Revealing the Unknown God—Lectionary Reflection for Easter 6A (Acts 17)

Acts 17:22-31 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

²² Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual 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 peoples 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 fumble about 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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                Many modern folks say they don’t believe in God, but many of those who make this claim do say they are spiritual people. Whatever spirituality entails it isn’t necessarily religious or for some even involve God (some forms of Buddhism are nontheist). Growing numbers of people say they are spiritual but not religious. When pressed on what they mean by this, they distinguish spirituality, which they see as non-institutional, from religion, which is institutional in nature. For many the rejection of religion is due to either the perception of corruption among religious institutions (and there is plenty of evidence) or the experience of some form of trauma (and there is a lot of evidence of this reality). In the minds of many, as Diana Butler Bass has shown: “Spirituality is understood as somehow more authentic, religion as having ‘a somewhat cynical orientation’” [Christianity after Religion, p. 67].  

                I write this lectionary reflection from the perspective of one who invested much of my life to the business of religion. Yes, I am a religious professional. That means I have a vested interest in the survival of religion, even if I understand why many find religion to be oppressive and even irrelevant. Nevertheless, I also believe that religious institutions have their place, even if they must be continually reformed and perhaps restored so that they can be authentic. Sometimes that means getting back to basics and reclaiming the original vision (I reflect on this in my book Called to Bless: Finding Hope by Reclaiming our Spiritual Roots).

                During this Easter season, we are walking through the Book of Acts. The previous week we heard the story of Stephen’s martyrdom (Acts 7:55-60) and the role a young man named Saul played in Stephen’s death. In this week’s reading, we jump forward in time. That young man named Saul, who gave assent to Stephen’s death, is now a fully engaged follower of the same Jesus whom Stephen proclaimed. Now he is known as Paul and when we encounter him in Acts 17 his missionary journeys have landed him in Athens. The city of Athens was known for being an intellectual center within the Roman Empire. It was also known for its many temples. According to Luke’s account, the Athenians tried to cover all their bases by erecting a temple to the “Unknown God,” just in case they missed one. When Paul arrived in the city, it appears that he was overwhelmed by what he encountered (and not in a positive way). Luke tells us that Paul was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols” (Acts 17:16).

                While Paul was distressed to see that the city was full of idols, he also saw an opportunity to share a word about Jesus with the Athenians. When he noticed that the Athenians loved to debate, he decided to take advantage of this freedom to share ideas by speaking of Jesus. He used that shrine to the “Unknown God” as his starting point. Paul noted that the Athenians were a very religious people who sought to cover all their spiritual bases. He also knew that the Athenians prized their intellectual reputation as the home of numerous academies. So, standing up in the Areopagaus, Paul sought to defend the intellectual validity of his message, especially since some of his debate partners accused him of being a babbler or “seed picker” who peddled old tales. He sought to defend the intellectual credibility of his message to gain a hearing from the crowd. But, first, he acknowledged the Athenians’ religiosity, evidenced by the many shrines and temples scattered throughout the city. He uses the Greek word deisideaimonisterous to describe their religious life. This word can be interpreted in two ways. At one level he could be calling them a superstitious lot, who worshipped lots of different gods, even every conceivable deity. On the other hand, he might use the word more positively, such that he was commending them for their religious piety and devotion. Since Paul seems intent on finding common ground so he can get a hearing, it’s more likely that he commended them for their piety than accusing them of superstition. Of course, the ambiguity of this usage might suggest that Paul was flattering them without giving them a compliment. What Paul seems to be doing here is acting as a good scholar by taking note of their beliefs and practices.

                Before Paul got up in the Areopagus to make his defense of his faith, he had engaged in debate with Stoics and Epicureans who had, as noted above accused him of being a babbler, but they also accused him of peddling foreign deities (Acts17:18). Perhaps they were concerned that Paul, like Socrates before him, was disrupting the calm of the city. Thus, they wanted to know more about Jesus and the idea of resurrection. Let’s remember that Socrates had been executed for corrupting the morals of the city’s youth, so this was a high-stakes debate. While the Athenians were unsure about this foreign religion, Paul was distressed by their religiosity/idolatry. This distress would come naturally for a monotheistic Jew. Nevertheless, Paul seized the moment and used the shrine to the Unknown God as the starting place for his defense of his commitment to the way of Jesus. He suggests that in worshiping the Unknown God they had unknowingly worshiped the God he represented. He declares to them: “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, 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” (Acts 17:23b-25). By making use of the shrine, Paul could overcome the charge that he was peddling foreign divinities. He was simply revealing to them the identity of the Unknown God who created all things and who is Lord of all.

                Now as a good Jew, Paul doesn’t believe that the Unknown God is just one among many, or even first among many deities. There is but one God and Paul believes that Jesus is the one who reveals this one God to the world. As for Paul, he is simply the representative of the true God, who is the creator and Lord of all. While Paul uses philosophical terms in his defense of God, his theology is clearly rooted in the Hebrew Bible. The God he proclaims is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and God did this without any help from other deities. In fact, this God, to whom the Athenians had erected 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. 

                In contrasting this Unknown God with the other gods worshipped by the people, he focuses on the self-sufficiency of the Unknown God, a God who doesn’t dwell in shrines or temples or needs human servants to care for God’s needs. Instead, the God Paul proclaims is the life-giver who made all the nations from one ancestor, and allotted to them their time and place of existence, so that they might seek after God, who is close by. This reference to a common ancestor is important for us today, as it speaks to our common humanity. Therefore, it speaks to our equality as human beings, created in the image of God. There is no such thing as racial superiority (vs. 26).

                To support his contention that God is the source of life for all humanity, Paul quotes from the philosophers, who taught that God is the one in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). In quoting their poets/philosophers, Paul makes his defense of the Unknown God by moving to his debate partner’s own turn. The phrase Paul quoted comes from a poem attributed to Epimenides the Cretan, who speaks to the closeness of God to our lives. Not only is God the source of our being, but Paul draws from another poet, the Cilician Aratus, who speaks of our being God’s offspring. While Aratus dedicated his poem to Zeus, Paul uses it to speak of the God revealed in Jesus. For Paul, to be God’s offspring, suggests that as children of God, we have been created in God’s image. As Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock remind us, we are all children of God by creation. Therefore, “no individual, people, race, or nation is an accident of nature or creature of some other God; all are children of the one God” [The People’s New Testament Commentary, p. 431]. As children of God, created in the image of God, we do not need humanly-crafted idols.

            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 is calling on God’s creation to repent in the face of the impending day of judgment. Thus, Luke portrays Paul assuming that the end of days, the time of judgment, is close at hand. On that day all will be held accountable for what they know. As for the identity of the judge, Luke suggests that it is the one whom God has raised from the dead. The message given to the Athenians is this. Jesus is coming to judge the world, so they must decide which way to go.

                The creators of the lectionary don’t continue beyond Paul’s message. We stop before hearing how Paul’s defense went. As we continue to the end of the chapter, it’s clear that Paul didn’t win many converts that day. In fact, in verse 32, we’re told that some among the crowd scoffed at Paul’s message of the resurrection. Nevertheless, others invited Paul to return and continue with the debate. Some even believed, though Luke doesn’t speak of Paul creating a community in Athens. Among those who believed was a man named Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris (Acts 17:32).

                For those who look to Paul’s encounter with the Athenian elite as a foundation for engaging in an intellectual defense of the faith, we need to acknowledge that ultimately Paul wasn’t that successful. At least that was true for the moment. While Paul isn’t as successful as he would have liked, at least he was able to share his message in a way that garnered a hearing from the Athenians. What that means for us is less clear. Perhaps the best we can say here is that Paul planted seeds that would take root and be productive down the road (Acts 17:32-34). Interestingly Paul found greater success in the Greek port city of Corinth (Acts 18). I don't know what that says about intellectual defenses of the Christian faith, but it stands as a reminder that it doesn't always work as planned.