Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Stained glass window
in the Monte Casino Shrine
at Saint Meinrad, Indiana

Lectionary: 293


What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all that is in it,
the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.


I have been reading Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) and, predictably, am blown away by his erudition and insight. Archbishop John Roach said of him and Pope John Paul II, speaking to the priests of his Twin City archdiocese, “You fellows should understand these two men are the most brilliant theologians living in the Church today. They can argue rings around any objection a lowly archbishop might bring up.”
In his book, published in 1990, Cardinal Ratzinger reminded us of the Greek philosophical foundations of Christian theology, and even of the Greek influence on the Old Testament. Where early theologians assumed the name of God (YHWH, “I am who am”) influenced Greek thought, it’s as likely that Greek thought influenced the Jewish expression. The Greeks provided a way to think of God as “being”; the Jews provided the relationship to God; and the Christian theologians agreed that the God of the Jews is The Supreme Being. The result was our creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty….”
Greek philosophy lacked the name for God. Greeks had their gods with Zeus as chief among them; but there had to be a being superior to the buffoonish Zeus and his entourage. Who could take seriously a deity married to his sister Hera, who sexually violates other deities, humans and animals? He may be all powerful but he has no authority over his own appetites. 
But what is the name of that Supreme Being? The Jews could answer the question, for they not only disdained devotion to alien gods, they denied even their existence. There is only one God and his name is YHWH. They knew this from His speaking to Moses from the Burning Bush. The name signifies a real relationship, which the Greeks lacked. They could speculate about the existence of God but without a name they could not know God. 
That is where Saint Paul found the philosophers in Athens. They had erected an altar “to an unknown god" but it suffered neglect. Who can relate to a nameless god? He, she or it is shrouded in mystery. Cardinal Ratzinger opined that the Son of God intervened in history at that particular moment to fulfill the Greek desire for a name. Both religions – Jewish and Greek – were ready for fulfillment. 
The Cardinal goes on to remind us we cannot ignore the Greek philosophical contribution as we read our Bible. If we do so we’re likely to acknowledge an existence to alien gods, the powers worshiped by the people around us. A multicultural nation wants everyone to “just get along” and one way to do that would be to honor everybody’s gods. If we worship a humble God born in Bethlehem and dying on Calvary, surely we can make room for a warrior god of the NRA, or the computer god of the so-called Singularity, or the loathsome gods of drugs, alcohol and lust – not to mention the gods of Mormon, Islam, Wicca and Yoruba. 
But there is no other god and we know him as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is Good News for anyone willing to listen to us. Unfortunately, many in Athens missed out when Saint Paul spoke to them. But the world cannot forever ignore our Faith, Hope and Love of the God whom Saint Francis knew as "good, all good supreme good."