Paul challenges Stoic pantheism and Epicurean materialistic deism by testifying that the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth (Ps 146:6; Is 42:5). The implication for worship is that God does not live in temples built by hands (1 Kings 8:27; Acts 7:48-50). Interestingly, this was a tenet of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism; Plutarch takes subsequent generations to task for abandoning it in practice (Plutarch Moralia 1034B). In chiastic fashion Paul moves immediately to another implication: God is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Service (therapeuo) is "cultic ministry [and] consists in the bringing of sacrificial fruits and any cultic action which might give the impression that the deity is referred to some human performance" (Beyer 1965:129). God's self-sufficiency is affirmed in the Old Testament (Ps 50:7-15) and developed in Jewish prayer (2 Macc 14:35; 3 Macc 2:9). It was also a tenet of Epicureanism (Lucretius On the Nature of Things 2.650; Philodemus Pros eusebeias fr. 38). Paul brushes aside the necessity, let alone appropriateness, of idolatrous worship servicing the divine nature by affirming that, conversely, it is God who gives all men (NIV has supplied men; the reference could be much more comprehensive—all living creatures) life and breath and everything else (Gen 1:29; 2:7; 9:3; Is 42:5; Acts 14:17).

What good news Paul had for the Epicureans and Stoics living as they did under impersonal chance or inexorable fate! Behind or within reality stands neither of these but rather a gracious, personal Creator, Ruler and Sustainer of all. For modern scientific humanity, living as it does within an impersonal universe that has evolved quite by "chance" from the big bang to the last whimper of a dark and frigid night without starfire, Paul's message is also very good news. And for postmodern humanity this gracious, personal God breaks the bonds of pantheistic "karma."

Paul now concentrates on humankind. He affirms the creation of human beings by a direct act and declares that God's design was for various cultures ("every nation," pan ethnos) to cover the face of the earth in a harmonious patchwork of diversity (Gen 1:28; 9:1, 7; 10:5, 20, 31-32). That harmony is born of God's governance of the time period and the space each culture would inhabit (Deut 32:8; Ps 102:13; Dan 2:36-45; compare Stoics on divine providence—Seneca the Younger De Providentia; see Winter 1993:133-36). While Stoicism looked at humankind in its diversity and urged it to consider itself one community, "even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field" (Plutarch Moralia 329B), Paul affirms both our unity and our diversity.

God's second design (not necessarily growing out of the first, as the NIV states, but parallel to it) was that men would seek him. In the biblical understanding this is "the thankful and reverent longing of the whole man for God whose goodness he has experienced" (Marshall 1980:288; Ps 14:2; Prov 8:17; Is 55:6; Jer 29:13; Amos 9:12 LXX; Heb 11:6).

Yet sin has interjected itself into the human experience, so that our "seeking" has become "groping" with no certainty of success, even though God is still very much present with us (compare Rom 1:18-32). The NIV's presentation of parallel purposes that men would seek him [God] and perhaps reach out (better "grope") for him and find him turns the qualifier clause about groping into a positive part of God's design. This lessens a main theme of the passage: ignorance of God (groping after him) is morally culpable and must be repented of.

Paul goes on to reinforce human responsibility for failing to seek and find God. He asserts God's presence in terms of our dependence on him. For in him we live and move and have our being. This is the converse of the Stoic pantheistic assertion that the divine spark of Reason, God, is in us (compare Dio Chrysostom Discourses 12.27; Posidonius as quoted in Barrett 1961:65). Paul appeals to the fourth- and third-century Stoic philosopher Aratus for confirmation: We are his offspring (Aratus Phenomena 5). His introductory remark (not a quote as NIV) cleanses the Aratus quotation of both its reference to Zeus and its pantheistic metaphysic (compare Renehan 1979:347; Edwards 1992). What is left is some recognition of the true nature of God, especially what humankind's being made in his image says about the divine nature (Bruce 1988:339). Being his offspring refers only to creation, not salvation, as the subsequent call to repentance clearly shows (Bock 1991:119).

For first-century Epicureans and twentieth-century moderns, the fact that God is the Father of humankind is challenging good news. No longer need we settle for the reductionistic explanation of humankind and its activity. We are not simply a complex interplay of electrical impulses, chemical processes, subatomic DNA and environment. And for Stoics and postmoderns, this good news makes us both less and more than they understand us to be. Pantheism or the "God within" is revealed as false, but in its place is the person made in God's image, living in conscious dependence on God.

As twice before (vv. 24-25) Paul draws implications for worship from these truths about God. His basic line of argument, found often in the Old Testament and Jewish literature, is that if like begets like, it is illogical to suppose that the divine nature that created living human beings is like an image made of an inanimate substance, no matter how valuable (Deut 4:28; Is 40:18-20; 44:9-20; Wisdom of Solomon 13:10; 15:7-17). Since such images are the product of human design and skill, they cannot be analogous to the divine being who made humankind.

This posed a direct challenge to some Stoic thought, which claimed that by following traditional myths of the poets and prophets along with innate reason, the divine spark within, idol-makers could appropriately represent the gods (Dio Chrysostom Discourses 12.44-46, 60). Postmodern thinking influenced by the New Age would find itself similarly challenged.