Romans 1:21

Vv. 21. “ Seeing that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave Him thanks; but were struck with vanity in their reasonings, and their foolish heart was darkened. ”

The because that bears on the idea of inexcusableness, which closes Romans 1:20, and reproduces the feeling of indignation which had dictated the ἐν ἀδικίᾳ, hurtfully and maliciously, of Romans 1:18: “ Yes, inexcusable, because of the fact that”...How can the apostle say of the Gentiles that they knew God? Is it a simple possibility to which he is referring! The words do not allow this idea. Romans 1:19 declared that the light was really put within them. Paganism itself is the proof that the human mind had really conceived the notion of God; for this notion appears at the root of all the varied forms of paganism. Only this is what happened: the revelation did not pass from the passive to the active form. Man confined himself to receiving it. He did not set himself to grasp it and to develop it spontaneously. He would have been thus raised from light to light; it would have been that way of knowing God by wisdom of which Paul speaks, 1 Corinthians 1:21. Instead of opening himself to the action of the light, man withdrew from it his heart and will; instead of developing the truth, he quenched it. No doubt acts of worship and thanksgiving addressed to the gods were not wanting in paganism; but it is not without meaning that the apostle takes care to put the words in front: as God. The task of the heart and understanding would have been to draw from the contemplation of the work the distinct view of the divine worker, then, in the way of adoration, to invest this sublime being with all the perfections which He displayed in His creation. Such a course would have been to glorify God as God. For the highest task of the understanding is to assert God freely, as He asserts Himself in His revelation. But if this act of reason failed, the heart at least had another task to fulfil: to give thanks. Does not a child even say thanks to its benefactor? This homage failed like the other. The word ἤ, or, must be understood here, as it often is, in the sense of: or at least. The words as God also depend logically on were thankful, which we have not been able to express in French [nor in English].

Now man could not remain stationary. Not walking forwards in the way of active religion, he could only stray into a false path, that of impiety, spoken of Romans 1:18. Having neglected to set God before it as the supreme object of its activity, the understanding was reduced to work in vacuo; it was in some sort made futile (ἐματαιώθησαν); it peopled the universe with fictions and chimeras. So Paul designates the vain creations of mythology. The term ἐματαιώθησαν, were struck with vanity, evidently alludes to μάταια, vain things, which was the name given by the Jews to idols (comp. Acts 14:15; Leviticus 17:7; Jeremiah 2:5; 2 Kings 17:15). The term διαλογισμοί, reasonings, is always taken by the writers of the New Testament in an unfavorable sense; it denotes the unregulated activity of the νοῦς, understanding, in the service of a corrupt heart. The corruption of the heart is mentioned in the following words: it went side by side with the errors of reason, of which it is at once the cause and the effect. The heart, καρδία, is in the New Testament as in the Old (leb), the central seat of personal life, what we call feeling (sentiment), that inner power which determines at once the activity of the understanding and the direction of the will. Destitute of its true object, through its refusal to be thankful to God as God, the heart of man is filled with inspirations of darkness; these are the guilty lusts inspired by the egoistic love of the creature and self. The epithet ἀσύνετος, without understanding, is often explained as anticipating what the heart was to become in this course: “in such a way as to become foolish.” But was there not already something senseless in the ingratitude described in Romans 1:21 ? Thus the want of understanding existed from the beginning. In the form of the first aorist passive ἐσκοτίσθη, was darkened (as well as in the preceding aorist ἐματαιώθησαν), there is expressed the conviction of a divine dispensation, though still under the form of a natural law, whose penal application has fallen on them.

To this first stage, which is rather of an inward kind, there has succeeded a second and more external one.