Romans 1:19-20 (NIV), “19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

Question: How have you experienced that – or not?

Childhood awareness

I recall the reality I experienced in childhood included extensive invisible aspects of life – of love & hate, goodness & evil, truth & falsehood, beauty & ugliness, fairness & injustice, harmony & conflict, meaning & purpose vs chaos & confusion. And as I had attended Sunday School & church from the age of five, I understood that almighty God was the source of those wonderful invisible qualities of life, while those negative aspects resulted from people choosing to ignore or oppose God’s rule.

Classical Greek Philosophy

When I was 16, I became an avid reader for many years, to catch up on the reading I hadn’t done in earlier years. My reading included the Greek gods and their unholy antics, but I also read of Greek philosophy and how they learnt from the invisible realities of the universe, which confirmed Paul’s claim in this reading.

Socrates argued the complexity of the human body was evidence of a wise designer, an invisible Intelligence that governs the universe.

Aristotle argued there must be an unmoved mover, the starting point of all motion in the universe, and this being was eternal and perfect.

Plato stated that a Creator, a higher and invisible reality, made our material world based on eternal, perfect, and transcendent qualities of Truth, Beauty, & Goodness.

The Greek Stoics developed responsible rules for living that influenced Roman culture. This last week I came across two quotes from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (ruled from 161-180 AD), who was a Stoic. He said, “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one”, and “The sinner sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.”

Limitations of Human Wisdom

But while classic philosophy supports Paul’s claim that God’s invisible qualities can be understood from creation, it only led to agreement about an intellectual concept of God, who was remote and impersonal.

We learn in Acts 17:23 that in Athens they had many gods, and Paul used their one altar to the unknown God to proclaim the real nature of God to them – that He is personal, He is involved in the events of our lives, and commands us to repent and enter into a restored personal relationship with Him through Jesus.

One teaching of the Reformation is that in mankind’s fallen condition, due to our choice of sin, we fail to fully know God from creation, so we need God’s revelation of himself through scripture and through Jesus. But because it was mankind’s choice to sin, we are without excuse.
That differs from Catholic teaching, which places more emphasis on knowing God through human reason and the beauty of creation.

Modern Popular Philosophy

These examples of classical wisdom pointing us to God are in stark contrast to the philosophy promoted by our modern media and universities. About 20 years ago, I heard the religious affairs presenter for the ABC support her argument with a claim that it was now widely accepted in universities that Marxism was the only viable philosophy. The current media view seems to be a mixture of Existentialism – which claims it is up to the individual to create meaning and purpose in a meaningless world – and Postmodern Relativism – which denies the possibility of any truth or reality beyond what is material and visible, and aims to deconstruct all concepts of transcendent or absolute meaning.

Painting

This connects with my interest in painting. Professor H R Rookmaker taught the only explanation about Picasso that makes sense to me. He claimed the art establishment misunderstood Picasso’s message, and invented theories concerning distorted perspective. Picasso was a Communist, and a zealous atheist, and his paintings presented people as being no different to stone rocks, and that life is ugly, horrible, and meaningless. His paintings stated there is no such thing as beauty, and no transcendent reality beyond physical matter.

I love outdoor painting because it immerses me in the beauty of creation, it’s a reminder of the presence of God in our world, and how his nature is reflected in creation. So, I like to think of my painting as an act of rebellion against the ugly atheism of the art establishment.

Science

A willingness to acknowledge the reality of invisible aspects of our universe is basic to science, and it has practical consequences.

The Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell allowed for the reality of invisible forces to explain the visible evidence about electricity, light and magnetism, and so developed the theories of electromagnetism which form the basis for our modern digital world. If he had closed his mind to the invisible and orderly realities of our universe, I wouldn’t have my smart phone!

And modern theories of cosmology rely on the existence of invisible, minute, concentrations of intense gravity called “dark matter”, which supposedly occupies 95% of the universe. So, even if we knew everything about the visible universe, our knowledge would be limited to only be 5% of the actual universe — a reason for humility.

Argument from Moral Law

I find the argument from moral law to be most convincing of those that use the created world to point to the existence of God. It asks if the terms “ought” , “should”, “ought not”, and “should not” can have real meaning beyond the local rules of one’s tribe or group. Do our choices have any meaning in absolute terms? Are terms like good and evil just limited to the likes or dislikes of the local group?

If it matters at all whether today I choose to do good or evil, and if those terms have any real meaning, it implies an absolute reality beyond the physical, and beyond our internal feelings.

And if there can be that invisible reality, it can also have an ultimate source, in the purposeful creator who gave us life and all we know.

Praise God!