Acts 17:22-34

March 9, 2003  

Proclaiming Christ in a Pluralistic World

Can we, should we, try to communicate the gospel in an age of pluralism? In a culture where competing voices appear to negate the ability to talk about truth, many times those of us who believe in absolutes feel as though we are negated, forbidden to even offer a perspective.  In his book, The New Absolutes, William Watkins cited several studies and then concluded, "Roughly three out of four Americans claimed they embraced relativism and opposed absolutism."  Pluralists contend that no one religion can know the fullness of spiritual truth, and therefore all religions are valid. But while it is good to acknowledge our limitations, this statement is itself a strong assertion about the nature of spiritual truth.

A common analogy is cited—the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels the tail and reports that an elephant is thin and flexible. Another feels a leg and claims the animal is thick as a tree. Another touches its side and reports the elephant is like a wall. This is supposed to represent how the various religions only understand part of God, while no one can truly see the whole picture. To claim full knowledge of God, pluralists contend, is arrogance.

But the only way this parable makes any sense is if you've seen a whole elephant. Therefore, the minute you say, "All religions only see part of the truth," you are claiming the very knowledge you say no one else has. (Timothy Keller, "Preaching Amid Pluralism," Leadership)

What does it look like when we speak to people with whom we disagree on essential issues of the nature of God and our standing before Him? While some may encourage us to keep quiet about our faith, we know that to not speak out is analogous to ignoring the flames from your neighbor’s house as they sleep. Yet how should we proceed? When talking about God’s grace, how do we keep from being ungracious? How do we show love for others by speaking words which convict?

Paul’s example in Acts 17 lays out some important principles which we need to recognize if we are to reach our world for Christ. Throughout Acts Paul speaks to a variety of people, but most often his audience is comprised of covenant people who share his view of Scripture. While they disagreed with his conclusions, their presuppositions regarding God’s communication to God’s people were the same. But here in Acts 17 Paul’s audience resembles the kind of people with whom we speak every day.

Paul, having fled once again from angry crowds in Berea, finds himself in Athens, the once great city of philosophers, playwrights, and politicians. The glory days of the fifth century B.C. had long faded, but Athens still remained the center of philosophical debate. While strolling the city, Paul was overwhelmed by the sea of idols which swamped every corner of the town. So with the Jews in the synagogue and the Gentiles in the marketplace he discussed the relevancy of Jesus Christ to their everyday life. His dialogues attracted the attention of not a few intellectuals in the town, namely the Epicureans and the Stoics.

• The Epicureans believed that if there are gods, they care nothing for us. Our existence came by chance, the random joining of atoms. So virtue is useless and there is no accounting of our lives. Instead we should live our lives to minimize pain and maximize pleasure.
• The Stoics held a competing philosophy. They believed that god pervades all of life, so much so it is hard to distinguish were god ends and we begin. For this reason, it is imperative that one seeks to order his life to endure whatever pain god sends our way, to rely on one’s innate and divine reasoning skills to respond to whatever life sends our way.

So Paul faced these two competing ideologies: pleasure or pride, chance or fate, happiness or duty as he was asked by these two groups to explain what it is he believed. Rather than dismissing their differences as merely different aspects of the same elephant, Paul speaks. READ Acts 17:22-34

Paul first perceives the need, points to the problem, pricks the conscience and then proclaims the gospel. We’ll look at the first two this morning and next week get to the third and fourth.

Perceive the need               17:22-23

How did Paul do this?

As Paul stood to speak to this august body of intellectuals, he makes it clear that he has been attentive to their culture. He’s kept his eyes open.

In v16 the same word is used as in v22 to perceive or to see, theoreo is more than to glance at, but to look with understanding, intently gaze upon. In v23 he intensifies the same word, as he observed, that is, looked again and again at their objects of worship.

It was then he found a link, common ground on which he could address his audience. He noticed their objects of worship and rather than launching on a tirade about their heathen idolatry, he makes a comment that was not unusual about Athens: “you are very religious.”

This is an insight that was often made by both fellow Greeks and Jews of Athens in the day. Sophocles claimed that Athens is the most pious towards the gods. First century Jewish historian Josephus said that the Athenians are affirmed by all men to be the most religious of the Greeks and Pausanias claimed that the Athenians venerate the gods more than other men.

Whether this comment is positive or negative is debated by scholars and it may have been a bit tongue in check given his audience. The word religious could be used in a positive sense of devout or negative, superstitious. Remember, his audience were not among those who would be found in temples or bowing down to idols. Both the Epicureans and Stoics leveled their own critiques at the numerous idols in that city. At the same time, his back handed compliment is his first response to the charge they’ve leveled against him (v18) that he is preaching some foreign divinities. Paul opens his address by denying this charge, as it is quite apparent that Athens has gods enough, that he is not about to add to the number. 

He points out one altar in particular that caught his attention: the Altar to Unknown God

This shrine to the god whose name is not known, seems a bit odd to us. However ancient writers corroborate Paul’s account. 

Pausanias, who toured Greece in the 2^nd century, admired that land’s glory, history and mythology. Just a few miles from Athens he reported seeing a number of temples, together with `altars of the gods named Unknown'

Another writer, Diogenes Laertes (Lives of the Philosophers 1.110) gives a reason for their origin. Once when Athens was plagued by pestilence in the 6^th B.C. they sought the help of a prophet Epimenides. His remedy was to drive a herd of black and white sheep away from the Areopagus and, wherever they lay down, to sacrifice them to the god of that place. The plague was stayed, and Diogenes Laertes says that memorial altars with no god's name inscribed on them may consequently be found throughout Attica.

These altars provided an insight into the needs of his audience.

What need did he perceive? What did they tell him about these people? The Athenians, the wisest of all peoples, the great intellects of the age, publicly admitted their desire to know god, but their inability to discern who He is. That they were agnostic, ignorant, was seen in the existence of these altars, otherwise these statues would not exist.

For Greeks, esp. Stoics, ignorance was a cardinal sin. The greatest virtue was to discover truth through pursuing the divine reason within oneself. Not to live in accordance with reason, to live in ignorance, was the greatest folly imaginable. Paul accused them of precisely this ignorance, this sin. (Pohill, Acts)

How should we do this?

An important lesson for us to speak to our culture is to know our culture. Just as it is critical for the doctor to diagnosis the illness so that he or she may apply the right medicine, so also, if we are to be physicians to people’s souls you and I must examine the illness which pervades our society.

Just as Paul looked for the empty spots, the wholes in their souls, he wanted them to know that they, like all of us, are vulnerable. Our needs do show, we can’t hide them. In Paul’s day, as in our own, the two competing worldviews deny human significance, a pervasive desire built into each one of us. Whatever philosophical name given, to identify us as either victims of chance or fate, to relegate life to nothing more than avoiding pain or embracing self discipline, life remains hollow. Humans were not created for insignificance.

You and I must perceive people’s needs. When you look out at the cultural landscape, rather than being overwhelmed by the idolatry, see what people worship as their longing, albeit misplaced, for God.

You can keep in tough with culture by simply listening to Ken Myer’s aptly named Mars Hills Audio Journal which provides a helpful grid to interpret your world. Another source is Gene Veith’s Culture Beat in World Magazine. In a recent article entitled Marriage Craving, Veith aptly identifies the unknown god of our age: marriage. In a day with sky rocketing divorces and meaningless sex, there is a aspiration for marriage. While we may decry aspects of Joe Millionaire, it tells us something that 1 out of every three TVs was on when Evan made his choice.

This desire for happiness betrays a longing contrary to the cynical appearance of our age. People want to be loved and that is a place where the gospel is applied.

Point to the problem        17:24-28

How did Paul do this?

It is not enough to perceive the need, but the next step states the problem. The very existence of all the altars and temples among people who already admit they don’t know God, is the inroad to tell them about the God who is not housed by bricks and mortar, but who made all there is.

While some of his audience would reject his biblical account of creation, Paul does not mince words: all that exists exists by God’s decree. Both Epicureans and Stoics criticized their fellow citizens frequenting the temples, as they thought it folly that a god could be housed in a temple.

Yet, they would not have sided with Paul. The God Paul proclaimed critiqued both aspects of pagan culture, for this God was quite personal. It is not the god of chance or of fate.

• The Stoics were pantheists, or better stated, panentheists, as they believed not just that god is everywhere, but that god is in everything. They held to an immanent spirituality, that god is in us, we possess enough of the divine spark so that we are able to do and think what is right. Temples are meaningless for the gods are in me.
• The Epicureans were materialists, all that is, is what we see. Spirituality is nothing more than an induced chemical process. Temples are meaningless because the gods they worship can not be touched.

Paul claims both are in error, for if God made the world, he can not be contained in the world. Rather than a spirituality which purports that God is in me, Paul explains the biblical worldview sees that I exist in God. God, who is outside his creation, controls his creation.

Whatever I have, I have because God has given it to me. He has no need, so that it is absurd to think I can give something back to him. Any attempt to tame or domesticate God, to reduce him to the level of a household pet dependent on us for food and shelter, is again a ridiculous reversal of roles. We depend on God; he does not depend on us.

What is more, not only do we all exist by God’s decree, seen in creation (v24) and providence (v25), all humanity is united by a commonality – God made from one man every nation (v26).

This flew in the face of the Athenian belief that they alone among men sprang from the earth, and are unrelated to the rest of humanity. It was contrary to the Stoic belief that we must work at community; that we are like varying species of wild beasts sharing a common watering hole. Paul challenges this with biblical creation – that we are created by God and for God from one man.

This unity produces a common goal in life – we are made to strive after God.

In v27, the goal of our existence is to seek God, something reflected by the Athenian construction of the altar to the unknown god. Yet Paul’s wording betrays the unlikely nature of this quest. The verb form he uses in v27 states what should be, but expresses grave concern that it ever happens. This is the common problem we all face.

Pascal said there is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart. Augustine claimed our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. Yet, on our own, we do nothing more than grope and feel our way in the dark. Like the blind men and the elephant – we can touch and feel only so much. Yet we are culpable, responsible for not finding God, for he is not far at all. Yet it is not that he is in us, but that we are in Him. 

To prove this, Paul quotes from their own writers. While his speech is full of biblical concepts, he finds connects with his audience in their own words. It is not that God resides in us and all we need to do is tap that internal resource to find the strength to do what is right. Rather we reside in God; we find our significance in Him.

We face worldviews not that unlike what Paul faced in Athens, we too can redirect the attention of those we meet in a similar fashion. Paul had good news for those living under impersonal chance or implacable fate. There is a personal Creator who graciously condescends to us. We are not residents of a cold universe nor are we bound to an impersonal karma which controls all which occurs in our lives.

Earlier I used the illustration of our culture’s love affair with marriage, with couples letting America decide who their life partner will be or vying for others to be chosen as the one. People desire permanence, significance. It is therefore sadly humorous when I read about Janet Downes who professes the secret for a happy marriage:  she's marrying herself on her fortieth birthday. The Bellevue, Neb., woman says the wedding ceremony celebrates that she is "happy with herself," and plans to exchange vows with herself in the mirror. The ceremony will include a wedding gown, flowers, a traditional cake, and a choir.

The answer though is not simply marriage the right way. C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity: To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin; though we shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.

So the answer is not a return to marriage the way we think it should be, it is seeing that our desire for good which displaces God is always idolatry.

Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that is meant to be worshiped. So whenever we find our solace and support in anything other than God, we are there idolaters. Whenever we love without a thought of God’s gracious working in our lives, we are engaged in false worship. This is the essence of all sin - misguided gratitude, not ingratitude.

As dependent creatures we all, by nature, thank somebody or something (usually ourselves!) for what we experience and achieve. And the ultimate object of our gratitude becomes the object of our worship. In turn, the object of our gratitude becomes the object of our service, since we inevitably serve whatever or whomever we think will meet our needs (Matthew 6:24). … This is a law of human nature, inasmuch as God made us to worship and live for him. The sin of idolatry, whether in the age-old worship of nature or in the modern worship of ourselves, is consequently the same: worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25).

Idolatry, whether ancient or modern, is thus the futile attempt to look for our lives to anyone or anything other than the one true Creator and Provider. Whom do I thank when things go well? To whom do I look when things go badly? What is my source of security? Where do I gain my sense of worth in the world? What am I striving to achieve in life, and why? The answers to questions like these will help determine whether we are honoring God as God or whether we are idolaters—whether that means we are praying to a stone image as in [Paul’s] day, drooling with envy over the car in our neighbor's driveway, or latching onto the latest self-help strategy. (S. Hafemann, The God of Promise and the Life of Faith, pp. 36-37)

In effort to help our world see their idolatry, the first and important step for you and I is to see it in ourselves. What and whom are you worshipping? Whatever preoccupies your thoughts, whatever gives you the comfort and satisfaction when troubled that is your god.