Christian witness, whether lay or clerical, stands between the world and the word. That means that to do it properly we have to understand both. We cannot evangelise unless we understand the word: and we cannot evangelise unless we understand the world.

This second requirement is by no means as easy as it looks. The world, unlike the word, is constantly changing, not least in the way it understands itself. Today, for example, we describe ourselves as a secular society. Our laws, our manners, our education and our culture are entirely divorced from religion. Our society is made up of atheists. At least, so everyone keeps telling us.

For the Christian communicator this creates enormous problems. How can we preach the gospel to atheists? Where can we find a point of contact with a man who believes nothing and to whom religious language and concepts make no sense? If he can make nothing of right and wrong, good and evil, what can talk of God, sin and salvation be but mumbo-jumbo?

It is all very discouraging. But is it true? Is modern man an atheist? and are we to presuppose this in our evangelism?

Bible never proves the existence of God⤒🔗

When we turn to the Bible for answers to such questions we find, first of all, that it never, anywhere, tries to prove the existence of God. From Genesis to Revelation it simply assumes that God exists: and that men know that He exists.

We find, secondly, that when Paul preaches to the philosophers of Athens he takes it for granted that they believe in God. He certainly does not approach them as if they were atheists. Athens was not a secular city. On the contrary, it was only too religious and Paul's approach is not to prove the existence of God but to proclaim the doctrine of creation, the equality of men, the certainty of judgment and the resurrection of Christ.

Thirdly, we find Paul in Rom. 1:18-32 telling us in so many words that God has revealed Himself to every human being: "That which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has shown it to them". Man, as Paul understands him, is surrounded with revelation because the visible world is by its very nature an unveiling of God: "Since the creation, the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, so that men are without excuse".

This is a theme that goes back to the Old Testament, especially to Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of His hands". In both Paul and the Psalmist stress is laid on the part played in this revelation by the static, external world. What we see speaks to us of God.

This has surely lost none of its force with the passing of the years. A generation which can peer into the structure of the atom and stand on the surface of the moon has more reason than even Paul to cry out, "Oh! the depth of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God!"

But the revelation is not confined to man's static environment. It takes place, too, through the movement of history. This was particularly true of the history of Israel. Time and again God invaded the lives of His people and made Himself known. Experiences such as the Exodus lay at the very foundation of Israel's knowledge of God. But the Gentiles, too, experienced God's revelation through providence. Even when He allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways, "He did not leave Himself without witness: for He did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness" (Acts 14:17). We have similar teaching from the lips of our Lord Himself in Mt. 5:44 ff. God shows His love for His enemies by making His sun rise on the evil and on the good and sending rain on the just and on the unjust.

Even in Rom. 1:18-32 Paul is largely concerned with God's revelation through history rather than His revelation through creation. This is particularly true of the divine wrath, which is revealed not through the things that are made but in the life­style to which God has abandoned civilisation. The degeneracy, vice and idolatry which prevailed in the Roman empire were themselves demonstrations of the judicial alertness of God.

Nor is this revelation at all minimal. In fact it is remarkably full. From Rom. 1:18-32 alone we see that the things which are made proclaim the eternity, the power, the wrath, the judgment and the godhead of God. According to Acts 14:17 and Matthew 5:45ff., providence witnesses to God's love and goodness to all men, including His enemies. Such passages as Ps. 104:24 and Proverbs 3:19 remind us of the disclosure of God's wisdom through creation.

Well-rounded impression of God←⤒🔗

Obviously, then, men are not left with only a bare grasp of the existence of some kind of deity. As the Bible understands it what is given to all men is a well-rounded impression of God.

Two details in Paul's teaching in Romans 1 deserve special notice.

First, the phrase "what may be known" of God. This strongly suggest that there is a range of truth which may not be known. God tells us only a little of what He knows about Himself. This is not because He wilfully withholds knowledge (as the Serpent suggests in Genesis 3:5) but because only a little is within man's grasp. This should cause no surprise. We have difficulty enough understanding the world itself and when we try to cram the findings of modern physics into our heads they burst (the debris falls out in apparently random masses of mathematics). The Creator Himself in­evitably proves even more of a headache. Despite the eloquence of creation, the fulness of Scripture and the gains of two thousand years of theological reflection He remains a mystery. As Deut. 29:29 reminds us, there will always be "secret things". "Man," said Blaise Pascal, "must not see nothing at all, nor must he see enough to think that he possesses God, but he must see enough to know that he has lost Him."

The second interesting detail is the word godhead in the phrase "his eternal power and godhead". It occurs only here in the New Testament and its practical meaning is probably little different from holiness. When the creation points to the godness of God it is directing us to One mysterious unmanageable and infinitely threatening upon whom we are totally dependent and to whom we are unconditionally accoun­table. Sometimes this registers in our hearts as pure dread. We see this frequently, for example, in Wordsworth, a poet whose doctrine of God was far from Christian but who, nevertheless, had a profound sense of the Awesome. At one point in The Prelude he gives a memorable account of a childhood escapade in which, one dark night, he stole a boat and as he rowed "into the silent lake" it seemed to him as if the huge peak which dominated the scene were striding after him.

But after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dimn and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion.

But it is not always in feelings of dread and terror that the sense of the godness of God is reflected. Sometimes the emotion can be much more gentle, as in the almost too familiar words of Browning's Bishop Blougram:

Just when we're safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self.

The mood there is very different from the earlier quotation but the foundation is the same: in man there is an awareness of "unknown modes of being" which can be stimulated into powerful action by a guilty conscience, a dark mountainscape or even by a flower-bell.

But isn't man blind?←⤒🔗

But what is the use of such revelation if man cannot see? Isn't man blind? "No!" says Paul, "at this level man isn't blind at all." Not only are the invisible perfections of God clearly revealed but they are clearly seen. They are understood by the things that are made (Rom. 1). Man is so made that he cannot but infer from his environment the eternal power and godness of God. His mind (indeed, his whole psychology) is tuned in to the revelation which surrounds him. He is neither blind nor insensitive. The message actually gets through to him.

This is not to say, of course, that man makes proper use of this knowledge. On the contrary, he holds the truth in unrighteousness. Indeed, from mere observation of human life (and especially of man's religious practices) one could easily conclude that man knows little or nothing of the truth. If he does, why does he so often either worship at all or worship completely worthless objects? Because, says Paul, he does not like to retain God in his knowledge (Rom. 1:28). Idolatrous man, falling down before birds and beasts and creeping things, is distorting the truth. Secular man, wor­shipping nothing (except himself) is supressing the truth. It is quite wrong to ridicule general revelation on the ground of its being ineffectual. The gospel itself suffers the same fate, even when preached by an Isaiah or a Paul: "Lord, who has believed our message?"

It is because he knows the truth that man's godlessness is inexcusable. Paul's argument is not that man's ignorance is inexcusable because revelation is so clear but that man's religious behaviour (or lack of it) is inexcusable because he is not ignorant. In refusing to bow the knee to God he is keeping the lid on truth which wells up, demanding a response, within himself. In the words of Calvin, "Men court darkness, stifle the light of nature and intentionally stupefy themselves."

A sense of deity on every heart←⤒🔗

If our understanding of Paul is correct, there is no such thing as an atheist. This has certainly been the traditional view of Reformed theology. To quote Calvin again, "God has endued all men with some sense of his godhead", with the result that "a sense of deity is inscribed on every heart". Moreover, this knowledge is indelible. Man never loses it: "Although men struggle with their own convictions and would fain not only banish God from their minds but from heaven also, their stupefaction is never so complete as to prevent them from being dragged occasionally before the divine tribunal". This agrees with what Paul says at the close of Romans 1: even when men sink to the very bottom of the moral abyss, not only engaging in perverted practices themselves but hero-worshipping those who excel in them, they carry with them a sense of the judgment of God (Rom. 1:32). "Still," wrote Calvin, "the conviction that there is some Deity continues to exist, like a plant which can never be completely eradicated, though so corrupt that it is only capable of producing the worst of fruit."

Practical implications←⤒🔗

All this has three obvious practical implications.

First, we can never accept men's claim that they are atheists or agnostics. Such a claim contradicts what the Bible tells us about human nature. Wherever we go we have to assume that there is a divinely implanted awareness of God in every human soul.

Secondly, we can take it for granted that basic religious concepts such as God, eternity, holiness, sin and judgment are meaningful to all men and women. To begin our evangelism by trying to get behind the framework (by setting out to prove, for example, that God exists) is to walk into a philosophical maze. We must not confuse knowledge of God (religion) with knowledge of how we know Him (epistemology).

Finally, all Christian witness must start from the assumption that "the seed of religion" exists in every human heart. This was certainly where Paul began with the Athenians. He did not try to make them religious. The evidence that they were already religious was all around him in the temples and altars and other priestly paraphernalia of the city. All men have a sense of the holy. All men have a feeling of dependence. All have God's law within their hearts. All know that they are answerable to God.

It is not our calling to instil these instincts in men. Our responsibility is to build on the foundation which God has already laid.