Acts 17:29Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He did not say, “You impious and most impious men, you must not think that the Godhead is like gold or silver.” Instead, he speaks humbly: “We ought not to think” this, but something far higher.

What is higher than this? God. Yet he did not say even this, because that name signifies positive activity. For the time being he speaks negatively: the Godhead is not like these things. Who could say this?

See how he leads them to the idea of the incorporeal. When the mind imagines a body, it imagines space along with it.

“Therefore, since we are the offspring of God,” he says, “we ought not to think that the Godhead is like gold, or silver, or stone, shaped by the art and imagination of man.”

Someone might say, “We do not think this.” Why, then, does he say it? He was addressing many people, and he spoke well.

If we are not like these things in the soul, much less is God. Thus he turns them away from this thought.

The Godhead is not only unlike an image made by art. It is also unlike any other “imagination of man,” since everything is devised either by art or by the mind.

Therefore he said: if God is something devised by human art or mind, then the being of God would also be in stone.

If we live in Him, how is it that we do not find Him? He condemns them doubly, both because they did not find Him and because they invented those gods. The mind by itself is never trustworthy.

So also the Apostle sometimes taught unbelievers and used verses from pagan authors, destroying the inventions of the poets; see Acts 17:28.

Let us recall accounts from Greek history, when armies and whole nations were saved by the sacrificial death of individual persons. Examples include Codrus, king of Athens, who gave his life for the Athenians' victory over the Dorians.

Let us recall also the commander’s daughter, led to slaughter so that the Greek army could cross over. Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, was offered in sacrifice before the expedition against Troy.

If men constitute the offspring of God, it is clear that God cannot be lower than man. Still less can He be man’s product, the creation of his art and imagination.

Yet idols are products of human art and imagination. As follows of itself from the very idea of their origin, nothing corresponds to them in reality.

How then, they will ask us, does the Apostle Paul say that the Godhead is not like stone, while the Apostle John contemplated Him as like a stone?

Clearly, Paul means the infinite and incomprehensible essence of God, which is above every likeness.

John, however, contemplated the image in which the Lord was pleased to appear to him, so as to be visible to bodily eyes.

Our icons are reproductions of those images in which the Lord, according to His goodness, appeared as like us men.

The rejection of temples as places of God’s special gracious presence, and of icons as reproductions of those images in which the Lord was pleased to appear among men, is in a certain sense a rejection of God’s goodness.

It is as though one said: we do not need that goodness of God by which the infinite Godhead limits Himself by space in order to draw as near as possible to us.

The omnipresent One is as near to us as He is far from us. Nor, they say, do we need that goodness by which the Lord accepted visible forms in order to be seen by men.

Finally, he turned to the preaching of the Lord Who had called him to apostolic service, and to Whom he had dedicated all his genius and his whole life.

“Therefore,” he said, “overlooking the times of ignorance, God now commands all men everywhere to repent. For He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained.

“He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead.”

This opposition between the true God and false gods is very sharp in essence. Yet the Apostle expresses it very gently before representatives of pagan worship: “We ought not to think,” instead of saying, “You think foolishly and absurdly.”

“Shaped,” and so forth. The forms of these golden, silver, and stone gods are the invention of man, to which nothing corresponds in reality.

This invention is represented in an image adorned by human art.

Thus Paul presents the worship of idols as a senseless thing. He does so both with respect to the material from which gods were made, for God is not like gold, and with respect to their manufacture.

Idols were made by artists’ hands according to an invention adorned by art, to which reality does not correspond.

The great Apostle speaks this boldly in view of artistically made statues of gods in gold and silver, marble and precious stones.

He speaks in view of the brilliant works of ancient art found in abundance on the Acropolis, in the squares, and in the temples of Athens.

He speaks before worshipers of these statues, who boasted of all this as the greatest proof of the highest civilization.

What a barbarian he must have seemed to them! Yet this supposed barbarism in time conquered that brilliant civilization.

Images of the crucified God cast down from their divine pedestals that multitude of artistic works; see 1 Cor 1:25 and 1 Cor 1:27-28.

“Therefore he said: if God is something depicted by human art or mind, then the being of God would also be in stone.

“He condemns them doubly, both because they did not find Him and because they invented those gods.”

“The great Apostle speaks this boldly in view of artistically made statues of gods in gold and silver, marble and other stones.

“He speaks in view of the brilliant works of ancient art found in abundance on the Acropolis, in the squares, and in the temples of Athens.

“He speaks before worshipers of these statues, who boasted of all this as the greatest proof of the highest civilization.

“What a barbarian he must have seemed to them! Yet this supposed barbarism in time conquered that brilliant civilization.

“Images of the crucified God cast down from their divine pedestals that multitude of artistic works.”

“Every statue, according to the material from which it is made, is nothing other than gold, silver, marble, or some other stone.

“In general, it is something by nature completely different from that side of man by which he has likeness to God.

“As to its form, every statue is a more or less artistic expression of one or another human representation. This representation proceeds solely from man’s imagination, and therefore does not correspond to reality.

“From this it is clear that there is no likeness whatever between man and the images of idols.

“Now the conclusion from the premises unfolded is entirely clear. If men are like God only in some very slight measure, and if at the same time, considered from the side of their likeness to the Godhead, they are in no way like idols, then the point follows.

“They are incomparably higher than idols, which are their own works. Therefore, much more and immeasurably more, the Godhead is not like idols.”