Natural Theology: The Apocalypse Now

 

“A concept which takes over where our comprehension ceases,”

 C. v. Orelli, D. hebr. Synonyma d. Zeit u Ewigkeit (1871), 70.

I know there is nothing in the word or in the works of God that is repugnant to sound reason, but there are some things in both that are opposite to carnal reason as well as above right reason; and therefore our reason never shows itself more unreasonable than in summoning those things to its bar that transcend its sphere and capacity. John Flavel (Elliot Ritzema and Elizabeth Vince, eds., 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Puritans, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).)

Whatever a man knows and understands is mere vanity, if it is not grounded in true wisdom; and it is in no degree better fitted for the apprehension of spiritual doctrine than the eye of a blind man is for discriminating colors. We must carefully notice these two things—that a knowledge of all the sciences is mere smoke where the heavenly science of Christ is wanting; and man, with all his acuteness, is as stupid for obtaining himself a knowledge of the mysteries of God as an ass is unqualified for understanding musical harmonies. Calvin, John  (Elliot Ritzema, 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Reformation, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).)

What good is it to profess with Epicurus some sort of God who has cast aside the care of the world only to amuse himself in idleness? What help is it, in short, to know a God with whom we have nothing to do? Rather, our knowledge should serve first to teach us fear and reverence; secondly, with it as our guide and teacher, we should learn to seek every good from him, and, having received it, to credit it to his account.

 Epicurus (342–270 B.C.), whose extensive writings are extant in fragments only, seems to have been known to Calvin chiefly through Cicero’s De finibus and De natura deorum. Book I of the latter work is devoted mainly to an exposition and an animated criticism of the Epicurean conception of deity. This sentence of Calvin sums up the impression of Cicero’s dialogue.

 Cotta, the Academician, pours scorn upon the Epicurean notion of remote, idle, unloving gods, asserting that Epicurus has in effect abolished the gods.

 Calvin as a Scriptural theologian could not fail to share this adverse judgment.  

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 & 2, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 41–42. 

Can reason and revelation be brought into harmony with each other, linking nature, morality and history? (Anthony Meredith, Christian Philosophy in the Early Church London; New York: T&T Clark, 2012, 5.)

The rationalistic view, exhibited at its highest and best by Leibniz, represents the idea of univocal reasoning in its first modern garb. By means of refined mathematical technique, Leibniz hopes to reach that for which the ancients strove in vain, namely, individuation by complete description. God stands for the idea of pure mathematics by means of which all reality may be described as seen at a glance.

 All historical facts are essentially reducible to the timeless equations of mathematical formulae. Such is the nature and consequence of his ontological proof for the existence of God. There could be no revelation of God to man on such a basis. How could God tell man anything that he was not able eventually to discover by means of the differential calculus?

 God becomes wholly revealed to man, but with the result that he is no longer God.

In opposition to the position of Leibniz, the rationalist, stands that of Hume, the skeptic. Concepts, he argued, are but faint replicas of sensations, and the laws of association by which we relate these concepts are psychological rather than logical in character. As Leibniz sought to be wholly univocal, so Hume sought to be wholly equivocal in his reasoning.

 As in the philosophy of Leibniz God lost his individuality in order to become wholly known, so in the philosophy of Hume God maintained his individuality but remained wholly unknown.

To be sure, neither Leibniz nor Hume was able to carry his position to its logical conclusion. Leibniz paid tribute to brute fact as Hume paid tribute to abstract logic. Leibniz maintained the necessity of finite facts and therefore of evil, lest his universal should be reduced to the blank identity of Parmenides, lest he should have all knowledge of a being that is interchangeable with non-being.

Parmenides, “whatever is is, and what is not cannot be”

 Hume, on his part, virtually makes universal negative propositions covering all objective possibility. To make sure that no God such as is found in the Confession, a God who controls all things by the counsel of his will, would speak to him, Hume had virtually to assert that such a God cannot possibly exist and that there cannot at any point in the past or future be any evidence of the existence of such a God. 

So Leibniz, the rationalist, was an irrationalist and Hume, the irrationalist, was a rationalist. It is impossible to be the one without also being the other.

Cornelius Van Til and Eric H. Sigward, The Articles of Cornelius Van Til, Electronic ed. (Labels Army Company: New York, 1997).

 We believe that he not only created all things, but that he governs and directs them, disposing and ordaining by his sovereign will all that happens in the world [Eph 1:11; Prov 16:4];

 not that he is the author of evil, or that the guilt of it can be imputed to him, as his will is the sovereign and infallible rule of all right and justice; but he has wonderful means of so making use of devils and sinners that he can turn to good the evil which they do, and of which they are guilty [Acts 2:23; 4:27].

 And thus, confessing that the providence of God orders all things, we humbly bow before the secrets which are hidden to us, without questioning what is above our understanding [Rom 9:19–20];

 but rather making use of what is revealed to us in Holy Scripture for our peace and safety, inasmuch as God, who has all things in subjection to him, watches over us with a Father’s care, so that not a hair of our heads shall fall without his will. And yet he restrains the devils and all our enemies, so that they can not harm us without his leave [Matt 10:30; Job 1:12; 2:6; Matt 8:31; Jer. 19:11]. Art. VIII. THE FRENCH CONFESSION OF FAITH. A.D. 1559 

Jeffrey J. Meyers, “Light and Shadow: Confessing the Doctrine of Election in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift in Honor of James B. Jordan, ed. Peter J. Leithart and John Barach (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 222–223.

“If that which I understand be so admirable, what is that which I do not understand!”

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 4 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 288.

The good philosophical thoughts and ethical precepts found scattered through the pagan world receive in Christ their unity and center. They stand for the desire which in Christ finds its satisfaction; they represent the question to which Christ gives the answer; they are the idea of which Christ furnishes the reality.

Émile Doumergue et al., Calvin and the Reformation: Four Studies (New York; Chicago; Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1909), 103.

For their part Protestants highlight the fundamental inability of finite men to grasp the infinite, which is interpreted as the manifestation of man’s inherent sinfulness. If there is to be any communication bridging the abyss between finite and infinite, the initiative must lie entirely with God.  

Joseph A. Komonchak, Mary Collins, and Dermot A. Lane, The New Dictionary of Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 709.

“All the power exercised in man’s salvation, the Reformed Faith ascribes to God alone, to His sovereign and irresistible grace.

 Only in this consistent form can evangelicalism be adequately defended against naturalism in the sphere of soteriology. 

Subtract from this pure evangelicalism in any degree, and you fall into the idea and attitude of dependence in some degree on human power and human merit for salvation.

Lawrence B. Gilmore, “The Present State, Progress and Prospects of the Reformed Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal 1, no. 2 (1938): 67. 

Just as sin has blinded the intellect of man, so it has corrupted the will of man. This is often spoken of as the hardening of man’s heart. Paul says that the natural man is at enmity against God. The natural man cannot will to do God’s will. He cannot even know what the good is. The sinner worships the creature rather than the Creator. He has set all the moral standards topsy-turvy.

This doctrine of the total depravity of man makes it plain that the moral consciousness of man as he is today cannot be the source of information about what is ideal good or about what is the standard of the good or about what is the true nature of the will which is to strive for the good. It would seem plain enough that men have to choose on this point between the Christian and the non-Christian position.

It is this point particularly that makes it necessary for the Christian to maintain without any apology and without any concession that it is Scripture, and Scripture alone, in the light of which all moral questions must be answered. Scripture as an external revelation became necessary because of the sin of man. No man living can even put the moral problem as he ought to put it, or ask the moral questions as he ought to ask them, unless he does so in the light of Scripture. Man cannot of himself truly face the moral question, let alone answer it. 

Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Philadelphia, 1955), 71.

“Beyond the word of Scripture we dare not go, in speech or in theological reflection; for it is in this word that God’s love in Jesus Christ is revealed. There is nothing beyond that.”

1 G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Justification (trans, by Lewis B. Smedes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 160.

Finally, when it comes to theology, faith is the principium cognoscendi internum. Principium cognoscendi internum refers to the internal principle of knowing, which in theology is the Holy Spirit's work of illumination and faith that enables a person to understand and accept divine revelation. It is the subjective, personal apprehension of objective truth, contrasting with the principium cognoscendi externum (the external principle of knowledge, such as Scripture). This principle is seen as the human subject's capacity to believe and respond to God's revelation, making knowledge of God possible. 

 By faith we accept God’s revelation as true, we embrace it as having authority in every area on which it speaks, and we respond in obedience and worship. 

We receive God’s word about himself not by empirical observation, or speculative reason, or by personal experience or religious consciousness.

 Faith is the organ by which God’s special revelation can, and must, be received. We know God because God chooses to be known, and what he has chosen to be known must be believed in order to be truly understood.

Kevin DeYoung, Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 16.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” Rom. 1:16–17

It is not from faith to works, as if faith put us into a justified state, and then works preserved and maintained us in it, but it is all along from faith to faith, as 2 Co. 3:18, from glory to glory; it is increasing, continuing, persevering faith, faith pressing forward, and getting ground of unbelief. 

Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 2194.

the Roman church is an integral part of the eschatological perspective of Paul’s missionary theology. However, its mixed character has produced problems. A conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christians threatens to dissolve its unity. This particular problem gives Paul the opportunity to address the church about the fundamental role of Israel in salvation-history in the framework of the universality of God’s grace in Christ for all people.

There is no room in the church as the beachhead of God’s coming triumph of grace for Jewish superiority or Gentile pride, because “God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” (Rom. 11:32). And this mercy of God will be fully realized shortly, because “the night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Rom.13:12). And so Paul concludes the body of the letter: “May the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Rom. 15:13).

J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 92–93. 

Paul unfolds his great theme by first showing at length that all men are utterly lost and cannot possibly be saved except by the wonderful gospel righteousness of God. The righteous shall live by faith, “for” (γάρ) outside of this righteousness from faith no hope or help exists, nothing but unrighteousness and the wrath of God. (R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1936), 89.)

 This righteousness is not known by the light of nature, nor by the law of Moses; it was hid under the shadows of the ceremonial law, and is brought to light only by the Gospel;

 it is hid from every natural man, even from the most wise and prudent, and from God’s elect themselves before conversion, and is only made known to believers, to whom it is revealed: from faith to faith; that is, as say some, from the faith of God to the faith of men; from the faith of preachers to the faith of hearers; from the faith of the Old to the faith of the New Testament saints; or rather from one degree of faith to another; for faith, as it grows and increases, has clearer sights of this righteousness, as held forth in the Gospel. (John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, vol. 2, The Baptist Commentary Series (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1809), 418–419.)

for apart from the Word, God remains “the unknown God.”

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse. Rom. 1:18–20 NASB 2020 

The reference is still to the innate knowledge of God which all men are supposed to have had originally; but the idea expressed is not their ‘having’ it, but their suppressing it.

 Truth strives and urges in the mind: but man hinders it. Bengel

H. D. M. Spence-Jones, ed., The Pulpit Commentary: Romans, The Pulpit Commentary (London; New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1909), 10.

The arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are gathered against me. Job 6:4

 So then, it is said that the wrath of God is now being revealed not against a certain part but against all ungodliness and wickedness; however, not in all men but only in those who, to be sure, hold fast to the truth but suppress it by their wickedness. He says that what is known about God is manifest to them. This shows that there is something about God that may be known and something about him that may not be known.

 That is why he says the wrath of God is being revealed to those who suppress the truth by their wickedness. What is revealed is brought forth from obscurity and hiddenness into the state of being known. Since therefore it is said here as well that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven not against those who are ignorant of the truth but against those who hold fast to it, although they hold fast to it in a bad way, evidently he is saying that the rationale for and knowledge of the wrath of God are manifested in those who know the truth, even though they suppress it in wickedness.

 As he declares in what follows, this is interpreted as having been spoken about the wise men of this world and the scholars and the philosophers. Although they knew the truth and righteousness of God, “they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became bankrupt in their thinking,” having turned to idols. And “claiming to be wise, they became fools,” for “they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of the image of man and birds and four-footed animals and reptiles.” 

Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 1–5, ed. Thomas P. Halton, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, vol. 103, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 87–88.

In the works of creation, God is a God above us; in his works of providence, a God without us; in the law, a God against us; in himself, a God invisible to us. Only in Christ he is Emmanuel, “God manifested in our flesh,” God in us, “God with us,” God for us. (James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 362)

Historically, some interpreters have been troubled by Paul’s claim about knowing God through creation, in part because it seems to support a form of natural theology. In its broadest terms, the passage asserts that humans can know God through logic and reason in the universe.

 But does Paul support such an epistemology in Rom 1:18–32? If not, in what sense have the “invisible attributes” of God been “clearly seen” since the creation of the world (Rom 1:20)? natural theology The belief that knowledge about God can be gained through the observation of the natural world...  

Derek R. Brown and E. Tod Twist, Romans, ed. Douglas Mangum, Lexham Research Commentaries (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), Rom. 1:18–32.

The idea of liberation through law was common currency among Greeks of the first century. Michael Green writes, “Rival pagan schoolmen asserted that you escaped from the toils of corruption (phthora) by becoming participants in the divine nature either by means of nomos (‘lawkeeping’) or phusis (‘nature’)” (2 Peter, Jude, 73). Jews and Hellenized Jews offered the same promise through Torah. (Peter J. Leithart, The Promise of His Appearing: An Exposition of Second Peter (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2004).)

The value of the language, however, is that it enables him to appeal to this commonplace of Greek religious philosophy: that rational man recognizes the existence of God (even though invisible) and his nature as eternal power and deity.

His invisible attributes, that is to say his everlasting power and deity, have been visible, ever since the world began, to the eye of reason, in the things he has made.  Rom.1:20 NEB

cf. ever since the creation of the world, the invisible existence of God and his everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things. Rom.1:20 NJB

 That is to say, however precisely the phrase νοούμενα καθορᾶται should be rendered (“clearly perceived” [RSV]; “visible to the eye of reason” [NEB]), it is scarcely possible that... 

 Paul did not intend his readers to think in terms of some kind of rational perception of the fuller reality in and behind the created cosmos  

James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, vol. 38A, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1988), 58.

In the Hellenistic milieu of Jesus no religion did, in fact, solicit faith toward the deity.

 The religion of the Greeks proceeded from the earliest times on the basis of the concept that at its deepest point this world was divine; every reflective human being could observe this; such recognition was not in need of faith. Even the cult of the ruler was not based on faith. 

That a ruler like Augustus was divine demonstrated itself to every person with understanding through his reign, which spread order, peace, and prosperity for everyone.

 In Stoic popular philosophy the deity was manifest through reasoned deduction from nature and history.

 In the mystery religions and in Gnosticism, however, the deity was experienced ecstatically or viewed mystically. Hence, it was not customary for a person of the Hellenistic world to speak in religious matters about faith. In the Jewish environment of Jesus, however, obedience to the Torah was the normative religious posture;

 faith stood as the confession to God demanded by the Law.

 Furthermore, faith had to be sustained in obedience to the Law. It became a work under other works. It was characteristic that the extreme expression of Judaism at Qumran should teach a justification sola gratia—grace made possible obedience to the Law and covered failure—but faith played no role. In this milieu Jesus phrased the key statement: “Your faith has saved you.”

Leonhard Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament, ed. Jürgen Roloff, trans. John E. Alsup, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981), 149–150.

At that time they made a calf, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and reveled in the works of their hands (Ex. 32:4, 6; Ps. 106:19). But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: 

Did you offer to me slain victims and sacrifices
forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? (Ezek. 20:25, 39; Am 5:25, 26)
No; you took along the tent of Moloch
and the star of your god Rephan,
the images that you made to worship;
so I will remove you beyond Babylon.’ Ac 7:41–43

If a “natural theology” occurs here, it accuses.

John Reumann, “Romans,” in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, ed. James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 1285.

You that sin presumptuously-To deal with a high hand,—that know to do good and do it not,—that know what is evil, yet will not forbear,—you cannot sin so cheap as others; though sin will cost every one dear, yet it will cost you dearer. 

You go directly against conscience; and if there be either justice in heaven, or fire in hell, you shall be sure to be punished.

 You who sin presumptuously, cannot take so much pleasure in your sin as another may have. One whose conscience is less enlightened, though his sin will be bitter to him afterwards, yet at present he may roll it as honey under his tongue, and find pleasure in it: but you that sin against your knowledge, you cannot have so much pleasure in sin as he, for conscience will put forth a sting, and all the threatening's of the word will set themselves in battle array against you, so that you can have no quiet. And that trouble thou feels' now in thy conscience, is but the beginning of sorrow.

Thomas Watson, “Sermon V,” in The Select Works of the Rev. Thomas Watson, Comprising His Celebrated Body of Divinity, in a Series of Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, and Various Sermons and Treatises (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1855), 646. 

“To deal with a high hand” is nothing more than to attempt, or undertake proudly, what is not lawful: for our hands ought to be guided, and, as it were, restrained by God’s word, lest they should lift themselves up. But although men’s hands are used in various acts of audacity and wantonness, yet here there is especial mention of the profanation of God’s true and legitimate worship, when anything is invented inconsistent with its purity:

 for the punishment is not decreed against thefts, or murders, or other similar crimes, but against the perverse imaginations, which tend to the corruption of religion.

 The reason is afterwards added: “Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken His commandment.” For it is no light offence to transgress the bounds which God hath placed. Now, it is certain that all self-invented services betray an impious contempt of God, as if men designedly despised Him, and spurned at His commands.

 Whence we infer, that nothing is more opposed to perfect and sincere religion than that temerity which induces men to follow whatever course they please. 

John Calvin and Charles William Bingham, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 91–92.

True knowledge of God can only come through God’s personal self-disclosure. It is always a divine act of grace through faith.

But if the expressions are interpreted in view of the central Creator/creation/idolatry motif that runs throughout the passage, a different picture emerges. God’s eternal power would then pertain to God’s creative energy, and God’s deity would pertain to the idea that the creator, not creation, is sovereign and deserving of worship.

 Thus what is manifest throughout creation is simply that God is the Creator who should be worshiped. From a human perspective, however, there remains a distinct obscurity.

 There may be an awareness that the power that created the universe is worthy of worship, but who or what is this power? 

 This corresponds to the idea that the knowledge under discussion is incomplete. Paul’s τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ is normally rendered “that which can be known about God.” If τὸ γνωστόν is rendered in its normal sense, “what is known,” it creates a tautology: “what is known is evident.” Thus it appears better to understand it as “God in his knowability,” meaning knowledge of God in so far as God can be known by finite humans. Fitzmyer (Romans 279) notes that γνωστός is used twice in the LXX as meaning “knowable” (Gen 2:9; Sir 21:7).

 This reflects the Jewish belief that humans are unable to fully know God even though God has revealed himself (cf. Exod. 33:20; Deut. 4:12; Job 11:7; 23:9; Ps 145:3; Eccl 3:11; Sir 43:31). Also, the genitive τοῦ θεοῦ is probably partitive, suggesting that only a certain aspect of God could be known, such as God’s being the creator who should be worshiped.  

"In the words of Basil,

 “The knowledge of God consists in the perception of his incomprehensibility.”

 Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 29."

A “felt ignorance” is an awareness that never attains to the level of knowledge as understanding. People are aware they do not know, but they have no understanding of what exactly it is they do not know. It is an awareness of “a felt ignorance.”

Barth agrees with Aquinas that what Paul is talking about is not true knowledge at all. It is simply an awareness of ignorance. It is an awareness of our finitude that is ignorant of what limits us. Barth says, “We know that God is He whom we do not know, and that our ignorance is precisely the problem and the source of our knowledge. (Barth, Romans 45).”  Barth is saying that some sort of knowledge is involved, but it is a negative, not a positive knowledge.

 He is contesting natural theology by saying a negation must precede affirmation.

 That is, humanity’s idolatrous worship of self (along with the idea that humans have a natural capacity for the divine) must be negated before one can come to true knowledge of God by faith.

 Thus the rejection of idolatry is the precondition of revelation.

 Barth correctly sees that there is no hint in the text of any human capacity to climb the ladder of logical reasoning to God and to construct a system of natural theology.  

Richard Alan Young, “The Knowledge of God in Romans 1:18-23: Exegetical and Theological Reflections,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43, no. 4 (2000): 704,705.

According to Barth, there can be no approach to God whatsoever via human reason.

 Apart from God’s revelation in Christ, human reason comprehends absolutely nothing about God. 

The fundamental reason for this agnosticism concerning human knowledge of God seems to be Barth’s firm commitment to the thesis that God is “wholly other” and therefore transcends all categories of human thought and logic.

Like Barth, Bultmann Therefore, rational evidence is not only irrelevant, but actually contrary to faith. Faith, in order to be faith, must exist in an evidential vacuum. Only a decision to believe wholly apart from evidence will bring one into contact with the existential significance of the gospel. 

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith : Christian Truth and Apologetics, Rev. ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1994), 23-26.

Barth argued that classical liberalism had reduced theology to anthropology, and turned divine revelation into natural theology. 

Liberalism’s theology began “from below” instead of “from above.” 

For Barth, if humans have a “natural” or “innate” capacity to know God, then God’s freedom is compromised. Why? Because it assumes that we have a knowledge of God apart from God’s free and gracious activity in Christ; it identifies something “creaturely” with God.

 And if this is so, then revelation is no longer God’s gracious and free choice to make himself known in Christ. Instead revelation is a “natural” given that humans can use to control and manipulate God.

 As Barth asserts,

 “the logic of the matter demands that, even if we only lend out a little finger to natural theology, there necessarily follows the denial of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.”

 Thus, any revelation, including natural revelation that is not mediated through Christ, is rejected. Furthermore, given our sin, there is no point of contact in us, other than what God creates by his gracious action in Christ. 

For Barth, natural revelation and its counterpart, natural theology, is a vain attempt to know God apart from Christ. 

Stephen J. Wellum, “Karl Barth, Natural Revelation, and Its Implications for Ethics,” Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 2, no. 2 (2020): 134.

For Barth, “natural theology” is a contradiction in terms, a logical impossibility or nonentity.

Apart from the special revelation of Christ, Barth said, fallen man is totally blind to God, and man’s contemplation reveals to him only demons and idols.

 There is no “point of contact” between the natural wisdom of men and the revelation of the Holy Spirit.

 Romans. 1 and Acts. 17, he said, describe only “the possibility of the knowledge of revelation,” but not the reality, for apart from the Word, God remains “the unknown God.”

 Later, Barth argued that Romans 1:18 and following must refer to man’s response to God’s revelation through the gospel (Rom.1: 16–17), not through the cosmos. ( Karl Barth, “No!,” in Natural Theology; Church Dogmatics)

 Brunner also looked with suspicion upon theistic proofs as examples of putting reason before revelation 

Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Revelation and God, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 233.

Theoretical knowledge, he holds, cannot discover spiritual objects or judge them; all that pertains to religion must be determined religiously and practically. 

Reason cannot find a basis for religion or prove the existence of God; its efforts to do so he regards as a perversion of religion. There is, he says, no natural religion, no natural theology. 

J. H. W. Stuckenberg, “The Theology of Albrecht Ritschl,” The American Journal of Theology II, no. 2 (1898): 274.

In the nineteenth century, natural theology almost completely disappeared from Germany. For Schleiermacher (1768–1834), it deserved nothing but ridicule:

 “the malady of fragments put together from metaphysics and morality that one labels reasonable Christianity.” 

Joar Haga, “Natural Theology,” in Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 537. 

The ποιήματα-work; creation, then, are not phenomena or processes which are primarily noted by sense perception, and which call for this. On the contrary, the ποιήματα-work; creation, which the apostle has in mind may well be phenomena or processes which, if they are to be perceived at all, must be considered in a way which combines καθορᾶν-discern clearly and νοεῖν-to be grasped (intellectually).

 If the ref. is to nature, it cannot be to the side of it which offers itself primarily for apprehension by the senses; the ref. might well be specifically to history including providences in individual life.    

That the ref. of the καθορᾶν-discern clearly conjoined with νοεῖν-to be grasped (intellectually), in Rom. 1:20 is not to a possibility always available to man, but to one which is opened up for him by God (in individual cases?), seems to be clear from the context, cf. Rom.1: 19;

 The expression  eyes of your heart enlightened, The paraphrase “to see with (the eyes of) the reason”  in Eph. 1:18, which is used of the special revelation of God in Christ, if transposed mutatis mutandis to the level of general revelation, is well designed to bring out the nature of this καθορᾶν-discern clearly; Rom. 1:20 is also closer to Heb. 11:3.

 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible Heb. 11:3. goes further than Rom. 1:20: “through faith we perceive that the universe is ordered by the Word of God.”

 The reality of the invisible (Heb. 11:1b), exemplified here by the truth of the origin of the world in God’s Word, is accessible neither to the senses nor the ratio of man, but only to the capacity for knowledge to be found in faith.

 To understand, perceive and acknowledge that God’s will as Creator is the basis of all things is to think in terms of faith. It presupposes πίστις-faith in the sense of Heb. 11:1b, namely, inner conviction that the invisible is the true reality which alone is worth seeking.

 For the author of Heb. this reality is, however, the reality of salvation. For him, then, knowledge of God the Creator is rooted in faith in the God revealed in salvation history. 

Wilhelm Michaelis, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 380–381, 951

In the gospel not only is God’s salvation revealed, but God’s wrath also, and both are the revelation of God’s righteousness. the wrath of God. This expression occ. only here, John 3:36; Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6. Cp. Rev. 19:15. Referred to many times in N.T., e.g. (Rom. 2:5; 5:9; 9:22; Matt. 3:7; Eph. 2:3; 5:6; Rev. 6:16, 17.) The Companion Bible 1663

What the gospel reveals is the ongoing human effort to suppress the truth. Persons and regimes constantly try to cover up the truth about themselves and their self-serving quests for superior honor, as revealed paradigmatically in the crucifixion of the Righteous One.

 His “resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1: 4), however, gives Paul confidence that divine truth is triumphant. The wrath of God sets limits that the human race incessantly tries to thwart, but 

Romans contends that the “wrath of God” is currently being “revealed” in the gospel message in such a way as to expose the “unrighteousness of humans.” 

Robert Jewett and Roy David Kotansky, Romans: A Commentary, ed. Eldon Jay Epp, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), 153.

Translated into structural terms, this means that Romans 1:18–3:20 does not constitute an independent unit. It is inseparable from the articulations of the gospel in Romans 1:16–17 and Romans 3:21–26 which bracket it. The interdependence of the central material and the frame is clear already from the opening parallel phrasing in Romans 1:18 (“the wrath of God has been revealed”) which is linked to Romans 1:16–17 with an explanatory γάρ For.

In this passage he speaks broadly of the obedience of Gentiles, including the occasional conformity to the Law’s demands by unbelievers.

 In Romans 2:27 he has believing Gentiles in view and speaks more narrowly of their full obedience to the Law. In the first instance, Paul is countering the equation of wisdom and Torah and its implicit exclusivism with a perspective drawn from the older biblical understanding that wisdom—unsearchable though it is—is inherent to creation.

 In the second instance, he introduces overtones of the new covenant and the new creation in which true obedience is effected immediately by the Spirit of God. 

His point nevertheless is the same in both cases. Even the pagans (ἔθνη) who stand in something of the same relation to Judaism as the “barbarians” did to Hellenistic culture, enjoy the benefits which the Law is supposed to offer. All of them have the knowledge of the divine will written in their hearts and sometimes do what the Law demands. Some of them truly obey God by the work of the Spirit apart from instruction in Torah.

 In both cases, when he ascribes the capacity for Torah-obedience to pagans, Paul challenges in a startling and direct way the view that conformity to the divine will comes through knowledge of the Law.

Mark A. Seifrid, “Unrighteous by Faith: Apostolic Proclamation in Romans 1:18–3:20,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D. A. Carson and Peter T. O’Brien, 181st ed., vol. 2, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Tübingen: Baker Academic; Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 107. 129,130 

“The natural knowledge of God is imperfect mainly in two respects: (1) as regards its object, this being either altogether unknown (and here belongs the gospel, which is a mystery hidden from the ages), or not fully known (and here belongs the doctrine of the law, which man knows from natural sources only in part); (2) As regards its subject, either not recognizing God with sufficient constancy, or sometimes doubting concerning him in consequence of congenital corruption.”

“The saving knowledge of God through which we obtain eternal life, is that revealed through the Word, in which God makes known himself and his will.

 To this revelation God has bound his Church, which knows, worships, and glorifies God only as he has revealed himself in this Word, so that in this way the true and only Church of God may be distinguished from all Gentile religions.”

Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Verified from the Original Sources, trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs, Second English Edition, Revised according to the Sixth German Edition (Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Publication Society, 1889), 118,120 

Lutherans preach God’s wrath not in order to launch a search for the source, but so that one learns to run from this angry God in naked majesty—but where does one run from wrath? Jonah found no escape. Paul takes away every place to run from God—including the law—so that only the preached word of promise remains.

 People must learn to flee from God—to God; sinners learn to run from the unpreached, absolute, naked God of wrath who hates them, to the preached God clothed in the new word of the Crucified, who is pleased with them 

Yet Paul revealed to the Romans exactly what was first revealed to him. God’s wrath is personal (not theoretical or legal); it is zealous beyond any proportional limits of law; it is universal in breadth (since God shows no partiality); it is relentlessly eternal.

 Most offensive of all, this wrath is hidden so that it must be revealed for what it is, the total destruction of this world with no hope for a change in plans—the apocalypse now.

Trying to make God lovable and convince sinners “to deal with God as though God and our nature were good friends of each other,” created Luther’s own problem in the first place. Human nature and God are not friends. When theology attempts to justify God apart from his words a “natural” theology results that replaces the distinction of law and gospel with a synthesis of nature and grace summarized in the scholastic phrase: “grace perfects nature.”

Reason revolts at the very idea of God’s wrath, since God’s anger cannot be confined to the law, and thus is immoral and unjust. Divine wrath undermines morality, destroys faith in God’s law, and (adding fuel to the fire) God intends it that way.

 God’s greatest enemies are his friends who package him and sell him as “the greatest good” and our heart’s highest desire. This is why the wrath of God has to be revealed, since suppression of it is deeper than even Freud knew.

 We are to fear God who has no words (unpreached), and run from him to the place where he has given himself in words—that is to the preacher. Only there do fear and wrath end in Christ incarnate as he gives himself to sinners. 

Luther learned this strange Christian flight from Paul’s argument that God’s eternal and immoral wrath (Romans 1:18) ends only where he wants to be found in his words of promise (Romans 3:24).

 Life without a preacher is life with a knotted collection of voices that either accuse or excuse, but in either case end up used in the service of self-justification. 

Steven D. Paulson, Lutheran Theology, Doing Theology (London; New Delhi; New York; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2011), 64–66,69.

Faith is not inevitable for us, because our condition is one of revolt against God, and in consequence we have lost the capacity to recognize the traces of God’s sovereignty in His works. This state of affairs has often enough been emphasized. 

All that Calvin says about the natural knowledge of God is subject to the one condition: if Adam had not fallen.

 In that very passage of the Institutes where he speaks about the twofold source of our knowledge of God he goes on immediately to add that the simple knowledge of God from nature would only be possible to us if Adam had not fallen. (3 In. I, 2, 1.) 

If we suppose that, while not clearly recognizing the Creator in creation after the fall, an obscure impulse in our inner life (needing only elucidation) still points to Him, we are again mistaken. Here the interpretation of Calvin in reference to our problem falls constantly into the second error; to wit, that we are apt to forget that, for Calvin, man can never adopt a neutral attitude towards God.

 The words “if Adam had not fallen” are not only the all-inclusive condition governing Calvin’s arguments: it would be better to say they are the minus sign preceding the whole sum of what Calvin teaches about man and his relation to God. The fall means that man’s whole relationship to God is reversed. Thus it introduces not a quantitative change but a qualitative one. We are not only blind and deaf with regard to the intimations of God in nature; we are crazy. 

Our deadness and perversity darkens everything, so that any insight which we gain becomes nothing more than a monstrous deception. 

Wilhelm Niesel and Harold Knight, The Theology of Calvin (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 44,46. 

On the contrary, Calvin affirms in the strictest sense that God does reveal Himself in nature and history, and he must in consequence dispute the reality of a natural knowledge of God. Why then does he consider it so important to develop fully the doctrine of a natural knowledge of God? 

In so doing his intention is to make clear, like the apostle Paul, that in face of God we cannot shelter behind the excuse that we have no knowledge of Him. In saying that Calvin denies the possibility of natural theology we must be rightly understood. We did not mean that the religious disposition of man does not bear fruit. On the contrary, we have shown how strongly it makes itself felt. But the use man makes of it is to turn not towards God. 

Wilhelm Niesel and Harold Knight, The Theology of Calvin (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 48–49.

Some Calvinists may be embarrassed by Calvin’s repeated affirmations of the persistence of the divine image, particularly with the Reformer’s appeal to metaphors such as embers, lamps, and remnants. Indeed, total depravity is sometimes represented even by advocates as requiring something closer to the Lutheran view, with every vestige of original righteousness, holiness, and love extinguished in the unregenerate heart. 

However, Calvin is closer to Augustine in this respect. Although he does not attach himself (at least explicitly) to the theory of sin as mere privation of the good, he typically understands sin as parasitical. It cannot create, but can only undo; it cannot bring about its own state of affairs, but can only corrupt, distort, disfigure, and suppress an original state of affairs determined by God’s goodness. Ugliness is the marring of beauty; stupidity and foolishness are the derangement of an original intelligence and wisdom; injustice is, as its prefix suggests, the undoing of justice; error is the distortion of the truth.

 Sin and evil cannot create, but only destroy. 

Michael S. Horton, “A Shattered Vase: The Tragedy of Sin in Calvin’s Thought,” in A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback, The Calvin 500 Series (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015), 159–160. 

Calvin’s view of this innate knowledge of God was affirmed by the Synod of Dordt under the fourth and fifth head of doctrine and described as “glimmerings of natural light”:

  There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment.

 But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil. Nay, further, this light, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted and holds it in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God. (Synod of Dordt) cp. The Westminster Confession of Faith  

      Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; (Rom. 2:14–15, Rom. 1:19–20, Ps. 19:1–3, Rom. 1:32, Rom. 2:1) yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation. (1 Cor. 1:21, 1 Cor. 2:13–14) Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manner, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; (Heb. 1:1) and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: (Prov. 22:19–21, Luke 1:3–4, Rom. 15:4, Matt. 4:4,7,10, Isa. 8:19–20) which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; (2 Tim. 3:15, 2 Pet. 1:19) those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased. (Heb. 1:1–2) The Westminster Confession of Faith (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996).

We need Holy Scripture as our leader and teacher if we would attain the knowledge of God—and precisely and above all God as Creator. “We confess”, we read in the Confession of 1537, “that we will follow Holy Scripture alone as the rule of our faith and religion without mixing therewith anything derived from human understanding apart from the Word of God” (OS I, 418). 

In the same moment when we depart from the guidance of Scripture, all knowledge of God fades from our minds.

 In Jesus Christ, the theme of Holy Scripture, we recognize also the glory of God as Creator shining in the world. “For Christ is the image in which God makes visible to us not only His heart but also His hands and His feet.” “By the heart”, says Calvin, “I understand that love with which He has enfolded us in Christ, by the hands and feet I understand the works which are manifest to our eyes.

 As soon as we deviate from Christ there is nothing big or little about which we do not inevitably fall into misconceptions.” What we describe as God apart from the Biblical revelation in Jesus Christ is nothing but an idol. We find God nowhere else but in the Mediator. 

“For since Christ is the sun of righteousness we see nothing if we look outside His reality; it is He too who opens the eyes of our spirits.” All this is fully elucidated by the treatment of the problem of natural theology. 

Wilhelm Niesel and Harold Knight, The Theology of Calvin (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 50–51.

In any event the natural man is unable to realize that his covetous desires point to the rottenness of his condition. 

“The light of nature is long extinguished before we gain any idea of this unfathomable gulf.” 

“It is more than enough that man’s insight should reach so far as to deprive him of every excuse, and so, convicted by the testimony of his own conscience, to make him begin to tremble before the judgment seat of God.” 

Natural man is thus not relieved of his responsibility before God. He is rightly summoned before the bar of the divine judgment and condemned. This is the meaning of Calvin’s arguments about the natural law imprinted on the soul of man. Conscience, in which the law of nature makes itself heard, does not on the other hand give sufficient indications to enable us to walk uprightly before God.

 It does not provide the starting point for a universal ethic which could develop into a Christian one. 

Wilhelm Niesel and Harold Knight, The Theology of Calvin (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 103.

The apostle testifies that we are indeed condemned by the judgment of the law, “so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” [Rom. 3:19]. He teaches the same idea in yet another place: “For God has shut up all men in unbelief,” not that he may destroy all or suffer all to perish, but “that he may have mercy upon all” [Rom. 11:32]. 

This means that, a dismissing the stupid opinion of their own strength, they come to realize that they stand and are upheld by God’s hand alone; that, naked and empty-handed, they flee to his mercy, repose entirely in it, hide deep within it, and seize upon it alone for righteousness and merit. 

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 & 2, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 356–357.

According to (2 Cor 4:18; 5:7) Paul’s theology expressly opposes present “sight.”  

God remains “invisible” here to the extent that we cannot get power over him or calculate him metaphysically; rather, he “has” us.

 Corruption of the worship of God according to Rom.1:23 consists in trying to lay hold of God in the creature.

 Already we find here a rejection of the enthusiasm which (in Stoic fashion-Stoicism philosophy attributed to Zeno. A unified theory of the cosmos involving physics, logic, and ethics. The philosophy is named after the Painted Porch in Athens.) sees itself hidden in the world order or mystically thinks it can elevate itself above the world. It is no accident that, in opposition to enthusiasm, Rom. 8:19 refers back to this verse with the catchword ἀποκαραδοκία τῆς κτίσεως.the "creation waits with eager longing" 

Obviously this line of argument is not natural theology in the Hellenistic or the modern sense (cf. Nygren). It is an eschatological illumination of existence and the world.

 In Paul’s theology change of existence always takes place as a change of lordship, thus with the relation to another lord, and is nothing other than entry into a new relation. A person’s reality is decided by what lord he has. (2 Pet. 2:19 NLT)

 As this applies to becoming a Christian and to the resurrection, so here it applies to the event of the fall that continues universally.

 The servant becomes like his master and shows this by his behavior. For Paul no man is ever really without a master or on his own. He who evades the Creator runs into his Judge.

Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, ed. and trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, First edition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 41,42,43.

In Galatians 6:8, Paul contrasts the reward of the fleshly man (“corruption”) with the reward of the spiritual man (“eternal life”), and Peter describes the pseudo-prophets as slaves of corruption. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you. (2 Pet. 2:19 NLT) 

Peter J. Leithart, The Promise of His Appearing: An Exposition of Second Peter (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2004), 33. 

Finally, in Romans 8:19–23 Paul speaks of the subjection of the created order to “futility” (or “vanity,” mataiotēs, Rom. 8:20) and the “bondage of decay” Rom. 8:21 in which it “groans in labor pains” Rom. 8:22 as it awaits its liberation.

 The suggestion has been made that Paul is here alluding to the created order’s subjection to the power of Satan as the “god of this age,” or to his agents. 

There is surely something to be said for this, for Paul ends his train of thought with a confident statement that no power of the cosmos can keep believers from the love of God in Christ Rom. 8:37–39; and in Romans 16:20 he looks forward to the defeat of Satan in terms clearly echoing Genesis 3:15 

Daniel G. Reid, “Satan, Devil,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 865.

Indeed, the doctrine that God delivers over the contumacious and rebellious to the fatal consequences of their sin pervades the Scriptures. 

Thus it may be said that the subjection of the human race to the evil of idolatry was not simply the will of man himself, but the judicial act of divine justice.

Yet it was not a hopeless decree. ‘The preservation of one nation from the universal apostasy had in it a germ of hope for mankind. 

In the fulness of the time God’s purpose of mercy and redemption for the human race was manifested, and ‘the adoption of sons,’ which had been the exclusive privilege of one people, was now declared to be open to all without distinction. 

For this high privilege the race is represented as waiting with eager expectation, and now the Gospel, which was the divinely appointed means of rescuing men from the moral corruption and degradation of heathenism, was proclaiming deliverance and salvation ‘to Gentile and Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free.’

James Stuart Russell, The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord’s Second Coming (London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1878), 231–232.

Here once more the problem of knowing God and His mysteries is under discussion. ψυχικός-natural; unspiritual, describes that which is earthly and which is thus closed to the world of God. Here, however, this restriction is demonic (Does the Gk. identification of demons as souls exert some influence here?) The earth or lower sphere is governed by wicked demons and hence gives rise to strife, unrest, and conflict  

  It is these worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions. Jud. 19   

 Even more plainly Jude. equates the ψυχικός-natural; unspiritual, who lives apart from God’s πνεῦμα-Spirt with the ungodly man who lives according to his own desires. Certainly what is earthly is not evil as such. But the impulses already observed are stronger now than in Paul.

 Thus it presupposed that without the aid of God’s Spirit man will be the victim of his own lusts and of ungodliness.  

Eduard Schweizer et al., “Ψυχή, Ψυχικός, Ἀνάψυξις, Ἀναψύχω, Δίψυχος, Ὀλιγόψυχος,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 662–663.

But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Co 2:14 LEB. occupied with mere animal things, animal, sensual, 1 Cor. 2:14; Jas. 3:15; Jude 19

William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 1314.

sown as an animal body, it is raised as a spiritual body. If there is such a thing as an animal body, there is also a spiritual body. It is in this sense that Scripture says, ‘The first man, Adam, became an animate being’, whereas the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.

 Observe, the spiritual does not come first; the animal body comes first, and then the spiritual. The first man was made ‘of the dust of the earth’: the second man is from heaven. The man made of dust is the pattern of all men of dust, and the heavenly man is the pattern of all the heavenly. As we have worn the likeness of the man made of dust, so we shall wear the likeness of the heavenly man. 1 Co 15:44–49 NEB 

  This is Paul’s view in 1 Cor. 15:45. In the background is the spherical thinking of Wisdom and Philo, as may be seen from Jn. 3:31; 1 Cor. 15:47. 

The psychical is neither sinful as such nor does it incline to the πνεῦμα-Spirt, But it is corruptible and finds no access into God’s kingdom, 1 Cor. 15:50  

In this case God’s Spirit stands in sharp antithesis to man, whose psychical nature is strictly of earth. The only question is whether this confrontation took place before time, so that God’s Spirit is in some way imparted to the earthly nature of man and thus makes man a twofold being, or whether it is regarded as eschatological, in which case- the psychical describes man as earthly and the pneumatic is understand only as a miracle which anticipates the coming consummation

What separates Paul from his opponents, however, is the eschatological caveat that the heavenly pneumatic being is still future 1 Cor. 15:49 and is not a seed hidden in the husk of the psychical.

 What is to come is given only as the promise of God to faith, and continuity between the psychical and the pneumatic lies wholly outside us in the faithfulness of God, in the πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν-life-giving spirit, which is the risen Christ. cf. (Jn. 5:21; 6:63; Ro 4:17; 8:11; 1 Cor 15:22,36)

Frederick William Danker and Kathryn Krug, “Ζωοποιέω,” in The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 162. 1 Cor. 15:45 

In 2 Th. 2:10 and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. the ἀπάτη ἀδικίας-wicked deception to which the ἀπολλύμενοι-who are perishing, are subject is contrasted with salvation by receiving love of the truth.

 In 2 Th. 2:12 so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned. the contrast is between believing the truth, i.e., the Gospel and delighting in ἀδικία-unrighteousness as wrongdoing. In both cases reception of the Gospel (ἀλήθεια-truth) means a break with ἀδικία-unrighteousness. 

Gottlob Schrenk, “Ἄδικος, Ἀδικία, Ἀδικέω, Ἀδίκημα,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 156.

 ἀλήθεια-truth and ψεῦδος-lie; falsehood are understood as genuine possibilities of human existence rather than substances. It is in keeping that revelation is determined by the thought of the Word and of hearing the Word, so that we again have a genuine possibility of existence.

 ἀλήθεια-truth is thus the reality of God which is, of course, opposed and inaccessible to human existence as it has constituted itself through the fall from God, i.e., through sin, and revelation is a miraculous occurrence beyond the reach of the being which is alien to God.

 Yet in revelation there is disclosed to man the true possibility of his own being when, in face of the Word of revelation which encounters him, he decides to surrender himself. 

Thus the reception of ἀλήθεια-truth is conditioned neither by rational or esoteric instruction on the one side nor psychical preparation and exercise on the other; it takes place in obedient faith. (cf. Jn. 8:44; 1 Jn. 1:8; 2:4)

Ambiguity thus arises when Jesus is said to speak the truth, for this means not only that what he says is true but also that he brings revelation in words (Jn. 8:40, 45; 18:37). As revelation, alḗtheia is known (Jn. 8:32; 2 Jn. 1). This is not just a knowledge of a complex of statements but an encounter with Christ, who is the truth (Jn. 14:6) and who sanctifies in truth (Jn. 17:17, 19).

 God himself is disclosed herewith, the incarnate word being “full of grace and truth” (Jn.1:14;17 ). Worship in truth is to be understood similarly, i.e., not just in pure knowledge but as determined by God’s own reality, in pneúma (Spirit), and by the revelation made in Jesus (Jn. 4:23–24).

 Again, the Paraclete as the Spirit of truth insures ongoing revelation in the community (Jn. 14:17; 16:13; cf. 1 Jn. 5:6), and this comes to expression in right doctrine (1 Jn. 2:21) and a right way of life (1 Jn. 1:6). Thus the church’s witness may be equated with that of truth (3 Jn. 12) and Christians are to be fellow workers in the truth (3 Jn. 8), loving one another in the truth and united in truth and love (2 Jn. 1ff.)

Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), 39.  Gottfried Quell, Gerhard Kittel, and Rudolf Bultmann, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 245.

Now we face an important question, which again and again dominates discussions of our problem: whether the idea of the image of God in the broader sense does not lose all sense when we consider fallen man, “totus peccator-all sinner,” of whom Scripture speaks in such radical terms as children of wrath (Eph. 2:3), wandering in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God (Eph. 4:17–18).

 Does not the term image of God—however it is further delimited—ascribe too much, far too much, to the worth of fallen men, who although “knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks … and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man” (Rom. 1:21, 23)?

Does not the image of God, according to the testimony of Scripture, refer only to the richness and glory of man as created in the image of God, to man as the child of God? And is it not then a strange and unlikely usage to speak of fallen, corrupt, and perverted man, who has rebelled against God as the image of God?

We do not at this point propose to examine these Scriptural terms more closely, but it can be stated as generally held today that this supposed Scriptural basis for the double usage of the term “image of God” is not convincing, and that the conclusions drawn from the dual terminology used in the Old and New Testaments are invalid.  

G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 41–42.

Even those who did not accept the supposed dual terminology used regarding the image still held that various Scriptural passages dealing with post-lapsarian man give occasion for reflection and differentiation, supporting their distinction between essence and nature. 

 The texts particularly referred to are the well-known passages in Genesis 9:6, James 3:9 and 1 Corinthians 11:7. Genesis 9:6,...

These terms make sense in the context only if applied to man as he is now, since the Fall. It is especially on the grounds of these texts that it was held to be unfair to Scripture to say without qualification that the image of God is lost through sin.  

But this leaves us with a difficult question: How must we understand the image of God in fallen man, and what do we mean by it concretely? We surely do not want to minimize at all the radicality and absoluteness of the break in man’s life, the alienation and lost condition, the darkness and vanity.

 Besides, the object of the New Testament treatment is not an image which is obviously and as a matter of course present in all men, but is rather the renewing of the image through the grace of God,

 a new conformitas cum Deo-conformity with God, by way of an image that had been lost.

 When Paul treats the putting away of the old man and the taking on of the new, which “hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth” (Eph. 4:24), “renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Col. 3:10), his concern is with an eikoon, image, nature of man, as something which is to be established—or, better, re-established.

Thus here we are confronted with a miracle of restoration, the renewal of man’s nature as a salvation, in eschatological and Christological perspective, from being lost, and a destining to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). This renewal of the image of God is a gift of grace, made against the somber background of man’s lost wealth.

 It is the grace of sonship, it is the being “wholly other” than before (cf. Eph. 4:20), it is being the new man as over against the old (cf. Eph. 4:22). Grace brings about a historical transition from the old to the new man, to that man who is created after God’s image in true righteousness and holiness.

 Does this transition, therefore, afford occasion for contemplating any duality other than the duality old and new? 

G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 41–45.

When we hear Eastern theology sing its hymn of praise for man’s personality or freedom or reason, we remind ourselves that Scripture speaks of “brutal men, skillful to destroy” (Ezek. 21:31). These words do not imply that men do not still think; but it is not this thinking as such which is the central point of Biblical interest, but rather that which these thinking men, in the totality of their existence, are and do.

 And thus, viewing the image as treated in Eastern theology, we may conclude that we should always be alert for the dangers of stressing the image of God in fallen man.

 There is always the possibility that such accentuation is the result of a kind of thinking in which emphasis on man’s reason, freedom, and personality surely seriously weakens, if it does not destroy, the reality of sin and corruption.

G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 51.

Certainly it is true that fallen man became an immoral creature, but that does not mean that his life before the Fall can be described as ‘moral’ in the same sense. As we have already remarked, the Fall itself was characterized by the attainment of moral awareness, so that it is hard to see how this concept can be applied to the prelapsarian Adam, whose blessedness is attributed to Adam’s obedience, not to his consciously moral behavior.

 The moral issue entered the picture only after the Fall, and became associated with the divine doxa in and through the Law. 

Thus it is because the Law has now been internalized by Christ that the doxa of God in the new man has a moral character, not because this was inherent in the glory bestowed on man at creation.

Gerald Bray, “The Significance of God’s Image in Man,” Tyndale Bulletin 42, no. 2 (1991): 222.

 Man has therefore been set free from the effects of the sin which he incurred when Adam ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and is now able to resume his progress towards the fulness of the image of God.

 If we take the Genesis account of the Fall literally, this means that man is now free to pursue eternal life, the tree which was barred to him in the Garden of Eden, but which has now been made available in and through the resurrection of Christ.

 Thus to be conformed to the image of the resurrected Son of God is in reality to perfect the image of God in man which was left in an incomplete state in the Genesis account of creation!

Gerald Bray, “The Significance of God’s Image in Man,” Tyndale Bulletin 42, no. 2 (1991): 214.

Conversely, since the promise of Christ has been there since Adam’s fall into sin, all sin from the beginning is unbelief in and ignorance of Christ.

Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966).