Day 102: A Logical Consideration of the Divine Nature

Acts 17:28-29 :

‘For in him we live, and move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man.

Paul puts forward an interesting logical argument to the Athenians here. He asks them to consider the logic behind their behavior regarding idol worship. He said that they had written that all of mankind is the offspring of the “Divine Nature.” If that is so, and we are like the Divine Nature in some way, does it really make sense to suggest that things made out of gold, silver, stone or wood could be a good representation? If it was designed by man and man was supposedly born of it, then how can that be? It isn’t very logically consistent. These people were living by their own will to have gods of their own making, rather than admitting that they had to have been made by someone greater than themselves.

Philosophically, we see the same basic problem today. People want to make gods in their image rather than to recognize that they were made in God’s image. Mankind would rather say that we came from “nothing” than to admit the obvious; that we came from someone who was greater than we are.