At a wedding I conducted at Kings College University chapel Aberdeen last year the best man tried to be cocky about the existence of God. This was a few minutes before the service started and I felt somewhat decidedly not in the mood. In the vestry he joked how if we had time he would intellectually spar with me, because he had read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Smiling I gave the quote from the psalmist; 'The fool has said in his heart there is no God'. We scoffed at each other. He was very soon to get a bigger headache than the one caused by the stagger the night before. (Who has a stag night before their wedding these days?) As he stepped out of the vestry into the courtyard one of God's winged creatures dropped what seemed like divine judgement. I have never seen such good targeting since Bomber Harris returned from his dam busting mission. The burly man delayed our ceremony as he screeched for Head and Shoulders to resurrect his mop.
Its not easy arguing the Christian faith and the existence of God these days. But I think we can get solace that what goes around comes around. Sunday's reading from Acts 17.22-31 shows that Paul faced an intellectual climate not unlike our own. Athens was not the glorious centre of civilisation that it had once been and had been in decline under the shadow of Rome. Yet it retained something of cultural hub popular with philosophers and devotees of the ancient Greek religions. To be able to lecture here you had to get a license and although the society was fairly liberal the license was not automatic. Some preachers and lectures could be seen as a danger to the status quo.
In his debate Paul encounters two schools of philosophy; the Epicureans and the Stoics. The Epicurians believed the gods,if they existed, were disinterested in us. The world as they saw it was solely material constructed from atoms. When you die that is it. The Stoics held that God was the universe and all of us emanate from it. We are all part of God and our divine spark returns to God after our death. It's not a great intellectual leap to see that this compares closely with much of the culture and thinking of today, especially here in this country. The Christian who lifts his or her head above the parapet is often confronted by either athiests or new agers, Epicureans or Stoics.
Paul's genius is that he didnt bring out old tired arguments but addressed these armchair philosophers in their own intellectual dialect. Now and again I have heard red-faced evangelists get into wild arguments with scoffing athiests and a lot of scripture is thrown around with arguments about Jesus saving. The athiests simply side-step the Scripture because it has no authority to them. They have intellectually built up an Aunt Sally, a vision of religion that does not match the reality. Likewise the New Agers will calmly inform us that all religious institutions are destructive forces that will wash away when the Age of Aquarius come in. Each us, is our own God, they let us believe. It is very difficult to argue with these folks since one group is invariably evasive while the other is slippery.
Paul's words begin with reference to the altar of the unknow god. He then beautifully uses an old philosophical quote about the God in whom we move and have our being. God is unknow to the Epicureans because they are more comfortable with the idea of a distant deity. The arguments are simpler if you either dont believe in God or think he's not really involved. It then becomes culturally unfashionable to believe in an involved God. Today, as then, athiesm is largely intellectual laziness and cultural snobbishness. It is a lack of willingness to go deeper. In a similar way the Stoic's God is unknown because he impersonal. New Ager philosophy largely dismisses the personal God because its easier to fashion God into our own image.
We are not going to get anywhere unless we begin on the same wavelength and speak to the culture as it is. It is no good pulling out proof-texts in the Bible. Rather we need to begin with where these people are at, only from this point will we be listened to. Many struggle to see how God allows suffering in our world and it is our task to gently and humbly unfold the mystery of God in Christ on the Cross. St Peter strongly admonishes us to always have our defence arguments ready. But these are not just intellectual arguments, but a witness to a whole spirituality or what he calls 'The hope that is within you'. (1 Peter 15b)
If we are feeling nervous we should recall the words from Gospel, Jesus promises us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit (John 14.15-21). Not only will the Advocate give us the words we need, but the same Spirit will give us the joy of knowing that we are loved by the universal Father. If we carry this joy and day by day make more room for love, then spiritual orphans will catch a glimpse too of him who said "You will see me, because I live, you also live." (John 14.19)
