Chapter IV:

CHAPTER IV: ON THE QUESTION WHETHER GOD EXISTS

First, we must prove that God exists [esse].

§ 58. [I] First of all, we presuppose that it must necessarily and correctly be proved that God does exist [esse]. It could appear to someone that this is a useless question in the Church because everyone knows and concedes that God does exist nor is there any people so barbarous as to deny that God exists and is to be worshiped, though they may not know how they should worship Him. Therefore all people have an inherent knowledge of God by nature, as the Damascene (Orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 1) concludes on the basis of Romans 1.

Nevertheless we must establish the [“that”] or prove that God exists: (1) To refute those who deny that God exists. There are two classes of such people, for some deny this immediately. They do this either directly as, for example, Diagoras Melius (nicknamed [“godless”]) and Theodore of Cyrene (according to Cicero, De nat. deor., bk. 3, toward the end; Augustine, Contra liter. Petil., bk. 3, c. 21; and Lactantius, Div. inst., bk. 1, c. 2). In bk. 2, c. 19, Irenaeus adds Anaxagoras, who he asserts was also nicknamed . Epiphanius includes Protagoras, who said there was no God at all (Epit. ver. doctr., p. 484). Concerning Protagoras, however, Cicero (De nat. deor., bk. 1) and Laertius in his biography write otherwise. Zwinger lists many examples of such people in Theatrum vitae, vol. 17, bk. 7, p. 3188.

Or there are those who deny God indirectly, such as those who doubted, for example. One such individual was Protagoras, who began some book with this statement: “I am unable to decide completely whether or not the gods exist.” When he read this book at Athens, he was driven into exile and his writings were burned in public according to Laertius’s biography of him. Some, on the other hand, deny God mediately and indirectly, as the person who denies God’s providence (Ps. 14:1). Ps. 53:1: “The fool has said in his heart: ‘There is no God.’ ” In his commentary on this psalm, Augustine further notes that some people say this in their hearts or in their minds because they actually dare not express this wicked idea of theirs. Erasmus proves with an elegant simile that those who deny God’s providence also deny God. He says: “As you would be less angry with one who thought he was not born than with one who believed that he did not have the human senses or mind or the other things without which a man loses the name ‘man,’ so he who denies providence errs more shamefully than one who denies God Himself” (Symb. catech., 2, p. 55). Concerning this principal foundation of faith—namely, that God exists—Moses purposely discusses nothing; rather, he simply says that God created heaven and earth. After all, he was writing to the people of God who did not have to be shown with many arguments that God exists because they had already been instructed in the recognition of God with many arguments, especially on the basis of the laws that they had received. However, there is another rationale for the unbelieving outside the Church.

(2) We must prove it to strengthen our own faith. Thomas, [ST,] p. 1. q. 2. art. 2. resp. ad 1, writes: “That God exists is not an article of faith but the preamble to the articles.” The apostle teaches the opposite in Heb. 11:6: “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.” Theophylact writes on this passage: “We hold by faith that God does exist.” This faith, however, must be drawn from the Word of God and be strengthened by meditation on it. Dr. Chemnitz says that in grave and serious temptations we are all Epicureans or Stoics. Therefore we must strengthen our hearts with the consideration of passages that bear witness that God exists and that He has a provident care for human affairs.

(3) We must prove it for the perfection of our natural knowledge. Although we know by nature that God exists, that natural knowledge still is imperfect, weak, and next to nothing in comparison with revealed knowledge. It is clear from this explanation that it is imperfect: What we know about God we can sum up under four headings: His being, will, power, operation. The being of God consists in the fact that He is one in [“being”], three in hypostasis [“person”]. In some way we know the former naturally but by no means the latter, which we know from revelation alone. The will of God is dual: legal and evangelical. We somehow know the former, but the latter is “the mystery that was kept secret for long ages” (Rom. 16:25). I say that in some way we know His legal will because one must distinguish the exterior obedience to the Law from the inner obedience. Natural knowledge reveals the former but certainly not the latter. Rom. 7:7: “I did not recognize my sin except through the Law.” That we somehow know the power of God through our natural knowledge is clear from Rom. 1:20, but we conclude from the words of the apostle in Eph. 3:[20] that we do not know it fully and completely: “God is able to do more abundantly than we know.” God’s operation is twofold: internal and hypostatic, on the one hand, which is completely unknown to all nature. That the Father begot the Son from eternity and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both is a holy mystery that surpasses the understanding of angels and men. The other is external. It embraces both the creation of the world and of all that is in it, as well as the redemption of the human race. To creation are also related the preservation and governing of created things. The heathen know this only as probable from the light of nature, but the work of redemption is totally unknown to them. To this latter classification belong all the works of God in the Church—calling, justifying, sanctifying, glorifying—which people know only in the light of grace.

We confirm that the natural knowledge of God is weak both by the example of the heathen and on the basis of our own experience. Wisdom 13:1: “All people who are ignorant of God are foolish by nature.” Acts 17:23: “You worship without knowing.” In 1 Thess. 4:5 this is called “the ignorance of God.” In Eph. 2:12 the heathen are said to “live without God,” clearly because that knowledge is insufficient for salvation and is almost nothing when compared with revealed knowledge. (See our commonplace On the Nature of God [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 3], § 17.) Therefore because the natural knowledge of God is imperfect and weak, we must surely strengthen, perfect, and complete it from the divinely revealed Word, from which it is clear what we must respond to the argument set forth in the beginning. What one knows naturally needs no proof. We know naturally that God exists. Therefore.

In [ST,] part 1, q. 2, art. 9, Thomas responds a bit differently:¹⁰

This proposition “God exists” is indeed of itself self-evident because its predicate (“exists”) is of the intrinsic nature [ratio] of the subject, that is, of God, who is His own being. The proposition, however, is not self-evident to us because we do not know the essence [quidditatem] and nature [ratio] of the subject of this proposition, and thus we do not know its connection with the predicate as we know it in the former. Because they signify common things whose essences [quidditates] no one does not observe, [statements such as,] “Everything exists or does not exist,” and other common principles of this type, are self-evident not only of themselves but also to us. Therefore in this respect this proposition “God exists” is not self-evident to us but is in need of special proof to persuade us that it befits God [to say] that He exists, even according to that imperfect knowledge that we conceive when we hear the word “God.”

Gregory of Valencia clarifies this response of Thomas in great detail and confirms it against the rest of the Scholastics (disp. 1, q. 2, point 1).

Second, God’s existence is proved from both nature and Scripture.

§ 59. [II] It can be demonstrated that God exists both from nature and from Scripture, and for this reason the knowledge of God, according to Augustine, can be divided into natural knowledge and revealed knowledge (De civ. Dei, bk. 8, c. 1). In Loca fid. Christ. praecip., treatise 3, p. 439, Weidner sets up three knowledges of God: (1) The knowledge of reason, which we investigate by looking at His creatures and about which Rabbi Moyses Aegyptius says in his treatise More: “There is no way at all to know the Creator except in His works.” (2) The knowledge of devotion, which comes through the Word, from the preaching of which springs the knowledge of faith. (3) The knowledge of glorification, which occurs in eternal life (1 Cor. 13:12).

Others claim there is a fourfold book of divine knowledge: (1) , the book of nature, to which belong the common conceptions that nature imprints on the mind. (2) , the book of the creature, to which are related the investigation and contemplation of things created. (3) , the book of Scripture, to which the divine revelation in the prophetic and apostolic writings is to be referred. (4) , the book of eternal life, to which belongs the clear and intuitive vision of God in eternal life, which we await.

But omitting the knowledge of glorification and the book of eternal life (which mode of knowledge we can only hope for in this life but which we do not hold in full and actual possession), we can very well sum up the remaining three under two headings: the book of nature and of Scripture.

Tertullian, Contra Marc., bk. 3, p. 175: “We define that we must first become acquainted with God by nature and then become reacquainted with Him through doctrine: by nature from His works, through doctrine from His words.” Augustine, on Psalm 34: “There are two things that lead to the knowledge of God: creation and Scripture.” Those things that we can know about God from nature and that we actually do know are called [“the things that can be known”] (Rom. 1:19). What we can know by revelation alone are called [“the things to be believed”]. Thomas, Contra gentil., bk. 1, c. 3: “We know some things about God that excede the common reach of human reason and are knowable only through revelation (for example, that God is one and three, that Christ is God and man), but some are demonstrable.” Even natural reason is, in some way, able to reach as far as these things, such as, that God exists, that God is one, true, good, and just.

Third, the natural knowledge of God is either innate or acquired.

§ 60. [III] For the sake of instruction, we can establish a twofold book of nature: internal and external. Consequently, natural knowledge is divided into (“inherent” or innate) knowledge and (“acquired”) knowledge. The former they call subjective; the latter, objective. Inherent knowledge has its origin in the [“common perceptions”], which are obscure fragments of the lost divine image and traces of the lost light that used to shine in the mind of man before the fall, tiny sparks through which the common and preconceived knowledge that God does exist is branded naturally on the minds of all people. Therefore we refer these to the internal book of nature. The book of (the internal testimony of the conscience that the Scholastics call [“watchfulness” or recognition of the principles of the moral law]) also pertains to this. You see, from our first beginnings the practical syllogism arises in the heart of every human. Whoever leads a wicked life will feel the wrath and punishment of an avenging God. The reason [for this] depends on the fact that the knowledge that God does exist, that people must worship Him, that He avenges sin is naturally imprinted on all. The conscience of the wicked man reasons: “I have led a wicked life.”

The human mind gathers acquired knowledge from the external book of nature, namely, by the power of natural reasoning from contemplating the works and effects of God. As a book is organized of many letters, so this is organized like a book of many creatures because every creature is nothing but a letter printed by the finger of God in which we can read and thus become acquainted with God from our reading. Mr. Schröder reduces these divine effects to twelve sources and explains them in detail, as we see in his work, part 2, De princ. theol., p. 185. In De nat. deor., bk. 2, Cicero lists four arguments: (1) From the preconception of things to come. (2) From the advantages that are perceived: the temperance of heaven, the fertility of the earth. (3) From the terrors of the mind because of lightning, plague, earthquake, comets, etc. (4) From heavenly bodies and their permanent ordered movement, the distinction, utility, beauty, and arrangement of the stars. Others establish nine classes of proof: (1) From the order of nature. (2) From the human mind. (3) From the difference between honorable and shameful things. (4) From the truth of natural knowledge. (5) From terrors of conscience. (6) From the political society. (7) From the series of causes. (8) From signals of future things. (9) From final causes (where they nevertheless confuse the things that belong to the inherent knowledge of God with those that we must properly refer to the acquired knowledge).

§ 61. It is worth our while to take a look at some proofs in order to be able to make a comparison with revealed knowledge. (1) From the order of movements. By our sense we perceive that some things in this world move. Moreover, everything that moves must be moved by something else because nothing can be at the same time actual and potential with reference to the same thing. But in the things that move and are moved, there is no progression to infinity because there would be no first mover nor, as a consequence, would there be anything else, because secondary moving things do not move except through that which is from the first motion. It is necessary, then, to arrive at one first mover, whom we call “God.” The Philosopher uses this proof (., bks. 7–8).

(2) From the series of efficient causes. In these sensible things we find that there is an order of efficient causes. Yet we do not find in these causes, nor is it possible, that anything can be the efficient cause of its own self, because in this case it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Therefore because in cases of this sort there is no progression to infinity (from the fact that secondary causes do not act except in the power of the first cause), it is necessary that there be some first efficient cause. Everyone calls this “God.” (Cf. Aristotle, Metaph., bk. 2, text 6.)

(3) From the gradation and connection of beings. In created things we find something more good and less good, something more being and less being. But there is no room for various kinds of goods and beings except to the extent that anything of them more or less approaches some highest good and some supreme being. Therefore some best and most noble being must exist. By common consent we call this “God.” (Cf. Anselm, Monol., c. 1.)

The following proof belongs here also: All the things that exist are either possible or not. If all things are possible, it follows that at some time nothing existed [“simply”]. For “possible” is what can exist and at some time did not exist, for if it always existed, it was not possible but necessary. But it is absurd in many ways to say that at some time nothing existed simply. Therefore it follows that not all things are possible but that at the least there was always something that was necessary. Furthermore, this either has a cause of necessity or it does not. If it has, we shall ultimately arrive at something that is necessary of itself, because progression to infinity is impossible. If it is necessary of itself, it does not have a cause of necessity but is rather the cause of necessity in other things. Now this thing is the supreme being that we call “God.” (See Richard, De trinit., bk. 1, part 1, c. 7.)

(4) From the definite operation toward a goal [propter finem]. We see not only beings endowed with reason but also those things that lack knowledge operating to achieve a definite goal, because always or quite frequently they work in the same way and achieve their goals through due means. From this it is clear that they are acting not fortuitously and by chance but that those operations are coming from the intent of some intelligence that directs them. This intelligence we call “God.” (See Aristotle, Metaph., bk. 12, title 52, and, from him, Thomas, [ST,] part 1, q. 2, art. 3).

(5) From natural inclination. No natural inclination can be to no purpose. But all people are naturally inclined to believe that someone is the governor of this universe, and they call Him “God.” Now what applies to all things and every time seems to be natural. Moreover, we discern the natural disposition and inclination of each one in unexpected matters. But in unexpected perils, when all men realize that they are destitute of human help, they turn by some natural instinct to superior things. Therefore it is naturally inherent in them that there exists some supreme principle of things and some governor of the universe. (See Savonarola, De verit. fid., bk. 1, c. 6.)

In Acts 14:17 the blessed apostle points out these sources of natural proofs from which one can prove that God exists: (1) from the production of things, (2) from their preservation, (3) from their control, (4) from the bestowal of benefits to the human race, (5) from the condition of the human mind, (6) from civil association. We shall speak about this in greater detail a little later. Lactantius, Div. instit., bk. 1, c. 2: “There is no one of such rude and animalistic behavior who, lifting his eyes to heaven (though he may not know what god’s providence controls what he sees), nevertheless does not understand that some god exists (1) from the magnitude of things, (2) from their motion, (3) from their disposition, (4) from their constancy, (5) from their usefulness, (6) from their abundance, (7) from their symmetry.”

Fourth, the book of Scripture supplies more definite foundations for the knowledge of God.

§ 62. (IV) The book of Scripture provides more numerous and sure foundations with which to prove that God exists. From it revealed knowledge is made more complete and more certain. Tertullian, Apolog., c. 18: “So that we might more fully and more strongly approach Him (God), as well as His dispositions and will, He added the tool of literature, if anyone wishes to ask anything about God, and discover what he has asked, and believe what he has discovered, and be devoted to what he has believed.”

Now we can sum up these foundations under the following headings: (1) The divine oracles themselves. On almost every page of Holy Scripture, God’s words and works are discussed, and God provides clear testimony about Himself because He is both a suitable and sufficient witness of Himself. (2) The divine names with which God describes Himself both immediately and mediately through holy men, for some truly existing supreme being must correspond to them. (3) The divine blessings that God confers generally upon the entire human race and specifically upon the Church. Here we should note that God has revealed Himself at all times with special blessings to the Church and has confirmed them with the word of promise. In this way in the Old Testament He led the children of Israel out of Egypt, and in the New Testament He sent His Son and completed the work of redemption through Him. (4) The miracles, wonders, and marvelous works of God with which He reveals His majesty and power at all times. (5) The divine prophecies and their immovable certainty, because for many ages He prophesied through His prophets things that happened later (Isa. 41:22; etc.). (6) The punishments of the wicked with which He displayed His justice and revealed clearly that He was the avenger of sins (Ps. 58:[11]). The flood, the destruction of the people of Sodom, the punishment of the Israelites in the wilderness, etc., belong here. (7) Finally, the frequency of divine revelations, for He appeared to the patriarchs, struck covenants with them, sent prophets, and finally even His Son, at whose Baptism at the Jordan a miraculous theophany occurred.

§ 63. Concerning this natural knowledge of God, (1) some sin by defect who simply deny this knowledge. The Photinians deny this. Their first fallacy and the origin of their error seems to depend on this: They deny that the first man was created for immortality and had an original righteousness (the divine image), the remnants of which are natural knowledge. Socinus, Prael., c. 2, p. 3, writes: “Today the more acceptable opinion is that there is naturally inherent in man and in his heart an idea of some divinity whose power rules and governs all things and who especially cares for human affairs and advises and watches over people. We think that this idea is false.” We encounter similar things in his Resp. ad objectiones Cuteni, 5, p. 86. Ostorodt, Instit., c. 7, p. 10, writes: “That people know something about God or the Godhead does not come from nature nor from a study of creation but from hearsay, because God has revealed Himself to men since the creation.”

The Photinians are partly supported or at least given encouragement by: (1) Tostado, who in his commentary on Exodus 5 argues in detail “whether the existence of God is self-evident.” He finally draws the conclusion that “one can gather from nature that there is some supreme being who is the best and most perfect of all things, but he cannot know whether it is incorporeal, knows all things, acts freely, is endowed with limitless power.” This he concludes from the fact that Pharaoh says: “Who is the Lord?” (2) Flacius, part 1, Clavis, on the term “law,” col. 563: “We should not concede that any true principles or knowledge of the one God and of His governance are still in man.” Col. 566: “By nature, man can know no more about God than an animal.” (3) Vorstius, Exeg. apolog., c. 1: “Inherent knowledge is neither actual nor habitual but only potential, that is, it is merely the ability to know.” (4) Those, too, are in error who rashly and indiscriminately declare: “It is false and is called false if the heathen affirm that God is eternal, omnipotent, etc.,” because the apostle clearly calls this “the truth of God” (Rom. 1:18).

§ 64. Before we attack this error of the Photinians, we must first correctly shape the state of the controversy. The question is not (1) whether from the book of nature one can have the sort of knowledge of God that is sufficient for salvation, something we energetically deny against Zwingli, Gwalther, and others. Rather, the question is merely this: whether we can draw from naturally inherent principles and from a contemplation of all creation only some knowledge of God, namely, an inchoate and rough knowledge.

(2) The question is not whether some “general revelation” is required for the natural knowledge of God that we are claiming because, when the apostle discusses the natural knowledge of God in Rom. 1:19, he uses the words “God has shown it to them.” Here the question is merely whether a special revelation in the Word or in divine appearances is required for any knowledge of God at all. Revelation is either general, taking place in the creation of the world and in the writing of the Law in people’s hearts, or it is special in the revelation of the Word.

(3) Nor is the question about the [“what it is”]—whether a man knows and, in fact, can know completely by nature what God is, to which an understanding of the Trinity also belongs. Rather, it is about the [“that it is”], that is, that God exists.

(4) The question does not concern the legitimate and required method of divine worship, whether man can learn from nature how to worship God in such a way that it pleases Him and is salutary and saving for man, for one learns this only from the revealed Word. Instead, the question involves the requirement of worship, namely, that God does exist and that humans should worship Him.

(5) The question does not involve the special will of God—whether man can learn from nature that special will of God in the mystery of the redemption, which in the past was going to be shown through Christ the Mediator but today is already shown, being published and revealed in the Gospel. Instead, the question concerns His general will published in the Law, namely, whether man knows this in some natural way.

(6) The question is not whether God has shaped some idea of Himself in the minds of humans by which they may know who God is. Instead, it only concerns their natural instinct by which they are told under the direction of nature to claim that there is a God and that they should worship Him.

(7) Finally, we must provide this advice: When Ostorodt says that humans have whatever they know about God or the Godhead not from nature nor from a consideration of its creatures but only from hearing and from the reporting of others, then that word “hearing” is ambiguous. You see, if Ostorodt intends to say that the special revelation of God is required through the Word for every knowledge of God, we completely deny this. If, however, he would understand the word “hearing” to mean the doctrine and institution drawn by our forefathers who followed nature alone as their teacher, then we say that such is related to natural knowledge no less than are the principles born with us and the consideration of things created. On the other hand, though the arguments by which one proves both the inherent as well as the acquired natural knowledge of God are different, nevertheless, because the Photinians deny both, it is sufficient that we prove against the Photinians that there is some natural knowledge of God, regardless of the principle from which it may stem, whether from natural instinct or from considering created things or from the reporting of others who have followed nature as their only teacher.

This we prove, however, (1) with statements of Scripture, (2) with rational arguments, and (3) with the confession of our adversaries.

We prove the natural knowledge of God, first, from the statements of Scripture: From Job.

§ 65. We divide the passages of Scripture into three classes. The first we seek from Job; the second, from the royal psalmist; the third, from the blessed apostle Paul.

(I) Job 12:7–10: “But please ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you. Speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.” There can be two connections of these words with the preceding ones. In v. 6, Job had said: “The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure, who bring their god in their hand.” That is, robbers and the wicked in this life experience favorable situations, have peaceful homes, and enjoy great tranquillity. From this the Epicureans gather that God is not the avenger of sins nor is His providence divine, as the heathen poet sings: “When the wicked fates carry off the good, forgive what I have confessed. I am moved to believe that there are no gods.” To these thoughts of the Epicureans, however, Job opposes the consideration of created things, from which one can see clearly that there is a God who is the creator, preserver, and governor of all things. Also, with the adversative particle (“nevertheless, certainly, indeed”), Job teaches that we must fortify our minds against such thoughts and laughter of the Epicureans with the contemplation of created things.

One can also provide the explanation of such a connection in Job 11:8. Zophar had said bombastically that “the wisdom of God reached all the way to heaven, was deeper than hell, longer than the earth, broader than the sea.” Therefore Job responds that it is not necessary to seek further documentation of divine wisdom and majesty because those lower things that are visible to the eyes of all bear enough witness and more about that wisdom and majesty. If we were to consider the structure of the limbs in animals or the powers of herbs and things born of the earth, surely they provide clear witnesses of divine wisdom. In Job 39:1 God Himself cites some outstanding, admirable works in the preservation and governance of His created things. Therefore in a figurative way of speaking the holy man commands that they ask the beasts and birds, that they address the earth because the goodness, wisdom, and power of the Creator can be learned from these by careful consideration and meditation. See also Wisdom 13:3; Sirach 43:1; etc.

From this we draw the following conclusion: If from our consideration of created things we can arrive at the knowledge of some sort of creator, surely we are given some natural knowledge of God. However, the former is true; so, too, is the latter. The logical sequence of the major premise is certain because the Creator is none other than the true God. In fact, not only Scripture but also nature teaches that the uncreated being by whom all things were created is God Himself. The minor premise can be constructed by the clear words of Job and can be confirmed with a general axiom: Every effect presupposes and argues its own cause, for from the consideration of an effect not only does the existence of its cause become known but also in some way its nature, because there is nothing in the effect that was not in the cause earlier, either formally or virtually and eminently. If Protogenes recognized the great artist Apelles from the thin subtlety of his line drawn on a canvas (according to Pliny, Nat. hist., bk. 35, c. 10), how much more certainly can we recognize the Creator from the beautiful lights of heaven and the constant variety of their movements? If we recognize and admire the wisdom of their manufacturers from the marvelous making of clocks and from their sure movements, why should we not recognize the marvelous wisdom of God the Creator from the miraculous and stunning manufacture of the heavens? “Who does not know,” asks Job, “that the hand of the Lord has done all this?” That is, even the most illiterate person acknowledges that these are the works of God’s hands. It would be ridiculously childish if a person were to admire the canvas of a painter and not praise the artist nor his artistry.

§ 66. Socinus makes the exception: “The greatest philosophers, such as Aristotle and others, did not view the mechanism of the world in this way but carefully searched it out. Nevertheless they were unable to arrive at the point of believing that God cared about lower things or even humans, nor were they capable of concluding that God created the world. In fact, they instead clearly denied it” (Praelect., c. 2, f. 4).

We respond. (1) On the contrary, Aristotle clearly rises up to recognize the first mover and first cause from a consideration of secondary movers (Phys. acroas., bks. 7–8; Metaph., bk. 12). If Aristotle wrote the book De mundo, we cannot deny that he knew both creation and providence in some way.

(2) Although one can in some way know not only the essence of God but also His providence from the principles born in us and from contemplation of created things, nevertheless the knowledge of divine providence taken from the book of nature was weakened in the minds of the heathen by a consideration of this inequality: the good often appear to experience the worst fortune while the wicked, on the other hand, enjoy good fortune (Job 21:7–8; Ps. 73:17; etc.).

(3) We must distinguish between a knowledge of creation and of the Creator Himself, for we cannot go from only the contemplation of created things to an understanding of the creation specifically and literally—that God created all things out of nothing within a definite time (six days). Heb. 11:3: “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God so what is seen was made out of things that do not appear.” Nevertheless we can arrive at a knowledge of the Creator from looking at creatures, namely, that there is some supreme uncreated being from whom all things have come.

(4) One cannot progress from the negation of a secondary actuality to the negation of the primary actuality or of its faculty. Thus the blind, the deaf, the lame, etc., do not see, hear, walk by a secondary actuality. Nevertheless one cannot infer from this that the faculty of seeing, hearing, and walking must simply be refused to them, for it is because of accident [ex accidenti]—namely, because of a defect of organs—that they happen to be deprived of the use or the secondary actuality of a faculty but not of the faculty itself. In a similar way, the natural knowledge of God belongs to everyone in the manner of a primary actuality because that knowledge is inherent in everyone and because all can gather it from a contemplation of created things. In the manner of a secondary actuality, however, it is limited in some people and, as the apostle says: “It is restrained in the case of unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18), namely, because of accident, namely, by the blinding caused by the devil through the domination of sin, malicious ignorance, and the like.

From the Psalms.

§ 67. (II) Ps. 19:[1]: “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims His handiwork.” Here the royal psalmist connects both means of the knowledge of God: nature and Scripture, His revelation in creatures and in prophetic literature. He speaks about the former in the first part of the psalm, about the latter in the second part. Ambrose, Hexaëm., bk. 2, c. 4: “In Psalm 19 David teaches that when we see the work of the world, it preaches and praises its Creator.” Theodoret, in his commentary on this psalm: “If someone looks at a large and beautiful building and wonders at its architect, or if he sees a good and well-constructed ship and considers its builder, or if a recollection of the artist comes along with the contemplation of his painting, all the more are we drawn to its Maker when we see the world’s structure.” (Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics draw the following from Ps. 4:6: “The light of Your countenance is sealed upon us,” which they take to mean the light of natural reason. Yet the “light of Your countenance” means the favor of God, which we ask for through prayer.)

To this passage we add the frequent exhortation in the Psalms that commands all creatures, both rational and irrational, to praise God. Ps. 69:[34]: “Let heaven and earth praise God, the seas and everything that moves therein.” Ps. 103:22: “Bless the Lord, all His works, in all places of His dominion.” Ps. 148:3–4: “Praise Him, sun and moon, all you shining stars. Praise Him, you highest heavens and you waters above the heavens.” Ps. 150:6: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.” You see, though irrational creatures do not praise God effectively (because they do not know God as their Creator in the same way as rational creatures—angels and humans—know Him), nevertheless they praise Him objectively because they reveal the material for praising God to those who look at them. From this we make the following inference: Whatever praises God objectively and reveals to humans the material for praising God, we learn by looking at it and contemplating it not only God’s divine essence but also His wisdom, goodness, power, majesty, etc. The argument is that creatures exhibit the material for praising God because they set before us the wisdom, goodness, power, etc., of the Creator. But now creatures praise God objectively, that is, they exhibit the material for praising God. Therefore. Nazianzen calls creatures “the melodious heralds and silent praisers of God” (Orat. in Christ. nativ. 38, p. 588) because, according to Theodoret, “though silent, they preach their Creator, as it were, and invite the lips of all to praise Him” (at the beginning of Serm. 4. de provid. Dei). Augustine, at the beginning of his explanation of Psalm 148: “There are some things that do not have the breath of life and the intelligence to praise God, but even they are good things and are completely arranged according to their own order and are related to the beauty of the universe that God created. They, indeed, do not praise God of themselves with their own voice or in their own heart, but when intelligent people consider them, they praise God through them. Thus in a certain way those things praise God.” And later: “All things (even irrational ones) praise God because when we see those things and consider their Creator who made them, from them the praise of God is born in us. And when God is praised because of a consideration of those things, they all praise God.”

§ 68. Socinus makes the exception, op. cit.: (I) “In the psalm, as a concession, it is assumed that God created the heavens and that those who look at the heavens believe this, as used to happen in those places where David (who wrote the psalm) was. And the meaning is this: that when someone looks at and contemplates the heavens that he knows God has created, he perceives from them the wisdom and power of God. For if one does not [first] acknowledge God as their Creator, who will be able to recognize from them the glory of God as of their Creator?”

We respond. (1) The psalmist is speaking not about the Israelites alone, who knew the mystery of creation from the revelation of the Word, but in general about all people, for he adds in vv. [3–4]: “There is no speech, and there are no words; their voice is not heard, yet their line goes out to all the earth and their words to the end of the world.” (2) Although creation, properly speaking and as it is revealed in Scripture, was not known to the heathen from the light of nature, nevertheless they could go up the staircase of creatures to a recognition of some highest uncreated being from whom all things took their beginning. Therefore they could recognize the glory of God from looking at the heavens. (3) Here we must connect this passage of the apostle, which is by far the clearest: “Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). Here it is affirmed with clear words that one can draw a knowledge of the Deity by looking at His creatures. (4) The psalmist in fact teaches that clearly in this passage, for he adds: “And the firmament proclaims His handiwork.” Here he attributes to the firmament, or heaven, that it indicates the handiwork of God, that is, that it bears witness that God made it and manifests His power and glory. That is why the heavens in Ps. 8:[3] are called “the work of His fingers.” Just as craftsmen use and carefully apply the work of their fingers in their most subtle products, so the heavens are called the works of the fingers of God because they were made , “by intelligence” (Ps. 136:5). To this we can relate what Deut. 4:19 says about the sun, moon, and stars, “which the Lord, your God, has allotted to all the peoples under heaven,” namely, that those things should serve the peoples and be useful to them. The Hebrew , however, also means “it was pleasant”; therefore the meaning is that with those lights of heaven God invites and attracts all nations to recognize and praise Him. The author of the Book of Wisdom rebukes the idolaters who believed the lights of heaven were gods and says: “If they were amazed at their powerful working, let them perceive from them (and from gazing at them) how much more powerful is He who formed them” (13:4). Then he adds: “For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator” (Wisdom 13:5). Therefore he is teaching that idolaters could have known God as their creator from actually looking at heaven and the heavenly bodies.

Socinus sees this strength of our argument and therefore makes the exception (II) that “ ‘to declare the handiwork’ does not, in this passage of the psalm (nor perhaps anywhere else), mean to show that it is His work. Instead, it means to show what sort of work it is or to praise it.”

We respond. (1) On the contrary. The psalmist says absolutely: “The firmament proclaims the works of God’s hands,” not merely the quality of that work. (2) We should not create opposing ideas from subordinate ones. The firmament proclaims two things: both that it is the work of the Most High, because it is either of itself or of another, and that it is a magnificent and beautiful work of the Creator. This is evident from parallel passages of Scripture. Sirach 43:[1–2]: “The pride of the heavenly heights is the clear firmament, the appearance of heaven in a spectacle of glory. The sun, when it appears, making proclamation as it goes forth, is a marvelous instrument, the work of the Most High.” V. [5]: “Great is the Lord who made it.” (3) These latter words explain and give the cause of the earlier ones. From this and for this reason the heavens tell of the glory of God because the firmament declares His handiwork.

(III) Socinus makes the exception: “The word ‘declare’ can be referred to the word ‘glory,’ which was used earlier, and the word ‘firmament’ can be explained through apposition in this way: ‘His handiwork, namely, the firmament, declares the glory of God.’ ” Here he appeals to the translation of Zwingli, who translated it this way.

We respond. (1) This explanation is inconsistent with the earlier one; therefore Socinus should select the one upon which he intends to stand. (2) The devout and prudent translator of Scripture should not seek out how he can twist Scripture in various ways but should seek out what its proper and genuine meaning is. Without even a probable reason, he imagines this apposition and abandons the original meaning. (3) The first words are separated from the latter part by the athnach accent, which is a major separator. (4) The Septuagint translators rendered it: “The heavens describe the glory of God, and the firmament announces the works of His hands.”

(IV) He makes the exception: “In sacred literature, and especially in the Psalms, the expression ‘all the earth’ is generally understood as ‘Judea,’ as in Ps. 2:8; 45:[16]; 105:7.”

We respond. (1) Even if [“all the earth”] may be taken by synecdoche to mean Judea in other passages of Scripture, it still does not follow that we must affirm the same figure of speech in this passage. (2) The psalmist himself explains emphatically what he intends “all the earth” to mean here: “There is no speech, nor are there words, where their voice is not heard.” Therefore he establishes peoples of every tongue as these heralds of God’s majesty. He also teaches that “their words go out to the ends of the earth.” Ambrose, commentary on Psalm [19]: “Whom do they declare through what is seen? Heaven is silent, but looking at it emits a sound louder than a trumpet. The heavens teach us through our eyes, not through our ears. Both the idiot and the wise man will be able to gaze equally well upon this book that the same prophet looked at when he spoke. There are no speeches nor words whose voices are not heard. That is, there is no people, no language, that cannot understand this voice.” Ps. 2:8 is not speaking about David (for we must not place our confidence in him) but about Christ Himself, whose possession are the ends of the earth, not only [the ends] of the Jewish land but, in general, of all the earth, as is evident from the prophecies of the prophets. Ps. 45:[16] also speaks about Christ in a literal sense, and His realm is not contained within the narrow limits of Judea but extends throughout all the ends of the earth. Socinus compares Ps. 105:7 with Ps. 147:20 because in the first passage the judgments of God are said to be in all the earth, but in the latter they are not given to every nation. As it stated that God revealed His judgments to the Israelites, he concludes from this that the expression “all the earth” in Ps. 105:7 is taken as a synecdoche. But he is deceived by his comparison of dissimilar passages. For it is one thing to say that the judgments of God are in all the earth, that is, that God judges the whole world (Gen. 18:25; Acts 17:31), but it is another to say that the judgments of God—that is, His Word, His speeches—are known to every nation. The word “judgments” is taken differently in Psalm 105 from the way it is taken in Psalm 147. Also, the kingdom of power is one matter, but the kingdom of glory or the breadth of the Church in the Old Testament is another.

From Paul: First, Acts 14:[17]: “God did not leave Himself without witness.”

§ 69. (III) We prove it from the apostle Paul. (1) Acts 14:16–17: “In past generations God allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways; yet He did not leave Himself without witness, for He did good and gave you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” The subject about which the apostle is speaking is the heathen who live outside the Church, as is evident: [a] From a consideration of the object. The apostle is not speaking to people converted from the Jews and heathen (to Christians), but to the heathen people of Lycaonia, Lystra, etc.

[b] From the determination of the subject. V. 16: “God permitted all the nations to walk in their own ways.” Now, such a word of revelation as was made to the Israelites was not given to all the heathen in general in the Old Testament.

[c] From the description of the subject. The apostle is speaking about the sort of people who were followers of foolishness (that is, who had surrendered themselves to heathen idolatry); who still were to be converted to God, the living Creator of all things; whom God in past generations permitted to walk in their own ways (that is, whom He left to themselves and their own abilities and ingenuity and whom He did not call to the fellowship of the Church through the word of preaching). The predicate is that God did not leave Himself without witness. Although they did not have the preaching of the Word (that heavenly witness), the apostle states that they nevertheless had not lacked every witness. Furthermore, he quickly adds the means of that witness, which includes the manner of the predicate. In general, he says that God does good to them, that is, He heaps various blessings of soul, body, and fortune upon them. In particular, He has given them defense through government; He has given them propagation of their race through marriage, etc.; He has given them rains (“the autumn and spring rains,” Jer. 5:24) and fruitful seasons from heaven, filling their hearts with food and gladness. From these benefits they could and should have recognized God as their benefactor, just as we are led from brooks to their sources and as one who seeks a way to the sea makes a river his companion.

So, then, we conclude as follows: Whatever God uses to bear witness of Himself to the heathen, that is the means through which the heathen could and should have known God. But God bears witness of Himself through His benefits revealed to men in their preservation, sustenance, and governance. Therefore they are the means through which the heathen can know God. Consequently, they are given some natural knowledge of God. Psalm 104 pertains to this, in which the royal psalmist confirms that men are able to rise up to a knowledge of the Creator from looking at and considering His creatures.

Second, Acts 17:23: “What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

§ 70. (2) In Acts 17:23 the apostle sees in Athens an altar inscribed “to an unknown god.” Pausanias, Attic., mentions “altars to unknown gods” that were built as an invention of Epimenides of Crete, for that region labored under a pestilence and the Pythian oracles were consulted. They responded that the city and its lands had to be expiated, but the oracles had not said to which god the sacrifice should be made. Epimenides, who was in Athens at that time, ordered that sacrificial victims be sent out into the fields and that the sacrificers follow them. In whatever place each animal stood, the sacrificers were to slay it and sacrifice it to a favorable, unknown god. Therefore from then until the time of Diogenes Laertius, one would commonly see throughout Attica sacred altars without a name. (See Luis Vives, on De civ. Dei, c. 17, bk. 7; concerning the unknown god, Viterbiensis relates a remarkable account according to Wolf, Cent. 1, p. 4.)

The apostle was deeply disturbed by this inscription on the altar and began to preach to the Athenians about the true and living God. In this sermon, he provides many arguments for the support of the natural knowledge of God. [a] In v. 23 he says: “What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” To the Athenians he attributes both ignorance and public worship. They indeed knew that God existed and that they were supposed to worship Him. They bore witness to this by building that altar. They did not know, however, who that true God was, and of that they bore witness with the inscription on the altar. In the temples of the Athenians and of the heathen, therefore, there were both wickedness and truth—wickedness when they did not worship the true God and truth when they looked for God, as Augustine says. From this we draw the following conclusion: If the Athenians—under the guidance and direction of nature alone—were able to know that God existed and that they were supposed to offer Him religious worship, they surely also were given some natural knowledge of God. The first is true; therefore the latter is also. The multiple idolatry of the Athenians and of the other heathen bears the clear testimony that they knew by natural instinct that God existed, though they did not know who that true God was.

[b] Concerning that true God whom the apostle was preaching to the Athenians, he says in the same chapter: “He gives to all people life and breath and all things and made from one blood every nation of people to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, (add an understood ) so that they would seek God, if by chance they might feel after Him and find Him” [vv. 25–27]. Here the apostle is establishing the purpose and function of the human race’s preservation, of political governments, of periods of empires, of the determination of dwelling places, and of the remaining works of God’s wisdom, goodness, and power: so that we may be stirred up to seek God by considering these benefits. From this we draw the following conclusion: Whatever draws us to search out the true God, that is a means of knowing God. The works and benefits of God in governing the world, however, draw us to search Him out. Therefore.

[c] In the same passage the apostle says: “God is not far from each one of us because we live and move and have our being in Him.” For this reason one of the heathen poets (I think it was Aratus in the Phaenomena) said: “We are the offspring of God.” If the heathen poets could know from the light of nature that we are the offspring of God and that we live and move and have our being in God, surely they are given some natural knowledge of God. But the former is true; the latter, then, is also true.

§ 71. Socinus makes the exception, Praelect., p. 6:

To seek the Lord is nothing other than to live in holy fashion as He Himself commands; moreover, to discover Him is to have Him kindly disposed to oneself (Ps. 9:[10]; 24:6; 105:3). In Isa. 55:6 “to seek” is not to touch but to come in contact with. 1 John 1:1. This, then, is the meaning of Paul: that it was God’s plan that people should live holy lives in accordance with His will and that in this way they should find Him kindly disposed to them. Thus it follows that He is not far away from each one of us, for we live and move and have our being through Him. That is, we should entertain no doubts that He is near to those who live holy lives, though He confers His benefits upon all people, for we have this very thing from Him, that we live and move and have our being.

We respond. (1) We concede that in some passages of Scripture “seeking God” and “finding Him” are used metaphorically for a true conversion to God and the reconciliation of a sinner with Him. However, all those passages speak about people in the Church who have known the true God from His Word. Meanwhile, these people have not shown due obedience to His commandments but have turned away from Him through their sins. Consequently, they are ordered to return to Him and seek Him through true and serious conversion. Furthermore, God promises that He wants those who seek Him in this way to find Him. But this passage of the apostle is very different. In this passage he discusses the heathen who live outside the Church and who lack the true knowledge of God, which must be sought from the Word. These surely must be invited and drawn to a knowledge of God before their reconciliation with God.

(2) Seeking God, therefore, cannot mean the same thing as leading a holy life, which we will show by the following argument: “Seeking God” here means that all people without exception, including the heathen located outside of the Church, can learn of Him by considering the general benefits of God that are common to the entire human race in its preservation, in the constitution of human society and government, in the propagation of men, etc. But the heathen could not have learned how to lead a holy life and show God-pleasing obedience [merely] by considering the general benefits of God. Therefore. The truth of the major premise is clear from its connection with the apostolic text. The minor premise is confirmed by the apostolic passages: “Whatever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23) and by Heb. 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” We also have Christ’s exclusive statement: “No one comes to the Father except by Me” (John 14:6). But now we must learn faith in Christ from the Gospel, which no one knows from nature but which is “the mystery that has been kept secret for long ages” (Rom. 16:25).

(3) “Seeking God” is understood to mean that at any time people can seek Him from the means set forth by the apostle. But it is not the case that people can at any time seek from them the means to live a holy life as God commands, because in the Old Testament all nations had not yet been solemnly called to the fellowship of the Church through the preaching of the Word. Instead, it was necessary for those who wished to learn the norm of living a holy life and the true means of divine worship to unite themselves with the Church of Israel. Therefore.

Socinus makes the rejoinder: “In all humans there is a natural distinction of what is just and what is unjust, or at least there is this ability in all, that they know and admit that they ought to prefer the just to the unjust, the honorable to the shameful. However, this is nothing other than an inner word of God. Whoever obeys it is obedient to God Himself, though otherwise he may not know or think that God exists. There is no doubt that whoever has obeyed God in this manner is going to please Him.” With this reasoning, however, Socinus is contradicting himself. You see, if there is some natural distinction of the just and the unjust in all men, surely there also exists in all men some natural knowledge of God. This is the reason: No one recognizes the distinction between right and wrong except by comparison with the divine Law, which is the norm and rule of all righteousness. If, then, there is a natural distinction between right and wrong in all humans, surely there is also in them the knowledge of the divine Law. But where there is a knowledge of the divine Law, there is also some knowledge of God as the Lawgiver on the basis of related things and the necessary connection of cause and effect. He who knows the divine Law knows that God exists, because He is the only Lawgiver. He knows that he must worship God, because this is the purpose of the Law. He knows that God is the righteous avenger of sins, because from that innate distinction of right and wrong his conscience concludes that God punishes those who transgress the Law. He knows that God is good and generous to those who show obedience to the Law. But if the knowledge of the Law is natural to man, so is the knowledge of God. Consequently, what Socinus says is unsubstantiated: “One who does not know or think that God exists can be obedient to this principle innate in us, that right must be preferred to wrong.” How could one obey that practical principle and naturally inherent Law without the knowledge and thought of the Lawgiver Himself, because obedience necessarily includes the respect of the inferior toward the lawgiver as his superior? In no way can the distinction between right and wrong, honorable and shameful things, be separated from the internal witness of the conscience, which concludes from this naturally innate distinction that God does exist and that He is the righteous avenger of sins.

If what Socinus adds—that “he who has obeyed that naturally inherent distinction between honorable and disgraceful things is pleasing to God”—means some special favor and kindly disposition of God by which God embraces devout people, it is false, because unless the person first pleases God, the works of the person will never please Him, as Augustine and Luther correctly conclude from Gen. 4:4. Furthermore, a man does not please God except by faith in Christ. The Father’s favor rests upon Christ (Matt. 3:17). Therefore he who is outside of Christ cannot please God. “He loved () us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6). Therefore whoever is not in this Beloved is not loved by God. Rom. 5:15: “Christ is the only man in grace.” He who is outside of Christ is not in grace before God. How, then, will Socinus be able to defend his pronouncement that for anyone to be especially pleasing to God (even for another reason than that he is His creature), he is not required to believe that God exists? How, I ask, will he be able to defend this when the apostle says clearly: “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6)? He retorts: “The apostle is speaking about those who for some special and uncommon reason are pleasing and acceptable to God.” But it is easy to respond that the apostle is transferring the hypothesis to the thesis and drawing a general rule from a special example, that whoever wants to approach God in true faith and please Him must believe that God exists and that He is the avenger. Surely it would be a blind obedience that obeys God but does not know that He exists.

(4) In [Is.] 59:[10] the Septuagint translators use for in the Piel, and it means literally “to touch with the hands” in the way blind people usually do. This meaning fits this passage in the literal sense, for just as blind people do not recognize those things that are close to them and, therefore, try to touch them with their hands, so the heathen indeed were “blind” (Rom. 2:19) and “were sitting in darkness and in the land of the shadow of death” (Isa. 9:[2]). Nevertheless they should have been able and ought to have, as it were, touched God with their hands, for He is not far away from each one of us. The words of Hermes in Poemander are related to this: “God surely cannot be penetrated by a human line of battle, but He can be touched by human hands.” Also related is that statement of Iamblichus, De myst., c. 1: “Before any use of reason, we somehow conceive of God, not indeed by a proper knowledge but with something like a touch, which is more definite than all knowledge.”

(5) We have the gloss of Socinus on the words of the apostle: “We should not doubt that God is near at hand to those who lead a holy life, though He does confer His blessings on all people, for we have this from Him: that we live and move and have our being.” I say, this gloss is diametrically opposed to the analogy of faith (which teaches the immensity and infinity of God’s essence), to the context of the apostle (in which he speaks about one and the same subject, that God is not far from each of us and that in Him we live and move and have our being), and to the letter itself (which asserts that we not only have life and movement from God but that we also live and move in God).

Third, Romans 1:19: “What is known of God is plain to them.”

§ 72. (3) We come to the classic passage, Rom. 1:19: “For the wrath of God is revealed upon the impiety of men who suppress the truth in their wickedness. For what is known of God is manifest among them (the heathen), for God has revealed it to them. V. 20: Because His invisible things from the creation of the world, being understood by His works, are seen—His invisible things, also His power and divinity—so that they may be without excuse.” Some people (such as Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Theophilus) take this passage to refer to acquired knowledge alone because of the causal particle (“for”) in v. 20, which shows that the same knowledge is being discussed in v. 19 as is discussed in the verse following. But it is evident on the basis of the apostle’s words in v. 20 that he is speaking about acquired or experimental knowledge.

Some people, on the other hand, take the first words to refer to innate knowledge (1) because of the universality of the subject. The apostle is not speaking about wiser people but about all the heathen, as the article shows, which is not diacritical but causal and shows the reason why the wrath of God comes upon all men: because they all suppress the truth. Now this acquired knowledge, however, does not befit all, but rather those who are quite wise. (2) Because of “to suppress,” which shows that such inherent practical knowledge is detained by the heathen when they do not submit to it, like a prisoner in a prison of unrighteousness. But practical knowledge is related to inherent rather than to acquired knowledge. (3) Because of the manifestation of “what is known” in the heathen. It is said that the (“what ought to be known of God”) is obvious and without discursive thinking is known, not among them (which could be understood about debates and experimental knowledge) but in them, that is, in their hearts. (4) Because of the explanation of “what is known,” given in v. 32, where the rule of divine righteousness revealed in the Law is called “the decree,” and in vv. 18 and 25, where it is called “the truth of God,” that is, the true knowledge about God, given to minds at creation and still remaining after the fall, which we should take to mean properly the Law inherent in nature. (5) Because of the denial of the excuse. “What is known of God” is said to be so obvious in the heathen that “they are without excuse.” But they would have an excuse if they lacked the Law inherent in their nature, because the distinction between honorable and disgraceful things cannot be concluded directly, of itself, and clearly by looking at creatures. Because merely the rationale of acquired knowledge is given, therefore it happens that acquired knowledge springs from innate knowledge and confirms it. (Cf. Dr. Meisner, De ll., p. 132.)

Regardless of whatever knowledge we take this passage of the apostle to mean, it offers us a strong argument against the Photinians. From the species I can conclude not the whole genus, but I can conclude something about the genus. If “what is known of God” was manifest in the heathen in such a way that they could see clearly the invisible things of God, understood from the creation of the world (from His works, that is)—that is, that they could see so clearly His eternal power and deity that they were without excuse—surely they are given some natural knowledge of God. The former, however, is true. So, then, is the conclusion.

In his commentary on this passage, Ambrose writes (p. 14): “The knowledge of God is clear from the workmanship of the world. So that God, who by nature is invisible, might be able to be known also by visible things, He did that work which would reveal its workman by its visibility,” etc. Ibid.: “God manifested Himself when He did His work through which He could be recognized.” Theodulus, on this passage: “God has set before everyone His creation as the teacher of His majesty.” Also: “Creation opens its mouth and preaches its Creator by the sight of creation.” Augustine, sermon 55, on the Word of God: “We see the Creator through His creation, the Maker through His handiwork, the Manufacturer of the world through the world.” We add also this: The heathen are said to be without excuse because they know that God exists, but they do not glorify Him as God. And there are many who have not perceived by report that God exists. Therefore if they also have not known Him by nature, they will be without excuse.

§ 73. The Photinians twist this passage in various ways. (I) They deny that the subject is the heathen who are ignorant of the Gospel. The Catechesis Racov., p. 23, says: “That knowledge is being described which comes from the Gospel.” Socinus makes the same claim in Praelect., c. 2, p. 5, where he argues: “The apostle is speaking about the type of manifestation that finally occurred at the time of Christ and the apostles through their miraculous works.” Ostorodt, Instit., c. 1, p. 11: “The invisible became visible, that is, the unknown became known through the works that God completed through Christ and the apostles (in the proclamation of the Gospel).”

Several things militate against this manipulation: (1) The intent of the apostle, which he himself explains: “We charge (and convince) with our arguments that Jews and Greeks are under sin” (Rom. 3:9). Therefore the apostle intends to prove that both Gentiles and Jews are accused and condemned as sinners by God’s Law. He proves this about the Gentiles in Romans 1 and up to Rom. 2:17, and about the Jews in Romans 2 from v. 17 to the end. Because no one could deny that the Gentiles had not received the Law from God, and thus could not be accused by the Law, he teaches that the Gentiles had the Law written in their hearts and “do by nature the things that are of the Law” (Rom. 2:14). Thus they had not been deprived of all means of knowing God. Instead, through a knowledge of His creation, they could come to some knowledge of God. Thus they are without excuse. If those invisible things were only revealed in the New Testament through the miracles of Christ and of the apostles, how can that knowledge leave those without excuse who, though they have learned that God exists, nevertheless have changed His glory into the likeness of men, of birds, etc.—that is, into heathen idolatry?

(2) The description of the subject proposed in the apostle’s text. You see, he describes those in whom the knowledge of God is obvious in this way: “They suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness” (v. 18); “they have changed the glory of the immortal God into the image of man, birds” (v. 23); and “they contaminated themselves with terrible sins against nature” (v. 26). All these descriptions fit the Gentiles, however, to whom the revelation of God’s Word was unknown and who “lived in times of ignorance” (Acts 17:30).

(3) The opposition of the apostle: “All who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law” (Rom. 2:12). Here he shows that up to this point he has been speaking about both the Gentiles—who though they did not have the Law in outward form (namely, published and in written form) nevertheless show the work of the Law written in their hearts and have contaminated themselves with the terrible sins described in Romans 1—and about the Jews, who received the Law solemnly given and published to them. He also shows that both have become guilty of sin. In v. 17 he attacks the Jews in particular, who were boasting of their worship of God. It is not what they retort (v. 19, where mention is made of a revelation) because though the Gentiles were deprived of the special revelation that happens through the Word and is the mark of the Church, nevertheless they had the general revelation set forth outwardly in creatures and inwardly inscribed in their hearts.

§ 74. (II) They also corrupt the means of knowledge. (1) They take the phrase “from creation” to refer to the time, not to the means. (2) They understand “the things that have been made” as the works of the Gospel and the miracles of Christ and of the apostles. Socinus, Praelect., p. 5: “We should know that the phrase ‘from the creation of the world’ should be connected with the word ‘invisible,’ and that the meaning is the same as what we have in Matt. 13:35: ‘… what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.’ Most of the interpreters have made ‘out of’ from the preposition ‘from,’ contrary to the word of the Greek codices, which do not have but .” He repeats the same thing in his Animadv. defens. contra Eutropium, p. 83. Ostorodt, on this passage: “Although never before since the beginning of the world has it been seen, that is, revealed, nevertheless the invisible is now visible, that is, the unknown is known, namely, through the works or deeds that God has done through Christ and the apostles, through their miracles.” The Catech. Racov. has the same thing in its commentary on this passage. In the prior instance they have Piscator supporting them, who asserts that he learned this interpretation from Olevianus, who recommends it as being in harmony with the apostle’s text and with the Syriac version: “from the foundation of the world.” He says: “ here indicates time, not subject material, which the preposition serves. In this manner, one also avoids the inconvenience of the tautology that develops from a different explanation.”

We respond. As far as the former is concerned, absolutely and simply speaking, it is not opposed to our opinion to explain the phrase “from the creation” as referring to time, provided no foreign distinction is attached and the things that should be tied together are not pulled apart. You see, “from the creation of the world” is not related to the preceding “unseen things,” as Socinus wishes, who tries to prove this falsely from Matt. 13:35 where we do not find “from the creation” but “from the foundation of the world.” Rather, it is related to the following verb “is perceived,” as the explanatory adverb “for” teaches, as well as the trustworthiness of the approved versions, according to Arias Montanus.

Meanwhile, we prefer the explanation that takes the phrase “from the creation of the world” to refer not to time but to the means of knowledge (1) because does not only mean “from” but also “out of,” as is known from dictionaries and concordances. , “from a part [partially],” is a meaning nearly proper to it when it is used about drawing knowledge. Matt. 7:16, 20: “From ( their fruits you will know them.” Matt. 24:32 and Mark 13:28: “Learn the lesson from ( the fig tree.” It is also in this sense that the Septuagint translators use this. Wisdom 13:3: “From ( these luminaries they ought to learn how much more powerful He is who made them.” (2) The word [“creation”] is almost always used in the New Testament not about the act of creation but about created works, not about the action but about the effect thereof: the actual substance of creation. (3) When the continuation and establishment of a thing from the origin of the world are indicated, we do not say but [“from the beginning of creation”] (Mark 10:6; 13:19; 2 Pet. 3:4); [“from the foundation of the world”] (Matt. 25:34; Heb. 9:26; Rev. 13:8; 17:8). (4) We need not fear a tautology here because the expression “the things that have been made” is explanatory and sets forth more clearly what we should take “creation” to mean in this passage.

Concerning the latter, we concede that the word [“to make”] is general and sometimes refers to the performing of miracles (as in Matt. 7:22; 21:15; Mark 7:37), but we deny that the noun [“things that are made”] must be taken here to refer to the miracles of Christ and of the apostles: (1) Because the word is nowhere used in the New Testament in this sense but rather about the work of creation (Eph. 2:10). (2) Because our adversaries provide no foundation for this interpretation. (3) When the world was created, the miracles of Christ were not known (4) nor were the heathen idolatries that the apostle describes here known.

§ 75. (III) They mangle the object of knowledge just as badly. (1) They take to mean “whatever is known or even can be known about God” (Catech. Racov. and Ostorodt, commentary on this passage). They obviously do this so that they may make their point that the apostle is discussing here not the natural knowledge (through which not everything is known that can and should be known about God) but the saving knowledge revealed in the Gospel. However, the apostle makes himself quite clear in v. 21: “Knowing God, that is, that He exists, they did not honor Him as God.” He is speaking, then, only about the knowledge by which one can know that God exists. The apostle is not speaking universally but indefinitely, and by adding examples, he makes clear what he takes this knowledge to mean: the knowledge “of His eternal power and deity.” (2) Socinus thinks that [“the eternal power”] in this passage means “the promises of God that are not lost” because in the preceding v. 16 the Gospel is called “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” He also thinks that [“eternal deity”] is “that which God wants to make us forever, in which sense the word ‘divinity’ in Col. 2:9 is also understood.”

We respond. (1) We must distinguish the general revelation of divine power in His work of creation from the special revelation of divine power in the work of redemption and in the preaching of the Gospel. The apostle is not speaking more about the latter but about the former, as the arrangement of the text reveals. (2) Col. 2:9 does not have the word but . Eniedinus talks nonsense and says: “Because of the carelessness of the scribes, was written here instead of .” But no conjecture proves this. (3) Neither nor occur anywhere in the New Testament as that harsh misnomer for “that which God wants to make us forever.” Our adversaries, then, are foisting upon us the dreams of their own minds and have enough to do in turning the clear light of Scripture into darkness with this twisted and violent interpretation of theirs.

Fourth, Romans 2:14: “The Gentiles do by nature the things of the Law.”

§ 76. (4) Rom. 2:14–15: “When the Gentiles, who do not have the Law, do by nature the things of the Law, they are a law unto themselves, though they do not have the Law. They show the work of the Law written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their thoughts accuse among them.” This passage properly and principally discusses the inherent and innate knowledge of God, which the apostle confirms with two arguments: (1) From the knowledge of the divine Law. Whoever has a natural knowledge of the Law, he also knows by nature that God exists. Earlier we confirmed the logical sequence of this proposition. Gentiles have a natural knowledge of the Law because, according to the apostle’s testimony: (a) They do by nature the things that are of the Law. (b) They do not have the Law written and published outwardly, but they do not completely lack the Law. (c) They are a law unto themselves. (d) They show the work of the Law written in their hearts. Therefore they also know by nature that God exists.

(2) From inner conscience. (The witness of conscience proves both an innate and acquired knowledge. Our conscience proves the innate knowledge, while the pangs of conscience in others are related to the acquired knowledge of God.) The heathen, who lack a knowledge of the revealed Word, bear witness by both their words and deeds that an inner testimony of conscience and (as Nazianzen says) “a tribunal” have been placed within them. For this reason they have naturally felt joy after good deeds and sadness after crimes. Cicero, Pro Milon.: “The conscience has a great power in both directions, so those who have done nothing wrong have no fear and those who have sinned think that punishment is always a blink of the eye away.” In fact, even those who, because of their power, have been exempt from the penalties that an ordinary person has to fear or whose sins everyone hides nevertheless have not been able to be free of the silent lashings and the inner beatings of conscience. Seneca says: “Fortune frees many from punishment but no one from the fear thereof.” In his biography of Nero, Dio Cassius says that after he killed Agrippina, his mother, he was upset at night with such a great terror that he quickly jumped out of bed. During the day, Nero would hear pipers playing where the bones of Agrippina had been buried. The noise would frighten him, so he moved away. When the same thing happened to him there, he became completely terrified and kept going to other places. As he fled, he flinched at everything—if a cat would yowl or a rooster crow or a branch move. Plutarch mentions that after Bessus had concealed the murder of his father for a long time, the swallows filled him with fear and he confessed. In fact, he knocked down their nest with his spear and killed their chicks because they seemed to be accusing him of committing a crime and to cry out that he had butchered his father. As a result he was later caught and punished. When Ibycus died, a high-flying stork was his avenger. Caligula used to cover his head with a curtain when lightning flashed. But where do these pangs of conscience come from if not from the inherent knowledge that God exists and that He is the just avenger of crimes?

Rational arguments.

§ 77. Earlier we cited the arguments for confirming the acquired knowledge of God. The inherent knowledge of Him is proved by: (1) The universal and constant agreement of all peoples. Cicero says, De nat. deor.: “There is no nation so savage and barbaric that it does not acknowledge that a god exists.” The sense of divinity naturally inherent in all people was so effective in the Gentiles that they claimed that God was located everywhere, even in the nature of man.

(2) The salutary commandments and decrees among the Gentiles that stemmed from the light of nature. You see, these show clearly that the distinction between honorable and shameful things is naturally imprinted upon all people and that the knowledge of God is inherent in all.

(3) The fear of a supreme deity that naturally breaks forth from the hearts of men. For example, wild and barbaric men who are far removed from all doctrine and instruction, living in the forests, hear thunder and are frightened. By their fear they bear witness to the knowledge naturally inherent in their hearts, which knows that there is some supreme deity who orders all things. In Jon. 1:5, when the storm arose on the sea, because of their fear, “the sailors cried out, and each invoked his own god.”

(4) The natural recognition of sin. As soon as anyone has committed a disgraceful act, he recognizes that he has transgressed the law of a superior being. Therefore by nature he has the inherent knowledge that there is some supreme lawgiver to whom all people owe their obedience.

(5) Ruins of the divine image have been preserved in mankind (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9). On the basis of those remnants of the divine image, one can know that God exists.

[Testimonies of the fathers.]

§ 78. We can cite testimonies of the fathers in great number. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres., bk. 2, c. 9: “The creation itself reveals Him who created it, the handiwork itself suggests Him who performed it, and the world manifests Him who has ordered it.”

** Toward the end of oration 3, Contra Arian., Athanasius says: “The creating Wisdom has imprinted the likeness of itself upon the things it created, and that which was imprinted is a beginning, so to speak, of instruction in the knowledge of God.” **

Tertullian writes, Adv. Marcion, bk. 1, p. 152: “The soul is endowed with the consciousness [conscientiam] of God from the very beginning.”

Basil, Homily 1, Hexaem., after the middle: “God made as good what is useful; as wise, what is beautiful; as endowed with power, what is great.” Basil also writes, sermon De grat. Deo agendis, vol. 1, p. 360: “God’s creatures are letters through which we read of the great providence and wisdom of God, their Creator, concerning all things.”

Augustine, Contra Faust., bk. 32, c. 20: “This entire world is called a great book on the nature of things.”

** Augustine again, treatise 106 on John, on the words, “I have revealed Your name,” etc.: “It is not that name of Yours by which You are called ‘God’ but that by which You are called ‘My Father.’ For that name by which He is called ‘God’ cannot be unknown to all creation and to all nations before they believed in Christ. This, you see, is a characteristic of the true Divinity: that it cannot be totally and completely hidden from every rational creature that already exercises its reason.” (Cf. De doctr. Christ., bk. 2, c. 40.) Minucius Felix: “If you had entered a home and had seen that everything was polished, neatly arranged, and elegant, surely you would believe that its owner was in charge of things and that he was much better than those good things. So also in this home of the world—when you see heaven and earth and view its providence, order, and rule—believe that there exists a Lord and Father of everything and that He is more beautiful than the stars and all the parts of the world.” **

The Damascene proves that “the knowledge of God is naturally sown, situated and inborn into the minds of men” (Orth. fid., bk. 1, c.3). (See also Origen, homily 3 on Song of Songs; Arnobius, Contra gentes, bk. 1, p. 24.)

Dr. Meisner cites the statements of the philosophers in his book De ll., p. 145.

[Testimonies of the adversaries.]

§ 79. From our adversaries we should note the testimony of Socinus on the innate difference between honorable and shameful acts, which we cited earlier. To that we should add that of Schmalz, Contra D. Frantz., disp. post. 8, p. 424: “In addition to divine revelation, one is also given the knowledge of those things that pertain to the will of God on the basis of nature itself and the light of correct reason. Although this knowledge is not on the level of that which occurs through revelation, yet it is not wicked of itself but is a little flicker of that great flame, namely, of revelation.” Disp. 1, p. 12: “Reason itself teaches that God exists from eternity despite the fact that this perhaps is written nowhere as regards the actual words. Thus reason itself teaches that unless God is eternal, He cannot be the highest being.” Because our adversaries attribute to the keenness of the human mind only that it can draw a saving knowledge of God from the book of Scripture without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, why are they so unjust in the case of the book of nature as to think that one cannot seek even the slightest knowledge of God from it?

Antithesis.

§ 80. Socinus declares, Epist., p. 70: “I confess that if a man’s nature were considered simply and of itself, it can easily happen that a man has either no distinction or a very tiny distinction of what is just and corrupt distinct from his own goodness and evil.” In the preface, Socinus also provides five arguments with which he tries to subvert the natural knowledge of God. (I) “Immediately from the beginning when man was created, God revealed Himself to him who was the first man. Because he lived for 930 years, he could easily teach his offspring the idea of the Divinity [divinitatis opinio]. In fact, God Himself for various reasons revealed Himself not only to the first man but also to others born of him thereafter.” We respond. Subordinates should not be opposed to each other. A disclosure of God through the revelation of the Word does not eliminate the natural knowledge of God but rather completes and confirms it. God revealed Himself for various reasons not because there clearly was no natural knowledge of God but because it was weak, imperfect, and not at all sufficient for salvation. Furthermore, Scripture attributes a knowledge of God even to those who did not receive the disclosure through the light of grace and the word of life, a revelation that was lost in their forefathers.

(II) “If the idea of the Divinity is natural for all people, it does not come from faith. Yet the Epistle to the Hebrews, c. 11, v. 6, teaches that it is from faith, for there it says: ‘Without faith no one can please God.’ For one must approach God and believe that He exists and that He is a rewarder.”

We respond. The things we must believe are set down in the Word. They are of two types. Some are mysteries set beyond the grasp of all human wisdom. They are simply called [“things believed”]. However, others are provided in such a way that reason can in some manner lift itself up to investigate them. Therefore an opposition between those things that one knows by nature and that he grasps by faith has a place only in the former type of things we should believe, not in the latter. Actually, we know them because of the proof of reason, and we believe them because of the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Faith itself is not knowledge drawn from the principles of reason but is a spiritual light kindled by the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless any object of faith can be considered in such a way that it can somehow be known by nature and, when it is set forth in the Word, is apprehended by faith. Furthermore, the Epistle to the Hebrews is not discussing the natural knowledge of God but the saving knowledge of God as it is revealed in the Word, as is obvious from [the discussion of] approaching God and pleasing Him.

(III) “If the idea of divinity were natural to all, why would the same author try to prove that because Enoch pleased God, he believed that God exists? Certainly he argues that an idea of this kind is not natural. That is, he argues that it can happen that someone would not grasp this with his own mind. For the things that are natural are also completely necessary.”

We respond. We have here a confusion of some kind of rudimentary natural knowledge of God with the revealed, perfect, and salutary knowledge of Him. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews does not argue that Enoch pleased God from the natural knowledge of God but from the saving knowledge of God revealed in the Word and joined in Enoch with faith in the promised Messiah.

(IV) “Holy Writ bears witness that there are some people who do not believe that God exists (Ps. 10:4; 14:1; 53:[1]). Although it calls these people fools, it still does not wish to indicate that they were destitute of the natural faculties of the soul and of common sense but that they were completely lacking in true wisdom. Moreover, true wisdom is not at all natural but is provided by reasoning.”

We respond. The wicked deny God not so much with their words as with their deeds (Rom. 1:21; Titus 1:16), just as there are even some people in the midst of the Church who are said to deny God in this way but who nevertheless have known from Scripture that God exists. Therefore we must distinguish between ignorance and malicious denial. The fact that a wicked person denies God in his heart does not come from simple ignorance but from detestable wickedness. Therefore Augustine advises us to say that the wicked person denies in his heart that God exists because he does not dare confess this with his words because he is convinced in his conscience that God does exist. The reproach, then, is against a disposition of wickedness, not a defect in knowledge. The pricks of conscience that they feel when they are afraid (Ps. 14:5) bear witness that those same wicked people do know that God exists. We should take these words to refer to those (a) who, along with Epicurus, strip God of His righteousness, power, and providence, who make Him lazy and shut Him up in heaven; (b) who have destroyed their fear of heavenly judgment, indulge themselves securely, and promise themselves no punishment for all their sins; (c) who have extinguished the light of nature and deliberately deprive themselves of feeling.

(V) “Not only individual men but entire peoples are found who have no sense nor suspicion of a divinity at all. These are in the New World in the west, in the province of Brazil, as the historians tell and as a trustworthy man who had been there for some time has sworn to me. The recent history of India, however, testifies that tribes of this kind are also found elsewhere.” Socinus names as the author of this tale a certain Capuchin monk (De auct. Script., c. 2, p. 46).

We respond. On the contrary, writers of the history of the New World—such as Benzoni (De India occident., bk. 1, c. 26, p. 111) and Lerius (Hist. nav. in Brasil., c. 16, p. 223)—bear a contrasting witness, reporting that some knowledge of divinity exists even in these men of the most distant islands. Benzoni (Hist., bk. 2, c. 18; bk. 3, c. 2), Peter Martyr (Histor. novi orbis), and Philipp Nicolai (De regn. Christi, bk. 1, c. 1) cite some vestiges of the preaching of the apostles still left among American peoples. But if that natural knowledge does not reveal itself in some people by their external actions, one still cannot infer from this that it clearly is absent. Rather, it is accidentally held back by sins, and its remnants lie oppressed by the darkness of malicious and pretended ignorance. It is in this respect that the heathen are called “callous” (Eph. 4:19), because they strip themselves of the sense of that knowledge and close their ears to the inner warnings of conscience. We also have such people in the visible assembly of the Church who cannot but know that God exists and that we must worship Him religiously. The Catech. Racov., p. 22, quotes the apostle’s words: “The natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:14). The entire context shows clearly, however, that the discourse there refers to those things that have been revealed in the word of the Gospel and to the salutary and saving knowledge of God.

They also generally press the point that the heathen are said to have not known God (Wisdom 13:1; Acts 17:23; 1 Thess. 4:5). We must distinguish, however, between natural knowledge and spiritual, or saving, knowledge. The latter, but not the former, is denied to the heathen. Next, we can consider natural knowledge in two ways: either absolutely and in itself or comparatively with respect to spiritual knowledge. In the former consideration there certainly is a knowledge, but in the latter there is ignorance. The knowledge of God, then, is taken away from people with respect to the completeness of natural knowledge (because the greater portion of it has been erased from their minds by sin) and with respect to its purity (because the remnants of that knowledge are still dim) and with respect to the singular corruption of some people. (See more concerning this question in Dr. Meisner, De ll., bk. 3, q. 2; Dr. Hunnius, Exam. error. Photin. de cogn. Dei, c. 2, error 1.)

Those who err in excess.

§ 81. So far we have been discussing those who err in defect concerning the natural knowledge of God. Those who claim that such knowledge is sufficient for salvation sin in excess concerning that knowledge. Those who do this include: (1) Some of the fathers and Scholastics who assert that men could have been and, indeed, were saved by their natural knowledge before Moses’ publication of the Law. As Augustine correctly warns in epistle 99: “The virtues of the heathen take pleasure in a certain disposition of mind, so we do not condemn them lightly.” Clement, Stromat., bk. 1: “Once philosophy used to justify the Greeks by itself, for there are many roads to salvation.” Justin, Apol. 2: “Those who lived in accord with the Law are Christians, though they are not thought to have known God. Among the Greeks, Socrates and Aristides were men of this kind.” We find similar things in Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, Jerome, Chrysostom, etc. However, Augustine, moved as he was by the Pelagian controversy, corrected what the ancients had said improperly. Acosta says that the belief of the Scholastics was the same and refutes it (De procur. Ind. sal., bk. 5, c. 3). Brulefer testifies that Gregory of Rimini made the same claim (in prolog. Sent., q. 2). (Cf. Casaubon, Exerc. 1. contra Baron.)

(2) Some of the Papists. Andrada, Defens. conc. Trid., bk. 3, p. 292: “One can possess true faith and the true knowledge of God for righteousness and eternal salvation not only from Holy Writ and the oracles of God but also from those things that are subject to the senses.” At the Council of Trent in 1552, a Franciscan monk publicly preached while explaining Romans 2 that “even the heathen have been saved without a knowledge of Christ.” The Protestant theologians complained about this matter before the orators of the emperor, according to Sleidanus (Comm., bk. 23). Theobald Thamer tries to prove this very thing in his books published at Mainz and urges especially these two arguments: “The wisdom of God was known to the heathen. Christ is the wisdom of God. Therefore the heathen knew Him.” Also: “The power of God was known to the heathen. Christ is the power of God. Therefore.” By this reasoning, he is confusing the wisdom of the Law—in fact, only a small part of the wisdom of the Law—with the wisdom of the Gospel, the power of creation with the power of salvation, and he does this in a disgraceful way. Cappel, in Vindic. Casaub., bk. 1, v. 1, witnesses that the Spaniard Luis Vives was guilty of a similar error. (See also his commentary on bk. 10 of Augustine’s De civ. Dei, c. 23.) Catharinus, on 1 Timothy 4, says that some who do not believe can be saved. In Daemonom., bk. 2, c. 3, and De republ., bk. 4, Bodin declares that we should not be rash in condemning Socrates, Phocion, Aristides, etc. Galeotus Martius makes the same claim, according to Friedrich Tilemann (preface to his Discurs. politic.). Erasmus writes: “After the votes are cast, those who hope that he is leading a tranquil life with his ancestors will not find me opposed to this” (preface to Cicero’s Tusc. quaest.). Erasmus again: “When I read such things, I can scarcely keep myself from saying: ‘St. Socrates, pray for us’ ” (Coll. religios.). And later: “Frequently, however, I do not restrain myself from invoking well the sainted souls of Maro and Flaccus.” The same thing is claimed by Johann Baptist Fickler in his book Rettung der Concilien, p. 75 (Ingolstadt, 1590), and Isengrinius in Exposit. evang. dom. Septuag. In De vanit. scient., c. 54, Cornelius Agrippa claims there was a book published under the title De salute Aristotelis [On the Salvation of Aristotle], at the end of which the author concludes: “Aristotle was a precursor of Christ in natural matters in the same way as John the Baptist was in matters of grace.” Gregory of Valencia maintains that some people of his order believe this: “According to God’s sweet providence and goodness, if anyone in any way should know the natural law and should do the things he knows should be done to the extent that he can, by human means, he, without any knowledge of God, achieves salvation from beginning to end, provided he be not stubbornly ignorant of the rest” (vol. 3, Controv., p. 390). He names de Soto, Victorio, Vega, etc. Miletus argues, Discus. error., p. 113: “Before Christ, the heathen had an obscure knowledge about Christ that involved the actual general providence of God and His procurement of salvation for mankind. Others call this ‘implicit faith.’ ” Maldonado, on Matt. 11:22: “The Gentiles can be saved by keeping the law of nature and confessing it all. Furthermore, the law of nature was enough for them as it was declared by nature herself.” Pererius, disp. 18 on Romans 1: “For people in ancient days (if any attained salvation without manifesting faith in Christ), it was sufficient to have had an implicit faith in Him included in their belief in one God, namely, to believe that God is the Savior of the human race according to the order and means known to Him and hidden in His marvelous providence.” Bellarmine says: “The heathen philosophers really did know God and in this regard were, as it were, naturally Christians” (De Christ., bk. 1, c. 3).

(3) Some of the Calvinists. Zwingli places Numa, Aristides, Socrates, etc., among the blessed in heaven and declares that “God wrote something of faith into the heart of Seneca with His own hand” (Expos. fid. ad Christian. regem). From this came Veit Wins-heim’s joke: “My listeners, beware of the heaven of the Zwinglians. I would not want to live there, for I would be afraid of Hercules’ club.” (See also Zwingli, Elench. contra Anabapt., vol. 2, Opera, f. 35.)

** Zwingli again: “If a heathen fosters a devout mind at home, he is a Christian, even if he does not know Christ” (vol. 1, epistle 1, f. 382). In his De provident., vol. 1, f. 358, he writes concerning Seneca: “He spoke in a religious way about the creation and preservation of things because he had a divine spirit.” **

Gwalther, Zwingli’s son-in-law, supported Zwingli in his Apologia, p. 52 (published 1545), where he tries to prop up the opinion of Zwingli with arguments that Wigand carefully refutes in De sacramentariismo, f. 32. Bullinger equips Zwingli’s book with a preface and calls it his “swan song.”

** Bullinger, op. cit., attributes “to Hercules devout undertakings, to Numa a pious enthusiasm for religion,” and he adds: “Shall we, then, think that they lacked the heavenly spirit for such devout and holy pursuits?” **

Because of this, Bucer, in a letter addressed to this point, asks him earnestly to refrain from defending such a terrible doctrine. (This letter is extant in Dr. Pappus, Refut. relationis Bipontinae, p. 93.)

The preachers at Emden also defend Zwingli in their Commonefactione de libro D. Hunnii, p. 3, f. 416. Paraeus (Iren., p. 245, c. 24) and Pelargus (in Comp. theol. correcto, p. 289) try to excuse and cover over Zwingli’s opinion, but only with paltry trifles, as we showed in De gloria Dei, disp. 6, § 25. Cf. also Sohn (Exeg. Aug., p. 828), the preachers of Zürich (Resp. ad Lutherum, published 1545, f. 16–18), Albert Hardenberg (Script., published 1557), and Daniel Tossanus (Contra Marbachium). Keckermann (Syst. ethic., p. 10) does not appear to disagree with Zwingli. The Berliners (in Coll. posteriore contra D. Hoe, p. 100) and Pelargus (op. cit.) even make Luther a supporter of this opinion, though he nevertheless condemns it with clear and serious words (Jena edition, German, vol. 8, f. 175; and commentary on Genesis 47, f. 633, where he condemns Zwingli by name because of it and says that he has fallen from Christianity into heathenism). As to the fact that he attributes salvation to some heathen, he explains this clearly as referring to those not who continued in their unbelief but who were led to a true knowledge of the true God of Israel through the preaching of the Word and who are not ignorant of the Messiah. In fact, they have even joined the Church, if not in body and place nevertheless in heart and disposition, for he names Abimelech, Job, Naaman, Jethro, some of the Moabites and Ammonites, etc.

(4) Although the Photinians clearly deny the natural knowledge of God, nevertheless, despite their hypotheses, they are unable to claim otherwise than that the heathen could have had, even outside the Church, a knowledge of God sufficient for salvation. In one of his letters, Socinus says that we should not discuss this question. Francesco Pucci Filidinus, who seems finally to have come over to the Photinians, as is concluded as probable on the basis of an interchange of letters between him and Socinus, has published a book in which he tries to prove that “heathen also have been saved without faith in Christ.” Against this Osiander has given a solid refutation. The Pole Georgius Zarnovecius (in the preface to an anti-Socinian pamphlet translated into Latin by Conrad Nuber of Danzig and published at Danzig in 1607) proves that it follows from the theology of the Photinians that “anyone can be saved in his own religion regardless of what he may have embraced, whether he be Jew or Turk or Anabaptist or Arian or Christian.” This is related to their view that sins are forgiven by the absolute mercy of God, to their denial of Christ’s satisfaction, and to the way they propose articles of faith that can be known from the light of nature beyond and outside of the revelation of the Word. In the Catech. Racov., pp. 25–26, to the question “What are the things entirely necessary to salvation that are related to the essence of God?” they give the following answer: “They are these: that God exists; that He is only one; that He is eternal; that He is perfectly just, perfectly wise, and completely powerful.” Ostorodt, Instit., c. 3, p. 28: “Beyond these things, we know that there is nothing else we have to know insofar as the essence of God is concerned.” Yet one can draw all those things from his natural knowledge. Therefore, according to the hypothesis of the Photinians, the heathen have been able to seek from nature a knowledge of those things that are necessary for salvation.

(5) Finally, Muhammad makes the same claim in the Qur’an, second sura: “One must know generally that every right-living Jew or Christian, even if he abandons the Law and inclines toward another law, that is, everyone who worships God and does good, undoubtedly will receive the love of God.”

§ 82. Before we state our arguments contrary to this opinion, however, we must note (1) that the question does not concern the Gentiles who were gathered into the Church of Israel nor (2) natural knowledge such as it was in the first man. But it does concern the heathen outside the Church and the natural knowledge such as it is in men after the fall and outside the revelation of the Word, which knowledge we say is not sufficient for salvation. We prove this with the following argument: Those who lacked (a) the knowledge of the one true God, who is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; (b) the knowledge of Christ, the Mediator; (c) the means through which Christ’s blessings are offered; (d) true faith in Christ; (e) works that are truly good and God-pleasing. I say, those who lacked these could not have drawn eternal salvation from their natural knowledge of God. But the heathen who stood outside the Church lacked all these things. Therefore.

We prove the major premise. (1) The true God thus reveals Himself in His Word, that He is one in essence, three in person: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore whoever does not know Him in this way does not know the true God. John 5:23: “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father.” This does not merely say that one can attribute the same honor to the Son that he gives to the Father, nor does it merely say that whoever insults the Son also blasphemes the Father. Instead, it affirms that the honor of the Father and of the Son is one and undivided in such a way that whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father. 1 John 2:23: “No one who denies the Son has the Father.” 1 John 5:11–12: “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son has not life.” I summarize: Whoever does not know the Son does not have Him. Therefore he does not have the Father; therefore he does not have the true God. For this reason the heathen are also called , “people without God” (Eph. 2:12); that is, with respect to the salutary and saving knowledge of the one true God, they are said to have not known God (Gal. 4:8), to have lived in “times of ignorance” (Acts 17:30), to have not heard about God (Rom. 10:14).

(2) The Savior teaches that one cannot obtain salvation without a knowledge of Christ as mediator. John 17:3: “This is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Acts 4:12: “There is salvation in no one else nor has any other name been given to men.”

(3) Salvation does not occur without Christ and outside of Christ. The benefits of Christ do not come to people except through the divinely instituted and appointed means, namely, through the Word of the Gospel and through the Sacraments added to it. Therefore without the means through which Christ’s benefits are offered according to God’s arrangement men do not attain salvation. Rom. 1:16: “The Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”

(4) The oracles of God, written like the rays of the sun, bear express witness that salvation comes to no one without faith in Christ. Mark 16:16: “Whoever does not believe will be condemned.” John 3:18: “He who does not believe is judged already,” etc. V. [36]: “He who does not believe the Son will not see life.” John 14:6: “No one comes to the Father except through Me” (that is, “as I am known from the Word of the Gospel and apprehended by true faith”). Heb. 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

(5) True faith reveals itself through good and God-pleasing works (Eph. 2:10; Gal. 5:6: James 2:14). Therefore where there are no good works pleasing to God, there true faith is also absent. Where no true faith exists, there no person is able to please God.

§ 83. The minor premise also stands. (1) The heathen indeed have known that God exists, that He is one, that He is just, that He avenges sin. But they could not have known by natural knowledge that He is three in person. In fact, they did not even use that natural knowledge correctly, but “they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for images resembling mortal man” (Rom. 1:23). Consequently, Luther says: “The heathen have known the divinity, but they did not distinguish it correctly, for they attributed it to false gods.” Lactantius, Instit., bk. 4, c. 4, p. 198:

Philosophers who worship the gods are similar to either disinherited sons or escaped slaves because the former are not looking for a father nor the latter a master. Just as the disinherited do not receive the inheritance of their father and just as escaped slaves do not go unpunished, so also the philosophers do not receive immortality, which is the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven—that is, the greatest good that they especially seek—nor will those who worship the gods escape the punishment of eternal death, which is the punishment of the true Lord against those who flee His majesty and name.

(2) They clearly lacked the knowledge of Christ as mediator. (3) The teaching of the Gospel was unknown to them. In fact, it is “the mystery kept secret for long ages but [that] is now disclosed in the New Testament through the writings of the prophets” (Rom. 16:25). (4) They lacked faith in Christ. Augustine, Contra Julian., bk. 4, c. 3: “Perhaps you Pelagians are going to provide the Fabricii, the Reguli, the Fabii, the Scipios, the Camilli, and others of their ilk with some place between damnation and the kingdom of heaven where they will not live in misery but in eternal blessedness. They did not please God, whom it is impossible to please without faith, which they had neither in their hearts nor in their works. I do not suppose that your destruction can rush forward to that shamelessness.”

(5) They did not perform works that pleased and delighted God. Rom. 14:23: “Whatever is not from faith is sin.” But the works of the heathen were not done from faith. Augustine, on Psalm 67: “There are no good works except those that follow faith, which precedes.” Many defects occur in the works of the heathen with respect to the efficient cause (because they were done by persons who were not in grace) and with respect to the material cause (because they were imperfect in many ways). They acknowledged their external sins from the law of nature, but they believed their lack of inner discipline and their impurity were something natural and completely without sin. Also, with their deeds they did not observe the natural law itself. Their knowledge of the law was stained and mangled, but even more stained and mangled was their obedience given to the law, and many more evil works were set beside one politically good work. Also with respect to the formal cause (because they were done without a knowledge of the true God and without faith in Christ, which covers up the imperfection and uncleanness of works and which creates that God-pleasing obedience) and with respect to the final cause (because they were not referred to the glory of God but to other ends). Lactantius, Instit., bk. 6, c. 9, p. 334: “Let us suppose that is possible for someone to acquire true virtues by a natural and inborn goodness. We have understood Cimon of Athens as such a person. He gave alms to the needy, invited the poor to his home, and clothed the naked. Yet because he lacked that one thing that is most important—the knowledge of God—those good works are already useless and empty.” For this reason, in the same book he compares the works of the heathen to “a body without a head.” Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 19, c. 25: “If virtues are not done to the glory of God, they are vices rather than virtues.” Contra Julian., bk. 4, c. 3: “Fabricius will be punished less than Catiline, not because the former was good but because the latter was more evil and because Fabricius was less wicked than Catiline not in having real virtues but in not going further astray from the real virtues.” Prosper of Aquitaine, Sent. 106: “All the life of the faithless is sin and nothing is good without the greatest good. For where the knowledge of the eternal and unchangeable will is lacking, there the virtue is false, even in the best of behavior.” Bernard, sermon 22 on Song of Songs: “What do you philosophers have to do with virtues, you who do not know Christ, the Virtue of God?” De amore Dei, c. 8, col. 1569:

The philosophers are convicted of not having loved righteousness because they did not love You from whom comes the source and origin of righteousness, in whom is the end and return of righteousness, and without whom all the righteousnesses of men are filthy rags. For they did not have the faith that works through love, though they had a pretended love. They did have some honorable behavior, but because this did not issue from the source of true righteousness and did not aim for the goal of true righteousness, the more hopelessly they strayed, the harder they ran outside the way. For the way is Christ, who said: “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Luther followed these men when he wrote: “[Although there is a] righteousness of man, as God honors it temporally with the finest gifts of this life, yet before God it is a worm, a wicked hypocrisy, and a great problem because God is rewarding the righteousness that He considers malicious iniquity.” Therefore we must justly praise the frank confession of Oecolampadius, who says in his Exegem. of Job, c. 10, p. 58: “I do not see with what confidence some give a hope of salvation to the heathen to whom God has not spoken, who have not accepted Christ, and who are burdened with many sins.” Just as the flute players were playing funeral dirges in the home of Jairus, but Christ alone was raising his daughter from the dead (Matt. 9:23), so also human knowledge and wisdom indeed give much useful advice and provide us with many useful things in this life, but in such a way that they are at the same time witnesses of our calamities. Theology alone shows us the way to heaven and causes us to live eternally.

§ 84. They make the exception: (I) “Those things that are said concerning the necessary knowledge of Christ, who was offered in the Gospel and who is to be apprehended by faith, must be taken in a limited respect for those who are in the Church.”

We respond. (a) The words of Scripture are general and, therefore, are not to be limited by private decision. (b) The apostles were sent to the heathen with the preaching of the Gospel for this purpose: to convert them “from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they might receive the forgiveness of sins and a place among the saints through faith, which is in Christ” (Acts 26:18). (c) We must consider the foundation of this necessity, which is explained in John 3:36: “He who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God continues to rest upon him.” Because of sin, all people “are by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) and “are dead in their sins” (v. 5). Hence they are subject to the wrath of God and eternal damnation. Therefore it is required that they be accepted into grace by God and obtain remission of sins. But now neither God’s grace nor the remission of sins is possible outside of Christ, who alone provides the all-sufficient satisfaction for sins. Therefore to obtain salvation, the knowledge of Christ and true faith in Him are necessary. (d) “To deny the Son,” “not to believe in the Son,” “not to have the Son”—this is common both to unbelievers present in the visible assembly of the Church, who reject the benefits of Christ, as well as to the heathen who live outside the Church, as is understood from the equal force of the phrases. (e) There is one and the same faith for all who are to be saved, one Church, one way to be justified (Rom. 4:1; Eph. 4:4; Heb. 13:8).

§ 85. (II) They say, “We must distinguish between the implicit and explicit knowledge of Christ. The heathen lacked the latter but not the former, and that could be enough for their salvation.” Andrada reasons as follows:

In divine providence, by which created things are regulated, the redemption of the human race through Christ is contained implicitly and secretly. Therefore the philosophers who had observed the general providence of God at the same time understood that God left nothing undone so that men would enjoy eternal salvation. The heathen have confessed that God is supremely good. It is the nature of the greatest good, however, to omit nothing that can cause men to be blessed and saved, because as long as they have been persuaded about God, it is by no means improper to judge that they have had some knowledge of Christ.

We respond. (1) The Holy Spirit removed all knowledge of Christ and of the Gospel without exception from the heathen who lack the light of the Word (Matt. 16:17; Rom. 16:25; Col. 1:26: 1 Cor. 2:7; etc.). (2) That implicit and confused knowledge is not enough for salvation; instead, there is required an explicit and distinct knowledge of Christ as He is revealed in the Gospel, as the foundations noted earlier prove. (3) If that implicit knowledge in the heathen would have been sufficient for salvation, why then did the apostles, who obeyed Christ’s command, preach the Gospel among the heathen at such great peril? Why are the heathen commanded to believe in Christ under peril of eternal damnation?

The arguments of those who attribute salvation to the heathen outside the Church.

§ 86. The greatest strength for their cause they place in the apostle’s words in Rom. 1:20, where he says with reference to natural knowledge that through it “they are without excuse.” (I) “But,” they say, “if that had not been sufficient for salvation, it could not have made the heathen inexcusable.” Some run back to the state of original integrity, because the natural knowledge of God in Adam was sufficient for salvation. Because nothing in and of itself departed from this knowledge through the fall of our first parents, though it was diminished and contaminated, therefore they believe that the apostle was speaking so highly in this sense and respect about natural knowledge. The context shows clearly, however, that the apostle is speaking about natural knowledge not as it once was but as it is now in the heathen themselves, because it still leaves them without excuse.

Therefore we say: From the fact that natural knowledge leaves the heathen without excuse, one cannot and should not conclude that it is sufficient for salvation of itself but that the heathen did not use it correctly, as the apostle himself declares in the following verse: “Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God nor give Him thanks, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.” God wanted a natural knowledge of Himself to be left in man for this reason: that by His leading them by the hand, they would be aroused to seek out a further revelation of God in the Church, which was always set up in a well-known place, and that they would do this in the sort of way we explained in our treatise On the Nature of God [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 3], § 11. They were so far from using the natural knowledge of God for this salutary purpose, however, that they strove to cut off completely the light still left in nature with serious sins, by keeping back the truth in unrighteousness, by exchanging His glory for images, by indulging in the vanity of rationalization, and by surrendering themselves completely to carnal lusts. Because of this abuse of natural knowledge, the apostle is correct in stating that, through it, the heathen have been left without excuse, despite the fact that it is of itself not at all sufficient for salvation.

(II) They urge that “what is known of God” has been revealed to the heathen (Rom. 1:19). Yet the apostle himself has clarified those indefinite words when in the same place he restricts it to a knowledge of His “eternal power and deity.”

(III) In John 4:38 Christ says concerning the apostles: “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor.” Therefore “through the reasonings of the philosophers, the heathen were prepared for the ministry of the apostles,” according to Zwingli and Peucer. We respond. We take the workers here to mean the prophets, not the philosophers, as Calvin himself acknowledges. For they published the promises of Christ’s coming and, to stay with Christ’s metaphor, they cleared the field of the Lord that was full of idolatrous tares on all sides with the preaching of the Law as a sort of plow by which they cut into the hearts of people and sowed in the Church the first seeds of the Gospel’s promises. However, they did not see the ripening of this crop, that is, the fulfillment of the prophecies and the preaching of the Gospel among the heathen, which was reserved for the apostles, because they all outlined with the coverings of obscure language that Christ would come long after.

§ 87. (IV) “There is no harshness nor enormity more savage than to deliver up people to eternal torments because they lacked that faith which they were able in no way to attain” (Andrada and Pucci).

We respond. (1) In our first parents, all men were given the image of God, to which image pertains the salutary light of the knowledge of God in the mind. But because our first parents deprived themselves and their children of this by their own willing fault, they should not accuse God of injustice. Augustine, epistle 105, to Sixtus: “No ignorance is free of condemnation, but through this everyone is inexcusable who sins out of ignorance, either by original sin or by adding to it of his own volition, whether he knows it or not, whether he judges it or not, because the ignorance in those who did not wish to understand is undoubtedly a sin. Moreover, there is a penalty of sin in those who were unable to understand. Therefore in both cases there is no just excuse but just condemnation.”

(2) God wanted the imperfection of natural knowledge to be pondered through the knowledge revealed in His Word, which God communicated three different times to all people on earth: to Adam after the fall, to Noah and his children after the flood, to all people in the world at the time of the apostles. But if any of the heathen lacked that revealed knowledge, without which natural knowledge is not sufficient for salvation, they should recognize this as the fault of their forefathers and not accuse the mercy of God.

(3) On the contrary, in fact, God did not leave Himself without a witness in the midst of the heathen but revealed Himself through the law of nature, through the voice of His creation, through the great assembly of His Church. Hence, because with nature as teacher and leader the heathen could know that God exists and must be honored with religious worship, they ought to have inquired more deeply as to the true means of worshiping God revealed in the Church that God established in a well-known place and ennobled with many miracles, whose report was spread among the heathen to invite (as with a public crier) everyone to the Church and thus to use that natural knowledge. (See our commonplace On Election and Reprobation [Commonplace X], § 135.)

The use of natural knowledge.

§ 88. The practical use of natural knowledge can be considered in two ways: with respect to the heathen outside the Church and with respect to those who are in the Church. Mr. Chemnitz establishes three purposes of natural knowledge in the heathen in his Loci, part 1, p. 30: (1) With respect to themselves, so that they seek out God (Acts 17:27). (2) With respect to the neighbor, so that people might have an external discipline and live in peace with their neighbors. If they were without that natural knowledge and innate distinction of good and evil, men would oppress one another like animals. (3) With respect to God, that they might be left without excuse “because, though they knew God, they did not glorify Him” (Rom. 1:20). This purpose, however, is accidental, so that the phrase is explained with the words , and the result, rather than the proper and principal purpose of natural knowledge, is stated as being indicated. You see, because the heathen have not used their natural knowledge correctly, for the purpose for which God intended it to be left in the human mind, therefore they finally were left without excuse through their natural knowledge. This is the explanation the apostle gives (Rom. 1:21; 2:10).

With respect to us who are in the Church and who rejoice in the knowledge revealed in the Word, the true, salutary use of natural knowledge consists in this: that we not consider it as an indifferent matter but cultivate it carefully and meanwhile recognize its imperfection by comparing it with revealed knowledge and determine that it should be subordinated to revealed knowledge. Because inherent knowledge contains the book of conscience and because acquired knowledge must be learned from the book of nature, therefore let us consider carefully each book that has been entrusted to us. Conscience is the private witness of our words and deeds and our individual companion. How wretched we are if we harm this witness and companion! Bernard, De int. dom., c. 28: “It is the book in which all our words and deeds are written truthfully. All other books were invented to correct this book.” How wretched we are if we forget that book! In his Liber praeceptorum, Nilus says: “Use your conscience as a lamp in all your actions, for it will show you those actions in life that are good and those that are evil.” How wretched we are if we try to extinguish this light! Conscience is a genuine teacher. Whoever listens to it remains free of the hindrance of anxiety. How wretched we are if we refuse to offer our ears to this teacher! Conscience is the face of the soul. Just as a pretty face is pleasing in the sight of people, so also a clean conscience is attractive in God’s sight. Bernard, De inter. domo, c. 22, col. 1210: “A good conscience is a title of religion, the temple of Solomon, a field of blessing, a garden of delights, a golden couch, the joy of angels, the ark of the covenant, the king’s treasure, the court of God, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, a book signed and closed to be opened on Judgment Day.” (See our Pract. aphor., under the title “Conscientia.”)

Not only should we daily examine the internal book of conscience, but we also should daily open the external book of nature, the “school of spiritual words and classroom of the knowledge of God,” as Basil calls it (Homily 11, Hexaëm.). Because God completed all His work in six days and rested on the seventh (Gen. 2:[2]), therefore on each of the six days of the week we should contemplate with our mind’s eye every miracle [] of those six days so that our soul may repose in God, our Creator, on the seventh day, the day of rest. Clement of Alexandria says: “The entire universe is nothing other than a great book in which the knowledge of God is written, not in dead but in living letters. It has three pages: sky, earth, and sea.” Anthony the Hermit, as quoted in Socrates (Hist., bk. 4, c. 23) and Nicephorus (bk. 11, c. 34): “My book is the nature of things that have come into being, and it is at hand when I want to read the words of God.” Bernard used to say: “Sometimes I had no other teachers but the oaks and beeches in the woods.” In nature there are as many miracles of the power of God, as many evidences of His goodness, as much proof of His wisdom as there are species of things in the world, in fact, as there are individuals of those species.

10 Cf. Summa theologica, part 1, q. 2, art. 1.

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