[Delivered on May 21, 2017 at Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, South Dakota]
Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and
said, “Athenians, I see how extremely
religious you are in every way. 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. 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.’ From
Acts 17
It’s not every Sunday one can give a homily based on
Greek legend, Geek mythology, and the New Testament. So I couldn’t pass up this
opportunity to do so.
In order to fully appreciate our first reading from
Acts 17, we need to know why Paul addressed the Athenians at the Areopagus and why
he cites two poems about the Greek god, Zeus. The author of Acts, Luke, likely
assumed that everybody of his day, two thousand years ago, would have known why,
but knowledge can get lost in two thousand years. So let’s take a moment to rewind and review:
The Areopagus is a rock outcropping in Athens that
was used in Paul’s time for conducting public trials. Here the Athenians wanted
to discern if Paul was introducing a new religion into their city as Paul’s
preaching about Jesus and his resurrection seemed to indicate. Introducing a new religion was considered
corruption, a serious crime in ancient Athens; a charge that resulted in the
death of Socrates in 399 BCE.
On his way there, Paul passes an altar to “The
Unknown God,” the history of which Paul uses in his effective defense, along
with citing two early Greek poems to support the premise that he was not preaching something new.
The first poet cited is Epimenides who wrote a poem
called, "Cretica." In "Cretica," Epimenides argues with his
fellow Cretans that Zeus was very much alive as evident in our being alive
after they had built a symbolic tomb declaring him dead:
They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always
liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But
you (Zeus) are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our
being[1]
As
a side note, the line about Cretans being liars is cited, verbatim, in Paul’s letter to Titus (1:12) and is the
basis for Epimenides Paradox which states if being a Cretan himself,
Epimenides, in calling Cretans liars is also a liar by telling a truth
applicable to himself.
In
fact, the altar to The Unknown God has a close connection to Epimenides:
During the time of the great Athenian law giver,
Solon, the Athenians suffered a horrendous plague attributed to an act of
treachery on people who they granted asylum and then killed. To rid themselves
of the resulting plague, they tried appeasing their gods through sacrifice, but
nothing was working.
So they approached the Oracle at Delphi who informed
them that there was a god they failed to appease. When they asked which one, she said she didn’t
know but they should send for Epimenides, a prophet in Crete, who would help
them. So they did.
When Epimenides arrives in Athens he comments that they must be very religious because
of the many gods and goddesses they
have. He told them there is a good and great unknown god who was smiling on
their ignorance but was willing to be appeased. When they perform the proper
rituals throughout the city, the plague is ended and they erect altars to this
unknown god throughout Athens. [2]
The second “poet” Paul cites is the philosopher Aratus,
from his work Phenomenon:
… always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring…[3]
* * * * * * * * * * *
Avoiding the name Zeus, Paul infers, via his
reference to the unknown god, the philosophical idea of a Superior God whose
nominal identity is simply “God” which we monotheists have adopted. As a result, Paul’s catechesis on God and who
we are in relation to God boils down to this:
Question:
Who is God?
Answer:
God is that Being in which we live, move, and have our being.
Question:
Who
are we?
Answer:
We are his offspring.”
In my opinion, this is the best definition of God
and our relationship to God found anywhere. God is the active force of all that
is, has been, and will be, and we are the incarnate manifestations of that
activity. We live because God is living, we move because God is moving, we are
because God is. This concept of everything
existing in God – panentheism – is found in Paul’s understanding of the Risen
Christ. Jesus, as the Risen Christ, is, in Paul’s theology, the cosmic nexus between God and humankind.
Paul’s personal encounters with Jesus occurred in
his visions of the Risen Christ. The only historical information about Jesus that gets
any press began in Paul’s epistles begins on Maundy Thursday and ends on Easter
Morning. Consequently, his epistles never mention Jesus’ parentage, his
miracles, his parables, his disciples other than Peter, or his ministerial teachings
other than the words of institution used in Holy Communion.
For Paul, the Resurrection was the reset point of God’s
original relationship with us. Jesus as the Risen Christ is declared by Paul to
be the first born of a new creation who, as a man was sown a physical body and,
as the Christ was raised a spiritual body as stated in his first letter to the
Corinthians (15)
*
* * * * * * * * *
In his defense at the Areopagus, Paul also accused
the Athenians of becoming too religious for their own good, as demonstrated by
their many idols. They had become God-blind – a problem every age encounters,
including our own. Paul knew something about being God-blind.
It took his vision of the risen Christ on his way to
Damascus to experience literal blindness which led him to see how blind he was
about God. He went from being Saul, the
Pharisee, a devout believer in a God of laws and strict discipline, to Paul, a
prisoner of Christ, a man of faith, hope, and love who became shackled to a God
of faith, hope, and love in us.
It was the wide embrace of God, the God and Father
of all, as expressed in the poetry of Epimenides and Aratus that prompted him
to a make the revolutionary claim echoed in every social/religious debate to
this day:
“For there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,
male nor female, for all are one in the risen Christ,” as he writes to the
Galatians (Galatians 3:28).
Too often it is the Christians of today; especially those
of rigid inclination who treat the Bible as being the literal inerrant word of
God that are not only God-blind but also Bible-idolators. After all, it was Paul who entered into their
inerrant view of the Biblical record the words of Epimenides and Aratus, the
poets of Zeus, giving Epimenides’ Paradox a new twist:
If the word of God is literal and inerrant, are the
quotes by Epimenides and Aratus found in the New Testament, inerrant also?
By extension, does not Paul’s use of their
definition of Zeus make Zeus another name for God?
*
* * * * * * * * *
God is known by many names; and yet, no single name
can describe the ineffable, intimate, pervading sense of BEING that God is. So in our liturgies and hymns when we
reference God’s name, we capitalize the word “Name,” as in today’s opening
hymn:
Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light
inaccessible hid from our eyes, most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of
Days, almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.
To all life thou
givest, to both great and small; in all life thou livest, the true life of all. We blossom
and flourish, like leaves on the tree, then wither and perish; but nought
changeth thee.[4]
To
which, I am confident, Aratus, Epimenides, and Paul would say, “AMEN!”
* * * * * * * * * *
Until next time, stay faithful.
[1] Translated
by Prof. J. Rendel Harris in a series of articles in the Expositor (Oct. 1906,
305–17; Apr. 1907, 332–37; Apr. 1912, 348–353;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides
[2]
“To An Unknown God,” Christians in
Crete, Connecting God’s Family http://christiansincrete.org/news/to-an-unknown-god/
[3]
“Phenomenon” translated by G.R. Mair; http://www.theoi.com/Text/AratusPhaenomena.html
[4]
“Immortal, invisible, God only wise” by Walter Chalmers Smith (1824-1908),
number 423 in The Hymnal 1982.
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