LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 151

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IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

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Though each of the above accounts is fictional, together they serve to illustrate the two-sided coin—or double-edged sword—that is humanity’s natural
knowledge of God. Making implicit note of the potentially contradictory
directions in which one might be led by such knowledge, the 2007 synodical
convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) requested the
preparation of “a study of the natural knowledge of God, and especially its
implications for our public witness.” Partially predicating this request was
the stated conviction that “[t]he Scriptures teach that all people have a natural
knowledge of God,” and that “[a]n understanding of the natural knowledge
of God can assist the members of the congregations of the LCMS in their witness.” Also informing this request, however, was another pair of equally firm
convictions: not only is humanity’s natural knowledge of God “not saving
knowledge”; but its very possession may lead many to be “confused about
the one true God” and “to believe falsely that all religions lead to salvation.”1
That many are indeed confused about the one true God is made more than
evident simply by fact of the world’s plethora of religions; a host of mutually
contradictory conceptions and confessions of the divine must lead inevitably
to the conclusion that the vast majority of these are, at the very least, “confused.” Similarly evident is that many increasingly do believe that religions
other than Christianity can lead to salvation. Surveys conducted in the United
States, for example, reveal that this is not only the belief expressed by three
quarters of respondents, but even by nearly half of “strongly committed”
evangelical Christians.2
With regard to the positive premises of the above-noted convention resolution, however, consensus remains elusive, not only within the universal
Christian church, but even within the far narrower confines of the world’s
Lutheran bodies. Dissent from the confession that Scripture itself testifies
that “all people have a natural knowledge of God” is not uncommon, even—
sometimes especially—among those taking a very high view of Scripture’s
testimony and authority. Similarly, while one might assume that those admitting of a natural knowledge of God would indeed embrace it as being able to
“assist [Christians] . . . in their witness,” it has been noted with some warrant

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that many, “especially those in the Reformed and Lutheran traditions, have
historically been cool or hostile to natural theology.”3
In this light, the present study seeks to examine, first, the biblical, confessional, and dogmatic treatment of the natural knowledge of God and
certain intimately intertwined concepts. Various historical and contemporary
objections to such knowledge—and any theology or witness purportedly
deriving from or making use of it—are then surveyed and analyzed, with the
goal of highlighting both the legitimacy and limitations of humanity’s natural
knowledge of God. Informed by these conclusions, final attention is given to
the faithful and fruitful use Christians might make of this knowledge in their
public witness. Given the conceptual confusion which sometimes intrudes
upon discussion of the issues here addressed, however, it will be advantageous to begin with some preliminary definitions and distinctions.
Natural Revelation: That general manifestation of God—whether recognized
as such or not—in and through nature, as distinct from his special revelation in the
incarnate Christ and inspired Scriptures.
Natural Knowledge: That knowledge of God, however dim or incomplete, to
which humanity has access by means of natural revelation, and apart from special
revelation.
Natural Theology: That exercise of reason by which a natural knowledge of God
is acquired, or by which it is further supported, by means of natural revelation.
Natural Religion: False religion (as, e.g., Deism) in which natural revelation,
natural knowledge, and natural theology are deemed sufficient for salvation, are elevated to a magisterial position, and are thus made the rule and norm by which even
supernatural revelation, knowledge, and theology are judged.
Natural Law: Those objective and universal moral precepts—whether or not
acknowledged as such, and whether or not recognized as divine in origin—which are
innate or accessible to natural reason without recourse to special revelation.
In light of the various confusions surrounding the nature and, in some
cases, the legitimacy of the concepts briefly defined above, their treatment in
Scripture, in the Lutheran Confessions, and in the dogmaticians of Lutheran
orthodoxy deserves some slightly more detailed examination.

1
2007 Resolution 3-04A "To Call for Study of the Natural Knowledge of God and Its Implications for Public Witness," 2007 Convention Proceedings, 121.
2
See, e.g., Pew Research Center and The Pew Forum on Religions and Public Life, Americans
Struggle with Religion’s Role at Home and Abroad (Released 20 March 2002), 2, available online
at http://people-press.org/files/2002/03/150.pdf. Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell
provide even more recent statistics in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2010). Their 2006 survey reveals that 89% of Americans believe heaven
is not reserved solely for those who share their religious faith (534). A 2007 follow-up survey
of the original 89%, stipulating that “other faith” be read as “non-Christian faith,” brought
this percentage down only slightly, with a clear majority (54%) even of evangelical Christians
confessing that non-Christian religions can lead to salvation (536). Putnam and Campbell also
cite the results of the contemporaneous 2007 Pew Religious Landscape Survey, which largely
confirms their own data (538).

3
C. Stephen Evans, “Apologetics in a New Key: Relieving Protestant Anxieties Over Natural
Theology,” in The Logic of Rational Theism: Exploratory Essays, ed. William Lane Craig and Mark
S. McLeod (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990), 65.

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II. Natural Knowledge as Christian Confession
What is more definite, more certain, less open to question, than what
the clear testimony of Scripture presents concerning the natural
knowledge of God? . . . Of course the revealed knowledge of God is more
complete than the natural knowledge, but it is no more firmly and certainly grounded in the testimonies of Scripture. ~ Abraham Calov4

A. The Testimony of Scripture
Though Scripture is of course the rule and norm of all Christian doctrine,
it may nevertheless seem counter-intuitive—even contradictory—to look
within God’s special revelation for evidence of his natural revelation. And
yet precisely because it is on the basis of God’s inspired word alone that the
church may speak confidently about God’s ways with man and about man’s
knowledge of God, it would be presumptuous to speak dogmatically about
any subject on which Scripture remains silent. In the emphatic statement
quoted above, therefore, the seventeenth-century Lutheran dogmatician Abraham Calov (1612–1686) appeals not to his own experience or to the opinions
of philosophers in affirming a natural knowledge of God; instead, he cites a
number of biblical passages, at the head of which stands that passage widely
recognized as the locus classicus concerning the natural knowledge of God:
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God
has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his
eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived,
ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been
made. So they are without excuse. (Rom. 1:19–20)
Though the language and logic of this text would appear unambiguously
to affirm God’s natural revelation of himself (“God has shown it to them”),
man’s resultant natural knowledge of God (“what can be known about God is
plain to them,” and, later in v. 21, “they knew God”), and even the possibility
of a natural theology (“his invisible attributes . . . have been clearly perceived
. . . in the things that have been made”), such a straightforward reading is not
infrequently rejected either in whole or in part.
Some, for example, conclude that, while it “is plain that the idea of a
natural revelation occurs” and that St. Paul here makes “a bare statement
of man’s factual knowledge of God,” the text does not “support any theory
of a theologia naturalis.”5 Others would restrict the text to confirm that “God
through his wisdom is revealing himself in creation,” though this revelation
is not at all understood or acknowledged by natural man; thus “it is more
appropriate and more fitting for Paul’s whole theology to conclude that there
4
Abraham Calov, Consideratio Arminianismi (1655), quoted in Robert D. Preus, The Theology of
Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 2 vols (St. Louis: Concordia, 1970 & 1972), 2:21.
5

Bertil Gärtner, The Areopagus Speech and Natural Revelation, tr. Carolyn Hannay King
(Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1955), 82.

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is no natural knowledge of God,” much less any possibility of engaging in a
natural theology.6 Still others go so far as to reject even the minimal claim that
God naturally reveals himself to all men, arguing that Paul’s use of the past
tense (v. 21: “they knew God”) implies that he “has in mind a particular historical occasion in the past when the Gentiles actually knew God” on the basis
of some special revelation.7
Though Christian theology is not, of course, determined by majority vote,
it is worth immediately noting that such conclusions are decidedly those
of a minority. That God’s natural revelation, for example, is so infrequently
questioned is largely explained by Paul’s explicit claim that God “has shown”
(phaneroun: made evident, caused to see) even to the unrighteous “what can
be known about God.” Indeed, especially in light of the contrary prejudices of both his Jewish and Greco-Roman contemporaries, “it is striking to
observe how bluntly and unequivocally Paul speaks of divine manifestation
to everyone.”8 Though Paul in no way suggests that this natural revelation
makes possible a comprehensive knowledge of God—nor, most importantly,
any saving knowledge of God—he appears equally unequivocal in stating
that “what can be known about God” on this basis “is plain,” and that these
things “have been clearly perceived.” For this reason even modern Lutheran
theologians have not hesitated to echo Calov in affirming that “[f]or Paul the
knowledge of God is not merely a possibility open to man, but the inexorable
reality under which the whole world stands.”9 And, again, though this natural
knowledge is entirely insufficient for salvation, Paul can grant that it is, so far
as it goes, “true” (cf. vv. 18 and 25). Indeed, it is precisely Paul’s assertion that
God has clearly revealed himself to all men and that all men thus possess some
true knowledge of him that provides the force of his argument. Even those
never having heard the testimony of God’s special revelation are “without
excuse” (v. 20) because they too “knew God” (v. 21) and yet “exchanged the
truth about God for a lie” (v. 25). Thus, as one commentator summarizes:
“Every person is ‘without excuse’ because every person—whether a firstcentury pagan or a twentieth-century materialist—has been given a
knowledge of God and has spurned that knowledge in favor of idolatry, in all
its varied manifestations.”10
6
Richard H. Bell, No One Seeks for God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 1.18–3.20
(Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 97; see also C.E.B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 116.
7
David M. Coffey, “Natural Knowledge of God: Reflections on Romans 1:18–32,” Theological
Studies 31 (1970), 676.
8

Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 154.

9
Ralph Bohlmann, “The Natural Knowledge of God,” Concordia Theological Monthly 34 (1963),
725. See also John Theodore Mueller, Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia, 1934), 143–7,
and Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1950), 371–6.
10
Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 98. Compare also
Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 1:372–3, as well as Mueller, Christian Dogmatics, 143: “This natural
knowledge of God is so certain that the apostle says of all agnostics and atheists, who deny His
divine existence and commands, that ‘they are without excuse’.”

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2016 Convention Workbook