These verses are the only discourse addressed to Gentiles in Acts. We best understand the speech as like other speeches in Acts as a missionizing performance. It has a more logical than emotional appeal. His format is precise, his argument progressive, giving it the shape of a learned philosophical presentation. I think it fair to say that Paul gave at least one speech to the Gentiles, the basis of which Luke has preserved in this speech.[2] The speech shows its concern to pick up previous knowledge of the Christian God by means of the theme of affinity between God and the works of creation. He will refer to creation, preservation, and redemption. My understanding of this passage is that it shows a generous approach and appeal to those who do not share the knowledge of the Bible that Jews and Christians had.[3] I Thessalonians 1:9-10 refers to a report of how his readers turned away from false gods to serve the true and living God. This would be like the opening of this speech. He commends them for their curiosity in spiritual matters.[4] Polytheism has an ability to absorb into itself conflicting beliefs regarding the gods. God made all that we see but does not live in the shrines we make. Paul is drawing upon monotheistic argument against polytheism and idolatry among Hellenistic Jews. He is using similarities between Christian theology and the belief systems of other cultures to lead the listeners gently toward some commonly held truths. We have a common ancestry and therefore a common spiritual quest. In Romans 1:18-2:16, Paul also refers to the anger of God in connection with creation only hear the focus is upon how people can know God but refuse to do so. Instead, they turn to immorality and physical images of God. The judgment of God was allowing action to have consequence. His argument expands to those who would judge such persons also judge themselves. God will be angry with those who pass judgment on those whose only knowledge of God is creation. Whether Jew or Gentile, those who do what is right receive glory, honor, and peace, for God does not play favorites. He grants that those who sin without having the law will receive condemnation. Yet, those who have the law and disobey it will also receive judgment. Those who obey will receive approval. The conscience will be law enough by which God will judge those who do not have the law. The point here is that taken as a whole, the argument of Paul is almost taking the typical Jewish polemic against the Gentile and turning it back upon itself, opening door for some graciousness and judgment from God upon both Jew and Gentile. The Acts speech continues with the idea that God preserves what God has created. He will quote from Greek poets as he makes his appeal. Paul is in the heart of intellectualism, where Epicureans and Stoics were especially prominent. Showing he is not afraid of confrontation, he says that if all this is true, then surely, they see the absurdity of idolatry. In making his appeal for repentance, he points to the promise of the redemption of creation through the one whom the Father raised from the dead. Again, in I Thessalonians 1:9-10, Paul says they wait for the Son to come from heaven. The Son is Jesus, whom God brought back to life. Jesus is the one who rescues us from the coming anger of God. However, mentioning resurrection shuts down the conversation, demonstrating a willingness to engage in confrontation even if it means rejection of his message. His words have a blend of generosity with confrontation and even a combative spirit. Only a few people will respond. Damaris and Dionysius the Areopagite are historical, though not necessarily connected with this mission, since Paul says the household of Stephanus in Corinth was the first fruits here. Paul did not have much missionary success in Athens, for an Athenian community has no recognizable role in his plans for his mission, journeys, and collection. Church history will not record a significant congregation in Athens until around 170 AD.[5]
Paul had begun his second missionary journey with Silas. He went to the churches of Syria and Cilicia, strengthening churches that were already established. While at Lystra, Timothy joined them. When they arrived at Troas, Paul received the call to go over to Macedonia. They arrived at Philippi, and while there he established a church, with Lydia, a possessed woman, and the jailor forming the nucleus of it. An uproar occurred there, and so they were forced to move on to Thessalonica. Paul first went to the Jews, and only some of them believed but many Greeks were receptive. The Jews caused trouble once again and Paul was forced to move on to Berea, where his word was graciously received. A church is not expressly mentioned as being formed, but it is clear one did eventually develop. But the Jews once again caused trouble, and Paul was forced to move on. However, this time Silas and Timothy remained at Berea. Paul and his guides arrived at Athens, where he asked them to have Silas and Timothy meet him there. After his dialogue with the Jews and those in the street, he was asked to explain his position, which he did in the sermon recorded in Acts 17:22-31. After substantial rejection, but several converts, Paul moved on Corinth, where he established a church. He was there for 18 months, and then moved on to Ephesus and Caesarea, where he visited people whom he had known for some time, and then went back to home base at Antioch.
In Acts 17: 22-23, the unknown God is God, but not another foreign god but one known to them, yet unknown. The following verses are “milder sayings” on the theme of other religions, even though in Romans 1:20ff, Paul adopts the Jewish polemic against pagan religions with a view to turning the judgment upon the Jews themselves. Those verses are an exhaustive evaluation of the phenomenon of non-biblical religions.[6] 22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus, a place not clearly defined. The term originally referred to both the historic ruling senate of Athens — a less influential governing body by the first century — and to the physical location in which it met, the royal portico in the marketplace. Indeed, for these Athenians “the Areopagus” may have meant simply gathering at the hilltop for the luxury of an undisturbed place for a talk with Paul. And Paul said, "Athenians, inclusively addressing all Athenians, not any particular philosophical or religious group. I see how extremely religious you are in every way. The ὡς is comparative, but the comparison is not expressly stated. My suggestion is that Paul begins with a compliment to their desire for truth and the fact they are more religious than other Greeks are, or at least more than Paul had expected.[7] Paul uses their legendary curiosity to see if they were willing to listen to some innovative ideas. Scholars who see this speech as sympathetic and inclusive hear Paul gently praising the natural religiosity of the Athenians. Antiquity recognized the Athenians as the most religious of all Greeks. Their religious yearning, even though a scandal to a Jew, is the inarticulate and uninformed yearning of the pagan for the God that only the Scriptures can disclose. 23 For, giving an example of their religiousness,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.' The absence of the article is significant, referring to the qualitative aspect of the divine rather than identifying a specific god. The dedication is not an identifiable god, but rather to a being who is out here, somewhere, but which the Athenians could name. Paul wanted to make clear that this God had has disclosed the divine nature. Paganism has a limitless ability to absorb into itself conflicting beliefs, tolerating all things as opinion rather than fact. He builds upon what they were able to accomplish with the altar to the unknown God. Greeks did dedicate altars "to the unknown gods" to please gods whose names they did not know. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. They worship this God unknowingly (ἀγνοοῦντες), without understanding, or even unconscious mistake.[8] Paul is recognizing their worship as an expression of their desire for the divine character, even if they have not yet identified the one who is to be truly worshipped.
Most of the gods were linked with some aspect of life, be it romance (Aphrodite/Venus), reason (Athena/Minerva), war (Ares/Mars) or even messaging (Hermes/Mercury). Religious cults developed around each god or goddess, and their temples were well-known across the Roman world.
In addition to the stone visages of the gods, philosophers were also present on the streets touting their ideas. Paul debated in the synagogue with his fellow Jews, but also with Epicureans and Stoics who wrestled over the culture’s worldview. The Epicureans were upper-class elites — deists who believed the gods were not that involved in human life and, if they were, they wanted people to be happy. Life for the Epicureans involved the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The Stoics, on the other hand, opposed both pleasure and the Epicureans. They still professed belief in the gods but questioned the old traditions.
Acts 17: 24-26a have the theme of creation. God is creator of the universe, and therefore does not need a place to dwell or does need our worship. The true God is creator and ruler, and God's purpose is that people seek and find God, though this has not happened yet. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, asserting that God is even now Lord over the universe, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, and therefore one cannot gain divine favor by this type of service, as though he needed anything, since God has given humanity everything it has, God could not be in need of anything, for it was the will of God to give it or take it away, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. We find a thought common in Greek thought and Hellenistic Judaism. One can also see I Chronicles 29:11, where everything belongs to the Lord, Psalm 5O:9-13, where God made all things and therefore does not need sacrifices, and Amos 5:21, where God hates their festivals. Good Jew that he is, Paul sees Athens as little more than a wasteland full of idols. 26a From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth. Our common ancestry puts us on the same spiritual quest. God who created all things is also the source of humanity. If we continue with this irenic understanding of Paul’s speech, his reference to a common ancestor for all peoples is a further example of his attempt to make his Athenian audience feel they are already an integral part of the truth Paul is revealing. They have felt the divine presence but have mistakenly constructed altars to a variety of gods. Adam is the one to whom Paul refers. He is also important to Pauline theology. Here, Paul uses him to support the idea of the unity of humanity. Further, in Genesis 1:28, the implication that part of the purpose of the creation of Adam and Eve was to populate the earth. Humanity was no mere afterthought, and though humanity may have fallen short of the divine will, God intended to be involved with humanity no matter what.
Acts 17: 26b has the theme of preservation. The point is that the order of the universe leads to knowledge of God.26bAnd he allotted the times [seasons] of their existence and the boundaries [separating the habitable world from the Abyss] of the places where they would live.
Acts 17: 27-28 returns to the theme of creation. God gave humanity a time and a place to inhabit 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him-- though indeed he is not far from each one of us. Paul is emphasizing that God is active in the affairs of humanity for the purpose that they would see seek after God. Despite the nearness of God to humanity, humanity has so far been unable to find God. Paul does not here explain why this is the case. 28 For, as Epimenides of Cnossos in the 6th Century BC put it, 'In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets, namely Phaunomena of Aratus of the 3rd Century BC, as well as Cleanthes the Stoic, have said, 'For we too are his offspring.' Paul is emphasizing the kinship of all people and the fatherhood of God. In the play Inherit the Wind, one of the characters says: “He got lost. He was looking for God too high up and too far away.”
Let us think about the apostle Paul showing up in a Times Square Starbucks. What do you suppose Paul would say if he showed up not on the Areopagus in ancient Athens, but in New York City? What if he undertook his teaching not on the brow of a Greek hill surrounded by temples, but rather inside a Starbucks, handing out mocha lattes all around?
"Americans, I see how extremely religious you are, in every way," Paul might begin. Instead of speaking of temples to unknown gods, he might say something like this:
"I have observed how many of you are fond of saying, 'I'm spiritual, but not religious.' I'm aware how increasing numbers of you never cross the threshold of a church or synagogue or even a mosque, but spend hours browsing religious books at Barnes & Noble. Many of you wear crosses around your necks, but hardly know why. You finger them in moments of fear or anxiety and feel vaguely comforted. You sit at home, channel-surfing the televangelists and religious talk shows, hoping to glean some spiritual comfort, but you never linger long enough to submit yourselves to their teachings. You have an insistent curiosity about things religious, and vow that one day you will do something about it. But somehow you never find the time ... you just never find the time."
The religious or spiritual impulse is a significant clue to the reality of God in our world and God's sovereignty over it. In varying degrees, most of us have that same hunger, although we may be more aware of it at certain times and seasons of our lives than we do at others. We may or may not have pursued it, but this "will to believe" (to use William James' expression) can help us to embrace the notion that something more than what we can see or touch embraces us and holds us accountable for our lives.
Therefore, in Acts 17:29-30, God created humanity, making it absurd to make idols. 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. The point is that if God is the one who has created us and is the source of our existence, it makes no sense to try to represent God by these images, for they cannot be adequate. One can see Isaiah 40:20 behind this argument. Monotheistic preaching said that if people are created in God's image, it is absurd to be idolaters. He quotes the context of the Greek poets. The sermon is a forerunner of the apologists of the second century. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent. The point is that the way of salvation through creation has proven impractical. In some way, God is not holding humanity accountable for what they do through lack of understanding. God is merciful and overlooks this lack of understanding, and instead judges by righteousness.
Acts 17: 31 has the theme of redemption. 31Because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness, appeal for repentance is against the background of judgment, by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." The resurrection becomes the pivotal point. Since creation has not been enough, Paul asserts that one can know God only through revelation. He then risks rejection by revealing that a leap of faith is required. It is beyond human understanding. Since God wanted to bring salvation, God has offered Jesus Christ. Christ's resurrection justifies belief in his coming as judge and Savior. Christian mission has taken to all nations the summons to turning or conversion to God in the sense of turning to the one only true God of Israel and of Jesus Christ, linking that call to baptism.[9]
Paul begins with where the Athenians were spiritually, which meant he must start with an example of their searching for God. In doing this, he points out that he knows the one for whom they are searching. This God cannot be confined to human temples. In fact, humanity cannot give this God anything, for this God is creator, owner, and sustainer of all that is. This God is actively involved in the material world, for this God created the first human being, and out of that one formed all nations, and was working in the great epochs of history, and all this for the purpose that humanity would seek God. Unfortunately, few did find God, even though God was near every person. Paul does go on to show that the being of humanity depends upon God for existence, and that God is the Father of all us. If God is our Father, however, it is quite absurd to worship those things that are products of human skill fullness and imagination, for these will never represent God. Instead, worship must be directed to God. However, God will, in mercy, not hold anyone accountable for what one does not know, and God will overlook these misguided attempts at seeking God. However, the day has passed when humanity could use lack of knowledge for an excuse. God has now given the command for repentance. What has changed? God has sent a man whom God has designated to be the judge. How do we distinguish this man from all other teachers? Because he is the one whom God raised from the dead. God thus put a stamp of approval upon this one man. In fact, the resurrection is the proof that God appointed this one man to judge the world, and is thus proof of the day of judgment has indeed been established, and because of this the call for repentance has gone out.
It would not be hard to find books and articles on the decline of faith or religion and the rise of secularity. It seems clear to most analysts that the cozy relationship between church and culture, in which the church could understand itself as an agent of transformation of culture into something it viewed as more Christian, is a distant memory. Those who describe themselves as “none” on the religion identification scale are increasing. Churches probably need to view themselves as increasingly on the margin of such a culture.
Among the effects of our secularity is the loss of religious language and knowledge.
William Buckley remarked that in his circles in the 1960s that you may be able to mention religion at a fancy dinner party once. But if you bring the subject twice in one evening, you will not be invited back.
There was a time when a Christian witness in this country rested primarily on calling the people back to what they already knew. That is not true today. We cannot even assume very much biblical knowledge right here, in the church. A Christian witness becomes more and more a matter of confronting a bewildering variety of world views with the Bible’s story and with the gospel as its crowning point. We live in a time when people believe in many truths, but no truth. We create our own truth, suitable for us. We have changed God’s truth to be nothing more than a private belief. The Son of God, his death and resurrection, are incidental events of the distant past.
A university pastor was asked to lead a discussion at the university about prejudice and bigotry on campus. He asked, “Have any of you been victims of racial or ethnic prejudice here? Have you heard bigoted remarks?” No one said anything. The group consisted of a couple of African-American students and a couple of Asian-American students. The others looked like most of us in this sanctuary. “None of you have ever been victims of such intolerance or prejudice?” He made it clear he could not believe it. Finally, someone said, “Well, maybe I have.” The young woman was white and blonde. “You have?” She went on to explain. “You see, I’m a Southern Baptist.” Other students, including one of the African-American students, added their agreement. “I’ve had professors make those same remarks about Baptists in class.”
Do we know what those students are talking about? We are living in an aggressively secular society. It is not considered acceptable to say cruel, bigoted things in public against any group in our society, except the Christians.
Modernity itself developed a moral problem with Christianity. It elevated science and technology to the status of being the primary lens through which it viewed the world. Such techniques improved the ordinary lives of citizens. Thus, one expression of the secularity of modernity is the narrow view of modernity rooted in science and technology.
If Paul is a model, then we can expect that for many people, to proclaim an event as the revelation of God will always seem foreign and strange. The speech becomes an example of the difficulty of communicating the Christian faith in the intellectual climate of paganism. Christians today ought to identify with Paul. We also are frustrated at our inability to make the world understand what we believe and why. Some of our failure is due to our limitations as Christians. Yes. But some of our failure is also due to the limitations of a form of rationalism and empiricism that still influence the limited modes of thought in modernity.
Aldous Huxley, the great English writer and scientist, once said, "There was a time when I gazed upon the stars with great wonder and amazement. Now, in late life, I look up at the heavens in the same way in which I gaze upon the faded wallpaper in a railway station waiting room." Modernity does that to us. One of the characteristics of the modern world was "demystification," the loss of wonder, the dissipation of mystery and awe. The world we inhabit tends to be flat, predictable, explainable.
Among the common criticism of modernity is that we like to think of ourselves as completely able to think about anything, to comprehend everything. We inhabit a flattened world. Science and technology are the tools through which we understand and use our world to advance our interests. Of course, Christian belief suggests that one event does not fit into such categories. In our world, that which lives, dies. If we follow the limits of modernity, what can we know of resurrection? Christians are those who appeal to a wider rationality beyond our modern cause-effect, this-equals-that way of thinking. What we have to say to the world goes considerably beyond common sense and worldly wisdom. What Christians have to say has its roots in an event that involves genuine revelation from God, who reveals a truth about the world and humanity that science will not discover. We proclaim Jesus, crucified yet risen from the dead – Jesus who shall one day judge the world. Since such a belief deepens and broadens our rationality, a mind limited by the mathematization of nature we find in science will scoff. The thought in Christianity is that life may be stronger than death, that we shall be held accountable to a standard of judgment beyond our own standards. No wonder the ancient and modern world of the intellectual mocks.
The gospel is literally mind-blowing, an invitation to practice a wider rationality than that available in the world. The world is forever telling us Christians things like, "get real," or "face facts," but this begs the prior question of who defines reality and who defines the facts? Christians believe that we have seen something that the world has not yet seen, that we have been given a larger view, a more expansive notion of what is going on in the world than that view which is prevalent in the world. This does not mean that Christians are credulous people. Many are skeptical persons. Christians accept the marvels of science and technology, but do not find in them the sole arbiters of truth and morality. Christians have come to trust the witness of the apostles. The tomb was empty because God raised Jesus from the dead and that the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples, to groups of followers, and to Paul. Accepting such a statement as true means humanity has a deep interest in the God of the Jewish people and the presence of the life-giving Spirit of God, out of which will form a community of people who share this faith, hope, and love. It means Christians will live with a different view of their world, humanity, and their personal lives that will lead them to a sense of calling, vocation, meaning, and purpose.
At the same time, I suggest that flat, empty, purposeless expression of secularity, with its dependence upon rationalism and empiricism, has long frustrated people who participate in modern culture. The loss of meaning is particularly troubling for many persons. Although it can take various forms, the basic principle is to broaden and deepen our understanding of rationality in ways that we can discover fullness, meaning, and purpose through discovery of self, deepening relationships, and relieve suffering. Thus, we can think of at least certain expressions of secularity as having a religious feel to them. It may well be that this expression of secularity has rebranded the religious quest rather than extinguished it.[10] The problem, when it comes to our spiritual quest, may not be that we are atheists. Our problem is idolatry. If we do not know the true God, we will create our own gods. We are extremely religious.
If we think of religion as a controlling story that deals with the question of how we dispose of our energies, organize our lives, and even live our lives, then the religion of a person becomes shorthand for the lens through which we set priorities, focus desires, and look at the rest of the world. Religion becomes our guide in the pursuit of happiness. If we could be successful enough, happy enough, thin enough, woke enough, or good enough, then we would have genuine satisfaction. We will religiously pursue whatever we value because it promises to satisfy our deepest needs. We seek a religious faith that will satisfy, but so many of us are looking in all the wrong places. Many have rejected God as Christians understand God to be. Many others have never known this God at all.
Paul may well provide a model for at least one way to navigate the shifting forms of secular religious expressions. People have developed their own quasi-religious expressions around a variety of aspects of life where the rituals and pursuits take on almost a religious flavor.
Busyness remains attractive because it does double duty, allowing us to feel like we are advancing on the path of life while distracting us from other, less pleasant realities, like doubt, uncertainty and death. Ask someone how they are and they will respond, almost liturgically, “I’m very busy.”
The love partner becomes the divine ideal within which to fulfill one’s life. All spiritual and moral needs now become focused in one individual. Aphrodite is alive and well.
The rise of “helicopter parenting” betrays the belief that there is no future for our kids beyond that which parents can engineer for them. Parents are the saviors in this religious expression.
Food now expresses the symbolic values and absorbs the spiritual energies of the educated class. It has become invested with the meaning of life. It is seen as the path to salvation for the self and humanity, both. In this cult, you are what you eat!
We bow to our screens as a way of distracting ourselves from reality. We flee from boredom because of what we encounter there, namely, ourselves. Screens distract us from our core pain, which is the pain of not being enough.
Political stances become religious claims. Moral outrage fills a psychological need. It allows people to feel like they matter, especially when they are fear they do not.
Philosophers abound, whether in the moralism of the epicurean or the skepticism of the Stoic.
Paul’s address to the Athenians is both courageous and courteous. He begins by acknowledging their religiosity, even though Paul knows that their gods are no gods at all (v. 23). That is quite a different approach than disparaging a secularizing trend. Paul does not see the Athenians as far from God but as on the way to God; that their good religious impulses only need rebranding. The focus of the missionary preaching of the church needs to be more on human motivation than on human behavior. When people have a religious impulse, no matter where they direct it, we should acknowledge that they are moving in the right direction. They are seeking something, and, like Paul, we need to be ready to point out the real object of their search when they are ready to hear about it. Paul pointed the Athenians to the statue they had erected to “an unknown god” and then proceeded to fill in the blank (v. 23). He begins with meeting people where they were and with encouraging them to keep looking.
Paul proceeds to talk about the one God, the Creator God, the Lord of heaven and earth, who doesn’t dwell in temples (v. 24). This God is not served by human hands like the gods in the temples (and the gods in our kitchens, on our computer screens, and in our social media feeds) who require constant maintenance. He is the One who “give to all mortals life and breath in all things” (v. 25). This is the God who created humanity, the nations and their boundaries, and God did it “so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though he is indeed not far from each one of us” (vv. 26-27). Paul even refers to their literature as a touching point for his appeal.
What Paul does here is increasingly narrow the focus from creation to humanity to Jesus. It is shorthand for the entire story of the Bible, which is the ultimate “controlling story” for human life as the Christian sees it. In a culture exploring secular forms of religious feeling and expression, Christians must become storytellers who point to the climax of the story in Jesus Christ. Such a presentation will show that the false gods of secularity will not deliver on the promise of happiness. It will show that the truth revealed in the event of Jesus of Nazareth can lead to truly satisfying and meaningful way of life lived in the context of a beautiful hope for humanity and the world.
[1] I refer to a paper I presented to Dr. Wayne E. Caldwell for a course at Marion College called New Testament Church on December 14, 1973. He gave me an A- for the paper. I presented a grammatical analysis of this passage to James A. Hewett for a course at Asbury Theological Seminary on Exegetical Greek Grammar on November 7, 1975. He gave me an A for the paper.
[2] Still other scholars think it more likely that Luke and Paul know a similar type of sermon to the Gentiles independently of one another.
[3] In contrast, others will argue that precisely because of my understanding of the text, which assumes some affinity between God and humanity and that it suggests a proof from creation, it argues against the idea that Paul could have said it. For them, Paul assumed such a basic alienation of humanity from God and that human sinfulness was so profound that the witness of creation is not something humanity can hear.
[4] For some interpreters, Paul is not impressed with this city, the place of Plato and Pericles. Paul is eager to argue with anyone in whatever world he finds himself.
[5] Nauck in 1956 discovered three different groups of motives in the Areopagus speech: creation in verses 24-26a, 27-28, preservation in verse 26b and redemption in verses 31, and succeeded in demonstrating the same scheme of motives in the missionary literature of Hellenistic Judaism. In addition, he indicates the occurrence of the same scheme in early Jewish and early Christian writings. His conclusion is that 'the structural pattern which is frequent in tradition makes it advisable not to take the combination of the three themes in the Areopagus speech as Luke’s theological conception. He showed that the mission speech of Paul is not the creation of Luke. Rather, mission activity made him aware of this approach. This is a history of religions approach to tradition. Verses 32-34, the name of Dionysius the Areopagite probably comes from tradition.
[6] Systematic Theology Volume 1, 178-9.
[7] John Calvin, in his commentary on Acts, says that Paul begins with a stinging rebuke, pointing tho the extreme corruption of their worship, since he did think Paul could have commended the use of idols.
[8] Bultmann, TDNT, Vol I, 115-6.
[9] Systematic Theology Volume 3, 245.
[10] David Zahl explores this notion in his book Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do About It, Fortress Press, 2019.
Enjoyed this. Liked the engagement with modernity. I see some of Taylor here. I think it is a good assessment of where America is today and how we need to address it.
ReplyDeleteYes I preached the same text and as I prepared I thought a lot about how Taylor, Zahl and others might join the discussion. I do think Paul offers a roadmap. The truth of Jesus Christ, the person dead and risen, this cannot be given away. BUT among the seculosties- the idols- there may just be places that we can point to, to interpret Jesus Christ to a secular world. That and that point alone may be the primary focus of my ministry in the next 30 years. In response to one point above, I do not consider a loss of the privileged place in society for people of faith in and of itself to be discriminatory- and perhaps it’s generational, but I am not particularly bothered by it. I have been in a philosophy class at a public university where the professor assumed any thinking person would be an atheist and I knew that such rigid overly foundational thinking was not for me and I transferred out, but I did not feel he did many harm. I realize others have had more and realer difficulties perhaps.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comments. The method of interaction Glenn suggest is one consistent with this passage as well as into the second and third century. I guess where we might differ is that not having a privileged place in the culture is one thing; being at the receiving end of moral disgust is another. Preparing followers of Jesus to deal with that is an important part of our ministry I think.
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