Facts reveal God

Scott Oliphint, in his book Reasons for Faith, suggests that if our intellectual faculties were not influenced by sin than we would all know, believe, and acknowledge God in his existence and in his character. However, sin has influenced every human being and thus Oliphint writes,

But our faculties no longer function that way. They have been damaged, fractured, broken, impeded, hindered, hampered, thwarted from doing what they were designed to do, since the effects of sin have enslaved and influenced them. Whereas we were designed to do all things to the glory of God-whether eating, drinking, thinking, knowing, and so forth-sin has constrained us so that, enslaved to it, we do all things to our own glory, or to the glory of something or someone other than God. If every fact is such that it reveals God, we may take that fact and believe it to be what it is, but in our sin we believe such without acknowledging the God who is revealed in that fact. In every aspect of knowledge or belief, therefore, in which the effects of sin's enslavement are operating, our cognitive faculties fail to function as they were designed to function. There is, we could say, in every functioning of our cognitive faculties in which sin dominates, an element, perhaps a strong element, of self-deception. (159)

I love the idea that every fact, in its truth and in its reality, reveals God. That is an astounding way of viewing God as the foundation for existence and as the only truly independent thing that exists.

But sin prevents us from seeing facts this way. Sin prevents us from seeing things as they really are. But the Spirit of God helps us to see and when He does, we see things as they truly are and recognize that God is revealed.