4 、罪恶感 一般性启示的果效GUILT-THE EFFECT OF GENERAL REVELATION
《简明神学》Concise Theology: A Guide to
Historic Christian Beliefs，巴刻（J. I. Packer）著/張麟至译，更新传道会，2007年。
GUILT
THE EFFECT OF GENERAL
REVELATION
...what
may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
ROMANS 1:19
Scripture
assumes, and experience confirms, that human beings are naturally inclined to
some form of religion, yet they fail to worship their Creator, whose general
revelation of himself makes him universally known. Both theoretical atheism and
moral monotheism are natural to no one: atheism is always a reaction against a
pre-existing belief in God or gods, and moral monotheism has only ever appeared
in the wake of special revelation.
Scripture
explains this state of affairs by telling us that sinful egoism and aversion to
our Creator’s claims drive humankind into idolatry, which means transferring
worship and homage to some power or object other than God the Creator (Isa.
44:9-20; Rom. 1:21-23; Col. 3:5). In this way, apostate humans “suppress the
truth” and have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to
look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Rom. 1:18, 23). They
smother and quench, as far as they can, the awareness that general revelation
gives them of the transcendent Creator-Judge, and attach their ineradicable
sense of deity to unworthy objects. This in turn leads to drastic moral
decline, with consequent misery, as a first manifestation of God’s wrath
against human apostasy (Rom. 1:18, 24-32).
Nowadays
in the West people idolize and, in effect, worship secular objects such as the
firm, the family, football, and pleasant feelings of various kinds. But moral
decline still results, just as it did when pagans worshipped literal idols in
Bible times.
Human
beings cannot entirely suppress their sense of God and his present and future
judgment; God himself will not let them do that. Some sense of right and wrong,
as well as of being accountable to a holy divine Judge, always remains. In our
fallen world all whose minds are not in some way impaired have a conscience
that at some points directs them and from time to time condemns them, telling
them that they ought to suffer for wrongs they have done (Rom. 2:14ff.); and
when conscience speaks in these terms it is in truth the voice of God.
Fallen
humankind is in one sense ignorant of God, since what people like to believe,
and do in fact believe, about the objects of their worship falsifies and
distorts the revelation of God they cannot escape. In another sense, however,
all human beings remain aware of God, guiltily, with uncomfortable inklings of
coming judgment that they wish they did not have. Only the gospel of Christ can
speak peace to this distressful aspect of the human condition.