Injustice that Suppresses Truth

Reformed theologians and epistemologists tend to psychologize Romans 1:18-32. God’s character and demands are evident in the creation, but human beings, while knowing God, suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Sinners become double-minded, both knowing God and not-knowing, both aware of the truth but denying the truth, and becoming self-deceived in the process.

I think that’s there in Romans, but I’m not certain that it’s the main thrust of the passage. Theodore Jennings (Transforming Atonement, 42) points out that “unrighteousness” translates adikia, “injustice,” and further suggests that the unjust suppression that Paul is talking about isn’t psychological but socio-political, not private but public.

That makes for a pretty smooth, comprehensible passage: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the injustice and wickedness of men, who suppress the truth in their injustice.” The truth suppressed is not truth in our heads, but, perhaps, the truth of truth-tellers, who are refused an audience by unjust powers. It’s not talking about complicated psychological dynamics, significant as those may be. It’s talking about the common fact that truth-tellers get silenced.

“Because what is known about God is evident within [or among] them, because God made it plain.” Nothing requires this to be a psychological or epistemological statement. In the context of a speech about the (apparently public) revelation of wrath and the unjust, cruel suppression of the truth, it can simply be a statement about the state of public knowledge. God’s character is known, not least in the fact that He acts in wrath toward injustice.

Compressing the next few verses: From creation, God’s eternal power and divine nature have been seen in things made, so that all are without excuse, yet instead of honoring God and giving Him thanks, human beings speculate foolishly, become fools, and worship idols. Again, there is nothing narrowly epistemological here; it is about the public human response to the knowledge of God revealed in creation. Idolatry isn’t always a public institution, and wasn’t always public in the ancient world, but the clearest manifestation of idolatry (as Paul knew from his trip to Athens) is in the corner shrines that dotted ancient cities.

From here, Paul moves to describe how wrath operates: In His wrath, God “turns over” idolaters to their sin, and to worse sins. He removes restrains and lets them loose along their own path.

Again, I don’t think that the epistemological inferences from Romans 1 are wrong. But they should be integrated with a socio-political reading of the passage, in order to arrive at a Pauline sociology of knowledge.