Biblical Reflection, FAP's Council - march 9th 2026
The text of the day is that of Acts 17. 26
“From one man, he created all peoples to dwell in all the earth. He drew the boundaries of their countries, he fixed the time of the seasons. »
This text is taken from Paul’s speech in Athens, one of the key moments of Christian mission in the theology of Luke. Christianity passes symbolically from Asia to Europe, from the Semitic and Eastern world to that of Greek thought. About 300 years before Nicaea, we have here the description according to Luke of the first attempt at inculturation of the Christian faith. I propose to start from this text to reflect on the interactions between the Gospel message and the human culture in which it is proclaimed. For this I will also call upon the text of the multiplication of loaves and fishes in the Gospel of Luke (9.10-17).
Last October, in Chiang Mai/Thailand, we experienced days of intense intercultural exchange between the Churches of the World Communion of Reformed Churches WCRC, but also discovered how the inculturation of the Christian faith is expressed in the Asian and Thai context. According to the cultures, the Christian faith takes different colors and accents. Having to do as in the FAP with Churches from very different contexts allows us to appreciate not only the differences, but also the exchanges between the different cultures, as well as the limits of inculturation, the moments when the Church must clearly distance itself from any assimilation and instrumentalization of the biblical message for political or ideological ends, what is called deculturation.
But let’s look at the context of this verse of the day, namely the stages of the journey that bring Paul of Troas (Troy) to Athens (v.1-7):
"Paul and Silas (...) came to Thessalonica, where the Jews had a synagogue; and Paul went in there according to his custom. For three Sabbaths, he discussed with them, (...). Some of them were persuaded, and joined Paul and Silas, as well as a great multitude of God-fearing Greeks, and many women of high quality. But the Jews, jealous, took with them some wicked men of the populace (...). And they brought themselves to the house of Jason, and sought for Paul and Silas, to bring them unto the people. Not finding them, they dragged Jason and some brothers before the magistrates of the city, shouting: These people, (...) Jason received them. They all act against the edicts of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus....
The strong reaction of the supporters of the Synagogue forces Paul to change his strategy: accustomed to going from city to city as he did in his first trip to Asia Minor, he decides here to skip the steps and gain speed for his opponents by taking the boat to go faster and directly to Athens. It is while waiting for his friends to join him that the main stage takes place (verse 16- 34)
"As Paul waited for them in Athens, he felt his mind within him become irritated at the sight of this city full of idols. He therefore talked in the synagogue with the Jews and the men fearing God, and in the public square (...). Some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to speak with him (...), hearing him proclaiming Jesus and the resurrection, saying: It seems that he is proclaiming foreign deities. Then they took him, and led him to the Areopagus, saying: Could we know what this new doctrine is that you are teaching? Because you make us hear strange things (...). Now, all the Athenians and foreigners living in Athens spent their time only saying or listening to news. Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said: Men of Athens, I find you extremely religious in all respects. Because, while traveling through your city (...), I even discovered an altar with this inscription: : To an unknown god! What you reveal without knowing it is what I announce to you. The God who made the world and all that is in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, he who gives life to everyone, the breathing, and all things. From one man, he created all peoples so that they would dwell in all the earth. He traced the limits of their countries, he set the time of the seasons (...). In reality, he is not far from each one of us, because in him we have life, movement, and being. This is what some of your poets also said: Of him we are the race... So then, being the offspring of God, we must not believe that the divinity is like gold, or silver, or stone, carved by the art and industry of man. God (...) has set a day when he will judge the world according to justice, by the man whom he has appointed, of which he has given all a certain proof by raising him from the dead. When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said: We will hear you on this another time. So Paul withdrew from among them. Some nevertheless attached themselves to him and believed, Denys the areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
The intra-cultural dialogue with the synagogue is not really a success, because Paul runs away. And the first attempt at dialogue with Greek philosophy is not a success either, but not a failure: "we will talk about this another day." Luke’s statement is clear: Paul reaches the cultural and intellectual center of the Empire, Athens. Then he will reach Jerusalem, then Rome in the following chapters. The whole Empire is reached by the Gospel. The attempt at reconciliation with the cultural, but also social main stream is successful, for example when we are told that 'quality women' are being converted, that is to say rich women. Indeed, the extension of Christianity owes quite a lot to wealthy businesswomen, even if it is surprising that Luke places this kind of remarks so early, and twice in a row, at a time when the mission is first directed towards the synagogues. But the message is clear: The Church is now an actor of the main social, cultural and intellectual stream.
However, unlike the bishops gathered at Nicaea, Luke is not enthusiastic about Greek concepts to explain the Christian faith. There is resistance. Just as with the birthplace of Christianity, Judaism. What the adherents of the Synagogue retain and which shocks them is specified in verse 7: "They all act against the edicts of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus." Lack of loyalty towards the political authorities is invoked as a reason for exclusion and conviction.”
Deculturation and inculturation: there remains an irreducible divergence with the ambient culture: there is another king! This message, already a source of tension with the Synagogue in Jerusalem, takes on an even more provocative, even dangerous aspect in a context entirely subject to Rome like Athens.
Deculturation consists in the assertion that this King, this Messiah, was not only crucified (which is unthinkable for a Jew) but also recognized by God through his resurrection as the king above all secular power. A crucified God! "we will hear you on this another day!". The problem is not that Paul preaches a new god. There were so many, and the intellectuals were always fond of a new idol, especially if it came from the East. The problem is that this faith claims there is another king than the emperor. It’s not politically correct at all, and dangerous. From the start, the Christian faith distances itself from power when it demands blind obedience and unfailing adoration. This discourse was not necessarily foreign to the Jewish thought of the time, particularly among the Pharisees (from whom Paul comes) or the zealots. The Jews, among whom the first Christians were assimilated as an additional sect, enjoyed an exception on this point from the Empire, because they waited for the Messiah and reserved their absolute obedience to this future king. But it remained limited to Judea, and was not tolerable in the rest of the Empire.
But what was wrong neither for the Jews nor for the Greeks, was to claim firstly that this king was as much for the Jews as for the non-Jews, and secondly that he was a crucified and deceased person. Death on the cross was the absolute antithesis of what religious and philosophers could represent as a divine image. It was highly impure, a shameful death, a torture reserved for bandits, agitators, slaves, those who were not Roman citizens. Messiah - King Jesus does not claim a territory like any self-respecting king, says Paul, but the hearts of the people, and his kingdom is not governed by order and strength, but by love and respect for everyone, justice. It is a kind of anti-culture, alternative culture that is proposed.
I take a big leap and return to our theme of intercultural. I have the impression more and more that the situation of the Churches today resembles more and more the situation of the Church of the first centuries, before Constantine, also and in particular on this subject of reverence to the dominant powers, insofar as those we intend to directly control and influence the entirety of our lives by orienting our choices, imposing dependencies, excluding or marginalizing alternative systems, and putting all this not under the control of a modern and transparent State of law, but in private hands accountable and judiciable before shareholders.
Distrust, even distrust of power is an almost constant in the Churches of the South that one can cross in the networks of the WCRC. It is a subject of intercultural tension with our Churches in Europe. But less and less so, for example, with those in the USA or in Eastern Europe.
We are at the challenge of transcultural, that is to learn in the way other contexts think, act for our own context. In a postcolonial perspective and not euro-centered, we are driven by convictions such as those expressed by a former Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Kenneth Cragg:
”In the same way that the Christ of Galilee and Jerusalem in the NT became the Christ of the Mediterranean, of Athens and of Rome, it is necessary that the Christ of the West be more clearly the Christ of the world. He can only be known everywhere in his fullness if the whole world in its cultural diversity seizes him and expresses about him what he has learned and loved from Him, freely, with his own thought and choice of form... This movement within the global Christian movement does not only mean a geographical movement, but also a social transformation, in the sense that the vast majority of committed Christians are today found in very economically disadvantaged regions, at the margin of the globalized world... This movement (from the North to the South) represents the return to a mode of mission that we know from the New Testament, when the Gospel was carried from the margins of the Empire to the center of imperial power by people without status or social honor. Today, the peoples of the margin claim their central role as agents of mission and affirm that mission is transformation.
Or again this statement by a waldensian theologian from Chile, Pablo Richard:
« The Christian Bible has been read and interpreted in the abstract spirit of Greek philosophy, the imperial spirit of Constantine, the conquering and colonizing European spirit, the patriarchal and erudite Western spirit, the individualistic spirit of modern liberalism.
It is necessary to save the Bible from this captivity in order to make another reading and interpretation possible with the Spirit in which it was written. For this, we need a non-Western reference point. " (1995)
Our mission at the FAP is to recognize this difficult Christian intercultural dialogue, but also to be open to transculture: to understand something of the Gospel through the cultural interpretation of other Churches, understand something that we had never understood like this and that carries a meaning not only new, but above all fertile for us.
To illustrate this and conclude, I would like to present to you the reading that a colleague from the Pacific, Jione Havea, made in Chiang Mai of the famous story of the multiplication of the 5 loaves and the 2 fishes in Luke’s version. Jione is an indigenous Methodist pastor from the Tonga Islands, professor at the United Theological College of Charles Stuart University and at the Siaa'atoutai Theological College in Tonga.
Luke 9:10-17: «When the apostles returned, they told Jesus all that they had done. He took them with him and withdrew apart, on the side of a city called Bethsaida. But the people heard of it and followed him. Jesus welcomed them; he spoke to them about the kingdom of God and he healed those who needed it. As the day began to wear off, the twelve approached him and said: "Send the crowd away, that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and food, for we are here in a deserted place." But Jesus said to them, "Give them something to eat yourselves." They replied: "We have no more than five loaves and two fishes, unless we ourselves go buy food for all this people". Indeed, there were about 5000 men. Jesus said to his disciples: «Have them sit down in groups of 50.» That’s what they did, and everyone sat down. Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven and blessed them. Then he broke them and gave them to the disciples so that they could distribute them to the crowd. All ate and were satisfied, and they took up twelve baskets full of the pieces that remained.
I don’t know about you, but personally, it’s one of those texts that I’ve always tried to avoid and I don’t know what to do. As much as for miracles of healing, I could rely on the fact that scientifically spontaneous healings occur, whether by laying hands or psychological shock, as much as for this kind of challenge to physics, I don’t see a way out. And the allegorical or numerological interpretations with these digits of 5 and 12 do not solve the problem.
Jione Haeva in his Bible study pointed out that in all classical interpretations there is a constant, namely that everything is centered on Jesus and his action (looking to God and blessing). The other actors are presented as a bit lost (the crowd), or overwhelmed (the disciples). But when Jesus takes matters into his own hands, literally, everything is regulated in profusion. A second constant is that disciples are not presented to their advantage. They want to keep their picnic to themselves and leave the crowd to fend for themselves. Once again Luke shows: it is only if the disciples do what Christ tells them that they are up to it. Without that they do not have the necessary resources. Only Jesus has the solution, he is the solution, not the disciples, not the institution.
Haeva invited us to reflect on our classic Western reaction to this situation: how would you react if at the end of an important company meeting called at short notice, your boss suddenly tells you: «finally, we will extend by a picnic offered for all: give food to all the staff present». It is panic that settles in the head of any normally constituted Western employee. « Chef, I just have two red bulls and gluten-free cookies! ».
Haeva directs his attention to the crowd. Starting from his Pacific Tonga culture, he is not surprised that the crowds gather. At home, when we go to a gathering, whether it’s worship or something else, we don’t leave without having a meal with ourselves, and enough to be able to share with others. This is also the case for migrants. You don’t go elsewhere without having enough to feed yourself until the next step. If the disciples at 12 only have 5 loaves and 2 fishes, Jesus knows that the crowd has something to share. The miracle of Jesus is that he believes in wisdom, local culture. He trusts the crowd of people from all over who want to hear his wisdom. The miracle is not the magical action of his two hands, but the fact that he uses the resources of the people gathered around him. And there are so many that there are many left for other groups.
The reading of this biblical text proposed by Haeva is stimulating and interesting not only because it shows us how inculturation can be practiced, but also for us because it invites us not to forget the strength of the communities we have to do in the work of the FAP. Do not overestimate the five loaves and two fishes that we can offer, but rely on the intelligence, commitment and generosity of the communities that come to us.
Serge Fornerod - pastor - Président of FAP