To an Unknown God
Acts 17:22-31
Acts 17:22-31 (NRSV):
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.”
Let me ask you some questions about God. Have you found God? Where did you find God? Were you surprised you found God there? Where have you seen God? When have you touched God? Where have you smelled God? When have you sensed God, in your gut? What is God’s favorite sandwich? What if told you it was a reuben? Would that deepen or shatter your faith in God?
Have any of you stopped believing in God? How would you describe the God you stopped believing in? Do you believe in something more meaningful to you than your ex-God, now? Why don’t you call that thing “God,” what makes it not God? ”If God had a name, what would it be and would you call it to (their) face? If God had a face, what would it look like?” Ok, now I’m just quoting a 90s song by Joan Osborne.
Do any of us really know God? I am torn between two answers to that question, which are “of course we do!” and “of course we don’t!” That, to me, is one of the paradoxes of faith. It’s the confidence needed to say “deep down, I know so much.” And the humility needed to say “There is so much more to know.” And maybe also the spiritual curiosity needed to say, “I’m going try to know a little more than I do now.”
Who or what even is God? When we speak about the God we believe in or the God we don’t believe in, are we all talking about the same thing? Assuming “yes” might help reveal our common ground. Assuming “no” might help us learn something new.
Speaking of learning, how do we learn about the Divine? Our sacred text? Religious teachers? I would not put either of these above the revelatory power of your own experience in the world, as a creature, as a human. I know our tradition is informed by the Quakers who’ve come before us, and Christ, who came before them, and the “recorders,” i.e., the people who wrote things down, but…life is revelatory, trees are revelatory, your neighbor is revelatory, you are revelatory.
And far as Jesus goes, can he really give us the whole picture? God is more than Jesus could fathom. Even if you think that God became human in Jesus of Nazareth, if we’re to take Divinity seriously, and take incarnation seriously, you can’t convince me that Jesus grasped the fullness of God. God is vast. Incarnation is specific. You are specific. Your neighbor is specific. The birds that come to your feeder are specific. The paradox of Divinity, I think, is that God is fully present in all these things and yet none of them, on their own, can communicate the fullness of God.
The same is true of Love; you can speak to your experiences of Love, you can try to define Love, like I have, like many of us have, and yet, definitions fall short. Definitions are neat! Your definition of God is probably pretty neat. But God embodied, God experienced is what matters. Love embodied, Love experienced is the good stuff.
I don’t know whether or not I relate to Paul, here. I remember my experience of writing my seminary masters thesis on interfaith dialogue. When I embarked on the journey of that project, my starting assumption was that interfaith dialogue was a useful way of guiding people of different faiths to become Christian. Because of course you should just be Christian, I thought. So if we listen with curiosity, we’ll discover enough about these religious others that we can invite them away from their spiritual traditions, to ours. Unfortunately for that thesis, as I learned about other faiths, and as my own heart and mind expanded, I discovered that there were many good, beautiful, and valid spiritual paths, not just my own. Realizing that was…disruptive…to my path?
I was a quiet pluralist or universalist for another year or so before I could more comfortably and publicly articulate this recognition in my evangelical context. It took another couple of years for me to learn how I could be committed to a tradition that was right for me, but didn’t need to be right for everyone. The path to the Divine is a multi-line highway, and it’s okay to pick a lane. And even change lanes, as you go. Or expand the highway for that matter, and add a lane!
How would you evaluate Paul, here, as he navitages this interfaith experience?
Luke’s preface to this speech mentions Paul’s distress at seeing the city of Athens full of idols. Which could mean many things. It’s not necessarily an inability to recognize cultural and religious diversity; “money” can be an idol, right? And so if Paul’s distressed by greed, just as one example, I would certainly sympathize with that.
Luke also says that one of philosophers Paul was debating with in the marketplace called Paul a “pretentious babbler” which is a pretty sick burn, and also how I might characterize say, a street preacher, among others—there to talk, not to listen. But many others appear genuinely eager to learn something new, and ask him to explain his teaching to them. That’s awfully gracious of them, given this outsider, coming into their space and kind of talking at them, at least at first. But Paul might also be listening.
“I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way” (22). Paul doesn’t start speaking without having first listened and observed. That feels important. “I looked carefully at the objects of your worship” (23). Paul communicates some degree of attention to specifics, noticing many transcendent pulls on these people, rather than a single pull.
“I found an altar that said ‘to an unknown god’” (23). The classic mystics often speak of the apophatic way–discovering the Divine beyond our names and concepts, and finding liberation in the unknowability of God, God beyond words, God in stillness, silence, and mystery. Could that be happening here? Paul recognizes their recognition of some degree of mystery. I guess they could just be trying to cover all their bases–don’t want to leave a god out! But I hear a humility that I don’t hear in Paul quite as strongly. As if this altar says: “there are things we don’t know. There are things we’ve yet to learn.”
“I can proclaim to you what this ‘unknown’ is!” says Paul (23). This might be where Paul loses some of us. There are many different models that Christian theologians have come up with to explain how one’s Christian faith might relate to other faiths. The simplest, but not my favorite model because it’s a bit oversimplified and lacking nuance, is the threefold paradigm: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Or, in plainer terms: Christianity is the only correct and trustworthy path to the Divine; Christianity is the best path to the Divine but others are on the right track; or Christianity is one among many reliable paths to the Divine. Paul says here: “I have the answer to your question.” I’ll leave it to you to consider whether Paul speaks like an exclusivist, inclusivist, or pluralist, here. At first it seemed obvious to me, and now I’m less sure.
“God does not live in shrines made by human hands” (24). This may remind you of Stephen, quoting Solomon, in our scripture from two weeks ago, a scene Paul the preacher, formerly Saul the coat-holder for a violent mob, might remember vividly. God cannot be contained by any shrine or structure we make. Paul may be expanding their notion of the Divine, and maybe, also, his own.
“God does not need anything” (25). Some gods come with a lot of pressure to perform rituals, or be morally perfect, or flatter the gods with praise, or give them money. Maybe Paul is saying that God doesn’t need any of that from us. I also wonder if Paul is grounding God, democratizing God. Inviting people to search for the living God not “up” there, like some kind of Divine counterpart to the emperor, and not in a statue or any other human construct that puts boundaries or limitations on God, but to search for God among and within us–in our life, in our breath, in our friendships, in all things.
“From one ancestor he made all peoples…” (26) A gentle reminder that we are family, all of us. All connected. We have diverged and evolved and developed our identities and customs in particular times and places and so our diversity is rich, but there is unity underlying that diversity. Diversity is not an evil, it is the natural outcome of the Divine taking shape in the world.
“They search…and fumble about for God, though God is not far from each one of us…” (27). I love this: “fumble about for God.” As if to say “we’re all grasping for something in the dark, and are probably going to bonk our shins in the process. But we’re so close.”
“In him we live and move and have our being’...‘we, too, are his offspring.’” (28). An early expression of panentheism? Theism implies a chasm between God and creatures. Pantheism equates God with creatures. Panentheism is participatory and incarnational. God is in all things, or all things are in God. There is difference, yet unity. Everything born, every emergence or evolution of life, is like the birth, emergence, and evolution of the Divine. We are all God’s offspring: related to the Divine, related to each other.
Therefore, “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” (29). Paul might be dissing their idols, yes, but I actually think there’s an invitation to deconstruction here that would apply to anyone at almost any time, including Paul. We might all do well to be ready to lay down any kind of constructs of God we’ve developed, even the really cool and woke constructs, if they have somehow become problematic, or are leading us away from Love.
That’s not to draw a false equivalency between all versions of God; some gods are more violent and life-destroying than others, which is why it’s unhelpful to say “it doesn’t matter what you believe about God” in a spirit of inclusion, because it does matter. Our theology has consequences. Deconstruction is not just about leaving fundamentalist religion, it's about keeping ourselves open to healthy doubt, to learning and growth, and to each other. And also maybe–and this may sound bizarre at first but I think it’s worth saying–to not letting our notions of “God” get in the way of Love.
“While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent…” (30). Now this may be where Paul and I diverge, if he’s saying, “it’s time to leave your inferior gods for the God Jesus told us about.” I may be in the Christian lane, but that doesn’t mean I think the world becoming Christian is the path we should be on. Christianity won’t save us. Love may save us. If other spiritual paths guide people toward Love, I will cheer them on.
However, where Paul and I might be on the same page, is if we read this as a broader critique of tendencies that could be present in any faith tradition. The Rev. Dr. Leah Schade, commenting on this passage, says this about the Athenians: “It seemed that every aspect of life had its own god or goddess that required homage. And payment!
The money given in homage to these gods benefited the makers and keepers of those idols as well as the leadership of the Roman Empire” ( https://interfaithsustain.com/ecopreacher-resources/acts-17-john-14-nature-reveals-unknown-god/) In that light, it would seem at least some of these people are not worshipping life-giving and soul-filling gods but are caught up in a racket! Paul’s invitation may not simply be a “come to Jesus, he’s the one you really want” kind of call, but an attempt to help people find God beyond a for-profit religion, managed by the Empire. No single religion has it figured out. We’re all grasping, fumbling, searching. And sometimes people exploit that spiritual impulse, and give us quick answers that serve them, serve the powerful, when true Divinity cannot be contained by the oppressive boxes we create for it.
“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” (31). First, consider that a righteous judgment is a relief, not a punishment, more of a making things right than a revealing of who was right. Consider also the Quaker view of the resurrection, an affirmation of Christ in all things, the Divine is in all things, Love present in all things. The point is not to call it the right thing. The point is to experience it, and live it.
My friend Promise, who is about to be our yearly meeting’s newest recorded minister, said something in a meeting, which I share with her permission. She said: “I want to know God. I don’t want anyone to tell me what I’m supposed to call it.” My belief is that the word “God” is just a template. It’s how we enflesh that word that matters, that reveals what is truly sacred to us. There are many good names for God besides “God.” I’m not even sure God likes being called “God,” any more than you’d enjoy being called “creature” or “entity” instead of by your true name.
We need many names for God that capture the fullness of Divine Mystery. And I think all you non-theists in the room needn’t feel left out of the conversation. We’re not just talking about a deity. We’re talking about what is most true, sacred, foundational, most central to you and your life. Many of you are constantly translating God-language into something more personal to you, that has another name. What’s its name?
Humans are many things. One thing we are is self-transcending. We are oriented toward some horizon that calls us forward. We can become that which we are not yet.
We can break from what is harmfully limiting in the present and find new life, individually and together. We can transcend our limited perspective, and more fully connect with reality, in all its goodness. In a way, a human is a question, and life is the quest for answers. Question and quest are strikingly similar words. Maybe because questions lead to quests. What are we on a quest for? What is our question? Who has the answer or answers? What inadequate answers have you been given?
We are pulled toward something that, as we pursue it, shapes us. I think you could call this God, but maybe it goes by another name, for you. What calls or pulls you forward?
Whether or not I agree with Paul’s approach here, there are truths here that resonate with me. Everyone is spiritual. The Divine transcends our boxes. Life is a quest for the living God, whom none of us are not far from. Whatever God is, we are their offspring.
My favorite band, Death Cab for Cutie, in one of their songs, speaks to this quest for the knowable yet unknowable God:
“I wanna know the measure…from here to forever
I wanna feel the pressure…of God or whatever
Now it seems more than ever…there's no hands on the levers
I wanna feel the pressure…of God or whatever” ( https://genius.com/Death-cab-for-cutie-here-to-forever-lyrics)
Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab, affirms the presence of…Something…and a fundamental impulse to quest for that…Something. You could call it God. Or whatever.
Queries:
Who or what is God, to me? How do I interact with or experience this God?
What other names do I call God that more fully express who/what God is to me?
If I don’t believe in something called “God,” what do I believe in? What is my Center?
How do I understand my faith in relation to other faiths?
How has curiosity about others’ spiritualities enriched my own?