The Natural World Has God’s Name Written All Over It

The whole of created reality, including therefore the fields of research with which the various sciences deal, reveals the same God of which Scripture speaks. The very essence of created reality is its revelational character. Scientists deal with that which has the imprint of God’s face upon it.

Created reality may be compared to a great estate. The owner has his name plainly and indelibly written at unavoidable places. How then would it be possible for some stranger to enter this estate, make researches in it, and then fairly say that in these researches he need not and cannot be confronted with the question of ownership?

Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics (P&R, 2004), 125.

Van Til’s point and illustration are in full agreement with Psalm 19:1-6 which remind us that every day the natural world is shouting, recounting, bubbling forth and advertising (the basic meanings of the Hebrew verbs in v. 1-2) the glory of God. As Van Til further says, “man is without excuse if he does not discover God in nature.” By this he does not mean that nature is God or that any god can be found in nature. Rather, he means that everything in creation is essentially revelational. And that revelation is clear. This means that the Christian holds to the perspicuity (clear and understandable nature) of both natural revelation and biblical revelation. This is exactly Paul’s point in Romans 1:18-20. The end result is that man is without excuse for his unbelief. No one will be able to say, as atheist Bertrand Russell once claimed he would say if he saw God after death, “Not enough evidence God, not enough evidence!”