As a way to introduce this post on Epimenides' Unknowable God, I am beginning with a portion of a homily I delivered on May 21, 2017 at Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, South Dakota. What follows provides the legendary history of Epimenides connection to the altar of the Unknown God, which the apostle Paul obviously knew very well to the point of being able to repeat the same phrases Epimenides used in his poem, "Cretica" and comments Epimenides made about how religious the Athenians were.
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[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.’ 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 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]
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In recent times, Epimenides' definition of Zeus as that "holy and high one" in which "we live and have our being" is becoming popular with Christians as a general definition of God. I see it as a bridge between God, as understood in religion, and God, as understood in science. God in religion is largely understood as being primarily concerned with us humans living on this planet. As such, God in religion is portrayed as being concerned with our moral behavior and incentivizing good behavior by rewarding it and punishing bad behavior.
On the other hand, God in science, if and when the term is used at all, is understood metaphorically to identify the laws that govern the physical universe or the currently nebulous, but hoped for, Theory of Everything. What God becomes in this sense is the totality of all that is, which relates well with Epimenides' unknown god, the being in whom "we live and have our being" and who "smiles on our ignorance." God in the scientific use of the term is not concerned with our moral behavior, but rather represents the laws (the forces) of nature which control cause and effect within nature and to that extent explains our life experience as also being a result of causes and effects. While one might be tempted to claim that such causes and effects belies a universal moral code, the universe does not reward or punish moral behavior. Behavior is simply behavior.
There is something personable about a god who "smiles on our ignorance." This unknown god is not presented as a capricious god, such as the Olympian gods. This god is approachable at least to the extent that this god wants to be approached.
Epimenides' unknown god is both nameless and imageless, and yet, to stave off the plague devastating Athens, this nameless and imageless god required recognition through ritual, which the Athenians perform and after which the plague is ended. In everlasting gratitude, the Athenians built altars to this god, and Paul, like those ancient Athenians is saved by acknowledging this god and equating it as the one god above all others. Paul goes a step further than Epimenides in attributing a line from Epimenides' poem on Zeus, "For in you we live and have our being" to this unknown God, which Paul claims to have knowledge of as being the one God Paul claimed as a Jew without directly making such a claim.
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Epimenides' unknown god undoubtedly raises some questions. Where did Epimenides come up with such a concept? Was it divine revelation or a theological deduction that such a god existed? Or was some sort of intuition, some insight into an obvious problem the Athenians were blind to? Remember the Oracle at Delphi told the Athenians to seek as prophet fro Crete by the name of Epimenides. If there is one thing we know about prophets, it is that they are good at exposing the ignored obvious.
What catches one's attention in this legendary story is the observation that Epimenides made regarding how religious the Athenians were because of the the many gods and goddesses they worshiped. Where there were many gods and goddesses there were undoubtedly many temples. Temples were and are places where people gather, especially when there is trouble afoot that people do not know how to respond to.
Given the experience those of us living today have had with the Covid pandemic, we know something about the effect that large gatherings had on spreading the Covid virus. It is more than likely that the Athenians were filling the temples with the sick, pleading for divine intervention, which ultimately led to more deaths. This would help explain why they thought they were being punished by the gods.
It is interesting that when Epimenides told the Athenians about the unknown God who would help them, he instructed them to go out into the fields and where they found a sheep laying down, that was spot where the Athenian were to offer that unfortunate sheep to the unknown god, as a sacrifice. In essence, what might have saved the Athenians was getting them out of the Petri dishes that was their temples and into the fresh air.
Of course this is all speculation on my part. One can't be certain what went through Epimenides' mind when he was summoned to Athens. Did he invent the idea of an unknown God or was it an intuitive revelation? We will never know. The bottom line in this story is that it worked, whether by getting the Athenians outside of their city and temples or because there is such a god who smiled on their ignorance and saved them.
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In my opinion the story of the unknown god represents the nexus of the two version of God that I wrote about in previous two posts, God in Religion and God in Science. In a sense Epimenides' unknown god, led the religious people of Athens out of their temples and their gods to experience god in science, an unknowable god that nevertheless exists in the background of our existence, that embodies us in the parental way that Epimenides spoke of in his poem "Cretica." Although, Epimenides was speaking of Zeus, he changes Zeus from an immortal god living on Olympus to a universal being that generates and embodies our being.
Most theistic religions get to the point where God becomes a paradox who is both one (the totality of all that is) and a multi-dimensional, who is both intimate with creation and other (holy) than creation. God is ultimately inscrutable whether in religion or in science. Perhaps the best understanding of such a god iswhen God in the story of the burning bush explains to Moses, "I am that I am (I will be what I will be)" or when Epimenides described the unknown god as one "who smiles on our ignorance. "
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
[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/
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