Day 334 - Acts 16-18

The order of the apostle’s argument deserves careful examination. Among Gentiles the treatment of the apostle’s subject takes the form of a series of steps. First, he teaches that the one God is the originator of the world and of all things, and in him we live and move and are, and we are his offspring. Thus he demonstrates that God is to be loved not only because of his gifts of light and life but also because of a certain affinity of kind. Next, he disposes of the opinion that is the explicit reason for idols [by saying] that the founder and Lord of the entire world cannot be enclosed in temples of stone, that the granter of all favors has no need of the blood of victims, that the creator and governor of all people cannot be created by human hands, and finally that God, in whose image humankind was made, should not be appraised in terms of the  ...