A Word about Religion - A Lectionary Reflection for Easter 6A (Acts)
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| St. Paul Preaching - Sebastiano Ricci Toledo Museum of Aart |
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’
29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
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We live in a post-religious age when growing numbers of people claim to be spiritual but not religious. By
religious they mean, engagement with traditional institutional forms of faith.
Where once religion and spirituality were essentially one and the same thing,
today we tend to separate them. As Diana Butler Bass notes, “Spirituality is
understood as somehow more authentic, religion as having ‘a somewhat cynical
orientation’” [Christianity after Religion, p. 67]. Many of those who read this reflection will,
like me, be in the religion business. I am a religious professional, and so I
have a vested interest in the survival of religion. At the same time, I would
like that which I participate in to be authentic.
When Paul went to Athens, he toured
the place. He found many expressions of religion present in the city. In fact,
he was overwhelmed by what he saw. In fact, according to Luke, Paul was deeply
distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (Acts. 17:16). He was distressed, by what he saw, but
also saw an opportunity to offer a different vision of the spiritual. Having
noticed that the Athenians loved to debate, he decided to enter the fray and
speak of Jesus. He found his entry point through a shrine dedicated to the “unknown
god.” What Paul discovered is that the Athenians were so religious they wanted
to cover all the bases, and so they erected a shrine to the “Unknown God,” just
in case they missed something.
So, Paul stood
up in the Areopagus and began to speak. He would do two things.
Since this was Athens, he figured had to defend the intellectual
validity of his message. In other words, since some of his debate partners had
accused him of being a babbler or “seed picker,” and thus peddling old tales,
he must define himself as being worthy of a hearing (Acts 17:18). He starts his address with an acknowledgment
of the religiosity of the Athenians. He takes note of their many shrines and
temples, using the word deisideaimonisterous to describe their religious
life. That word can be taken in two ways.
He could be interpreted as calling them a superstitious lot, who worshipped
lots of gods—indeed, they seemed to worship every conceivable deity. Or, we could read this in a more positive
way, understanding Paul to be commending them for their piety and devotion. Considering
that Paul is seeking common ground and trying to gain a hearing, it’s likely
that Luke is using it in a more positive sense. But, there is a degree of ambiguity, so what
the hearer may have heard and what Luke intends us to hear could be
different. Paul may simply be flattering
them, without offering them a real compliment [Luke Timothy Johnson, Acts, 314]. The key here is that in offering a defense
of scholastic credentials, Luke makes it clear that Paul had been observing and
taking note of their beliefs and practices—as a good scholar might.
Paul
had also been accused of peddling foreign deities (Acts 17:18). They were
concerned that Paul, like Socrates before him, was disrupting the calm of the
city. Thus, they wanted to hear his defense (remember that Socrates was
executed, so this is high stakes). If the Athenians were uncomfortable with his
representation of a foreign deity, Paul was distressed by their religiosity
(read idolatry). That shouldn’t surprise us, since Paul was a good Jew. Paul,
recognizing the challenges of the moment, remembers the shrine to the unknown
god, and he decides to use it as a way into the Gentile world. Perhaps, without
knowing it, they had worshipped this unknown God, whom he represents.
What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, . . . (Acts 17:23b-24).
He would use this moment to define for them
the one they worshipped in ignorance. Since preaching about foreign deities was
a problem, then Paul would speak to them as the divinely sent representative of
this God, proclaiming (katangellō) the God who created all things and
who was Lord of all.
As
he begins to speak, he introduces them to the one he believes to be the true
God. While they worship many deities, in Paul’s view there is but one God. Though
he will use philosophical terms in his defense of God, his theology is clearly
rooted in the Hebrew Bible. This God he
proclaims is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and this God had created
all things without help from other deities.
Indeed, this God, for whom they had crafted a shrine, didn’t live in
human-built temples or shrines. He makes
clear the Jewish-Christian idea that God cannot be circumscribed or put in a box.
Paul
seeks to contrast this unknown God with the gods that the people
worshiped. Still, he continued to teach
them about this self-sufficient and all-powerful God who didn’t dwell in
temples or need human servants to care for his needs. This God is the life-giver, who took from one
ancestor all the peoples of the earth, assigning to each a place to live,
hoping that they might "grope for him and find him" (vs. 27a). Such a God might actually appeal to the
Stoics because they did have a more universal sense of reality—but their view
was monistic and pantheistic, while Paul’s understanding envisioned a
transcendent God. And the Epicureans might have been attracted to the idea of a
God who didn’t require or need humanly created shrines. So, there were points
of contact but no complete agreement.
The
first part of the defense relies on ideas deeply rooted in his own faith
tradition—that God is the Creator and that God is beyond needing any humanly
created home. But then he moves onto
their own home turn. He points out that
God has not been without a witness among them.
Their own philosophers gave hints as to the way of this God he was
unveiling in their midst. Consider the words of one philosopher who spoke of
the one "in whom we live and move and have our being." This phrase,
attributed to a poem by Epimenides the Cretan, speaks to the closeness of God
to our lives. The second phrase—"For
we too are his offspring"—came from the Cilician poet Aratus in his poem
dedicated to Zeus. Though these passages in their proper contexts might not
speak about Paul's God, they have a hint of truth, a hint that Paul can apply
to the God of Jesus Christ [F.F. Bruce, Acts,
359-60].
Paul
allows for the idea that we are the offspring of God, and as such, we should
not think of God in terms of humanly-crafted idols of gold, silver, or stone,
images "formed by the art and imagination of mortals.” If we are the offspring of God, then we are
the true image of God, not these idols.
God must, therefore, be worshiped in a way consistent with God’s
identity.
Having
laid out the identity of this God, Paul turns to his altar call. He says to
them, whereas in past times God was content to overlook "the times of
human ignorance," now God was calling on God’s creation to repent in the
face of the impending day of judgment. As Luke portrays Paul’s message, Paul assumes that at the end of days,
there would be a time of judgment and all would be held accountable. On that appointed day, God will turn the
world over to the judgment of the one whom God had raised from the dead. Having heard the word proclaimed, with
judgment being held out before them, they must decide which way to go.
It
should be noted, that while Paul gave a most eloquent defense, which led to his
acquittal, it doesn’t appear that he was successful in converting the Athenians
to his vision of God. Sometimes we look to this encounter to support the work
of apologetics, that is the intellectual defense of the faith, but it didn’t to
work. Paul may have planted seeds, but there was no revival that day. On the
other hand, despite the lack of response, that doesn’t mean we should give up
engaging in intellectual conversations about the faith. We just should expect
it to be the key to revival. There has to be something more relational going on,
than mere intellectual argument. Perhaps, that’s why Paul found more success in
Corinth (Acts 18). Perhaps, the story of the Athenian encounter is a good word
to us, living as we do in a post-religious age. While intellectual rigor should
not be shunned, relationships are the key.
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