What We Can't Know About God From Creation and the Only Way We Can Know It

[Arial]

Romans 1:18-20 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 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 are made. So, there is no excuse.

God's eternal power and divine nature in the things that God has made. His creation is not neutral. It is always testifying to God's reality, power, and worthiness of worship.

His wrath is seen when that revelation is suppressed. His judicial response was to "give them over" (his wrath in action). He allows people to run the full course of their rebellion. Creation continually tells these truths about God.

As Christians we know that the way of redemption is not shown by the creation itself. What other attributes of God are we unable to see from creation that can only be revealed in Christ through our redemption?

 

[Josheb]

As Christians we know that the way of redemption is not shown by the creation itself.

I understand what the intent, and affirm the necessity of Christ, but I do not think that is wholly accurate. Decades of scientific research in the fields such as psychology, neurobiology, and medicine demonstrate the efficacy of forgiveness and its constituent elements (mercy, justice, compassion, etc.). Guilt, for example produces norepinephrine and cortisol, stress hormones that have both immediate and long-term adverse effect if left untreated. It inhibits the production to the "attachment" hormone, oxytocin., which is necessary for bonding and close, intimate relationships and has the paradoxical effect of increasing perceptions of guilt in cases of wronged relationships.

What other attributes of God are we unable to see from creation that can only be revealed in Christ through our redemption?

Timelessness. Who can fathom what is is like living extra-temporally?

 

[Arial]

One of the attributes of God that we cannot know from creation alone, but only fully through the incarnation of Jesus and his person and work, is God's covenantal relationality. That is. his nature as a personal, relational being who voluntarily binds himself to his creatures by oath, promise and fellowship.

We see shadows of it, most strongly with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in the OT as the eternal plan of Redemption, itself a Covenant of Redemption within the Godhead, plays out in history. It reaches its aim with the arrival of the Redeemer and his work on the cross, with the New Covenant.

In this is also displayed his covenant faithfulness so that those in Christ through faith rest solidly on the certainty of the resurrection of the dead and a new heaven and new earth.

 

[makesends]

I understand what the intent, and affirm the necessity of Christ, but I do not think that is wholly accurate. Decades of scientific research in the fields such as psychology, neurobiology, and medicine demonstrate the efficacy of forgiveness and its constituent elements (mercy, justice, compassion, etc.). Guilt, for example produces norepinephrine and cortisol, stress hormones that have both immediate and long-term adverse effect if left untreated. It inhibits the production to the "attachment" hormone, oxytocin., which is necessary for bonding and close, intimate relationships and has the paradoxical effect of increasing perceptions of guilt in cases of wronged relationships.

Timelessness. Who can fathom what is is like living extra-temporally?

Modern physics/cosmology has people conjecturing on that, too!

I know when I was a kid, trying to fathom the vast expanses of the universe and the notion of infinity (I naturally assumed the universe ran infinitely distant), yet that it was like a plaything to infinite God, I gathered hints of his 'timelessness' so that when I first heard it described in the Narnia (as in times that had only to do with whatever realm one was occupying) it jumped right out at me that God doesn't occupy/is not limited by any of those realms.

As a very little kid I began to wonder just how anything exists, and later to conjecture on the nature of existence, dependent on God. The self-existence of God may be at least considered by the notion that the rest of reality could not come from nothing, and self-existence may hint at, if not outright imply timelessness.

 

[makesends]

One of the attributes of God that we cannot know from creation alone, but only fully through the incarnation of Jesus and his person and work, is God's covenantal relationality. That is. his nature as a personal, relational being who voluntarily binds himself to his creatures by oath, promise and fellowship.

We see shadows of it, most strongly with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in the OT as the eternal plan of Redemption, itself a Covenant of Redemption within the Godhead, plays out in history. It reaches its aim with the arrival of the Redeemer and his work on the cross, with the New Covenant.

In this is also displayed his covenant faithfulness so that those in Christ through faith rest solidly on the certainty of the resurrection of the dead and a new heaven and new earth.

I think that there is a LOT about God that one doesn't know of rationally, that is nevertheless 'visible' through nature/ universe/ reality. When Romans 1 says they knew him —do we really know what that means? I've been arguing with people on CF about the moral responsibility of the unborn, and something my son once said when he could barely talk came to mind. He said that he had seen Jesus and talked with him, in his sleep. He said it so matter-of-factly that is was hard to think of it as just a dream, and certainly not imagination. His description had nothing to do with the clothing he saw in the pictures, and he didn't remember anything 'Jesus' told him. I'd be conjecturing to claim that in fact God does that to all rational creatures in their infancy, or even that it was indeed Jesus that he saw. But who knows what God has done in giving us the breath of life, or the sustaining of our existence?