Week 43 Romans 1
Paul says that God’s invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. Which I take to mean that if I look at what someone has produced (in this case God) then I can learn something about the producer himself (God).
For Paul the material world (and maybe the sum-total of all of time & space & matter & energy) is a gigantic deposit of trackable things that serve two purposes.
Purpose #1 is that the world does whatever physical or mechanical functions it regularly does (for instance the sun comes up in the morning).
Purpose #2 is the added value objective of tipping people off about the maker who’s in-back-of the mechanics.
Paul realizes that there are people who’ve had no exposure at all to prophecy or miracles or the bible or any authorized religious inputs. But what they do have is the universe – a big and inescapable environment that’s accessible to everyone. When it comes to rudimentary ideas I don’t need the Westminster Cathedral if I’ve got the world.
There’s likely millions of people in the modern world who think of the universe exclusively in terms of Purpose #1 – a kind of functional mish-mash of biological & non-biological materials and interactions that have developed by happenstance. But Paul is pretty clear that there’s extra intelligence to be gleaned when I observe the material world.
Note: quote from Romans 1:20 (CSB)