Paul’s striking claim in Romans 1:32 serves as a pivotal summary and a profound paradox within his argument: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”¹Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV). This verse compels theological inquiry: How can human beings possess a clear awareness of God’s moral will and yet persist not only in violating it but also in celebrating its transgression? Paul’s statement presses into the heart of a tension that runs throughout Romans 1:18–32—a tension between divine revelation and human suppression, between knowing and resisting, and ultimately between moral accountability and entrenched rebellion.

Traditional Reformed treatments of the noetic effects of sin have rightly emphasized how the fall has devastated human cognition. From John Calvin’s sober diagnosis of the mind as both illumined and “smothered” by sin to Abraham Kuyper’s insight that all human faculties are shaped by spiritual orientation, this tradition has underscored the intellectual consequences of moral corruption. In the twentieth century, Alvin Plantinga furthered the discussion by proposing that belief in God can be properly basic, rooted in a divinely implanted sensus divinitatis—a cognitive faculty nevertheless impaired by sin. Each of these contributions remains invaluable, particularly in defending the rationality of theistic belief and affirming the epistemic consequences of the fall.

Yet such accounts often frame unbelief as primarily a matter of impaired reasoning—a malfunction of the intellect to draw right conclusions from creation or retain sound theological knowledge. While intellectually coherent, this approach risks reducing Paul’s anthropology to a question of cognitive capacity, potentially overlooking the deeply moral and affective character of human resistance. Paul does not merely lament flawed reasoning; he exposes a deeper disorder—one in which known truth is not only misunderstood but actively resisted because it is unwelcome.

This article contends that Romans 1:32 points beyond cognitive distortion to what Gray Sutanto, drawing from the neo-Calvinist tradition, describes as affective suppression. Paul’s language indicates not ignorance but an emotionally charged refusal to love and submit to what is known. The argument developed here reframes suppression as a dispositional posture marked by fear, shame, pride, and love of autonomy. By retrieving this affective model of general revelation, the study not only offers a fresh theological reading of Romans 1 but also draws out its broader implications for anthropology, apologetics, and pastoral ministry—insisting that gospel witness must speak not only to distorted minds but also to wounded and resistant hearts.

1. The Noetic Effects of Sin: From Reformed Epistemology to Pauline Theology

The Reformed tradition has long affirmed that sin distorts not only the will and affections but also the intellect. Known as the doctrine of the noetic effects of sin, this teaching holds that human reasoning is darkened and unreliable due to the fall. Calvin underscores this point in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, observing that, although some understanding of God remains, it is overwhelmed by sin and rendered untrustworthy. As he laments, “But though experience testifies that a seed of religion is divinely sown in all, scarcely one in a hundred is found who cherishes it in his heart, and not one in whom it grows to maturity….”²John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845; repr., Eerdmans, 1989), 1.4.1. Though God’s glory is evident in creation, Calvin insists that the human mind is so blunted by sin that it fails to receive or retain divine truth, resulting in an ignorance that is both profound and culpable. For this reason, true knowledge of God is impossible apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.³Edward A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology (Eerdmans, 1994), 106–24.

Kuyper, building on Calvin’s foundation, expanded this doctrine by arguing that all human faculties, including rationality, are profoundly shaped by one’s spiritual orientation—either regenerate or unregenerate.⁴Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (1931; repr., Eerdmans, 1999). In particular, Kuyper’s lecture, “Calvinism and Science,” makes this point explicit: all human faculties, including reason, are shaped by one’s spiritual condition. The regenerate mind, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, perceives and interprets the world differently than the unregenerate, whose understanding is guided by an opposing spiritual orientation; see pp. 137–38. For Kuyper, the effects of sin are total, permeating every aspect of human existence and thought. He contended that true knowledge, especially of God, is not a neutral intellectual exercise but is inextricably linked to one’s disposition and relationship to the Creator. An unregenerate mind, while capable of certain forms of truth, fundamentally distorts ultimate realities because its starting point is a rejection of God.

In the twentieth century, Plantinga significantly advanced the conversation by proposing that belief in God can be “properly basic,” grounded in a divinely implanted cognitive faculty, the sensus divinitatis, that is nevertheless severely impaired by sin.⁵Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000), 184: “For now, we note only that the knowledge of God provided by the sensus divinitatis, prior to faith and regeneration, is both narrowed in scope and partially suppressed. Due to one cause or another, the faculty itself may be diseased and thus partly or wholly disabled. There is such a thing as cognitive disease; there is blindness, deafness, inability to tell right from wrong, insanity; and there are analogues of these conditions with respect to the operation of the sensus divinitatis.” For a fuller treatment, see chapter 7, “Sin and Its Cognitive Consequences.” For Plantinga, the noetic effects of sin are primarily epistemic in nature: sin causes the malfunction of the cognitive mechanisms that would otherwise lead a person to true belief in God. He suggests that the sensus divinitatis is a natural human capacity, analogous to sight or memory, designed to produce belief in God under certain conditions (e.g., perceiving the beauty of creation or feeling guilt), but it is “damaged or impeded” by sin, leading to a failure to form the intended beliefs. While this model preserves important insights about epistemic limitation and culpability, it also tends to frame suppression in largely intellectual terms. Unbelief is interpreted as a failure to reason correctly or as the result of a broken belief-forming mechanism.

Sutanto offers an important corrective to the predominantly cognitive emphasis of many traditional models by retrieving a more affective understanding of general revelation. Drawing on the neo-Calvinist tradition—especially the thought of Herman and Johan Bavinck—Sutanto argues that the sensus divinitatis is not best understood as a faculty of inference or propositional belief-formation. Rather, it is a deep, intuitive awareness of and dependence upon God. Johan Bavinck refers to this as the sensus numinis—a pre-reflective, existential consciousness of the divine, woven into the fabric of human life. This sense arises not from abstract reasoning but from God’s ongoing self-revelation in creation and conscience, and is rooted in the human heart’s affective orientation.⁶N. Gray Sutanto, A Sense of the Divine: An Affective Model of General Revelation from the Reformed Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2023), 8: “While the older Reformed tradition had already emphasized that God implanted notions that precede reasoned inferences from creation to God, these thinkers [Herman Bavinck and Johan Bavinck] … located the effects of general revelation as further sedimented underneath notions, ideas, or propositions, that is, in affects, feelings, and intuitions.”

Sutanto contends that sin’s primary effect on this sense is not simply cognitive distortion but affective resistance. The fall disorients human desire, corrupts emotional responses to truth, and produces a kind of existential flight from the God we already know. As Paul writes in Romans 1:18–21, suppression is not due to ignorance but to unrighteousness—it is a refusal to welcome what is plainly revealed. Sutanto’s model—developed with support from Heidegger’s phenomenology and neo-Calvinist anthropology—thus reframes suppression as an emotionally charged, willful rejection rather than a mere intellectual failure. This perspective better accounts for Paul’s paradoxical claim that humanity “knows God” while simultaneously exchanging his glory for lesser things (Rom 1:21, 23). It also helps clarify why humans are “unknowing knowers”: not blank slates but fugitives from the truth they already perceive.

2. Exegeting Romans 1:32 in Context

Romans 1:32 functions as the climactic summary of Paul’s theological argument in 1:18–31, serving as the logical and moral apex of humanity’s rebellion. The preceding section opens with the stark announcement that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (1:18). This fundamental act of suppression occurs despite the fact that “what can be known about God is plain to them” (1:19), and that “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (1:20). Paul’s emphasis in verses 18–21 is thus not on ignorance or a lack of revelation but squarely on recognition—a knowledge of God that is universally present yet actively rejected and suppressed.

This foundational suppression leads to a profound downward spiral of moral and spiritual degradation. In verses 22–31, Paul meticulously traces the consequences of this initial refusal to honor God: humanity, “claiming to be wise, became fools” (1:22), exchanging the glory of the immortal God for idolatrous images (1:23). This misdirection of worship is then followed by God’s giving them over to dishonorable passions (1:24), the exchange of the truth about God for a lie (1:25), and a descent into shameful sexual desires (1:26–27). The culmination is a “debased mind” (1:28) and a litany of unrighteous behaviors, from envy and murder to insolence and disobedience to parents (1:29–31). Importantly, this pervasive deterioration does not stem from a cognitive deficit or a lack of information about God but from a deliberate refusal to acknowledge and glorify him as God (1:21). Paul powerfully uses the language of “exchange” (ἤλλαξαν, 1:23; μετήλλαξαν, 1:25) to describe this substitution of truth for falsehood, of Creator for creature—a theologically rich diagnosis of idolatry as fundamentally misdirected worship rather than mere philosophical confusion. This chain of events demonstrates that the suppression of truth cannot be explained solely in terms of impaired cognitive faculties. Rather, it arises from a deep-seated spiritual and moral rebellion that progressively manifests itself in increasingly depraved actions.

Romans 1:32 then concludes this devastating argument with a pointed and damning assertion: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but also approve of those who practice them.”⁷Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed., NICNT (Eerdmans, 2018), 132 n. 165: “The participle ἐπιγνόντες has a concessive force (‘although they know’) ….” This verse is striking not merely for its content but for its precise grammar and lexical detail, which powerfully reinforce the claim that Paul views unbelief and immorality as flowing from affective resistance, not mere ignorance.

First, Paul uses the participle ἐπιγνόντες, which means “to know exactly, completely, through and through.”⁸BDAG, s.v. “ἐπιγινώσκω.” This is not the language of vague impressions, fleeting intuitions, or uncertain conjecture. Paul insists that his subjects are not just vaguely aware of a moral standard but are deeply and experientially familiar with it. They possess not only a general awareness of right and wrong but a conscious, undeniable recognition of the just judgment of God concerning their actions. The use of this strong verb underscores that their subsequent disobedience is performed with clear, undeniable comprehension.

Second, the word ἄξιος (translated “deserving” or “worthy of punishment”) underscores the moral clarity of this recognition.⁹BDAG, s.v. “ἄξιος.” The term frequently denotes worthiness of punishment in legal and ethical contexts. Paul’s audience knows that those who engage in such behavior are indeed worthy of divine judgment. The notion of ἄξιος is inherently judicial and ethical; it assumes a grasp of objective moral consequences, not simply emotional discomfort or cultural disapproval. This highlights the inherent justice of God’s judgment against their actions, as their own conscience, in tandem with God’s revelation, confirms their culpability.

Third, Paul uses the participle πράσσοντες to describe those who engage in such behavior. The verb often denotes morally significant actions and, in many contexts, carries a negative connotation. While not inherently distinct from ποιέω, πράσσω is frequently used for deeds that are ethically blameworthy or judicially indictable.¹⁰Moo, Romans, 132 n. 169: “The Greek verb here is πράσσω; in the immediately previous clause Paul uses ποιέω. Some posit a slight difference in meaning between them … but it is unlikely that any distinction exists ….” In Romans 1:32, the present participle form conveys an ongoing pattern of behavior, not merely isolated infractions. Paul’s point is that their transgression is not born of ignorance but performed with sustained and willful defiance of what they know to be just.

Finally, and perhaps most revealingly for the affective argument, Paul adds that they approve of others who do the same (συνευδοκοῦσιν τοῖς πράσσουσιν). This compound verb συνευδοκέω is particularly significant. It suggests more than passive tolerance or simple acquiescence; it indicates shared delight, active endorsement, emotional agreement, or even a conspiratorial pleasure in unrighteousness.¹¹BDAG, s.v. “συνευδοκέω.” The compound verb carries a sense of strong approval, shared delight, or active complicity. Compare its use in Luke 11:48; Acts 8:1; 22:20. The moral degradation described in the preceding verses reaches its apex not merely in private disobedience but in public affirmation and communal celebration of unrighteousness. This approval is not a consequence of rationalized ignorance but of deep-seated affective complicity, where the heart aligns itself with wickedness. It reveals a communal dimension to sin, where individuals not only commit evil but also derive satisfaction and solidarity from others participating in the same acts, thereby reinforcing their own rebellion.

Taken together, these terms offer a powerful portrait of universal and persistent human rebellion that is both epistemically aware and profoundly affectively corrupted.¹²Moo, Romans, 132, who observes that “the present tenses in this verse show that Paul is speaking not only of what has been true in the past or of what will be true in the future. People generally, Paul claims, have some degree of awareness that the moral outrages they commit are wrong and hence deserve to be punished by God.” These are not people who lack access to truth; they are people who actively reject, deny, and emotionally distance themselves from what they know to be right, finding perverse pleasure in their defiance.

This reading coheres exceptionally well with Sutanto’s affective model of general revelation. As Sutanto emphasizes, suppression is not merely a failure of cognition but a profound resistance of the heart—an aversion to dependence, vulnerability, and divine accountability.¹³Sutanto, Sense of the Divine, 42. The sensus divinitatis is present not as a mere faculty for forming accurate propositions but as a dispositional awareness of God’s power and judgment, stirring deep discomfort and actively prompting suppression. Paul’s use of συνευδοκέω underscores this: the heart aligns itself with unrighteousness, not in spite of knowledge but precisely because that knowledge demands a submission and a turning away from sin that sinful affections fiercely resist. Thus, Romans 1:32 does not present a paradox of intellectual capacity but a devastating theological diagnosis: people “know,” yet they fundamentally refuse to acknowledge, worship, and submit to the God they know. Suppression cannot be reduced to epistemic blindness; it is the whole person’s moral, volitional, and affective resistance to God. This is the heart of Paul’s indictment and reveals the profoundly holistic character of his anthropology.¹⁴Moo’s interpretation provides partial support for the view advanced here, though his emphasis remains more aligned with a cognitive model. He affirms that all people possess some true knowledge of God through general revelation (v. 19) and that they subjectively perceive this knowledge (v. 20)—suggesting that it is not merely external or abstract but internally registered. However, Moo explicitly argues that due to human sinfulness, people are “unable to respond appropriately to whatever knowledge of God they may possess” (Romans, 134), implying that the primary obstacle lies in impaired cognitive faculties. In this respect, his view echoes Plantinga’s model of epistemic dysfunction. While Moo does not entirely rule out affective elements, his framing tends to underplay them. Thus, although his reading affirms the presence of divine knowledge, it construes suppression primarily as a result of cognitive incapacity rather than affective resistance—offering a more rationalist account than that presented in the affective model developed above.

3. Suppression as Affective, Not Merely Cognitive

Paul’s theological anthropology in Romans 1 assumes that human beings are not primarily ignorant of God but fundamentally unwilling to acknowledge him. As Romans 1:21 makes plain, “they knew God, but they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” This framing significantly qualifies how one should understand the nature of unbelief and the dynamics of suppression. Paul does not suggest that the truth about God is unclear, inaccessible, or intellectually elusive. Instead, he portrays a humanity that is deeply aware of God’s righteous decree (1:32) yet obstinately refuses to submit to its implications. The crisis, therefore, lies not primarily in the intellect’s capacity to comprehend or correctly infer but in the will and, more deeply, in the affections, which recoil from the implications of divine truth.

This stands in contrast to approaches that emphasize a damaged cognitive faculty as the primary locus of the noetic effects of sin, such as Plantinga’s view, which, while valuable, may overemphasize the purely epistemic malfunction of the sensus divinitatis.¹⁵Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 199–240, esp. 205: “The most serious noetic effects of sin have to do with our knowledge of God. Were it not for sin and its effects, God’s presence and glory would be as obvious and uncontroversial to us all as the presence of other minds, physical objects, and the past. Like any cognitive process, however, the sensus divinitatis can malfunction; as a result of sin, it has indeed been damaged. Our original knowledge of God and his glory is muffled and impaired; it has been replaced (by virtue of sin) by stupidity, dullness, blindness, inability to perceive God or to perceive him in his handiwork. Our knowledge of his character and his love toward us can be smothered: it can even be transformed into a resentful thought that God is to be feared and mistrusted; we may see him as indifferent or even malignant.” While Plantinga meticulously argues that belief in God can be properly basic—that is, rationally warranted without being inferred from other beliefs—he often describes the suppression of this belief as a failure of a cognitive mechanism or a malaise warping one’s cognitive faculties, leading to an inability to form or sustain true beliefs about God. Our argument, drawing on Paul’s affective emphasis, suggests a deeper, more profound resistance at the level of desire and disposition.¹⁶But we do not want to overstate our critique or misrepresent Plantinga. While his framework is primarily epistemological, he clearly recognizes that the effects of sin extend to the affections. As he explains, “But sin is also and perhaps primarily an affective disorder or malfunction. Our affections are skewed, directed to the wrong objects; we love and hate the wrong things” (Warranted Christian Belief, 208). For Plantinga, then, the failure of the sensus divinitatis does not appear to be merely intellectual but also moral and dispositional—what he calls “a sort of madness of the will.” In this way, his account allows for a more holistic view of suppression than is sometimes acknowledged, overlapping meaningfully with the affective emphases of our argument.

This refusal is profoundly affective. It is driven not by a lack of intellectual conviction but by powerful emotional and moral dynamics such as deep-seated fear, pervasive guilt, rebellious pride, and an insatiable desire for autonomy. Humans resist God not because they are unconvinced by the evidence for his existence or his moral demands but because the acknowledgment of God entails the recognition of moral accountability and personal vulnerability. To honor God as God is to yield ultimate authority, confess personal sin, and accept complete dependence—realities that sinful affections fiercely reject. As in the narrative of Genesis 3, the instinct following transgression is not only to disobey but immediately to hide from God’s presence. This pattern of evasion is deeply rooted in the fear of exposure and the shame of guilt before divine holiness. These emotional dynamics align perfectly with Paul’s progression in Romans 1:21, 24, and 32, where the initial rejection of truth leads to futile thinking (1:21), a giving over to dishonorable passions (1:24), and ultimately a willing delight in unrighteousness (1:32).

Sutanto’s retrieval of the sensus divinitatis as a dispositional awareness rather than merely a cognitive faculty aligns closely with this interpretation. The knowledge of God is not suppressed because it is intellectually inaccessible but because it is existentially unbearable to sinful hearts. Suppression, in this view, is not a failure of comprehension but a reaction of aversion and avoidance. Quoting Johan Bavinck, Sutanto explains: “Suppression need not be understood as a conscious action. It can develop in total silence in the human heart. I am inclined to understand this in the sense of repression, as the concept of repression has been developed in recent psychology. As a rule, repression occurs ‘unconsciously,’ but that makes it no less real.”¹⁷J. H. Bavinck, The J. H. Bavinck Reader, ed. John Bolt, James D. Bratt and Paul J. Visser (Eerdmans, 2013), 284, as quoted in Sutanto, A Sense of the Divine,10–11. This affective suppression does not annihilate the knowledge of God but submerges it beneath the surface of consciousness, where it continues to generate moral discomfort and inward tension.

Paul’s language of emotional consent in Romans 1:32 vividly underscores this dimension. Humans not only act against what they know to be true; they actively take pleasure in it. The problem is not merely intellectual misalignment but a profound moral inversion—what ought to produce repentance and fear instead produces celebration and solidarity in defiance. This is not because the truth has failed to reach the mind but because the heart has declared war on the implications of knowing God. This distinction is crucial for a proper understanding of the noetic effects of sin: the issue is not merely that the human mind is clouded or impaired but that the human heart is disordered and actively resists the known truth.

To put it plainly, people do not suppress the truth because it is absent; they suppress it because it is unwelcome. The sensus divinitatis, rightly understood in Sutanto’s affective model, is not an abstract or neutral faculty of inference but a persistent, unavoidable awareness of God’s reality that stirs unease, confrontation, and guilt in the fallen human condition. Suppression, then, is the act of resisting divine presence, not from a place of ignorance but from a posture of active avoidance.

This understanding of suppression as primarily affective, not merely cognitive, offers a more biblically faithful and pastorally insightful model for understanding unbelief. It better explains why Paul speaks with such force about culpability in Romans 1:18–32, grounding divine wrath in willful resistance rather than simple lack of access or intellectual capacity. It also opens the door to a reimagined approach to gospel witness and biblical counseling, which must now take into account not only the mind’s need for truth but the heart’s desperate need for grace to confront its deeply entrenched fears and disordered desires.

4. Magnetic Points and the Plurality of Belief

If the sensus divinitatis is indeed a dispositional, affective awareness of God—as Sutanto, following the Bavincks, contends—then the wide-ranging plurality of religious and irreligious expressions across cultures is not evidence against general revelation but precisely how it manifests under suppression.¹⁸Dowey, The Knowledge of God, 53: “The explanation of these undertones of our existence—the servile fear of God and the troubled conscience—is found in a quality of the internal revelation which is … much more adequate as a basis for understanding the universality of religion, than the intellectual perception of God…. The ‘knowledge’ or ‘persuasion’ that God exists, which man receives internally by ‘natural instinct,’ causes him to react religiously. In it the glory and majesty of God, by which he inspires fear and worship, are given directly to the mind. This powerful persuasion penetrates even the benumbed receptivity of sinful man so forcefully that it breaks down his usual self-exaltation.” In Romans 1, Paul does not deny that humanity is inherently religious. On the contrary, he assumes it, diagnosing the misdirection of that religious impulse. The knowledge of God is powerfully present (1:19–21), but the human heart, unwilling to submit to the Creator, actively substitutes him with created things (1:22–23). Suppression, then, does not erase the fundamental human need to worship; rather, it merely redirects it. As Paul vividly describes, human beings “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (1:23); they “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” and ultimately “worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (1:25). This dynamic shows that the religious impulse is inherent, but its object is warped by sin.

This inherent religious orientation, even in its distorted forms, leads directly to Johan Bavinck’s concept of “magnetic points,” which Sutanto draws upon to illustrate how general revelation operates beneath the surface of religious diversity and human suppression. These “magnetic points” refer to universal existential concerns embedded deeply in every human heart. They represent the fundamental human search for meaning, purpose, and ultimate reality. These include the longing for destiny beyond death, the intrinsic search for moral order and justice, the deep-seated need for belonging and ultimate community, the pervasive fear of death and meaninglessness, and the innate desire for transcendence beyond the immanent world.¹⁹Sutanto, A Sense of the Divine, 12. Though these concerns take countless and often contradictory forms across diverse cultures and worldviews, they arise from the same fundamental reality: that God has made himself known, and that humans, even in their profound suppression of that knowledge, cannot entirely escape his pervasive presence or the demands of their created nature. These “points” are not neutral; they are areas where God’s general revelation continues to press upon the human consciousness, stirring unease and longing.

Rather than demonstrating the failure of general revelation, religious pluralism confirms its persistence. The widespread elevation of creaturely realities—be they ancestors, nature, political power, material success, or the deified self—as objects of ultimate concern precisely reflects Paul’s claim that human beings are worshipers by nature. When the true object of worship is rejected, the worship impulse does not disappear; it simply finds a substitute. Johan Bavinck aptly terms this a “parasitic substitution,” wherein the sense of the divine (sensus divinitatis) is displaced and projected onto a created entity.²⁰J. H. Bavinck, The Church Between Temple and Mosque: A Study of the Relationship between Christianity and the Other Religions (Westminster Seminary Press, 2023), 117–18, as quoted in Sutanto, A Sense of the Divine,12. People continue to respond to God’s self-manifestation, but they do so in distorted, displaced, and ultimately idolatrous ways. This explains the human tendency to seek ultimate security, identity, and hope in finite things, which are incapable of bearing such weight.

This insight has significant implications for how Romans 1 is read in theological and missiological contexts. Paul’s anthropology presupposes that all people are already engaged with divine revelation, whether or not they consciously acknowledge it. The human condition is thus not a state of religious neutrality or epistemic blankness, but rather one of misdirected worship, of “knowing yet not knowing.” The sensus divinitatis remains actively present—repressed, redirected, distorted, but never entirely absent. As a result, every worldview and religious system, no matter how divergent from biblical truth, can be understood, at least in part, as a response—however twisted and unrighteous—to God’s ongoing revelation.

This is precisely why Paul’s language in Romans 1 is not primarily philosophical but profoundly liturgical. He does not describe humanity’s fall as a mere mistake in logic or an intellectual error but as a fundamental failure in worship. The accusation, “They did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (1:21), strikes at the heart of humanity’s rebellion, revealing the core of suppression not as the absence of truth but as the willful refusal to glorify and thank God for it. When gratitude towards the Creator is absent, idolatry inevitably fills the void. Hence, the numerous religious substitutes that pervade human history and culture are not true alternatives to divine revelation; they are its distorted echoes, testifying implicitly to the reality they desperately seek to suppress or replace.

Sutanto’s retrieval of this affective, phenomenological model thoroughly recovers the existential weight of Paul’s argument. He highlights that “while the older Reformed tradition had already emphasized that God implanted notions that precede reasoned inferences from creation to God, these [Dutch neo-Calvinist] thinkers … located the effects of general revelation as further sedimented underneath notions, ideas, or propositions, that is, in affects, feelings, and intuitions.”²¹Sutanto, Sense of the Divine, 8. This perspective makes profound sense of how diverse religious expressions, even those that appear to deny theism altogether or embrace outright secularism, are still fundamentally entangled with a suppressed awareness of God. The affective impact of general revelation—manifesting through universal human longings, a sense of awe, pervasive anxiety, undeniable guilt, and an inherent moral intuition—finds culturally shaped outlets, even as it continues to press powerfully on the conscience.

In light of this, Christian witness must be profoundly attentive to these “magnetic points”—not as neutral starting places for dispassionate argumentation but as compelling evidence of the deep imprint of general revelation upon every human soul. These universal longings are not just—or even primarily—direct paths to God in themselves but rather undeniable signs that God has already made himself known and that the human heart, though vehemently suppressing the truth, remains haunted by its echoes and restless until it finds its true object of worship.

5. Apologetic, Pastoral, and Preaching Implications

The affective model of general revelation fundamentally reshapes how theologians and practitioners should understand and approach the complex condition of unbelief. If suppression is fundamentally affective—driven by deep-seated fear, guilt, rebellious pride, and an insatiable desire for autonomy—then the appropriate response cannot be limited to purely intellectual argumentation or detached propositional instruction. Instead, both apologetics and preaching must consciously engage the whole person: not merely the mind’s intellectual assent but also the heart’s desires, emotions, and existential posture before God. Hence, especially in apologetics, pastoral counseling, and gospel proclamation, the most revealing and transformative question may not solely be “What do you think?” but rather, more piercingly, “What is it that you want, and what are you afraid of?”²²See, for example, Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change, Resources for Changed Lives (P&R, 2002). This shift calls for a more holistic and compassionate approach to engaging the unchurched and discipling believers.

5.1. Apologetic Implications: Engaging Suppressed Awareness

Traditional apologetics often centers on offering robust rational proofs for God’s existence, the historical reliability of Scripture, or the historicity of the resurrection.²³Representative works include William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Crossway, 2008); Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 2nd ed. (IVP Academic, 2007); N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 3 (Fortress, 2003); Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God (Ignatius, 2017). While such arguments are undoubtedly valuable and indeed necessary for addressing intellectual obstacles, Paul’s diagnosis in Romans 1—and the affective model grounded in it—suggests that unbelief is not primarily the result of intellectual deficiency, a mere lack of information, or an inability to grasp logical propositions. Instead, it is, at its core, a morally charged and existentially motivated rejection of a truth that is already known and yet unwanted. As Romans 1:32 makes clear, the knowledge of God’s moral decree is undeniably present, intuitively perceived by all, but it is actively repressed and resisted in favor of unrighteousness and self-autonomy.

This perspective profoundly transforms the task of apologetics. The apologist is not merely introducing something entirely foreign or brand new to a blank slate but rather seeking to awaken what has been suppressed and reorient what has been misdirected. The goal is not merely to persuade with irrefutable logic but, more broadly, to expose the affective dimensions of unbelief—its hidden fears, deep-seated evasions, and cherished false allegiances. This aligns significantly with what Reformed apologetics, especially in the Cornelius Van Til tradition, has long emphasized: that no one is truly neutral in their posture toward God, and that every unbeliever already knows God but suppresses this knowledge in unrighteousness.²⁴Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 3rd ed. (P&R, 1967), 194–208. However, Sutanto’s affective model nuances this insight by emphasizing that this suppression often operates beneath conscious awareness, deeply embedded in one’s disposition and loves.²⁵Sutanto, Sense of the Divine, 15–16. The apologist, then, must be patient and perceptive, seeking not only to challenge faulty reasoning or provide logical answers but also to lovingly uncover the hidden fears and disordered desires that fiercely resist divine truth. Arguments alone may not suffice to break through this affective barrier. What is often needed is a form of apologetics that functions much like compassionate pastoral counseling—inviting honest self-reflection, drawing out suppressed guilt and shame, and, most importantly, pointing decisively toward the liberating grace of the gospel as the only true remedy for a restless and rebellious heart.²⁶See, e.g., Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Dutton, 2009), which masterfully links intellectual doubts to underlying emotional and relational barriers to belief; Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (Kneeland & Green, 1746), a classic work that argues true faith must be rooted in transformed desires and spiritual delight, not just intellectual assent; and Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith (Crown & Covenant, 2012), a personal testimony illustrating how relational hospitality can uncover and lovingly confront the hidden fears and identities that resist the truth.

5.2. Pastoral Implications: Ministering to the Restless Heart

For pastors, this understanding of affective suppression offers both profound clarity and compassionate insight into the human condition. It reminds us that beneath the surface of skepticism, cynicism, or overt resistance often lies a deeply wounded, fearful, and restless heart. If general revelation continues to press in upon every human soul—even in unconscious or repressed ways—then even the hardest-hearted skeptic is never truly beyond the reach of God’s persistent voice. People are not blank slates, nor are they merely rebellious intellects; they are conflicted souls who carry within themselves a buried, often anxiety-producing, awareness of their Creator and Judge.

This understanding should produce both a profound boldness and a deep tenderness in pastoral care. Boldness, because the gospel addresses what is already implicitly present and suppressed—the inescapable truth of God’s holiness, righteousness, and power, which their conscience affirms. But tenderness, too, because suppression is not only willful but often deeply fear-driven. People resist God not simply because they hate him but because they are terrified of what it would mean to stand exposed, vulnerable, and accountable before his holy presence. As Paul writes, they “knew” God but ultimately “did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom 1:21)—a fundamental failure rooted as much in a visceral aversion to dependence as in outright rebellion.

Pastoral ministry, then, must attend not just to beliefs but equally to affections. Such ministry disciples people not only in sound doctrine but crucially in reordered desire—teaching them to love what is true, good, and beautiful according to God’s nature, and to honestly confess their innate resistance to it. The affective model also underscores the transformative importance of presence: a faithful, consistent, and compassionate Christian community can act as a kind of “gospel pressure,” gently surfacing buried convictions and longings that people may not even know how to express. This living out of the gospel among people creates a relational context where the truth can be received by hearts that might otherwise close off to mere propositional arguments.

This vision of pastoral ministry also serves as a quiet but firm indictment of pastors who reduce their calling to preaching and administration alone. While these are essential duties, the affective model of suppression reveals that ministry must also be profoundly relational and formational. If the deepest resistance to God is not just intellectual but emotional and moral—rooted in disordered loves, hidden fears, and ingrained habits of autonomy—then pastors cannot simply inform from the pulpit or manage from the office. They must actively engage the actual emotional and spiritual lives of their people, patiently discipling their hearts and desires.

5.3. Preaching Implications: Proclaiming to Suppressed Knowers

The pulpit, too, is a powerful place where suppressed knowledge can be brought to the surface. Paul’s theology in Romans 1 assumes that his audience already possesses a fundamental awareness of God, his righteousness, and his impending judgment. The primary task of preaching, therefore, is not simply to inform but to confront, awaken, and draw out that suppressed knowledge. Preaching that faithfully reflects Romans 1 must do more than merely convey propositional truth; it must expose the insidious mechanisms of suppression and call hearers to repentance not only for what they do but for how they willfully evade the truth they already know and feel.

This understanding changes both the tone and content of preaching. Preachers must learn to lovingly name and challenge the hidden idols people cling to in place of God—comfort, control, autonomy, success, self-actualization—revealing them as the counterfeit objects of worship that they are. They must preach not just against abstract unbelief but against the false worship that often masquerades as secular neutrality or even genuine spirituality. At the same time, they must do so with the gospel clearly and consistently in view: not as a mere add-on after judgment has been declared but as the very means by which the affective suppression is healed and the heart is liberated. As Johan Bavinck powerfully notes, it is precisely the gospel that “illuminates” the sinner, enabling them to recognize that they have always known God and have long resisted him, now seeing this truth in the light of Christ’s grace.²⁷J. H. Bavinck, The J. H. Bavinck Reader, trans. J. A. De Jong, ed. John Bolt, James D. Bratt, and Paul J. Visser (Eerdmans, 2013), 285.

Good preaching, then, does not merely seek to win arguments or secure intellectual assent. It seeks to unmask the deep-seated suppression and invite people into the transformative grace that alone can deal with the pervasive shame and crippling fear that suppression attempts to hide.²⁸Sutanto, Sense of the Divine, 45: “If the genesis of failure to believe in God is affective as much as it may be intellectual, as sinners are incentivized to resist God due to our vulnerability in culpability, then the Christian witness must be presented with and shaped by the gospel from the outset. Exposure of culpability is painful and heart-wrenching, and only the gospel of grace can salve the fear that keeps one from freely confessing one’s guilt or shame before God. A Christian witness should keep in view that the same truth that exposes sinners is also a proclamation of a grace that offers forgiveness and reconciliation (Jn. 1:17).” It calls forth not just cognitive belief but wholehearted worship of the true God.

The affective model also offers profound hope for preaching to those often overlooked in discussions of natural theology—especially those with severe intellectual or cognitive impairments. If knowledge of God depended solely on one’s ability to reason through creation or grasp complex propositional truths, then many individuals would be left outside the reach of general revelation. But the affective model insists that God’s revelation presses on all people, not primarily as an abstract argument but as a deep, intuitive awareness of his presence and power. This means that even those unable to articulate belief or construct sophisticated theological arguments still bear within them a God-given sensus divinitatis. Preaching, in this light, becomes a ministry not just of explanation but of presence—offering beauty, tone, rhythm, and love that speak powerfully to the heart and spirit, even when the rational mind cannot fully engage or comprehend the intricacies of doctrine.

In sum, the affective model of general revelation comprehensively reframes how Christians understand unbelief, how they present the truth of the gospel, and how they engage with those who resist it. It reminds us that every heart, no matter how closed, resistant, or even impaired, is already being addressed by God. And it calls the church—apologists, pastors, and preachers alike—to speak not only to the mind but also profoundly to the heart that knows yet stubbornly refuses to know, until the sovereign grace of God breaks through its defenses.

6. Conclusion

Romans 1:32 offers a profound and often overlooked window into Paul’s theological anthropology and his understanding of human culpability. Far from presenting ignorance as the root of unbelief, Paul depicts a humanity that possesses an undeniable knowledge of God’s righteous decree yet persistently engages in rebellion and even finds perverse solidarity in the approval of unrighteousness. This deeply moral and affective posture is best explained not through cognitive failure alone but through a willful and emotionally charged suppression of divine truth. Suppression, in this view, is not the mere absence of knowledge but its active rejection; it is not a lack of evidence but a visceral aversion to its uncomfortable implications and demands for submission.

By integrating Sutanto’s affective model of general revelation with a close exegetical reading of Romans 1, this article has sought to recover an account of the noetic effects of sin that is both biblically grounded and theologically rich. Rather than locating the effects of sin solely in broken intellectual faculties, this model highlights the disordered affections—such as fear of judgment, pervasive guilt, rebellious pride, and an overarching love of autonomy—that lead the human heart to resist the truth it already inherently knows. Sutanto’s recovery of the sensus divinitatis as a deep, intuitive feeling of dependence—rather than a detached rational faculty—clarifies precisely how Paul can speak so confidently about human culpability in the face of God’s clear revelation. This affective resistance is what renders humanity without excuse.

Further research might fruitfully explore how this affective model illuminates the inner tension described elsewhere in Paul, particularly in Romans 7. Paul’s visceral portrayal of the divided self—“I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (7:15)—reveals a heart caught between moral recognition and profound volitional failure. This struggle is not merely cognitive; it profoundly resonates with the affective suppression described in Romans 1. The “I” of Romans 7 knows the good and even, on some level, desires it, yet is simultaneously overpowered by sin’s inward pull—a dynamic that deeply mirrors the affective model’s account of suppression as a complex conflict of loves and desires, not simply a failure of logic. Studying this pivotal passage through the lens of the affective model may deepen our understanding of the noetic effects of sin and indeed the universal human condition of knowing, yet tragically resisting, the God who continuously reveals himself.

This reframing of unbelief has far-reaching implications for Christian theology and practice. For apologetics, it shifts the primary focus from merely proving what is conceptually unknown to compassionately awakening what has been actively suppressed within the human heart. For pastoral care, it serves as a vital reminder to ministers that resistance to God often stems not primarily from intellectual confusion or doubt but from deeply rooted fears, shame, and disordered affections that demand tender yet firm engagement. And for preaching, it reinforces the crucial task of not merely informing the mind with propositions but profoundly exposing the heart, challenging its false loyalties, and calling forth true worship where active suppression has long taken root. In each of these vital ministry areas, the glorious gospel of grace must remain central and non-negotiable, for only divine grace can unmask the depths of human suppression without utterly crushing the soul, offering not condemnation but the possibility of healing and reconciliation.

Ultimately, Paul’s powerful declaration in Romans 1:32—that sinners “know” God’s righteous decree and yet deliberately “approve” unrighteousness—presses the church to engage the world not as one primarily proclaiming brand new, never-before-heard information. Instead, the church is called to announce a long-repressed, profoundly uncomfortable truth: the truth that God is indeed known by all, that his glory has been tragically exchanged for idols, and that only in the transformative face of Jesus Christ, encountered through the power of the gospel, can deep-seated suppression finally give way to saving sight, authentic knowledge, and true worship.

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