"Even though God has not been pleased to reveal Himself to us as He is visibly,
yet as the Scriptures tell us, He has not left Himself without a witness. The
heavens declare the glory of God, and we are told again and again in the Scriptures
that the whole earth is filled with His glory. Not that there are a few obscure
hints buried in the bushes available to only some gnostic elite group that can
probe creation and get a glimpse here and there of the glory of God. No! God has
filled His creation with His glory. It's all around us. Maybe it's beneath the
surface. But if it's beneath the surface, it's not far beneath the surface. All
we need to do is look, and there it is. John Calvin said that we as sinners walk
through this magnificent theater of divine creation as people wearing blindfolds.
On the one hand, I like that metaphor because it describes that our failure to
see the glory of God is somewhat willful. On the other hand, I see a weakness
in that metaphor because it suggests that even though the glory is there, we never
see it, but we do see it. We can't obliterate it. As much as we hide our eyes
from the glory of God, the glory of God still breaks through, but it is obscured.
Instead of looking to the deus revelatus of which Luther spoke, we concentrate
on the deus absconditus, the way in which God remains hidden from our view."
Dr. R.C. Sproul, excerpt from the 2004 Pastors Conference, Overcoming the Eclipse
of God