Liz Jackson writes ("Permissivism About Religious Belief", https://philpapers.org/rec/JACPAR-11):
In Romans 1:20, St. Paul writes, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Given passages like this one, those in the Christian tradition might argue that theism is not a permissive case. Paul seems to be arguing God is clearly seen from creation (and in a later passage, the moral law). From this, some conclude that theistic belief is rationally required of most or all of us, given the evidence.
In reply, my arguments in this chapter are consistent with a relatively straightforward reading of Paul in this passage (and similar passages). In Paul’s time, people had drastically different evidence that more clearly pointed toward theism. When Paul was writing, belief in God and/or the supernatural was extremely common and widespread (perhaps the divine hiddenness problem wouldn’t have gained much traction in the first century!) People spent much more time in nature, staring at starry skies and breathtaking sunsets; today, much more time is spent walking around concrete jungles and staring at computer screens. Furthermore, as Charles Taylor (2017) argues, the Reformation, Enlightenment, and Romanticism involved deep cultural and intellectual transformations that gave rise to a much more secular society. My arguments in this chapter regard our current evidential situation, and while I maintain that permissivism about theism is supported by the widespread historical disagreement about God’s existence, I don’t claim that permissivism about theistic belief extends to all historical periods, places, and times.
I see a few issues with this response to Romans 1. First, Christians usually believe in some form of inerrancy and inspiration: Because the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, anything it teaches to be true is true. (I acknowledge Randal Rauser's thesis of providential errantism and set that aside.) Combine this with the interpretation that Paul is teaching us that those with non-belief are without excuse and you arrive at the interpretation that this is an inspired and therefore inerrant teaching of the Bible.
Even if Paul is saying something from the point of view of his time and place, the Holy Spirit can inspire teachings that are applicable well into the future, and modern Christians usually see themselves as reading something that was in a sense meant for them. Very few Christians, in fact this is probably a heresy, see the Bible as a fossil or snapshot of a particular time and place—this would basically be a rejection of inspiration.
There's two aspects of the Holy Spirit view of scripture: The Holy Spirit guides the authors of the Bible to write from their own perspective in a way that includes layers of meaning and timeless truths applicable to future generations, and the Holy Spirit guides the modern Christian to the knowledge that a particular interpretation of a passage applies to the modern Christian and their life despite the gap in time and culture. Viewing the Bible as a fossil would mean to jettison both aspects of the Holy Spirit view of scripture. So a very natural and Christian way of interpreting Romans 1 is that its teaching applies for all time.
Second, Paul says since the creation of the world . . . from what has been made . . . This kind of language has a universality to it. We look at the time interval from the creation of the world to Paul's time; Paul says God's attributes have been obvious in that interval. It would be strange for God's attributes to be obvious for such a long interval, but suddenly change in the comparatively negligible interval of Paul's time to ours. (And sure, Paul's phrasing of "since creation" need not be literal, but this applies even if we think of it as "since human civilization" or "since humans began believing in gods".)
Plus, if God's attributes are made obvious by "what has been made", then there is no relevant difference from Paul's time to ours. Paul is surely citing objects of creation like the starry sky, the planets, the trees, the animals, the sun and moon, and humanity. We have all these today, but it's not at all obvious that any of this were made by a perfectly loving God. For some of us, it's painfully obvious that a perfectly loving God almost certainly does not exist because of what has been made: death, war, disease, murder, poverty, and so on. While Christians view these as accidents of sin, for some of us it's apparent that the systems of our world systematically produce these evils. This is perhaps most apparent with the evils of evolution, and the predation, starvation, parasitism, and mass amounts of death it took to create us.
If anything, because we have more rigorous philosophical arguments for God from fine-tuning, the inference from "what has been made" to God's existence should be more powerful than ever, and so all the more are modern humans without excuse in their non-belief in God. And yet we also have more rigorous philosophical arguments from evil, and for some of us the problem of evil trumps the argument from fine-tuning, and it's not a remotely close contest.
Third, what Paul says is arguably false even in his own time. For much of human history, humans believed in multiple gods, and didn't necessarily believe in a singular all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good creator. So it's just not true that most groups of people have clearly seen the workings of a singular God; many, maybe most, interpret creation as the workings of multiple gods.
Plus, even for Jewish people and Christians, who both believe in a singular God, they strongly disagree who this God is. Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate, while Jewish people strongly disagree. Even Christians disagree among themselves, with some being viewing the Holy Spirit as a person in some sense separate from the Father and Son, and others viewing the Holy Spirit as something more like a force or essence that is not separate from the Father or Son; or some viewing Jesus as purely man while others view Jesus as both man and divine. How many heresies were there in the first few centuries leading up to the Councils and Creeds?
Even if you extend the idea of God to the Greeks like Plato and Aristotle, it's obvious from the Greek texts that this conception of God is radically different from the God that Christians believe.
God’s eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen by whom? By Christians? After all, if the conception of God or gods is radically different between cultures, and Christians are the only ones who got it right, then it's not true that since the creation of the world God's attributes have been known. It's only thanks to the events of the Old Testament and the recent events of the Gospels that we now know the more important attributes of God, namely that God incarnated and died for our sins.
Because Christians made up a tiny minority in Paul's time, Paul must have had a broader understanding of God. But if that's right, then Paul is not speaking from this local perspective, but is speaking universally; God's eternal power and divine nature have been seen by everyone, so that everyone is without excuse [in their non-belief of God's existence]. Why assume that Paul make an exception for future generations? And if you're not assuming this, then you grant that Paul could be, for all you know, applying what he's saying to future generations too. Regardless, God's eternal power and divine nature, even in some broad sense, haven't been seen by everyone. That's just a mistake.
But putting Paul's mistakes aside, the question is whether Romans 1 commits Christians to an impermissivistic viewpoint about the rationality of belief in God, and there's an interpretation where yes, it does, and this interpretation appears at least as solid as any other.
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