at least to begin with, understand the matter when we are told that there are no atheistic peoples and no atheistic men. Psychologically there are no atheistic men; epistemologically every sinner is atheistic. . . .

Then, too, Paul tells us, in effect, that the voice of the true God, the only existent God, is everywhere present. He does not, to be sure, say that this God is present in the fulness of His revelation. Yet it is the true God, the God, not a God, that is everywhere to be heard, whatever button we may press. It is the what, not merely the that, of God's existence that the heathen find impressed upon them. To this what they, willingly or not, give interpretative expression, thereby increasing the pressure of God's requirements upon their ethical powers of reaction. . . .

Sin has not been able to efface all this requisitional material from the consciousness of man. The very activity of his consciousness is a daily reminder to him of the will of God. Though he has tried over and over again to choke the voice of God he has not been able to do so. His evil nature would fain subdue the voice of the creation in nature, but it cannot wholly do so. Involuntarily men think back, with the prodigal, to the father's home.