John Calvin Commentary Acts 17:24

"The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;" — Acts 17:24 (ASV)

God, who has made the world. Paul’s aim is to teach what God is. Furthermore, because he has to deal with profane men, he draws proofs from nature itself, for it would have been futile for him to cite testimonies of Scripture. I said that this was the holy man’s purpose: to bring the men of Athens to the true God.

For they were persuaded that there was some divinity; only their preposterous religion needed to be reformed. From this we gather that the world goes astray through many twists and turns, indeed, that it is in a complete labyrinth, as long as a confused opinion concerning the nature of God remains.

For this is the true rule of godliness: to know distinctly and plainly who that God is whom we worship. If anyone wishes to discuss religion generally, this must be the first point: that there is some divine power or godhead whom people ought to worship. But because that was not in question, Paul proceeds to the second point: that the true God must be distinguished from all vain inventions.

So he begins with the definition of God, so that from there he may prove how God ought to be worshipped, because the one depends upon the other. For from where did so many false forms of worship arise, and such rashness to add to them often, except because all people forged for themselves a God according to their own pleasure? And nothing is easier than to corrupt the pure worship of God when people evaluate God according to their own senses and understanding.

Therefore, there is nothing more suitable to destroy all corrupt forms of worship than to make this beginning and to show what the nature of God is like. Also our Savior Christ reasons thus, John 4:24, God is a Spirit. Therefore He allows no other worshippers but those who worship Him spiritually.

And surely He does not subtly dispute about the secret substance [essence] of God; but by His works He declares what is the profitable knowledge of Him. And what does Paul gather from this, since God is the creator, framer, and Lord of the world? Namely, that He does not dwell in temples made with hands. For, since it appears plainly from the creation of the world that the righteousness, wisdom, goodness, and power of God reach beyond the bounds of heaven and earth, it follows that He cannot be contained or confined within any space.

Nevertheless, this demonstration seems to have been in vain, because they might easily have said that images and pictures were placed in temples to testify to God’s presence, and that no one was so ignorant as not to know that God did fill all things.

I answer that what I said a little earlier is true: that idolatry is self-contradictory. The unbelievers said that they worshipped the gods before their images; but unless they had tied the Godhead and power of God to images, and had hoped to receive help through them, would they have directed their prayers there?

Through this it also came about that one temple was considered more holy than another. They ran to Delphi so that they might fetch the oracles of Apollo from there. Minerva had her seat and dwelling place in Athens. Now we see that Paul touches upon that false opinion by which people have always been deceived: because they imagined for themselves a carnal God.

This is the first step into the true knowledge of God: if we go outside of ourselves and do not measure Him by the capacity of our own minds; indeed, if we imagine nothing of Him according to the understanding of our flesh, but instead place Him above the world and distinguish Him from creatures.

The whole world was always far from this sobriety, because this wickedness is in people: to naturally deform God’s glory with their own inventions. For as they are carnal and earthly, they desire a god who will be answerable to their nature. Secondly, in their boldness they fashion Him in such a way that they may comprehend Him.

By such inventions the sincere and plain knowledge of God is corrupted; indeed, His truth, as Paul says, is turned into a lie (Romans 1:25). For whoever does not ascend high above the world apprehends vain shadows and illusions instead of God. Again, unless we are carried up into heaven with the wings of faith, we will inevitably vanish away in our own thoughts.

And it is no wonder if the Gentiles were so grossly deluded and deceived as to include God in the elements of the world, after they had pulled Him down from His heavenly throne; seeing that the same thing befell the Jews, to whom nevertheless the Lord had shown His spiritual glory. For it is not without cause that Isaiah chides them for including God within the walls of the temple (Isaiah 66:1). And we gather from Stephen’s sermon that this vice was common to all ages; this sermon is recorded by Luke in Acts 7:49.

If anyone asked the Jews whose ignorance the Holy Spirit reproves—if they thought that God was confined within their temple—they would have stoutly denied being in any such gross error. But because they only beheld the temple, did not rise higher in their minds, trusted in the temple, and boasted that God was, as it were, bound to them, the Spirit rightly reproves them for tying Him to the temple as if He were a mortal man.

For what I just said is true: that superstition is self-contradictory and vanishes into various imaginations. Nor do the Papists today have any defense with their assertions, by which they, in a way, excuse their errors. In some respects, superstition feigns that God dwells in temples made with hands—not that it intends to shut Him up as if in a prison, but because it dreams of a carnal (or fleshly) God, attributes a certain power to idols, and transfers the glory of God to external displays.

But if God does not dwell in temples made with hands (2 Kings 19:15), why does He testify in so many places of Scripture that He sits between the cherubim and that the temple is His eternal rest (Psalms 80:1; Psalms 132:14)?

I answer: As He was not tied to any place, He never intended to tie His people to earthly signs; rather, He comes down to them so that He might lift them up to Himself. Therefore, those people wickedly abused the temple and the ark who looked upon those things in such a way that they remained fixed on the earth and departed from the spiritual worship of God.

From this we see that there was a great difference between those tokens of God’s presence which people invented for themselves unwisely and those which were ordained by God. This is because people always incline downward, so that they may apprehend God in a carnal manner; but God, by the leading of His Word, lifts them upward. He only uses intermediate signs and tokens, by which He gently makes Himself known to people who are slow to understand, until they may ascend to heaven by degrees (and steps).