LIVING PROOF OF AN INVISIBLE GOD

Today, like Paul long before, we will visit Mars Hill in Athens. Not stopping there for long, we will visit the Palatine Hill in Rome.  

Mars Hill in Athens Greece is the location of the Areopagus — the Hill of Ares. Ares is the Olympian God of War, called ‘Mars’ by the Romans.

Paul visited that stoney craig to debate the philosophers there: 

Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, ‘To The Unknown God.’ Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and Earth, dwelled not in temples made with hands.’” (Acts 17:22-23)

 Greece, like Rome and many important city states, had twelve principle known gods, or six pairs of male and female gods. Their names are unimportant, but the Roman gods were the gods of the Greeks given other names.

Athens had an ‘Unknown God’ (Agnostos Theos) — a God without a name. He was an invisible God without a statue with only an altar. Agnostos Theos had a temple; and the Greeks would swear in the name of the Unknown God.

The Greeks ignorantly worshipped Him, but Paul came to declare to them who it was they were worshipping. He identified their Unknown God as the One who made the world and all things, and that their Unknown God was the Lord of heaven and Earth. Paul added that God did not dwell in manmade temples. Therefore, He could not be found in their temple.

Paul implied that the Greeks already worshipped the Invisible God but failed to recognize who it was that they worshipped.

The Egyptians, prior to Greece, also had an Unknown God, and so did the Romans later in history. There has always been an Unknown God of whom everybody, but the Jews, worshipped.

Moses worshipped the Known God, “I AM THAT I AM,” (Exod 3;14). Moses was not ignorant of the God that he worshipped, although that One God was invisible, and Paul identified Him specifically; speaking of Jesus Paul wrote that He is: 

In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in Earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him. (Col 1:14-16)

 Paul revealed to the philosophers in Athens that they got it right, but were ignorant of their own findings.

All the other gods had images and many of them temples. The Unknown God had just an altar; He had no Image in ancient times whether it be in Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Now Paul declared to the world on his journeys that the Invisible God now had an Image.

The ‘Mystery of God’ is that the Creator, although invisible, would be made manifest and given an Image. Ignorant people always needed an image to worship, and the manifestation of God in flesh is that very Image. When the Greeks saw Jesus, they were revealed their invisible God.

There were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast: The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, “Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:20-21)

 They wished to see their Unknown God in the flesh. Greeks were not so ignorant after all for some had realized before Paul’s journey that Jesus was the living ‘Statue’ of their Unknown God.

Paul wrote to the Romans that Jesus, “now is (God) made manifest” (Rom 16:26).

The Romans were as ignorant as the Greek philosophers, so Paul made them wiser. They too had an “Unknown God’ just off the Field of Mars on the Palatine Hill — a God without a name; the Invisible and thereto Unknown God that Livy (Titus Livius), the historian, called the “God of Utterance.”

 

Figure 1: Twelve Hills of Rome; Wikipedia

 

Now for a little early Roman history of which Livy wrote: Rome had a history of fighting their known enemies. Livy wrote about the wars of the early Romans (350 years of war and peace) prior to the time of Christ just as Flavius Josephus wrote about the Wars of the Jews up to the same approximate era. Josephus wrote much about the twelve tribes of Israel. They were the heroes of the Jews, albeit they were not gods.

All the other civilizations had multiple gods. Egypt, Greece, and Rome all had twelve gods. Perhaps they ignorantly worshipped the One True Invisible God, but did so ignorantly as well. Perhaps their progenitors misunderstood the Abrahamic Covenant and made their tribal leaders out to be gods. Of course, that hypothesis is speculation but why else would a twelve-god deity be so common and would parallel the planning of the Invisible God?

During the reign of the Greek Empire, Rome was under construction. Empires exist to fulfill the purposes of God. Just as Assyrian and Babylonian Empires were created to punish the disobedient Hebrews, the Persian Empire was created by God’s grace to restore the Kingdom of David. Likewise, the Greek Empire was created to prepare the world for the coming of Christ, and the Roman Empire for God to appear to the world.

The twelve-god-deity was called ‘Olympians’ by the Greeks, whereas the monotheistic Godhead is called the Holy Trinity with Jesus as the one and only true ‘Olympian.’ The multiple gods of the Romans were Omniglots — their version of Olympians.

However, Olympians were thought to be visible gods, albeit mythological, they were non-existent gods whereas the Unknown God is ‘Existence’ as He revealed to Moses. The Unknown God was the only real God that both the Greeks and Romans acknowledged but failed to worship properly.

Little is known of the Greek ‘Unknown God,’ but Livy wrote a goodly amount about the Roman ‘Unknown God’ — the “God of Utterance.”

Strangely, their God of Utterance seemed to be the apostle John’s vision of the Invisible God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2), Then John identified the Invisible God, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His Glory…” (John 1:14).

The Glory of God that they beheld was the man, Jesus.

Both the Greeks and Romans had altars without a statue of God upon them. They failed to behold His Glory, so God came in bodily shape (Luke 3:22) onto Jesus, for them to be able to behold the Glory of God.

John inferred that Jesus was the Unknown God all the time, but in ignorance neither the Greeks, Romans, nor even the Jews saw Jesus as the Glory of God!

Livy wrote about a sage who the ‘God of Utterance’ (‘The Word’) revealed to him. That God could not be seen but the sage did hear him.

Unknown to the Romans before, and neglected in history, were the pagan Gauls (Celtics). They were people beyond the highest Apennine mountain range who were unknown to the Romans except by legend.

The message of the sage was not taken seriously; the God of Utterance — the Invisible God — had sent a message by the sage that the Gauls would attack Rome, and that they must be vigilant. The Romans failed to take the warning seriously, and the savage brutes from beyond the mountains attacked and destroyed Rome. The Romans had failed to believe, not necessarily, the messenger, but the Invisible ‘God of Utterance’ — John’s ‘Word’ God.

Having supposedly learned their lesson after defeat and grace by the Gauls, finally they took the Invisible God more seriously. They built an altar to the Altare Del Dio Ignoto — ‘The Altar of the Unknown God’ shown below:

 

Figure 2: Altar of the Unknown God; Wikipedia

That altar was discovered in 1820 on the Palatine Hill in Rome but it was always there since ancient times.

Livy wrote about it beginning in 29 BC, perhaps to reveal before Jesus came, the coming of the Unknown God.

It can be assumed that there was one on Mars Hill in Athens that Paul found there sometime before 90 AD. Both cities had their Unknown God whose only manifestation was utterance of the Word as truth.

The truth that the God of Utterance revealed was that an unknown people would destroy Rome. Livy ended his history of the first and only destruction of Rome and by the Gauls.

The God of Utterance had revealed the truth and only after that became true, did they recognize their Unknown God as a real god. It took hundreds of years for them to put a face on their Unknown God and both the Greeks (Orthodoxy) and the Romans (Catholicism) put the Divine Face of Jesus above the Altar of the Unknown God.

So, now history has verified that the Romans and Greeks had an Unknown God that became known to them. The Altar of the Unknown God in Rome revealed to mankind that even the ancients all over the world knew there was an Invisible God but failed to heed Him. They always needed images of their gods, so God in His Wisdom made for Himself a Living Image that took the nations years to understand.

With that said, the world still has their Agnostic god; the one that they still doubt because they fail to believe that Jesus is God, even with Living Proof of it!