Unregenerate Knowledge of God
Good teaching proceeds from the
known to the unknown. So a good apologist will want to have some idea of what
an inquirer already knows about God. Do non-Christians have any knowledge of
the true God? If so, what do they know? In what ways does that knowledge
manifest itself?
Scripture says that unbelievers
know God (Rom. 1:21), but it also says they do not know him (1 Cor. 2:14,
15:34, 1 Thess. 4:5, 2 Thess. 1:8, compare 2 Tim. 3:7, Tit. 1:16, 1 John 4:8).
Evidently, then, we must make some distinctions, for in some sense or senses,
knowledge of God is universal, and otherwise it is not.
The knowledge given by general
revelation is not only a knowledge about God, a knowledge of
propositions. It is a knowledge of God himself, a personal knowledge.
For Paul says, not only that the wicked have information about God, but that “they knew God” (21).
Nevertheless, according to Paul,
the wicked do not make proper use of this revealed knowledge. Rather, they ‘by
their unrighteousness suppress the truth’ (18). He continues, ‘although they
knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became
futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to
be wise, they became fools…’ (21-22). Paul describes their foolishness as
idolatry (22-23). In his view, idolatry is not an innocent search for the
divine or the result of honest ignorance. It is, rather, willfully and culpably
turning away from clear revelation of the true God. So it is ‘exchanging the
glory of the immortal God for images…’ (23), exchanging ‘the truth of God for a
lie’ (25).
Because they willfully turned from God’s
clear revelation, God ‘gave them up’ (24, 26, 28) to serious sin, particularly
sexual. Even then, however, the original clear revelation continues to
function, for it serves as a standard of judgment. As Paul says, it leaves them
‘without excuse’ (20).
From this passage, we can
understand the senses in which the unregenerate do and do not know God. They
know God as they are confronted by his revelation. Other Scriptures tell us
that this revelation is found not only in the natural world, but in their own
persons, for we are all made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27). So God’s revelation is
inescapable. But apart from the special revelation and saving grace of God,
people exchange this truth for lies and engage in such wickedness that they
become enemies of God, not friends.
It is the grace of God that turns
this enmity into friendship, so that people come to know God in a higher sense
than the knowledge of Rom. 1:21. This is the knowledge of God that Jesus
equates with eternal life in John 17:3. Many other passages too describe
various kinds of knowledge that presuppose saving grace, such as Rom. 15:14, 1
Cor. 1:5, 2:12, 2 Cor. 2:14, 4:6, 6:6, 8:7, Eph. 1:17, Phil. 1:9, 3:8, 3:10,
Col. 1:10, 1 Tim. 2:4, 2 Tim. 1:12, Heb. 8:11, 2 Pet. 3:18, 1 John 2:3-5, 2:13,
2:20-21, 3:14, 19, 24, 4:2, 4, 6, 7, 13, 16, 5:2, 13, 19-20, 2 John 1:1. The
unregenerate do not have this kind of knowledge. In this sense should we
understand the passages that say they do not know God.
There have been two different
accounts of unregenerate knowledge of God in the theological traditions. One,
advocated by Thomas Aquinas, says that this knowledge comes through man’s
natural reason. In Aquinas’ view, natural reason is sufficient to accomplish
our earthly happiness, but a higher, supernatural knowledge is required for
eternal life. Natural reason operates apart from divine revelation, but
supernatural knowledge is based on revelation, which functions as a supplement
to what we know naturally.
Reformed theologians have objected
to this view that God never intended our natural reason to function
autonomously, or apart from his revelation. For one thing. all human knowledge
comes through revelation, either general or special or both. Further, even
before the fall, God supplemented Adam’s natural knowledge with verbal
revelation. And after the fall our natural knowledge requires both general and
special revelation for its proper functioning. Left to our own devices, as Rom.
1 teaches, we suppress and distort the truth of general revelation. Only God’s
grace, operating through the gospel given in special revelation, can enable us
to see general revelation rightly. So Calvin spoke of special revelation as the
“spectacles” by which we understand general revelation.
Calvinists, therefore, have been
more pessimistic than Aquinas about the unbeliever’s knowledge of God. Aquinas
regarded the pagan Aristotle as a paradigm of natural reason, and he followed
Aristotle closely in his proofs for God and in other philosophical and
theological matters. Followers of Calvin, however, have generally not thought
that we can learn much about God from non-Christians. And, since the knowledge
of God is integral to all human knowledge, some Calvinists like Abraham Kuyper
and Cornelius Van Til have argued that non-Christian thought is radically
distorted even in relatively non-theological subject matter. Yet the Reformed
tradition (with significant exceptions) has generally also accepted the
doctrine of ‘common grace,’ in which God restrains non-Christians from the full
implications of their rebellion against him and thus preserves in them some
inclination toward civic virtue and true beliefs.
On the Reformed view, unregenerate
knowledge of God needs more than supplementation. It needs a radical
reorientation. The work of the apologist is not merely to add information to
what the unbeliever already knows. It is, rather, to “take every thought
captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). This will involve questioning the
unbeliever’s basic worldview, the most basic presuppositions of his thinking.
So Reformed presuppositional apologists have spoken of an ‘antithesis’ between
believing and unbelieving thought, corresponding to the biblical distinction
between God’s wisdom and the world’s foolishness. But it has been difficult for
them to reconcile and balance their doctrine of antithesis with the doctrine of
common grace. If there is such an antithesis, so that the non-Christian opposes
the truth of God at every point, how can we ascribe to the non-Christian any
knowledge at all?
I have tried to address this
question in my book Cornelius Van Til, listed below. To summarize,
agreements between believers and unbelievers are never perfect agreements; they
are always agreements with a difference. Believer and unbeliever can agree that
the sky is blue, but the unbeliever tries to see this fact as a product of
matter, energy, and chance. Christian and Pharisee may agree that God requires
Sabbath observance; but the Pharisee will fail to see the mercy of God in the
commandment and therefore the appropriateness of healing. Non-Christians, in
other words, may agree with Christians on various matters, but seen as a whole
their understanding of God is seriously distorted, and apologists must deal
with that distortion.
The remainder of this article will
consider three questions about unregenerate knowledge of God: (1) How is it
obtained? (2) How is it suppressed? (3) In what ways does it continue to
function, despite its suppression?
(1) Rom. 1 tells us that this knowledge is gained from God’s revelation ‘in the things that are made,’ that is, the entire created world, including human beings themselves. But how do people obtain this knowledge from creation? Some apologists have thought that this knowledge comes about through rational activity, particularly through theistic proofs and evidences. But this understanding would limit the knowledge of Romans 1 only to those competent to understand and be persuaded by those arguments and evidences. Paul, however, sees this knowledge as universal. Romans 1 begins the argument that leads in Rom. 3:10-20, 23, to the conclusion that all have sinned and stand in need of God’s grace. . So the knowledge of Rom. 1 renders all human beings inexcusable (verse 20).
If that knowledge were less than universal, the conclusion of Rom. 3 would not follow from it.
So the knowledge of God by creation
evidently reaches all, even those who are not competent to formulate or
evaluate proofs and evidences. Evidently we discern the general revelation of
God by some form of intuition, an intuition that some are able to articulate
and defend by proofs and evidences, but which does not depend on them. Alvin
Plantinga says that we come to believe in God when our rational faculties are
operating as God intended, and when they are placed in an environment naturally
conducive to the formation of theistic belief. No better explanation of the
process has been offered to date.
(2) How do people suppress the
truth of this revelation? It is tempting to think of “suppression” in psychological
terms, as when someone relegates an unwelcome truth to his subconscious or
unconscious. But that is not the biblical picture. The enemies of God in the
Bible, from the Egyptians (Ex. 14:4) to the Pharisees, to Satan himself, often
acknowledge consciously the existence of God. In Rom. 1, the suppression is
seen in idolatrous worship and illicit sexual behavior. The unregenerate deny
their knowledge of God by their ethical rebellion.
When Scripture describes the
knowledge of God that comes by grace, that knowledge is always accompanied by
obedience and holiness. John says, ‘And by this we know that we have come to
know him, if we keep his commandments’ (1 John 2:3). Thus Scripture closely
relates epistemology to ethics.
So the difference between
unregenerate and regenerate knowledge of God may be described as ethical. The
unregenerate represses his knowledge of God by disobeying God. This
disobedience may lead in some cases to psychological repression, or explicit
atheism, but it does not always. The apologist should recognize, therefore,
that the unbeliever’s problem is primarily ethical, not intellectual. He
rejects the truth because he disobeys God’s ethical standards, not the other
way around.
This ethical rebellion does,
however, always inject an element of irrationality into the thinking of the
unregenerate. To know God and his commandments, even his ‘eternal power,’ and
yet to rebel against him, is supremely futile. In this sense, unbelief is
foolishness (Psm. 14:1). Consider Satan, who knows God in some respects better
than we do, yet who seeks to replace God on the throne. In some ways, Satan is
highly intelligent and knowledgeable. But in the most important sense, he is
supremely irrational. It is important for the apologist to understand that in
the final analysis the position of the non-Christian is like this: often
intellectually impressive, but at a deeper level ludicrous.
(3) The non-Christian’s suppression
of the truth is never complete. He can never eradicate the truth completely
from his consciousness. If he could, he could not live at all. For this is
God’s world, and all the world’s structure, order, and meaning is God’s work.
Further, as we have seen, God’s common grace restrains the non-Christian’s
distortions of the truth. So even Satan uses the truth for his own purpose, and
there are some unregenerate human beings, like the Pharisees, who are
relatively orthodox.
Therefore we can expect the
unbeliever’s knowledge of God to bubble up at times through his consciousness,
despite his attempts to repress that knowledge. How does that happen? In
several ways: (a) Unbelievers may sometimes display explicitly quite a lot of
knowledge of the true God, as the Pharisees did. (b) The non-Christian must
assume that the world is not a chaos, but that it is orderly and relatively
predictable, even though this assumption in turn presupposes God. (c) In
ethics, non-Christians often reveal a knowledge of God’s law. Apologists like
C. S. Lewis and J. Budziszewski have pointed out that principles like “Play
fair,” “Don’t murder,” “Be faithful to your spouse,” and “Take care of your
family” are universally recognized. Although many people violate these
principles, they show they know them by making excuses or rationalizations, and
by accusing others of violating the same principles.
In other words, they treat the
moral law as law. Although some theorize that moral principles are mere
feelings, conventions, or instincts, no one really believes that, especially
when injustice is done to them. When someone treats us unfairly, we regard that
unfairness as an objective wrong. But objective wrongs cannot be derived from
mere instincts, feelings, conventions, evolutionary defense mechanisms, etc.
Moral rights and wrongs are based on personal relationships, specifically
relationships of allegiance and love. And that means that absolute moral
standards must be derived from an absolute person. So develops the “moral
argument for the existence of God,” q.v. But that argument is based on
conscience, a sense of objective right and wrong that is universal, that exists
even in those who do not formulate it as an argument. Budziszewski also points
out the terrible consequences that result from violating one’s conscience.
Apologists should draw on the data of the unbeliever’s conscience to lead him
to that greater knowledge of God, which is eternal life in Christ.
Bibliography
Budziszewski, J., The Revenge of Conscience (Dallas, TX: 1999).
--,
What We Can’t Not Know (
Frame, J., Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: 1994). Develops the moral argument for God’s existence.
--, Cornelius Van Til (Phillipsburg, NJ: 1995). See chapters 15 and 16 on the antithesis between believing and unbelieving knowledge of God.
--, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: 1987). Seeks to show that epistemology can be regarded as a branch of ethics, showing why the two are so closely united in Scripture.
Lewis, C. S., Mere Christianity (London: 1952).
Plantinga, Alvin, Warranted Christian Belief (New York and London: 2000).
Sproul, R. C., If There’s a God, Why Are There Atheists? (Wheaton, IL: 1988). A good treatment of the psychology of atheism according to Rom. 1.