The Effect of Sin on Knowledge. Romans 1:18
– 28
In
this passage, verses 18-23, we have one of four or five of the most significant
passages in the Scripture that talk about the nature of man. There are other
passages that talk about sin and the specifics of sin but this passage talks about
the consequences of sin on human beings, on who we are as creatures in the
image of God, and specifically on our thought processes. It is important to
understand this because as we look at this passage and see the descriptions
that are there in vv. 18-23, there are implications that we can then take from
this text that relate to understanding how to communicate the gospel to someone
who isn’t saved, because they are in the position of being spiritually dead and
spiritually unable to understand fully the Word of God.
There
is a lot of controversy over this. There is a very strong Calvinist position on
these verses that flows from their theology called total inability. In their
view on the doctrines of salvation they focus on five key principles and these
came out of a theological synod in Holland about the same time as the
publication of the King James Bible. Just after that in 1616 there was a synod
that was held among the Dutch Reformed churches because of a controversy that
occurred due to the teaching of some of the professors that took the teaching
on free will too far in one direction. One of the professors who had died by
the time they had this synod was Jacob Arminius, from whom we get the term
Arminianism. Arminians in their full extreme form don’t believe that Adam’s sin
really affected anybody else, that each person is born in the same
unadulterated, uncorrupted state that Adam was created, and so every individual
makes a decision on their own life and which way they will go. So theoretically
people can live their life sinlessly. They would say that no one does but that
theoretically they could. They believe that God’s choice is totally dependent
upon human choice, that God’s movement, God’s wooing of the unbeliever, is
completely resistible, because the individual is really in charge and not God.
It is the polar opposite of strong 5-point Calvinism. We would be somewhere in
between but probably on the light or moderate Calvinist side, although we don’t
like to use those terms because in terms of the five points of Calvinism we
would redefine all of them. But none of them would be redefined in the way that
Arminians define them.
So
the student of Arminius who was teaching at the time was the one who was
actually up on charges. The Arminians brought together five points, what they
called their remonstrance, and in response to their five points the Calvinists
had five counter-remonstrances—usually referred to by the acronym TULIP. Some people
have somewhat facetiously said that you either have TULIP theology or DAISY theology. DAISY theology
(Arminianism) is where you set out to talk about God: does He love me? He loves
me today; He loves me not. He loves me today; He loves me not. Because in
Arminianism you can lose your salvation; you can choose not to be saved
anymore. So there is no eternal security.
In
Calvinism there is total inability, which means man can’t do anything. And they
always stress this emphasis on man is spiritually dead, and they miss the boat
there. Spiritual death doesn’t mean that he is non-existent; spiritual death
means that we are separated from God and we don’t have a spiritual life or
operation of our spiritual life in relation to God. It is non-operable; it
doesn’t mean that the unbeliever can’t think, can’t understand some things to a
limited degree. Then there unconditional election, limited atonement,
irresistible grace, and perseverance. Those five points make up what is
considered to be Calvinism—high Calvinism. The term “hyper-Calvinism” is
actually a technical theological term. It emphasizes the sovereignty of God in
an extreme way and they go beyond high Calvinism. A hyper-Calvinist believed
that those whom God elected would be saved. You didn’t need to tell them the
gospel because if God chose them He would save them without any help from us.
That was their view.
But
all of this relates to understanding the impact of sin on man’s intellectual
abilities, his ability to understand truth after the fall. It is important to
understand this because if we are talking to somebody who is an unbeliever and
they are spiritually dead in the sense of high Calvinism (total inability) they
really can’t understand and won’t ever understand anything we are saying unless
they the elect. God the Holy Spirit won’t even make it clear to them. They are
not the elect and so He is not going to be moving upon them in any resistible
manner, and if you go to the extreme of hyper-Calvinism it also lends itself to
a lot of rationalization that occurs: well, if God wants them to be saved they
will be saved, we’ll just let somebody else who is a little better at it than
me witness to them. So there is a minimizing of human responsibility because
they put so much emphasis on God’s sovereignty. As a result when they come to
passages like this and they talk about, for example, Romans 1:18 NASB “For
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,” they take
that last clause (and it can be taken a number of different ways grammatically)
as being a gnomic or universal truth, i.e. that all men suppress all truth at
all times. Therefore the unbeliever can’t even exercise positive volition to
God in a non-meritorious manner.
It
is also important to understand the nature of man and the nature of the
unbeliever’s ability to understand and what he is capable of on his own, as
well as what the Holy Spirit does. Obviously the Holy Spirit works on the
understanding of the unbeliever in order to understand the Word but we would
not agree that He does so in an irresistible manner, as Calvinism teaches.
Romans is all about
righteousness. That is what salvation is: God gives us righteousness. Romans is
in some sense a defence of the righteousness of God in light of the fact of all
of the things that happen in history, the things that happen in terms of
individuals’ lives, and how can God hold people accountable when they have
never heard anything about the Old Testament or anything about Jesus? How can
God bring condemnation upon the unsaved who never heard the name of Jesus?
Romans answers that by one of the most brilliant explanations of the process of
justification and the spiritual life and the implications of it. That is what
Paul develops here. For in it {the} righteousness of God is revealed from faith
[Justification] to faith [Sanctification]; as it is
written, “BUT
THE RIGHTEOUS
[Justified by faith] {man} SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”
Now
Paul is going to explain that so that we can understand the implications of what
he has just said. Romans 1:18 NASB “For the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who
suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” The contrast is between the
righteousness of God and the unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness. Twice we have the use of the negative here of unrighteousness,
and we have this emphasis on suppressing the truth, that there is from Paul’s
perspective one truth. There is an absolute universal truth, we are not left to
just sort of guess our way or fell our way blindly through the room where
everybody’s truth is ok, whatever works for you, etc. There are a lot of
inconsistencies in that position. When you have destroyed reason—that
came out of the enlightenment—and you have destroyed knowledge, the
possibility of objective knowledge which is basically what happened in the 19th
century, then you are only left with scepticism and despair. If you don’t know
truth then you can’t answer any questions and life is meaningless. People can’t
live that way and so then they leap into some sort of mysticism where they just
conjure up their own answers, because that is what works for them; because the alternative is despair, gloom and meaningless
life.
Romans
1:19 NASB “because that which is known about God is evident within
them; for God made it evident to them.” Even inside the fallen soul Paul says
that something may be known about God within every single human being. And God
has shown it to them, and that is the external evidence of God. There is a
resonance that occurs within every single person. When they look on God’s
creation there is something that vibrates, for lack of a better term, something
that resonates within the soul so that they know. They know internally, first
of all, that God exists. Then God gives evidence of His existence throughout
every detail of the creation. Everything shows something about God’s power and
God’s character.
Romans
1:20 NASB “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes,
His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood
through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” So by looking at
what God has made they can understand certain things about God’s character: “so
that they are without excuse.” This is the answer to that question of the ages:
what about those who have never heard. They’ve seen enough in the universe to
know God exists. That is where volition enters in. At that time they could
desire to know more about God or not to know more about God. That volition is
not meritorious; it is not the cause of anything. And they can still suppress a
lot of truth because we still do that—even as believers.
2
Corinthians 4:3, 4 NASB “And even if our gospel is veiled [If it is
veiled it is not invisible], it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose
case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that
they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the
image of God.” Here’s a question to the hyper-Calvinists, to anybody who takes
that first T in TULIP the way a
Calvinist does—total inability: If spiritual death means man is unable
and incapable, apart from any movement of the Holy Spirit, of having any
perception whatsoever of the existence of God (because he has suppressed it in
unrighteousness) or any perception of the truth of the gospel, why did Satan
have to blind their minds? Satan has to blind their minds because there are
still certain capabilities of the fallen mind to understand the existence of
God and to want to know more. It is not soteriological knowledge but it is
knowledge that gives man an opportunity to choose to know more or less. The
implication of 2 Corinthians 4:4 is that fallen man can know; he has some light
available. It’s not much; it is not going to get him saved; it is not going to
give the content of the gospel, but he does have a certain amount of light so
that he does know that God exists.
There
are unbelievers who can give the gospel as good as any believer, but they don’t
really understand it. They understand it in a certain academic sense and they
probably know more about the gospel than a lot of Christians do; but they can’t
really put two and two together spiritually, that ultimately comes from the
work of the Holy Spirit. So there is a measure of understanding on the part of
the unbeliever, but what he is doing is suppressing that truth. He is in
rebellion, he is rejecting the authority of God because he says I don’t like
what God says. God defines truth; I don’t like it, I want to create my own
truth.
The
average person is really concerned about how to make decisions about the
details of life. How are we to behave? That is a question that relates to
ethics. We would refer to it perhaps as spirituality, but that is the realm
where this takes place. How is a human being supposed to behave? In marriage,
in family, what is the role of husbands and wives, who does what and is
responsible for what? What is the role of parents? What are the limitations of
the role of parents? What is the extent of their responsibility? What about
educating their children? What about the role of schools? What about politics?
Who is right and who is wrong? Where do we draw all these decisions? All that
has to do with just the basic, practical decision making we have in life.
Economics: how should we spend our money?
To
answer ethical questions it really presupposes that we have answered the
question: how do we know what is right? We have a question of knowledge here.
How do we know it is true? How do we know there is truth? The very fact that we
talk about it implies that there is truth. It is amazing the way God structured
vocabulary and communication, that when we talk about something,
anything—a tree, a lazy-boy recliner—it can’t mean anything else,
it has limitations to what that word means. To be able to communicate even at
the most primitive level presupposes that there are absolutes, that there are
specific set meanings that can’t be changed and aren’t going to evolve over
time. Saying the sky is blue doesn’t in five or six years mean the sky is red.
When we look at epistemology we are concerned about truth claims but as soon as
we imply those ideas of truth in right and wrong that also implies
accountability and responsibility and a response to authority. If somebody says
this is the right thing to do, this is true, that is where it transitions to
ethics. There is an authority response at that point. Well who is the
authority? Who is the source of truth? Where do we get this idea of truth? That
takes us to the next question: how do we know what the ultimate authority in
life is? How do we know if there is a God—capital G or lower case g?
Then
the question which is the realm of epistemology—which is, how do we know
anything?—to the question of metaphysics, which
is the question of existence. There we have to answer the question: is there
something or is there nothing? We can’t really say that there is nothing, so
there is something and where did the something come from? Did it come from
something that was impersonal and just material, or did it come from something
that was personal? What do these words personal and impersonal mean? When we
have the Bible we have the authoritative information from God who created everything
to tell us, to give us the answers. But most people don’t have the Bible and
are trying to figure this out. They come up with different things such as
arguments for the existence of God and philosophy and other things of that
nature.
Once
we answer the question, is there something to exist, then that is going to
necessarily impact our understanding of knowledge, where knowledge comes from,
and where truth comes from and how we are going to define truth. When we are
looking at these types of questions ultimately we are asking the question: is
there real meaning and order and structure to the universe or not. That is
basically the question that is asked. People may not come right out and say it
that way but that is what they are asking. To bring it down to a more basic
level it is the question: does my life have meaning and value or not? When we
get it down there, there are really only two answers everything can boil down
to. The first is that there is really no logical, rational answer to that question.
We just don’t know. That is depressing. If we are consistent with that answer
then what we must conclude is that existence is meaningless, that everything is
governed by pure random actions. There is no purpose, meaning or real cause and
effect in relationship. Nobody can live like that though. If everything is
random and pure chance and life is meaningless then why does it matter? They
can’t live in a way that is consistent with their basic assumption about life.
The
only other answer is that life has some meaning and value. If
it does, how much? If life has real meaning and value and purpose then
we need to define that.
As
believers what this passage tells us is that whenever we are talking to an
unbeliever we don’t have to prove the existence of God. We may have to
resurrect their suppressed knowledge of the existence of God but we don’t have
to ultimately prove it. There is something inside of them that when we start
talking about it they are just trying to keep God like a jack-in-the-box ready to
pop out, and are just trying to stuff Him back down.
Romans
1:20 has some critical vocabulary: “clearly seen” is
the Greek word kathorao [kaqaraw] which means
to see or perceive thoroughly. So His attributes are clearly seen by everybody.
Fallen men clearly see it. That seems to argue against that total inability
concept that is in Reformed thinking. Then “understood,” a verb noeo [noew] which is
based on the noun nous [nouj] which has to do with thought, so
these are clearly words of perception, of understanding and gaining insight
into something. There is real true knowledge about God and His being, at least
enough to where every human being can be held accountable.
Romans
1:21 NASB “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as
God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their
foolish heart was darkened.” What is interesting is that all through these
verses there are about ten words that are related to knowledge. The word here,
“knew,” is ginosko
[ginwskw], a word that conveys understanding, comprehension,
perception. There is clear understanding and knowledge of the existence of God
and the rejected it, it was a volitional decision. Arrogance and ingratitude
always go hand in hand. The word “futile” is the Greek word mataios [mataioj], which means
something is rendered futile and made worthless. It is in the passive voice
which indicates that something acts upon their thinking to make it worthless.
What is it that acts upon their thinking? When they suppress truth the result
of that is that their thought processes, their ability to understand truth and
to reason truly is gone. So their rational system is designed to suppress
truth, not to get to truth. No matter how much they talk about finding truth
they are trying to suppress it.
The
word “speculations” is the Greek word dialogismos
[dialogismoj] from which we get our word dialogue, and the basic meaning
in Greek was the same as it is in English. It had to do with a conversation.
But in the world of philosophy they used the word to express this intellectual,
rational conversation because they understood that while you were trying to
understand the nature of reality and express that through your vocabulary what
underlies every sentence is a system of logic. Just the very structure of
grammar is a logical structure. So in philosophy they understood the dialogismos was the rational foundation
of logical, coherent conversation and thought. What Paul is saying here is that
as a result of suppressing truth our thought processes, not just the content of
our thought but our reasoning processes, become corrupted as a result of truth
suppression.
The
words “foolish hearts” is asunetos
[a)sunetoj] which means
senseless or foolish; “hearts” is kardia
[kardia], the thinking part of the soul; “darkened,” as a result,
not of sin in terms of their fallen state but as a result of suppression of
truth. The more truth suppression there is the more the understanding becomes
darkened.
The
result: Romans 1:22 NASB “Professing to be wise, they became fools.”
How many times have we been impressed by the academic credentials of somebody
who is completely wrong? God says they are fools because their starting point
is the assumption that there is no God, and the result is foolishness no matter
how erudite they are. It is foolishness because is starts from the wrong
starting point. So the question that we have to ask coming out of this is, what
is man’s basic problem? If we are going to talk to an unbeliever what is the
basic problem we have to deal with? If it is intellectual we need to give them
sophisticated arguments for the existence of God and the truth of the
Scripture. If it is social we need to socialize people and come up with social
solutions and restructure society so that they can come to know the truth. If
it is education then we need to solve the education problem. But what Romans is
saying is it is not intellectual, social or education, it is spiritual. They
have rejected God; they are truth suppressors.
This
is the same thing we see in Ephesians 4:17 NASB “Eph
4:17 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you
walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind.”
Paul is using nous here for mind
and mataiotes [matiaothj] for futility.
[18] “being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the
life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness
of their heart.” So we see that there is a volition that takes place there that
rejects God and that sets a course of action that darkens the thinking.