Groping after God

Groping after God
Stephen Curkpatrick

In his Areopagus address, best known for its reference to an altar inscribed TO AN UNKNOWN GOD, Paul refers to the Athenians as extremely religious or superstitious.§ Is he commending them? Paul is deeply distressed over their fateful idolatry rather than excited about their spirituality (Acts 17).

Elsewhere in Acts, Paul distinguishes religious confusion from good news. Good news for human wholeness is the fruit of Israel’s resistance to idolatry, together with the name now disclosed, Jesus Christ, in whom creation finds its true dignity as gift and not as the focus of idolatry or fear of fateful nemesis within phenomena.

The Athenians were extremely religious as extremely superstitious. The seemingly plausible is mixed with harmful superstition—the effects of pursuing this compound are detrimental to human wholeness and responsibility. Paul alludes to, while dramatically countering Stoic and Epicurean thought in his address.

In Stoicism, religious images and visages are merely expressions of the divinity of all things—pantheism. It is ultimately relativist. Beyond regional conventions, virtue is equanimity or being without pathos (apathetic) in the face of flux and its effects on the individual, who is also part of this flux. Since personal life is ultimately dissolved in the divine, suicide is as plausible as any other virtue within Stoicism.

With reference to Epicureans, humans are the measure of all things. Humans give their own values to phenomena, which can be as banal as eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die—the nihilism of living toward death as the ultimate horizon. This is intrinsically atheist. Ironically, when an Epicurean is dead, there can be no personal correlation with having existed at all, let alone having enjoyed any sated merriment of eating and drinking.

While Paul cites pagan poets concerning God’s nearness to humans, he also recognises that in searching for, they might only grope after God.§§ As Creator, God gives time and space for human life as volitional and responsible, toward which humans are called to accountability in a day when the world is judged in righteousness by an appointed person.

The scene conveys two themes that are articulated elsewhere in the New Testament. First, the Logos is the source of life and sustains all things, or similarly, all things cohere in Christ the icon of God. Second, reference to a person who will judge the world, following biblical apocalypse or revelation (Dan. 7), suggests a wholly different perspective than any shared by the Athenians.

Unlike the idolatrous investment of phenomena with divinity, God is distinctive as relational before whom humans as other are accountable for their decisions. As sovereign Creator, God is distinctive from phenomena that can be invested with divine fate. Paul’s attention is given not to phenomena but to the reality of creaturely existence as volitional and accountable, therefore ultimately relational. This marks the decisive difference between Israel and the nations, the law and idolatry, God and phenomena.

The nearness of God to all humans is a biblical perspective. God gives breath to all life, yet humans as responsible are not to be confused with cause and effect within phenomena. Such confusion is a propensity of pantheism with its conflation of phenomena and divinity that issues in idolatry. The holiness or distinctiveness of God is central to the dignity of human life created in the image of God. Humans are accountable to God as relational creatures beyond their material sustenance within natural and cultural phenomena.

Imaginative human products such as temples and sacred spaces, no less than nature, cannot be correlated with God—God is unlike anything conjured from gold, silver or even human imagination and art. God needs no contribution from the human religious impetus, which confuses divinity with phenomena and cultural artefacts instead of illuminating God’s distinctiveness in relationship.

Human fate within phenomena and the just will of the gods are inseparably linked as a consequence of equating phenomena, even to varying degrees, with divinity. The snake-bite scene on the island of Malta demonstrates this (Acts 28). Dikẽ or divine justice, when equated with phenomena, easily becomes nemesis or retribution in which adverse circumstances of human life are assumed to execute judgment for contravening justice. When Paul does not fulfil the nemesis script, he is worshipped as a god. Such is the fickle combination of phenomena with divine justice.

The confusion of Paul and Barnabas with Zeus and Hermes is also a consequence of confusing human life with divinity, elevating some humans above others (Acts 14). The goodness of creation remains a witness to the goodness of God as Creator, yet phenomena, even as human, are not sufficient to give the final end of this testimony. Humans tend to obfuscate any testimony to God’s generosity that can be read from creation. God gives human freedom for response; this is also potential exposure to nihilism as humans through hubris pursue folly in their freedom (Rom. 1).

Phenomena are diverse and variegated; they can be imagined and contested within infinite configurations—good, evil, benign, hostile, beautiful or ugly (Spinoza). Humans cannot read creation without investing their own values in phenomena. This is the perennial impetus of idolatry.

As unknown without the initiative of revelation, God is readily confused with superstitious idolatry as humans seek to construct a link between phenomena and God. Yet biblical testimony speaks of the living God—God of disclosure and encounter, who invites humans to distinctive life and communion in love. God is neither equated with nor found among the natural phenomena of creation.

Biblical critique of idolatry is comprehensive—the conflation of God and natural phenomena is a perennial human propensity; therefore the prohibition of idolatry. Any diminution of Jesus Christ as the icon of God and therefore humanity in the image of God also risks conflating human identity with phenomena and replaying the fear of fateful nemesis wrought from confused perceptions of God, humanity, phenomena and justice.

The Unknown God of Athenian apprehension and superstition remains unknown on speculative terms, however much humans have groped for divine disclosure among phenomena, with the endless speculation such tenuous groping generates. In terms of Christian proclamation, whatever is supposedly gained by appealing to a cohesive spirituality of phenomena is neutralised in the specificity and scandal of Christian theology with its offence of the cross and audacious testimony to Christ the risen Lord as definitive for human destiny.

Paul elsewhere announces estrangement toward God in which potential natural awareness in creation nevertheless fails within human hubris. The Athenians, who spend their time discussing the latest novelties, might only grope for God who is near as the giver of all life. While human seeking is affirmed, it is recognised as most tenuous. Humans, even in ignorance, are nevertheless called to repentance. What Paul announces at Athens could also be preached in Rome or Corinth. The Athens scene sustains the same tension as John’s prologue in which the source of all life and enlightenment is also unknown in the world.

Christ as risen Lord—the testimony of Christology—is an aspect of the Athens address that both religious and philosophical groping after God cannot integrate. God is given to human life in a specific way as integral truth and life, even as humans are called to specific response and responsibilities within creation according to this gift.

§ deisidaimonesterous adj. deisidaimonia superstition, fear of the gods, religion, meticulous ritual

§§ psẽlaphẽseian might only grope after (optative mood)

Reference: Spinoza Ethics I