Do atheists have an excuse?

I hold that there is vincible ignorance on various matters. But I deny that atheists are vincibly ignorant. Some might be, but not qua atheists. Whether or not God exists, one is not morally culpable for denying the existence of God. Nor do I think one is morally culpable if one doubts the existence of God.

Bill acknowledges that his exculpation of the professing atheist “puts me at odds with St. Paul, at least on one interpretation of what he is saying at Romans 1: 18-20.”

I’ll say! As Bill wrote in the post he linked to: “There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.”

For Bill’s argument to work, that interpretation of Romans 1:18-20—God infallibly communicates His existence, power, and divinity to all people and they are all responsible for having received that communication—would have to fall outside that “tradition.”

God’s Word is the light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world (John 1:9). There are no exceptions for professing atheists.

My reason for consistently modifying “atheists” by “professing” should be clear: if all people know God, then there are no real atheists, though there some who, suppressing what they know, profess atheism.

Professing atheist Bertrand Russell said he’d tell God, post mortem, “Not enough evidence!”[1] Does Bill take at face value Russell’s claim of a want of evidence? If so, I fail to see how doing so is consistent with the “Judeo-Christian tradition” of theology.

God’s Word—in any sense you care to take it—never returns to Him void; it accomplishes the purpose He sets for it (Isaiah 55:11), including putting people under responsibility to Him, according to the light they have. “But in every nation he that fears him [God], and works righteousness, is accepted with him,” declared Peter to Cornelius the Roman centurion and his household before identifying them with Christ (Acts 10:35).

Noah was another who had feared God and worked righteousness. He lived prior to any “Judeo-Christian tradition,” yet he found grace in the eyes of God (Genesis 6:8), unlike his neighbors who suppressed the light they had.

If God infallibly communicates His deity and power to people, as Paul says He does, and if the professing atheist suppresses that communication, then “invincible ignorance” is  irrelevant as a defense—pre or post mortem. Suppressing knowledge is different from failing to acquire knowledge one may be reasonably expected to acquire—and just as morally culpable.

Bill may believe that God is all-powerful, but he apparently doesn’t believe that omnipotence includes the ability to communicate infallibly. What theological “tradition” shares that unbelief? Certainly not the one Bill invokes. (Perhaps Whiteheadian process theism?)

In commissioning His disciples, Jesus declared that “he who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me” (Luke 10:16). Peter was one of them. And just as when we read the Scriptures we hear God, so when we “hear” Peter, we hear Christ. Now that same Peter regarded the letters of Paul as Scripture (2 Peter 3:16).

One may reject what Paul said about God’s infallible and morally binding communication of His deity and power and still regard oneself as a “theist.” But doing so puts one outside the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” if by that one means the tradition that takes the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as God-breathed (theopneustos; 2 Timothy 3:16).

That “tradition” places great value on human assent to what “the supreme being” has revealed. Faith is taking God at His Word and acting (and thinking) accordingly. It’s a necessary condition of pleasing Him (Hebrews 11:6). A word from God gives one something to have faith in. Philosophical “theism” rarely gets around to that issue.

A word from the Son of God to Peter was not a word to the centurion whose slave was at death’s door. Neither of those words was the word He gave to the Syrophoenician (i.e., non-Israelite) woman who sought healing for her demon-possessed daughter.

At Jesus’ word Peter cast down his net on the right side, and the haul of fish nearly sank his boat (John 21:6-8). At Jesus’ word the centurion returned home to see his slave healed without Jesus’ having to come under his roof (Matthew 8:8). At first, the word the Syrophonecian woman got from Jesus was that it wasn’t right to take food meant for the children of Abraham and give it to the dogs.

But then she took the dog’s place and accepted the dog’s portion: “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs”(Mark 7:28). And then she got the word she needed.

Do we have a word from God? Yes; actually, many words: “these [signs and wonder that Jesus performed] are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life through his name” (John 20:31). The intended audience are all who read John’s Gospel. The latter is the salvation-bringing message of God which, as the Apostle Paul declared, became freely available to the nations (Acts 28:28). Prior to that declaration the Word had to come from a divinely authorized herald or commissioned one (apostolos). The herald came with signs following, and it was to the Jew first.

Today, regardless of one’s relationship to Abraham, one has the opportunity to belong to the blessed company of those who, having not seen, yet believe (John 20:29).

Or one can make excuses for professing atheists.