Acts 17:27-28
“that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live, and move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’”
Where this sits
Paul speaking to the Areopagus in Athens, to an audience of philosophers with no Jewish background. He quotes their own poets rather than Scripture.
Reflection
This is Paul addressing people who had never read the Old Testament, and the method is worth as much attention as the content.
He does not open with Moses. He starts from an altar in their own city inscribed to an unknown god, moves through creation and history, and then quotes two of their own poets back to them. In him we live and move and have our being is not Scripture; it is a line from a Greek poem, and Paul uses it as true.
That is a considerable act of respect toward an audience he disagrees with, and it is the reason the speech is still worth studying.
The argument itself turns on a strange verb: that they might reach out for him. The Greek suggests groping, feeling around — what you do in a dark room, hands out, without a clear idea of what you are looking for. Paul allows that the search may look like that. He does not require it to be well-informed.
And then the counterweight: though he is not far from each one of us. The groping is real, and the distance is not. The problem is not that God is remote and must be found at the end of a long search. It is that he is close and unrecognised — which is a different problem, and closer to what most people actually experience.
- Theme:
- Presence
- Book:
- Acts