Romans 1:20Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

This very thing, and even more than this, Paul expressed in the following words: "For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse."

Of course, God did not create the world for this purpose, although this is what happened. He set this lesson before men not to deprive them of defense, but so that they might know Him.

Yet by proving ungrateful, men deprived themselves of every defense. Then, showing how the Gentiles were deprived of justification, the Apostle says: Rom 1:21. "Because, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks."

These are goodness, wisdom, power, divinity, or majesty. Paul calls this "His invisible things," though through consideration of visible creatures they are seen.

Thus the Apostle showed the Gentiles what can be known about God, that is, everything concerning His essence which is invisible to the bodily eyes, but can be known by the mind from the good order of creation.

Some understand the invisible things here as angels. In my opinion, this understanding is incorrect. One of the Fathers said that the eternal power is the Son, and the Godhead is the Holy Spirit.

"So that they are without excuse." This is how it turned out in fact. God did not create the world so that they would be without excuse, but this is what happened in fact.

Notice this particular feature of Scripture, and do not criticize it. In many places it contains expressions whose explanation requires that we seek the cause mentioned in it from experience.

Thus David says: "And I have done evil before Thy eyes, so that Thou art justified in Thy sentence" (Ps 50:6). This expression seems strange, but it is not so.

It says the following: having been benefited by Thee, O Lord, beyond all expectation, I sinned before Thee. From this it follows that if Thou bringest Thy claims against me in judgment, Thou wilt prevail.

Thus God is justified by our actions when we prove ungrateful to Him for the benefits received from Him and have nothing by which to excuse ourselves.

Therefore the Gentiles have no excuse. Having known God from creation, they did not glorify Him as they ought, but gave to idols the worship due to Him.

Why, then, as he says, are they without excuse? Is it not because of the usual excuse to which human pride resorts: "If I had known, I would have done it," that is, "I did not do it because I did not know"?

Such an excuse is taken away from them when a commandment exists, or when clear knowledge is given of how to avoid sin.

In reality it is not so. The Apostle did not say, “God Himself is power,” but “His power.” It is evident to everyone that the expression “His” does not mean “He,” nor does it signify something alien, but rather something properly belonging to Him.

Read these sayings in context and turn to the Lord: “The Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:17). Then you will see that the Son is meant here.

Having mentioned creation, the Apostle accordingly writes of the power of the Creator in creation, that is, of the Word of God, through whom “all things were made” (Jn 1:3).

If creation by itself alone, apart from the Son, is sufficient to bring one to the knowledge of God, then take care lest you fall by thinking that creation was brought into being without the Son. But if creation was brought into being by the Son, and “all things consist in Him” (Col 1:17), then whoever looks rightly at creation necessarily perceives the Word that created it.

Through the Word he begins to understand the Father also. If, according to the Savior’s saying, “No one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Mt 11:27), and if, when Philip asked. “Show us the Father,” the Lord did not say, “Look at creation,” but, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:8-9), then Paul rightly accuses the Gentiles.

When they considered the harmony and order in creation, they did not infer the Creator of creation, the Word. For creatures proclaim their Creator, so that through them men might understand the true God and cease serving creatures.

The Apostle, giving us to understand the Son, said, “His eternal power and Godhead.” The saints, saying, “He who is before the ages” (Ps 54:20), and “through whom He made the ages” (Heb 1:2), likewise proclaim the everlasting being and eternity of the Son. By this they also signify that He is God.

Isaiah says, “The eternal God, who formed the ends of the earth” (Is 40:28). Susanna said, “O eternal God” (Dan 13:42). Baruch wrote, “I will cry to the Eternal One in my days” (Bar 4:20). A little later he says, “For I hoped in the Eternal One for your salvation, and joy came to me from the Holy One” (Bar 4:22).

Since, when writing to the Hebrews, the Apostle says, “who, being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His hypostasis” (Heb 1:3), and David sings in the eighty-ninth psalm. “Let the brightness of the Lord be upon us” (Ps 89:17), and “in Your light we shall see light” (Ps 35:10), who will be so senseless as to doubt the eternal being of the Son?

When has anyone seen light without the brightness of its radiance, so that he could say of the Son, “There was when He was not,” or, “He was not before He was begotten”?

What is said to the Son in the 144th psalm, “Your kingdom is a kingdom of all ages” (Ps 144:13), permits no one to imagine even the smallest duration in which the Word did not exist.

If every duration is measured by ages, and the Word is King and Creator of all ages, then, since there is not even the smallest duration before the Word, it is necessary to call this madness when they say, “There was when the Eternal One was not,” and, “The Son is from non-being.”

Since the Lord Himself says, “I am the truth” (Jn 14:6), and does not say, “I became the truth,” but “I am” always, and again says, “I am the shepherd” (Jn 10:14), “I am the light” (Jn 8:12), and again. “You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for I am” (Jn 13:13), who, hearing God, the Wisdom of the Father and the Word of the Father, speak thus of Himself, will still doubt the truth?

Who will not immediately believe that by the word “I am” is signified the Son’s eternal, pre-eternal, and beginningless being?

Therefore the divine Apostle did not say "His invisible thing," but "His invisible things": His creation, Providence, righteous judgment concerning each thing, and divine economy of every kind.

Thus those who have so many teachers, and have received no benefit from so many lessons, are unworthy of excuse.

For this reason the Apostle added: "so that they are without excuse." The deeds themselves almost cry out that they have no justification for deliverance from the evils that threaten them.

Together with themselves, in each creature, they reveal the purpose of divine Providence. Therefore "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands" (Ps 18:2).

His eternal power and Godhead are the Providence of God, which embraces all beings, and His deifying action toward those under His care.

Or perhaps the "invisible things of God" are nothing other than His eternal power and Godhead, which have as their loud heralds the majestic splendors of the created world.

For, starting from beings, we believe that the truly existing God exists. Starting from the essential distinction among the kinds of beings, we are instructed concerning His Wisdom, innate to Him according to essence, which underlies and embraces beings.

Again, starting from the essential movement of the kinds of beings, we know His Life, innate to Him according to essence, which also underlies and fills beings.

In this way, on the basis of wise contemplation of creation, we comprehend the teaching concerning the Holy Trinity, that is, concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

For the Word, being consubstantial, is the eternal Power of God. The consubstantial Holy Spirit is the eternal Godhead.

Therefore accursed are those who have not learned, from the contemplation of beings, to apprehend their Cause and the natural properties of this Cause, that is, the Power and the Godhead.

For creation cries out by its works and, as it were, proclaims to those who possess spiritual hearing its own Cause, hymned as Trinity.

This is God the Father, and His ineffable Power and Godhead, that is, the Only-begotten Word and the Holy Spirit.

This is "the invisible things of God," contemplated intellectually from the creation of the world.

In God everything is invisible: His divine essence and His divine properties as they are, not only for us, but also for the higher spirits. The very actions of God are invisible.

If you had been present at the moment of the creation of the world and had watched how everything came to be, you would have seen only creatures appearing one after another on the stage of being. You could not have seen the manner of this appearance.

The Prophet says, "He spoke, and they came to be." Yet this "spoke" is not audible to anyone's hearing. It is the inner determination of the almighty will of God concerning the being of a creature, and the creature appeared.

You would have seen this appearance, but you would neither have seen nor heard the divine determination itself.

Even now God, who created the world, upholds it by His power, and it stands. We see that it stands, but the all-sustaining power of God is invisible to the eye. Yet all this is invisible only to the eye. It cannot be invisible to the mind unless the mind has become foolish.

God has clearly imprinted upon His creation the trace of His being, of His divine properties, and of His everlasting power. Only do not close the eyes of the mind, and do not squint with them, and you will see.

As a trace left in the snow clearly shows who passed by, a man or a beast, so the trace of God is clearly imprinted upon creation. This is so whether you survey it as a whole or examine each creature separately.

Withdraw mentally from our solar system and look how these enormous bodies move around the sun, sometimes singly, sometimes with satellites running around them. Look further, how the sun itself has its own motion. Is it not around its own sun, and in company with many suns like itself?

Look whether their common sun too has its own sun, around which it moves in a host of similar suns. Continue this way until, if you can see so far, you finally behold the one central sun common to all.

Then stand and survey all this at once, mentally passing from east to west, from north to south, from the highest point to the lowest. On this immeasurable expanse, whose limits thought cannot define although they exist, you will see bodies countless in multitude.

Having formed choirs, they move in diverse directions, some around others, crossing their paths now vertically, now at an angle. They go now side by side, now across, now opposite one another. Yet they do not hinder one another or disturb one another's paths, but move in harmonious combinations and relations.

Having seen all this, can you restrain yourself from crying out with the Prophet: "Wonderful are Thy works, O Lord, and my soul knows it well. I will confess Thee, for Thou art wondrous" (cf. Ps 138:14)?

Even the Angels could not restrain themselves from hymns of praise to the Creator of all when this enormous, most complex, wisely ordered machine was first set in motion. It stands immovably and lives in movement within itself. God Himself testified of them when He said in Job: "When the stars were made, all My Angels praised Me with a great voice" (cf. Job 38:7).

The holy prophet David also bore away an overwhelming impression from such contemplation and confessed: "O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is Thy name in all the earth, for Thy majesty is lifted above the heavens. When I behold the heavens, the works of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast established, what is man, that Thou rememberest him, or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" (cf. Ps 8:2, 4-5).

After this weak sketch, everyone can understand how the mind, thinking about created things, cannot fail to behold the everlasting power of God as clearly as one sees with bodily eyes an object placed before him.

The first impression from contemplation of the world is an irresistible awareness and confession of God's boundless omnipotence. By it He created such an immeasurable world by a single word. He upholds it by His single will and leads it to its appointed end by a single nod of His will.

Examine created things part by part, and you will see clearly imprinted everywhere the incomprehensible wisdom of God and His boundless goodness. This is what the Apostle signifies by the word "Godhead."

More directly, this signifies the whole totality of the properties of the Godhead. Yet among them wisdom and goodness are most evident to us: wisdom in the ordering of every being, and goodness in surrounding it with everything necessary for well-being.

There is no man who has not seen and confessed this. Take a snowflake, take a flower, take the wing of an insect, take the eye, and begin to examine how all this is arranged. You will not cease to marvel at the wisdom of this ordering.

Look further. A blade of grass is fixed to the earth and cannot move, yet it finds what it needs by its root in the earth and by its leaves in the air, and it lives. A tiny insect is born on a leaf and dies on a leaf, yet there it finds everything necessary for its life.

Animals are born as weak young, yet an irresistible concern for them has been placed in their mothers. It gives them no rest until they have raised their offspring. Who surrounded creatures with such care?

And as for man, how much care for himself does he encounter, proceeding from he knows not where? What need is there even to speak of it? Is not all this, and what is like it, a clear mirror of the boundless goodness of God?

Not only God's power and Godhead are visible in the works of God, but also His everlasting existence. That is, when all things are from Him, He Himself is from no one. He is the foundation of all.

Without Him everything hangs over an all-devouring abyss. The common consciousness and feeling directly confess God's everlasting existence, that He exists of Himself and cannot not exist. The rational mind, seeking a foundation for everything, comes to rest only when it reaches conviction in God's everlasting existence.

The sound part of mankind has always rested, and will rest, upon this conviction and belief. Only those diseased in mind lose it. In its place they weave propositions whose absurdities, and whose disproportion to the matter they are woven to explain, are astonishing.

Yet deviations of this kind from the common norm of belief and religious consciousness can in no way shake the truth expressed by that norm.

Thus everywhere the invisible things of God are visible, "that is, His creative work, providence, righteous judgment concerning each thing, and every kind of divine economy. Therefore those who have such strict teachers and have drawn no benefit from so many lessons are unworthy of excuse.

"For the Apostle also added this: 'so that they are without excuse.' For the works themselves almost cry aloud that such people have no justification by which to be delivered from the evils threatening them" (blessed Theodoret).

God surrounded people with such a multitude of testimonies concerning Himself so that they could not fail to know Him and understand. If after this there are people who do not understand Him, who is at fault? No one but themselves.

God did everything for this. They did not understand through their own fault, and they can present nothing in their own justification.

In the words "so that they are without excuse," the Apostle does not mean that God deliberately arranged everything to subject people to inexcusable condemnation. On the contrary, his thought is that God arranged everything so that people could not fail to know and understand Him, and so avoid every condemnation.

The Apostle depicts the fullness of God's guidance toward knowledge of Him. Thus, if someone does not know Him after this, he cannot lay the blame for it on God. He himself is guilty, and guilty without excuse.

"The world was not created by God for this purpose, that is, to make them without excuse, although this also happened. This lesson, the knowledge of God from creation, was set before people not to deprive them of excuse, but so that they might know God. Having become ungrateful, they deprived themselves of every excuse.

"Imagine that someone entrusted with the king's treasury and commanded to spend it for the king's glory spends it on prostitutes and sorcerers, supporting them with the king's money. As an offender against the king's majesty, he will suffer punishment.

"So also the Gentiles, who received knowledge of God and of His glory, but attributed it to idols, acted against the knowledge communicated to them. They did not use it as they should have" (Chrysostom).

Who then will not consider them without excuse?