Vss 1-17 Paul presents the gospel!
18ff Paul presents the problem!
1-17 Paul gives the solution now he presents the problem, why the solution was even given – Why the gospel?
1—Gospel of God
9---Gospel of His Son
15—give them the gospel
16---not ashamed of the gospel—for it is the
power of God for Salvation.
What is the Gospel?
How to come to God!
So in 18, he begins with the need for God.
In 18 Godless: they are without God & in need of God.
But they deny they need God by suppressing the existence of God
But they know He exist
1st Paul begins inside of them---he begins with the place where the gospel targets--soul! 19
In vs 20 we have outer witness to existence of God
Creation—Paul goes to creation in vs 20
1st The Duration of outer Revelation of the existence of God
For since the creation of the world
Creation of the world reveals the existence of God
2enly The Revelation itself
His invisible attributes, His eternal power and His Divine nature
The essence of God is real but invisible
Greek word for power is dunamis power, or achieving power, ability.
All the words derived from the stem duna have the meaning of being able, the ability to do something; being capable.
Eternal ability; we are innately aware that this God has existed for all eternity & has the ability to create all things.
He has the power, ability to create all things.
Omnipotence is one of the most observable of all the invisible attributes of God
Divine nature Deity of God, He is the only true God
1st The duration of the revelation.
Since the creation
2en The revelation itself…what is revealed
His invisible attributes, His eternal power/ability
His divine nature
& now The 3rd The clarity of the revelation
Have been clearly seen
Clearly seen Greek word appears only here in NT Present, Passive. Indicative. kaqoraw
The root word is orao horao to see, + intensive kata to see clearly, to see so as to know something, to clearly perceive.
Present:–noting something that happens all through history
Passive: the divine, invisible attributes of God receive being clearly seen.
Indicative: Reality of revelation of invisible attributes of God
Clearly seen
oxymoron
We have something that is invisible &
yet at /same time is clearly seen
What is invisible? God, Deity of God
What is clearly seen? God, Deity of God
Being understood
Present, Passive, Ptc. noeo from nous simple perception, being perceived
Pres.- what perpetually happens at God Consciousness
Passive voice is the Grace voice—we supernaturally receive this understanding by the grace of God of His Divine Invisible Attributes
Paul explains the fact of a revelation of God accessible to all men, through which God’s invisible being, His eternal power and divine nature, is apprehended from the beginning of the world in His creative works.
The creation by God reflects His eternal being, His almightiness. The invisible God is seen —as the thinking of His works directs the mind to their creator. From looking at creation man can know, recognize not only His existence but also some of His nature. This word describes what happens in the mind, which takes note of what is seen what is before him,.
Creation reveals God
Job 12:7-10;
Psa. 1:1-5;
Psa. 19:1-5
His invisible attributes of the essence of deity are clearly perceived so that they all members of human race are without excuse
(in their defense before God)
Without excuse
Anapologhtos an apologetos Eng. apology, here without apology without defense; without excuse
Without excuse in a Courtroom!
Bible is set up with this all important flow
1. The being of supreme being, Deity, God
2. The presence of super natural creatures…angels
3. In a courtroom setting
Job 32:2 against Job his anger burned because he justified himself before God
sadaq in the intensive Piel: to be right; to be just’ to be right; to prove oneself innocent.
Man all through history seeks to justify himself before God…where God is wrong, where God is unfair, unjust.
Job 40:8
Isa. 43:26
The Economist March 2008
Science and religion have often been at loggerheads. Now the former has decided to resolve the problem by trying to explain the existence of the latter
BY THE standards of European scientific collaboration, €2m ($3.1m) is not a huge sum. But it might be the start of something that will challenge human perceptions of reality at least as much as the billions being spent by the European particle-physics laboratory (CERN) at Geneva. The first task of CERN's new machine, the Large Hadron Collider, which is due to open later this year, will be to search for the Higgs boson—an object that has been dubbed, with a certain amount of hyperbole, the God particle.
The €2m, by contrast, will be spent on the search for God Himself—or, rather, for the biological reasons why so many people believe in God, gods and religion in general.
“Explaining Religion”, as the project is known, is the largest-ever scientific study of the subject. It began last September, will run for three years, and involves scholars from 14 universities and a range of disciplines from psychology to economics. And it is merely the latest manifestation of a growing tendency for science to poke its nose into the God business.
Religion cries out for a biological explanation. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon—arguably one of the species markers of Homo sapiens—but a puzzling one. It has none of the obvious benefits of that other marker of humanity, language. Nevertheless, it consumes huge amounts of resources. Moreover, unlike language, it is the subject of violent disagreements. Science has, however, made significant progress in understanding the biology of language, from where it is processed in the brain to exactly how it communicates meaning. Time, therefore, to put religion under the microscope as well.
Explaining Religion is an ambitious attempt to do this. The experiments it will sponsor are designed to look at the mental mechanism needed to represent an omniscient deity.
Such neurochemical work, though preliminary, may tie in with scanning studies conducted to try to find out which parts of the brain are involved in religious experience. Nina Azari, a neuroscientist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo who also has a doctorate in theology, has looked at the brains of religious people. She used positron emission tomography (PET) to measure brain activity in six fundamentalist Christians and six non-religious (though not atheist) controls.
The Christians all said that reciting the first verse of the 23rd psalm helped them enter a religious state of mind, so both groups were scanned in six different sets of circumstances: while reading the first verse of the 23rd psalm, while reciting it out loud, while reading a happy story (a well-known German children's rhyme), while reciting that story out loud, while reading a neutral text (how to use a calling card) and while at rest.
Dr Azari was expecting to see activity in the limbic systems of the Christians when they recited the psalm. Previous research had suggested that this part of the brain (which regulates emotion) is an important centre of religious activity. In fact what happened was increased activity in three areas of the frontal and parietal cortex, some of which are better known for their involvement in rational thought.
Dr Azari's PET study, together with one by Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania, which used single-photon emission computed tomography done on Buddhist monks, and another by Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal, which put Carmelite nuns in a magnetic-resonance-imaging machine, all suggest that religious activity is spread across many parts of the brain. That conflicts not only with the limbic-system theory but also with earlier reports of a so-called God Spot that derived partly from work conducted on epileptics.
Dr McNamara, for example, plans to analyse a database called the Ethnographic Atlas to see if he can find any correlations between the amount of cultural co-operation found in a society and the intensity of its religious rituals. And Richard Sosis, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, has already done some research which suggests that the long-term co-operative benefits of religion outweigh the short-term costs it imposes in the form of praying many times a day, avoiding certain foods, fasting and so on.
For even though they knew God
Aor.Act.Ptc. ginwskw to know something, to be aware of something; it accompanies the words for knowing in vs 19-20;
This battle is in the mind
Action of Aor. Ptc. Precedes the action of the
main verb: they did not honor Him
So first they know God, they know He Is!
Then follows the action of not honoring Him as God nor Giving thanks…
For even though they knew God! Or even know God
They did not honor Him as God
Aor.Act.Indic. Doxazw honor, glorify, to recognize as honorable, to praise
“I know this is the right thing to do but I am not going to do it”
“I know the right thing to say but I am not going to say it?”
What does it mean they did not honor Him as God?
The greatest honor we can give God is to recognize Him as God and seek Him.
Or give thanks
Aor.Act.Indic. Eucaristew thankful, grateful
Now this one may require a little thought
To know that He is God; & recognizing Him as God – that’s understandable ..
But giving thanks?
Yes, we give thanks that God has made Himself known to us!
1 Chron. 16: who were designated by name, to give thanks to the LORD, because His lovingkindness is everlasting.
Psa.52:9 I will give Thee thanks forever because Thou hast done it,
Psa. 63:3 Because Thy love is better than life, My lips will praise Thee
Rev. 11: 17 saying, "We give Thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who art and who wast, because Thou hast taken Thy great power and hast begun to reign.
but they became futile in their speculations,
Greek conjunction alla intro. a strong contrast
Instead of honoring Him by believing,
Instead of giving thanks
They became futile in their speculations
1st result: they became futile in their speculations
Aor. Pass.Indic. mataiow vain, to make vain or worthless, to cancel out; destitute of real wisdom
Aor. Just a fact, this is what happens when a person or people
suppress /being of God, this is what is happening in USA
Passive voice—subject receives the action of verb…this is what happens throughout all history, when men suppress the being of God.
There is no escaping this, yet thinking that he can is just more of the deceitful futile thinking of man, that there will be no damaging results of
denying God in my life, even denying His existence.
But historical fact bears differently
You cannot push God out of your life, out of your thinking without this effecting your soul, & thinking.
Futile in their speculations
here is where we live, here is why we care about keeping our physical hearts pumping
Dialogismos to reason, thoughts, here is where we do our thinking, however little or to what degree you think, this is where we reason things out.
1. you start out – there is no God, no one supreme being
That man is not designed & created by God
2. So, now you start your thinking process, on
how man did get here.
3. Your whole view of man changes with whatever your Speculation is on how man got here.
This is why you can have Islamic thinking, Secular Humanism, Marxism/Leninism; Cosmic Humanism & Post Modernism.
5 leading Worldviews.
Acc. Dr. David Noebel of Summit Ministries
and their foolish heart you are going to like this Greek adj.
Asunetos privative or neg. a + sunetos sagacious; to reason, understand, intelligent
Non-sagacious heart
not your physical heart, but the real you, soul! The center of your being!
Non-sagacious heart
Sagacious ‘keen & farsighted penetration & judgment & discernment, acute discernment”
Without insight or understanding
When you suppress God, & do not believe in Him, people, you lose the ability to think in the realm of reality! You are without insight, you are with out understanding --- of reality
and their foolish heart was darkened.
Skotizw from the root –darkness
To darken, deprive of light.
Aorist tense: Reality of trying to think outside of God
Passive voice: Once again you receive this darkness by shutting God out;
Indicative mood: This is reality!
When you eclipse the light of God, you are in darkness