Saturday, October 30, 2021

Notes on Stephen's and Paul's Speeches in Acts 7 and 17 and Idolatry, "Without Hands," and the Visibility or Invisibility of God

  

Acts 7 and Stephen's Speech


In regular Greek usage, ειδωλον means an “insubstantial phenomenon,” a “phantom,” or a “mental image,” yet the translators used this term to reference the material images of Gentile gods, suggesting that these images are at best elusive reflections of concrete reality. In other instances, idol polemic drew boundary lines between the God of Israel as Creator versus the created order (a move that bears some affinity with a Platonic Creator/creation divide). Idol parodies in particular draw this distinction, and in the LXX, the term “made with human hands,” or “hand-made” (χειροποιητος), appears in reference to divine images in order to highlight the difference between God the Creator and humans who attempt to create gods, or at least images of the gods (e.g., the LXX of Lev 26:1, 30; Isa 2:18; 10:11; 16:12; 19:1; 21:9; 31:7; 46:6; Dan 5:4, 23; 6:28; Wis 14:8). (Brittany E. Wilson, The Embodied God: Seeing the Divine in Luke-Acts and the Early Church [New York: Oxford University Press, 2021], 29)

 

. . . rather than critiquing the visuality of divine images, Luke more consistently critiques the tactility of idol making. Luke does take issue with (at least some) divine images, but he uses the sense of touch, not sight, to level his critique. In doing so, Luke suggests not that visual images incorrectly represent an invisible God but that the act of creating images effaces the distinction between God and humanity, or Creator and creation. In other words, Luke focuses less on the visibility of images and more on their human construction, the letter of which expresses his central concern with such images.

 

Luke lifts up the tactility of idols by incorporating “hand” (χειρ) and “to make” (ποιεω) language throughout all three of his idol passages. In Acts 7, Stephen repeatedly references the human manufacture of foreign gods. The Israelites commanded Aaron to “make” (ποιησον) gods for them (7:40); they also “made a calf [εμοσχοποιησαν[“ (7:41), “reveled in the works of their hands [χειρων αυτων]” (7:41), and worshiped images that they “made [εποιησατε]” (7:43). With the meaning of reveling “in the works of their hands,” Stephen also links t his idolatrous act to the building of the Jerusalem temple: Stephen explains that though Solomon built a “house” (οικος) for God, “the Most High does not dwell [κατοικει] in things made by human hands [χειροποιητοις]” (7:47-48), echoing a sentiment expressed in 1 Chr 17:4 (In Acts 7, Stephen uses the golden calf incident to transition to his discussion of the temple: his mention of the “tent” [σκηνη] of Rephan and the “images} [τυποι] the Israelites worship [7:43] leads to his discussion of the “tent” [σκηνη] of testimony that Moses made according to a “pattern” [τυπος] [7:44-45], which then leads to his discussion of God’s “house” [οικος] [7:46-50]). God is not contained by the temple or other things crafted by human hands; instead, God’s “hand” (χειρ) makes all, as Stephen makes clear in his citation from Isa 66:1 (Acts 7:50; cf. Isa 66:1-2). (Ibid., 38-39)

 

Acts 17 and Paul's Speech at the Areopagus


To be clear, Luke in his effort to signal the difference between “the Way” and other “ways,” incorporates philosophical discourse against divine images from the wider Greco-Roman world and reflects an adept understanding of his pagan context. This is nowhere more evident than in Paul’s Areopagus speech. Paul, for example, is careful not to use the term “idol” in his speech. The narrator uses this word when he says that Paul was distressed to see that the city was “full of idols” [κατειδωλον]” (Acts 17:16), but Paul himself calls these images “your objects of worship [σεβασματα]” (17:23). Paul is also careful to depict images as representations of the divine, merely saying that God is not “like” (ομοιον) an image (Since χαραγματι [“image”] stands in apposition to the four dative nouns that precede it, which are complements of ομοιον [“like”], we should read “like” [ομοιον] before “images” [χαραγματι] as well). (And though Demetrius will later accuse Paul of saying that “gods made with hands are not gods” [19:26], note that we never actually witness Paul saying this.) Yet while Paul’s Areopagus speech demonstrates an awareness of the philosophical critique against images, it nowhere draws upon the rationale concerning God’s invisibility as found in some philosophical circles. Paul does provide a rationale, but he does so by citing a well-known Greek proverb that depicts the divine in anthropomorphic terms, namely, as a parent (To be clear, the idea of God as a parental figure was also well known in philosophical circles, even among philosophers who advocated for God’s invisibility). In 17:28, Paul says, “For we too are his offspring [γενος],’” a quotation that derives from the poet Aratus’s Phaenomena (v. 5) but had gained proverbial status by Luke’s time, and he goes on to say that “therefore [ουν], being the offspring [γενος] of God, we ought not to think that deity is like gold . . .” (17:29). With his “therefore” (ουν), Paul links the Aratus quotation to his rejection of images and argues that we ought not to liken God to gold, silver, or stone, because we are God’s γενος, a word that means “offspring,” or “family,” or “descendants.” Luke interestingly refrains from saying that humans are the image of God (Pervo identifies Luke’s reticence here as an instance of enthymeme, a rhetorical device in which a premise or conclusion is not expressed but implied [Acts 439]. Cf. Gen 1:26-27; 1 Cor 11:7; 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; 4:4; Col 1:15; 3:10), but he fastens on to a familiar term that points to the relationship between God and humanity. God’s paternity—not God’s invisibility—serves as the reason to reject images; Luke nowhere indicates that humans should avoid images due to God’s lack of a visible form. (Ibid., 34-35)

 

. . . while Luke’s narrative as a whole paints a picture of an embodied God, some may be quick to argue that Luke is against the idea of humans holding a mental conception of God’s form. In Acts 17, Paul declares during his Areopagus speech that God does not resemble “an image of human craft and thought [χαραγματι τεχνης και ενθυμησεως ανθρωπου]” (17:29), which some interpreters take to mean images that are both made and imagined. Richard Pervo even suggests that the manuscript 𝔓74 omits “and of human thought” (και ενθυμησεως ανθρωπου) because an Alexandrian editor would have thought that humans can form a mental conception of God (Pervo, Acts, 423). Paul’s comment can certainly be interpreted in this manner, but his main critique seems to be directed at manually constructed images that derive from a person’s craft and creativity. Mikeal Parsons and Martin Culy’s discussion of the grammar in Acts 17:29 furthers this sense, for they argue that the genitives τεχνης and ενθυμησεως denote the means of the implicit verb “made” (hence their translation: “we should not think that the divine one is . . . [like] an image [made] by a person’s skill and creativity” (Parsons and Culy, Acts, 332, 341). Given that Paul is reacting to material images in his speech (17:22-25; cf. 17:16), coupled with the fact that Luke’s narrative encourages us to envision God’s imaginal body elsewhere, it seems more likely that Paul’s main issue in 17:29 lies with material images that arise from linguistic representation. (Ibid., 47-48)