Acts 17:23

23. Devotions The Greek word signifies rather the apparatus of worship, such as temples, altars, and the like.

An altar Amid the countless monuments of idolatry a single altar, alone, seemed to turn from all the deities of the Pantheon, and long for the unknown Infinite. From this pregnant text Paul can deduce God and Christ. “We should make use,”

says Stier, “of that modicum of truth that lies concealed in error.”

The unknown God Rather, to an unknown God, or to God unknown. How, it is asked, could the apostle truly say that the unknown God was in fact Jehovah? For to him, a preacher of truth and righteousness, no rhetorical license can be allowed. We are told that there were at Athens altars erected to unknown gods. Thus Philostratus says, Αθηνησιν ου και αγνωστων θεων βωμοι ιδρυνται At Athens, where are built altars to unknown gods. And Pausanias says, in his description of Attica, that altars of unknown gods were in the Phaleric harbour of Athens. The language does not unequivocally decide whether each single altar was devoted to a single unknown god, or to several, or all. But, first, we learn by these passages, at any rate, that the Athenians did erect altars to unknown divine power; and, second, we may then fairly allow the apostle’s word to decide for the singular. We also plentifully know that paganism often felt an anxiety as to what god it had offended, or ought to thank for some providential flavour. So the prayer of Horace: “O deorum quiequid in coelo regit,” (Epist. Acts 5:1,) “O whichever of the gods rules in the sky!” And this passage, addressing a single unknown god, confirms the singular interpretation of the above two Greek quotations. To Horace the apostle might have most truly responded, “Whom you, unknowing him, worship, Him declare I unto you.”

Ignorantly Unknowing; namely, the God worshipped. In unfolding here the sublimity of the divine attributes there seems to us a triad which has escaped the notice of commentators. From God’s illimitable nature he argues the insufficiency of temples, (Acts 17:24;) from God’s self-sufficiency, the needlessness of offerings, and so of altars, (Acts 17:25;) from the infinite spirituality, the folly of idol statuary, (26-29.) These are attacks on the threefold concrete forms of paganism.