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Karl Barth, Romans 1, and the Validity of

Natural Theology

10-12 Minuten

In a recent post, I responded to Richard Muller’s criticism

that Karl Barth’s rejection of natural theology as a valid way
of obtaining knowledge of God constituted an erroneous
and damaging revision of the concept of revelation. I
argued, not simply from Barth but, more importantly, on the
basis of Scripture, that revelation is reconciliation and that
no division should be made between a knowledge of God
that leads to salvation and a knowledge of God that does
not.

Those who disagree usually make immediate reference to

Romans 1:18-32 which, in their minds, deals a fatal blow to
Barth’s position. Often, they think that this text is such an
obvious defeater that it requires no explanation. Barth,
however, was not so naive as to have formed his view in
ignorance of this particular passage. In fact, he engages
with it at some length in Church Dogmatics I/2, and I find
his interpretation extremely illuminating. He writes:

The witness which the apostle declares to the heathen in

and with the preaching of Christ, which he therefore
awakens in them and makes valid against them, is here
emphasised to be their knowledge of God the Creator. The
invisible and unapproachable being of God, His everlasting
power and divinity, are apprehended and seen in His works
from the creation of the world (Rom. 1:20). It is from a
knowledge of God, a knowledge of Him on the basis of
revelation, that men always

start when revelation

comes to them in Christ (Rom. 1:19). That is why they can
be accused of a “holding of the truth,” a corruptio
optimi (Rom. 1:18). We must bear in mind that the very
words which are so often regarded as an opening or a
summons to every possible kind of natural theology are in
reality a constituent part of the apostolic kerygma,
whatever contemporary philosophemes may be woven into
them.

To bring out the real meaning of the revelation of the

righteousness of God in Christ (Rom. 1:17, 3:21), Paul
reminds us in Rom. 1:18–3:20 that the same revelation is a
revelation of the wrath of God, i.e., that as we are told of
the grace which has come to us, we have to perceive and
believe our own abandonment to judgment. Grace and
judgment are for both Gentile and Jew, both Jew and
Gentile, Rom. 1:16, 2:9, and for both Jew and Gentile in the
very best that they can do, their worship of God. It is a
Christian statement presupposing revelation when in
relation to the Jews Paul says that a knowledge of sin
comes by the Law (Rom. 3:20). Similarly, it is presupposing
the event which took place between God and man in Christ
that he says that the knowledge which the Gentiles have of
God from the works of creation is the instrument to make
them inexcusable and therefore to bring them like the
Jews under the judgment and therefore under the grace of
God. Here, too, there is no difference. Because Christ was
born and died and rose again, there is no such thing as an
abstract, self-enclosed and static heathendom. And
because Paul has to preach this Christ, he can claim the
heathen on the ground that they, too, belong to God and
know about God, that God is actually revealed to them, that
He has made Himself known to them in the works of
creation as God—His eternal power and divinity, which are
none other than that of Jesus Christ. Therefore he can tell
them that because of their knowledge they are inexcusable
before God, if they have “imprisoned” the truth with their
ungodliness and unrighteousness.

We cannot isolate what Paul says about the heathen in

Rom. 1:19–20 from the context of the apostle’s preaching,
from the incarnation of the Word. We cannot understand it
as an abstract statement about the heathen as such, or
about a revelation which the heathen possess as such.
Paul does not know either Jews or Gentiles in themselves
and as such, but only as they are placed by the cross of
Christ under the promise, but also under the
commandment of God. The witness of the hope of Israel,
the prophetic revelation, is fulfilled in Christ. By smiting its
Messiah on the cross Israel founders on that revelation. It
has now become a revelation to both Jews and Gentiles. It
now concerns the Gentiles. Therefore the Gentiles have to
bow just as emphatically as the Jews to the claim and
demand of revelation. Like the Jews, they are addressed
on this basis: that from the creation of the world (ἀπὸ
κτίσεως κόσμου, Rom. 1:20, i.e., in and with their own
existence and that of the whole world)—not of themselves,
but by virtue of the divine revelation—men know God, and
therefore know that they are indebted to Him. The status of
the Gentiles, like that of the Jews, is objectively quite
different after the death and the resurrection of Christ. By
Christ the Gentiles as well as the Jews are placed under
the heavens which declare the glory of God, and the
firmament which telleth His handiwork (Ps. 19:2). They are
therefore to be claimed as [those who know God] (Rom.
1:21); but only to the extent that, like the Jews, they have
not remained such (οὐκ ἐδοκίμασαν τὸν θεὸν ἔχειν ἐν
ἐπιγνώσει Rom. 1:28).

It is, therefore, not the case that Paul was in a position to

appeal to the Gentiles’ possession of a knowledge of the
invisible nature of God as manifested from creation. He
could not link up pedagogically with this knowledge. In his
proclamation of Jesus Christ he could not let it appear
even momentarily that he was speaking of things which
were already familiar by virtue of that “primal revelation.” At
bottom the Gentiles did not achieve even in the slightest
the knowledge of Ps. 19. That is, they did not give God
praise and thanks as God (Rom. 1:21). As the sequel
shows, this does not mean only a quantitative falling away
of their service towards Him nor an imperfection of their
relationship to Him. It means rather that the [worship and
thanksgiving] which they owe God are not there at all. They
have been ousted by another mind and thought and activity
which at its root (in negation of the fact that God is
revealed to man from the creation) does not have God as
its object. “Their thoughts became vain and their foolish
heart was darkened” (Rom. 1:21). “They professed
(themselves and others) to be wise, and in this they
became fools” (Rom. 1:22). And the result was sheer
catastrophe: “They changed the glory of the incorruptible
God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, yea
of flying and fourfooted beasts and creeping things” (Rom.
1:23). In this idolatry “they exchanged the truth of God for a
lie, they worshipped and served the creature instead of the
Creator, who is blessed to eternity. Amen” (Rom. 1:25). And
in due course the exchange had terrible consequences in
the indescribable moral confusion of the human race.

Paul says nothing at all about the heathen maintaining a

remnant of the “natural” knowledge of God in spite of this
defection. On the contrary, he says unreservedly that the
wrath of God has been revealed against this defection:
“they which do such things are worthy of death” (Rom.
1:32). Just as revelation had always contradicted heathen
religion in the sphere of Israel and on the soil of Palestine,
so now, when Jesus Christ has died for all, it contradicts it
“publicly,” in its own heathen area, in an apostolic letter
which remarkably enough is addressed to the Christians in
Rome. There is no such thing now as an undisputed
heathendom, a heathendom which is relatively possible,
which can be excused. Now that revelation has come and
its light has fallen on heathendom, heathen religion is
shown to be the very opposite of revelation: a false religion
of unbelief.[1]

Although Barth offers his interpretation of Romans 1 in his

typically dense style, his overall understanding seems
clear. First, he does not deny that creation declares the
glory of God (as per Ps. 19), yet he believes, with Paul, that
humanity is too blind and deaf in sin to see and hear it.
Whatever natural conception of God the Gentiles might
have, they transmute into idolatry. Thus, this passage can
neither be used to validate the knowledge of God available
through natural theology (for this is completely contrary to
Paul’s argument!) nor to justify its use by believers (for this
is completely beside the point of Paul’s argument which
addresses unregenerate humanity).

Second, Barth pays careful attention to the context of

Paul’s overall argument. Romans 1:18ff is connected to
what precedes with the word “for” (gar in Greek). That is to
say, Romans 1:18ff is inextricably linked to what Paul has
said previously regarding the gospel that reveals the saving
righteousness of God in Christ. The analysis that Paul
provides in the latter half of Romans 1 is thus not some
timeless truth regarding the human condition; it is rather
the divine judgment and verdict pronouned on the non-
Jewish world on the basis of the universal lordship of
Christ who “was declared to be the Son of God in power
according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from
the dead”. Paul’s understanding of the plight of all non-
Jewish peoples is therefore irreducibly eschatological, that
is, it too has only been fully revealed in the revelation of the
gospel of Christ: “For in [the gospel] the righteousness of
God is revealed…For the wrath of God is revealed against
all…” (Rom. 1:17-18). In other words, for Paul, the “natural”
knowledge of God in creation that results in humanity’s
inexcusability is itself the result of the revelation of Jesus
Christ. If we listen attentively to what Paul is actually
saying, we will discover that natural theology is not
something that stands prior to or independently from the
knowledge of God in Christ revealed in the gospel: natural
theology is only revealed as it is and for what it is – a
corrupt and damning knowledge – in the revelation of the
gospel.

Thus it seems that rather than being a defeater of Barth’s

rejection of natural theology, Romans 1 would seem rather
to fully support it!

____________________________________________________________

[1] Barth, K., Bromiley, G.W. & Torrance, T.F., 2004. Church
dogmatics: The doctrine of the Word of God, Part 2, London;
New York: T&T Clark. pp.306-307.