While some have used
Romans 1 to justify natural theology and argue that it is possible to arrive at
knowledge of God based on logic and observation alone, there is nothing in this
text to justify that contention. While it is obvious that this text teaches
that people “clearly see” something about God, that which people see is clearly
not the result of sophisticated logical argumentation, and Paul does not here
refer to or seek to justify “a long process of reasoning by which people come
to a knowledge of God’s existence and power” (Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans [Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998], 86). Moreover, the claim that this text teaches that
humans have “knowledge” of God is liable to be misunderstood. It is better to
see this text as teaching that humans have a “vague, unformulated knowledge or experience
of God” (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans, Anchor Bible Commentary [New York:
Doubleday, 1993], 200). Richard Alan Young argues persuasively that the best way
to see the understanding of God described in Romans 1 is a “vague unthematic
awareness.” See his “The Knowledge of God in Romans 1:18-23: Exegetical and
Theological Reflections,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
43, no. 4 [December 2000]: 695-707). From this perspective on this passage,
Karl Barth writes, “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” (Karl Barth, The Epistle
to the Romans [London: Oxford University Press, 1968], 45). And, in a
similar vein, but from the perspective of one more open to the concept of
natural theology, Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that “to understand the complex
issue, we need to separate the natural human knowledge of God, no matter how it
is to be described in detail, very sharply from the phenomenon of natural
theology, which may be related to it in some way but which must not be equated
with it. The lack of clear differentiation in this matter is partly responsible
for the hopeless confusion in the modern discussion of natural theology” (Wolfhart
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1998], 1:76).
But doesn’t the fact
that all people are aware of God, even if that awareness is vague and
unthematic, suggest that there are no people who are truly unevangelized and,
therefore, that attempts to argue that some will be given a Postmortem
Opportunity to hear the gospel are both unnecessary and presumptuous? No, for
two reasons. First, it doesn’t seem at all plausible that “all are aware of God’s
external power and divine nature” and have seen that “through what has been
created.” For instance, how could Anna and Sam come to an awareness of God’s
nature through observing creation? Now it might be possible to say that this
unthematic awareness of God is only possessed by those who suppress the truth
by their wickedness, but such an avenue of argument both raises questions about
the nature and extent of original sin and fails to show that all people have an
awareness of God. A second reason why Romans 1 does not function as an
objection to Postmortem Opportunity is that even if this text teaches that all
are aware of God in some sense, people are not aware in that requisite sense
that renders the question of the destiny of the unevangelized moot, or
undercuts the Postmortem Opportunity answer to that question. To see this,
consider the question, What does it mean to say that “people are without excuse”?
Does this mean that “people do not need to hear the gospel”? Surely not, for
such a claim would invalidate the Great Commission. Does it mean that God does
not desire the salvation of those who do not hear the gospel? Again, no. Human
sinfulness and our unworthiness to stand before God and demand anything does
not change the fact that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only
Son” (Jn 3:16). The lesson here is that our need for a salvific opportunity is
unchanged by the fact there is a very important sense in which people are aware
of God and therefore lack an excuse.
It would be one thing
if people who pressed this sort of objection to answers to the problem of the
destiny of the unevangelized also asserted that it was possible to be saved via
awareness of God’s invisible qualities on display in creation. Unfortunately,
many who press the “no excuse” argument claim that God’s general revelation is
sufficient to damn, but insufficient to save. For instance, Restricivists like
J. I. Packer argue, “The Bible says that God’s general revelation, even when correctly
grasped, yields knowledge of creation, providence and judgment only, not of
grace that restores sinners to fellowship with God” (J. I. Packer, “The Way of
Salvation, Part IV: Are Non-Christian Faiths Ways of Salvation?”, Bibliotheca
Sacra 130, no. 518 [April 1973]: 115). This is problematic . . . not because
God owes humanity an opportunity to be saved, but because this articulation of
God’s love and salvific will is incompatible with what Scripture itself
actually teaches. And perhaps that is the heart of what the “no excuse”
objection is all about. What they are objecting to is a sense that the problem
of the destiny of the unevangelized is being driven by a demand for “equal
opportunity” or “soteriological opportunity justice.” The problem of the destiny
of the unevangelized is driven by the sense that there are some that do not
have an opportunity to be saved combined with the belief that this state of
affairs is deemed to be undesirous by God himself. (James Beilby, Postmortem
Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death [Downers
Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2021], 122-24)
