The NA thesis

Dr. Reppert continues his critique of Van Til.

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Rom 1:18-21 and the NA thesis

This is the scripture passage used to defend the claim that there are no atheists.

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/02/rom-118-21-and-na-thesis.html#comments

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I don’t know to whom this reply is directed. As I’ve already explained, the NA thesis is prized on a much broader database than Rom 1 alone.

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Some key questions about this passage:
1) The passage does not say that there are no atheists. That result would have be inferred exegetically. I've never heard it claimed that exegesis by human beings possesses inerrancy.

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The relevance of this comment eludes me. A good deal of exegetical and systematic depends on logical inference. Inference is a basic component of theological method. So what? Why should inerrant exegesis be a precondition of invoking Rom 1 to establish the NA thesis?

How is this any different than exegeting C. S. Lewis?

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2) Is this about the human race individually or collectively? It seems to me to be more defensible as a claim about the human race collectively than it is about each person individually.

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In context, it’s about the unregenerate.

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3) If we are saying that this is true of individuals, what is says is that every individual at one point in their life knew God. It does not follow from that they these persons now know God. There is such a thing as forgetting.

4)We need an analysis of what the term "knew" means in the context of the passage. Does it mean that at some point in their life they formed the belief that God exists? Or that they had an awareness of something which, had they followed up on it, would have resulted in the belief that God exists?

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The thrust of 1:21 as well as v25 is that they reject what they know to be true. The rejection of the true God is concomitant with the knowledge of the true God.

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5) The awareness of God is presumably to be found in the things God has made. From this it would seem that the passage is implying that the design argument is obviously a good one.

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I agree.

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From this I conclude that this passage in Romans falls far short of supporting the claim that there are no atheists. Even if all atheists are suppressing the truth, it is still a mistake to say that they really believe that God exists.

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I’ve just shown how his conclusion fails to follow from the supporting arguments.

For a full-bore treatment of this issue, see:

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/NTeSources/NTArticles/GTJ-NT/Turner-Rom1-GTJ-81.htm