Each of the canonical gospels has its own special characteristics, agendae, and theology. The Luke Gospel is distinguished not only by being by and for Gentile converts but also as the only canonical gospel that has a sequel, namely the Acts of the Apostles. An important agenda item for the gospel was continuity between the Jewish and Christian covenants, thus extending into stories about the growth of the early Church was important.
The second half of Acts is centred on the apostle Paul and our reading today presents Paul at his finest. Perhaps Paul's greatest contribution to the growing Tradition was speaking of salvation as attaining correct, and eternal, relationship with God through trust in Jesus Christ. Today, missionary activity finds him in Athens, the intellectual capital of Greece. He has been invited by locals to give explanation of the "new cult" he propounds.
The Acropolis, or "high city," of Athens sported the Temple of Athena, town patroness, towards the east end and at the west an area called Areopagus, or commonly "Mars Hill,"so named because it was believed that the god Mars had there acquitted himself of charges of having murdered the son of god Neptune. Logically the area featured judicial procedures and eventually also became a place where various opinions could be aired. So Paul is in the perfect place.
He delivers what is clearly one of the finest pieces of rhetoric we know. He tells the Athenians that he has seen an altar "to the unknown god." Actually, it read "to unknown gods," but Paul's adaptation is apt. He goes on to say that he will reveal the unknown god, who is in fact the one true God who created the universe and "in whom we live, move, and exist." This God , Paul says, is certainly not anthropomorphic, does not live in temples, and cannot be represented in images. This God now calls out to humanity and has commended himself through Jesus' resurrection.
So Paul has invited his audience to cast aside primitive theologies and move up to monotheism. The ancient views of Deity must be shed. This revealing point shows that Paul himself had moved very far from early Judaism's view of God as a sort of super-sized version of us on a bad-hair day -- one who is angry, bloodthirsty, capricious and treats his children far worse than human parents do. Time to grow up, Paul says.
It is fair to say that God is not the one who changed over the scope of human history, but that human concepts of the Deity have evolved and become more healthy, in the light of human experience and reason. In today's Gospel, Jesus speaks of the sending of the Holy Spirit, the "Spirit of Truth," who will, a little later in the same gospel, be spoken of as guiding the Church into all truth. We see that as au unending gift which allows us better to understand God's will and to deal with new truth being uncovered every day. We never live in the past or worship the past's archaic view of God. We can have faith that is always fresh in a God who is always revealing.
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