Dear friends,
Fathers are so important in life, even in this anti-patriarchal age. For fatherhood is derived from God the Father. He is the provider and protector of us all, who knows our needs before we even ask. He is not far from us, and he is open to our prayers.
This is an important point in Paul’s logic as he attacks the inconsistency and incoherence of Athenian idolatry.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Throughout the rest of this summer season at Two Ways News, we will continue to deal with the great speech of Paul in Athens in Acts 17, where he explains to the Athenians who God is. Today, Peter will start us off with a reading from Acts 17:26-29.
Peter Jensen:
Acts 17:26–29
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
Phillip: Before we go further, let’s summarise what we’ve said so far in our summer series about the points Paul makes in his sermon. Firstly, he tells us that God is the creator of the universe. Secondly, he says that God is the sustainer of all life. Last week, we saw that God is the ruler of the nations, who leads us to seek after him because our nationalism divides us. Now, in our seeking and searching after him, we find that God is the father of humans. The reason for this addition is the claim of God’s sovereignty over the nations, for we now get an idea of the nature of this ruler. But what is the nature of God’s rule over the nations, and how does that lead to us seeking and searching after God?
Peter: It is certainly an encouragement to us that God is the father of humans. But the reason Paul says such a thing is because of the claim, as you said, of God’s rule over the nations, where he has frustrated humans in order to have them seek and perhaps find him. For when all is said and done, the whole purpose of humanity is captured in those words. Our true business in life is not to run a business, fly an aeroplane, or achieve any other great human accomplishment; it is to “seek God, and perhaps feel our way towards him and find him.”
That said, it sounds like a daunting and difficult task. How and where do we seek God? Though of course, human beings all throughout history have been engaged in that search. But one may notice the word ‘perhaps’ in the phrase, “And perhaps feel their way towards him and find him.” This is interesting, because the matter of God’s existence has been debated for centuries. Different proofs of the existence of God have come up, and people have disagreed over whether or not they are adequate. Even if you conclude that God is real according to some philosophical proof, it does not mean that you have found him.
Phillip: Indeed; trying to feel after this ‘knowledge’, this ‘person’, this ‘being’ that is out there is like being a blind man searching for the light. But Paul says that it shouldn’t be difficult, for he reminds the Athenians that God is not far from us; in fact, he’s right here. Our problem is not God’s absence but our sinfulness. Our problem is not a lack of evidence, but our blindness. It is the blindness of our sinfulness, and there are none so blind as those who will not see.
According to Psalm 14:1, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” That is a moral foolishness. The fool does not want there to be a God; he is looking where God is not in order to make sure he doesn’t find him. Likewise, the fool desperately hopes that God will not find him in his sinfulness. The Enlightenment atheists give the impression that the evidence is not there, that God has not shown himself clearly enough to us all. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that we don’t want to find him. If you don’t want to find him, you certainly won’t, because sinfulness means that humans are not searching after God as they should. God is not far from us, but in feeling after him, we keep our eyes closed.
Paul illustrates the point by quoting the audience’s own poets against them. The first one is Epimenides of Crete, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Then he references the Stoic poet Aratus, “For we are indeed his offspring.” Therefore God is not a being who is inaccessible; the Athenians themselves knew that God is right there. But quoting the pagans Aretas and Epimenides raises several issues for us.
Peter: It does. It reminds me of the great thinker from the 17th century, Francis Bacon, who said, “Atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man,” which is interesting. In other words, we know that God exists, but we are not prepared to admit it. It is, as you pointed out, a moral problem. It’s the problem of who rules over us: are we in charge of ourselves, or are we prepared to say that God is in charge of us?
Phillip: It’s like putting God in the dock, when in fact, we are in the dock and he is on the bench.
Peter: Indeed. Some of us may be a bit surprised that the Apostle Paul refers to the pagan poets and philosophers to argue for Christian truths, yet we shouldn’t be. I think it’s a good thing to do, though we don’t necessarily accept their teachings. There have been times when some of the great philosophers of the past have had too much of a dominance in Christian theology, which needs to be held in check. But on the other hand, of course it’s right to say that people from all sorts of religious affiliations, or none, may speak truths. Augustine once said, “All truth is God’s truth.” The fact is that people speak the truth, and we can use that truth as a way of promoting the gospel, while always being careful that what is being spoken is in fact truthful, and that it is not going to take over the gospel. Therefore, the sayings of these pagan thinkers can be used.
In fact, the truth that the pagan thinkers speak is useful in helping us understand this principle. God’s first disclosure of himself is through his great works. To quote Psalm 19:1-2
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
What we see around us is called ‘the general revelation of God’ (the word ‘general’ here meaning ‘universal’). It comes to every one of us as we dwell in this absolutely extraordinary world of ours, and it all testifies to the reality of God. So too does what theologians call ‘common grace’. In other words, all of us are corrupt, yet we are not completely bad. We are capable of good. There are books written by non-Christian authors that are profound, challenging, and informative, telling us things that we need to know. Though such things do not lead us to God himself, they may stimulate thought, encourage us to see, and be used as a testimony to God, as they are here by Paul, who essentially tells the Athenians, ‘Even your poets know the truth; let me use them to introduce you to the real truth.’
Phillip: I disagree; I think that Paul is negating the Athenian view rather than affirming that their pagan writers know the truth. In other words, Paul shows them the truth to point out their inconsistency. That is, he says, ‘You say you don’t know God, yet there are things about God and life that you’re already professing.’ We don’t use the pagan poets to accommodate our message to local views. You already mentioned that we can go too far with pagan philosophies. There were times when Platonism was the mode of the day, and Christians rephrased Christianity into Platonism, distorting Christianity as a result. Likewise, the Aristotelian revival of the church had the same problems when people changed Christianity in order for it to be consistent with Aristotelianism. Enlightenment Christianity had the same problem, as does postmodern Christianity. Christianity must rule over the philosophies of the world, rather than letting the philosophies of the world rule over it. We must be careful not to accommodate our message to local worldviews.
Furthermore, the poet Aratus, whom Paul quotes, was a Stoic; in the same passage, Paul preaches against Stoicism. Thus, he does not use the Stoic philosophy as a way of explaining Christianity. Instead, he shows the inconsistency and the incoherence of the Athenians. He does not speak of their great grasp of truth, but highlights that their worldview has a fundamental error running through it: they say they do not know God, yet they also claim that they do. The way in which they want to know God is inconsistent with their practice, so Paul teaches the Athenians that we are all God’s offspring.
Peter: Let me take that up with you, because after all, this part of the sermon where he mentions that we are all God’s offspring is quite jaw-dropping, since in so much of the Bible, terms like ‘offspring’ and ‘sons’ are used to refer to Israel. Israel is the son of God. As is said in Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Afterwards, we are born again into God’s family, and we have the inestimable privilege as believers of being able to call God our Father in that intimate way. Romans 8 and Galatians 4 make a great deal about this. It’s not a privilege you are born with; it’s a privilege which comes to you through a rebirth. Remember the genealogy of Luke 3.
Phillip: That takes you in the other direction, because the genealogy goes all the way up to Adam, who is said to be the son of God. But he was not born again by the Spirit of God, nor was he an Israelite. It was in his creation that he was the son of God. Thus I am not quite sure whether you can so limit God’s fatherhood to the rebirth of sinful people that you exclude the fatherhood of God in general. After all, isn’t all fatherhood in heaven and earth named after him?
Peter: It is. There is a unique sonship of whom only Jesus, the eternal Son of God, is that person. Then there is an adopted sonship of those who are born again and come into that living, wonderful, and unique relationship with God, who is our loving Father. But there is also the fact that we all belong to humanity, and humanity itself was created by God. Therefore we are the recalcitrant, prodigal children of the living God.
Phillip: I’ll put it this way: he is God the Father before we are created, so he is always the Father. It is right that we call upon people to turn back to God the Father. We are created, but we’re created in relationship with the Father. Jesus says, in Matthew 7:11, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Peter: Assuming, rightly so, that this is not an unbiblical expression, why does Paul use it here?
Phillip: It is because of the failure of idolatry, for they know God is not a statue, but the source of life and their Father, yet they continue to make statues. As Paul says in Acts 17:29, “We ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” God is not made in our image; we are made in his image. All idolatry is the making of man, and all idolatry comes from man’s image, whilst God is fundamentally not from man’s image. So Paul points out that what the Athenians say through their own prophets contradicts the presence of statues within the city.
Peter: Idolatry is a spiritual failure, which takes different forms. Traditionally, it has involved making images of the gods of the world, depicting them in human or animal forms as an attempt to understand and relate to them. But it doesn’t work. It works from the point of view of fulfilling a need in the human heart for worship and for organising the world, but it doesn’t fulfil the human heart, which longs for the great creator of all things, a creator who cannot be represented by plastic, by stone, or by any other malleable instrument.
Phillip: Idolatry is not feeling our way towards God and finding him; it’s running away from the God that we know, in making our own gods, because all idolatry is a misrepresentation of God.
Peter: To state something that’s been said many times before, instead of recognising that we are made in the image of God, we make God in our image. As Christians, we can be tempted to do that too; we make God a bigger form of ourselves in the hope of organising the world. This can be done verbally, in painting a portrait of God with our words, which is idolatrous.
Phillip: That is because what that does is reduce God to something we can control, and therefore it’s a rejection rather than a searching for him. Man in the Bible, especially religious man, is not seeking God but running away from him. Sometimes we talk of people as seeking God, and we should, because he is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. But what we are doing as sinful people is running away from him. That is the message of Acts 17 and the point of the climax of the sermon, which we will talk about next week.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on Acts 17, check out this talk. It’s called Who Judges Judges?
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