 |
| St Paul Preaching at Athens -- Raphael |
In the
passage from Acts for this Sunday Paul preaches in front of the Areopagus in
Athens. It is a key moment in the history of Christianity and the world. Two
great cultures meet for the first time -- the religion of the Jews and the
philosophy of the Greeks.
Athens
and Jerusalem are the streams of thought and culture from which all the most
important aspects of our civilization take their origin – philosophy, theology,
history, the arts, the sciences and technology. Both Jew and Greek were
passionately concerned to understand how the lives of human beings could be
rooted in reality, how they could transcend individual fads and passing
fashions, and be lived in harmony with the whole creation. When the Epistle for
this Sunday says “even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are
blessed” it could be taken to be stating one of Socrates’ most fundamental
ideas. This shows that in some ways Jew and Greek were not so far apart. But
while the Greeks looked to philosophy to learn this lesson (today it is science
to which people turn), Peter adds that what is required is that ‘in your hearts
you sanctify Christ as Lord’.
 |
| God Loves You -- Howard Finster (1989) |
Paul is
clear about this vital shift of perspective. “The God who made the world and
everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth . . .will have the world
judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has
given assurance to all by raising him from the dead”. The implication of this is
that humanity needs more than science or philosophy, valuable though these
are. At bottom, the ‘Spirit of truth’ is
not something impersonal – knowledge -- but something personal -- love. It is
only when we grasp this profound insight that our experience of human
nature (who we are) and of the human condition (the world in which we find
ourselves) can be fully reconciled. The world that God has made for us may be
studied as a physical system governed by causal laws of matter in motion. There
is undoubtedly a lot to be learned from studying it that way. But this is not
its fundamental basis. Rather it is a cosmic expression of Divine love, and
animated by that love.
In the
Gospel, Jesus identifies the Spirit of Truth as a Holy Spirit and promises a
truly remarkable kind of intimacy with this love. We are not orphans in an
alien cosmos because, he says, ‘I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you’.
No comments:
Post a Comment