To The Unknown God

 To the unknown God. The church speaks of this passage as if people were worshipping something they didnt know existed. But however the inscription to the unknown God has more philosophy in it than not. In the history of the church and philosophy this idea that God is unknown has meant that God can only be spoken of in the negative and not in the positive.

Someone can say what God is not but not what God is.

Paul in Acts 17:23 doesn't believe that God can only be spoken in the negatives. These people in Acts are like the Catholics, the naturalist like Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Hegel and a host of other naturalistic thinkers.

To say that God is not evil, is to say that He is good. Or We might say God is not finite but timeless. Some Calvinist and Catholics teach God is only in the negative statements. John Gill in his Body of Divinity says, "The attribute of God are variously distinguished by divines; some distinguish them into negative and positive, or affirmative: the negative are such as remove from him whatever is imperfect in creatures; such are infinitity, immutability, immortality, &c. which deny him to be finite, mutable, and mortal; and, indeed, it is easier to say what God is not, than what he is; the positive, or affirmative, are such as assert some perfection in God, which is in and of himself; and which in the creatures, in any measure, is from him, as wisdom, goodness, justice, holiness, &c. but the distinction is discarded by others; because in all negative attributes some positive excellency is found." - Page 34 - 35