Isn't unbelief just honest doubt?
Romans 1, Psalm 14, John 3, and 2 Peter 3.
The short answer Settled
Scripture says no. People who deny God are pushing away what they already know about Him. The knowing comes first and the denying comes after, and turning away darkens a person's thinking, so a denial can feel sincere without being honest doubt.
What Romans 1 shows
Paul names the knowing first: "although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful" (). Then he says what they did with that knowledge: "they did not like to retain God in their knowledge" (). What they had, they chose not to keep. At the start of the passage he names what this does to the truth. These are people "who suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (). To suppress something is to hold it down so that it cannot come up.
They even know there is a God to answer to. Paul says they act "knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death" ().
How a denial comes to feel sincere
Turning away has an effect on the one who turns. They "became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools" (). Both verbs, "darkened" and "became fools," describe something that happened to them after they turned away. Then "God gave them over to a debased mind" (), a mind that no longer judges rightly.
So when a denial feels honest to the person making it, Scripture does not take that as proof that the knowledge was never there. The feeling of sincerity is what the refusal produces.
The fool, and the light
The psalm puts the denial "in his heart," and the next words describe the man who says it: "They are corrupt, They have done abominable works" (). The Hebrew word for "fool" here is a moral word, not a word for someone slow to learn. Isaiah shows what it means: "the foolish person will speak foolishness, And his heart will work iniquity" ().
Jesus names the motive: "men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (), and "everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed" (). The same is true of denying the judgment. Peter says that the scoffers who ask "Where is the promise of His coming?" () are "walking according to their own lusts" (), and that "this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old" ().
The usual objection
Many people who deny God say they have looked honestly and found nothing convincing. They are not hiding from anything; they follow the evidence as they see it, and many of them are sincere and thoughtful. So, they say, they cannot be blamed for not believing in a God who has never shown Himself to them.
Scripture does not deny that the denial can be sincerely felt. But it says God has shown Himself to every person (see What does every person already know about God?). The feeling of sincerity comes from turning away from what He has shown.
The words behind it
| Word | Where | Form | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| κατεχόντων katechontōn, "who suppress" (Strong's 2722) | Present active participle | To hold. Done "in unrighteousness" by people who did not keep God in mind, it is holding down. The KJV's "hold" says the same more briefly. | |
| γνόντες gnontes, "although they knew" (1097) | Second aorist active participle | The knowing is in place before the refusal that follows it. | |
| οὐκ ἐδοκίμασαν ouk edokimasan, "they did not like" (1381), and ἀδόκιμον νοῦν adokimon noun, "a debased mind" (96, 3563) | Aorist active indicative, negated; adjective and noun | They tested keeping God in mind and rejected it, so God gave them over to a mind that fails the test. | |
| ἐσκοτίσθη eskotisthē, "were darkened" (4654), and ἐμωράνθησαν emōranthēsan, "they became fools" (3471) | Aorist passive indicatives | Passive: the darkness happened to them, after they turned away. | |
| נָבָל naval, "fool" (5036) | ; | Adjective | A moral word. In Isaiah the naval speaks foolishness and his heart works iniquity against the LORD. |
| ἵνα μὴ ἐλεγχθῇ hina mē elenchthē, "lest … should be exposed" (1651) | Aorist passive subjunctive in a purpose clause | The person stays away from the light so that his deeds will not be exposed. | |
| θέλοντας thelontas, "willfully" (2309) | Present active participle | From "to will" or "to want": the forgetting is something they want. |
No textual variants affect the conclusion.
This study checks the Greek Received Text against the Majority Text, and the written Hebrew against its traditional reading. If a difference could change a conclusion, this note explains it. Otherwise it says that none does.