For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
All Commentaries on Acts 17:28 Go To Acts 17
John Chrysostom
AD 407
In him; to put it by way of corporeal similitude, even as it is impossible to be ignorant of the air which is diffused on every side around us, and is not far from every one of us, nay rather, which is in us. (d) For it was not so that there was a heaven in one place, in another none, nor yet (a heaven) at one time, at another none. So that both at every time and at every bound it was possible to find Him. He so ordered things, that neither by place nor by time were men hindered. For of course even this, if nothing else, of itself was a help to them— that the heaven is in every place, that it stands in all time. (f) See how (he declares) His Providence, and His upholding power (συγκράτησιν); the existence of all things from Him, (from Him) their working (τὸ ἐνεργεἵν), (from Him their preservation) that they perish not. And he does not say, Through Him, but, what was nearer than this, In him.— That poet said nothing equal to this, For we are His offspring. He, however, spoke it of Jupiter, but Paul takes it of the Creator, not meaning the same being as he, God forbid! But meaning what is properly predicated of God: just as he spoke of the altar with reference to Him, not to the being whom they worshipped. As much as to say, For certain things are said and done with reference to this (true God), but you know not that they are with reference to Him. For say, of whom would it be properly said, To an Unknown God? Of the Creator, or of the demon? Manifestly of the Creator: because Him they knew not, but the other they knew. Again, that all things are filled (with the presence)— of God? Or of Jupiter— a wretch of a man, a detestable impostor! But Paul said it not in the same sense as he, God forbid! But with quite a different meaning. For he says we are God's offspring, i.e. God's own, His nearest neighbors as it were.
For lest, when he says, Being the offspring of God
