Therefore, because the Light from whom all things are and have life continued to shine, the world ‘outside’ of particular grace continued to proceed from the Word. Kuyper says that “the grace extended to our race that had fallen into sin consists not in the gift of something new, nor in the regiving of something we had lost, but exclusively in the continuation of something that lay at the foundation of our creation.”
Doesn’t the positive assessment of General Revelation offered by John’s Gospel contradict the first chapter of Romans? Not really, because John wants to talk about the Incarnation so he adopts the order Christ, Creation, Fall, Common Grace, Particular Grace. In the other case, Paul wants to talk about Justification so he starts with man’s misconduct and subsequent need. In his schema, idolatry points us to the human need for God – other animals don’t worship – and common grace stops sin from destroying the need to worship. Hence Paul’s phrase in Romans 1:21-23 that “though they knew God” they instead worship the creature and it is emphatically not ‘because they don’t know God….’ So it is not a new revelation that comes to the sinner but, in fact, the old one which has been preserved as a witness by common grace.