Where Do We Go From Here

67 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? languages at Harvard University as “going from the unknown to the unknown” – in other words, it was very difficult! He said learning occurs rather when we go “from the known to the unknown”, and this is Paul’s strategy here. And it’s surprising for modern readers because too often we restrict God’s revelation to what is found in Scripture or in the church. Yet these very Scriptures testify to God’s witness being found in an entirely “non- Christian” environment! (And perhaps some of us doubt that some people could be worshipping God outside all that we would name as Christian?) Paul takes this further in the next part of his speech, by stressing the universality of God’s reign: God made all things, gives life and breath to “all mortals… and all things”, oversees “all nations on the earth” and for this purpose: that they might “perhaps grope for him and find him” (NRSV v 27). It is striking how Paul then brings his argument to a culmination not with a Scriptural text but with one of their own philosophers, Aratus (c. 315-240 BCE): “For we too are his offspring”, taken from the opening lines of his poem Phaenomena: Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken. For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus. Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity. Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus. For we are indeed his offspring...