1. Divine Images and Idol Polemic in the Ancient World

As noted earlier, the prohibition against crafting images in the Decalogue (Exod 20.4; Deut 5.8) remains one of the most persistent rationales Jews and Christians cite in their defence of an invisible God. When we look more closely at this famous prohibition, though, it becomes clear that the primary issue is not God's visibility or lack thereof, but God's superiority in relation to other gods. In Exodus and Deuteronomy, the prohibition of ‘idols’ – itself a pejorative term used to describe someone else's divine images – is closely connected with the prohibition of worshipping other gods beside the God of Israel.Footnote ⁹ The commandment, which immediately follows the commandment to have no other gods before ‘the Lord your God’ (Exod 20.2–3; cf. Deut 5.6–7), begins with: ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol …’ and then goes on to say: ‘You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God …’ (Exod 20.4–5; cf. Deut 5.8–9).Footnote ¹⁰ As W. Barnes Tatum argues, the second commandment is not anti-iconic, but anti-idolic; that is to say, the commandment is not against images per se, but against images that represent other deities.Footnote ¹¹ Furthermore, in the explanation for this prohibition in Deut 4.15–18, the text does not prohibit the Israelites from making idols because God lacks a form, but because they did not see God's form: ‘Since you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure …’ (Deut 4.15–16). Just because God's form is not seen, however, does not mean that God lacks a form altogether.

Despite assumptions to the contrary, then, the modern understanding that visible images cannot represent an invisible God does not derive from the biblical prohibition against ‘idols’. Such an understanding instead largely stems from a dualistic ontology that distinguishes between a visible, material image and an invisible, immaterial deity.Footnote ¹² This dualistic bifurcation between the visible/invisible and material/immaterial finds its roots in Platonic philosophy and would become further entrenched in Western thought during the Enlightenment, when the philosopher René Descartes famously relegated ‘the mind’ to a distinct, ontologically separate realm from ‘the body’.Footnote ¹³ Such Platonic and Cartesian dualisms, however, do not adequately account for the myriad aniconic – and iconic – practices found within scripture. These dualisms are even more problematic because the terms ‘invisible’ and ‘immaterial’ do not appear in Hebrew scripture. As Rudolf Bultmann rightly notes, there is no word for ‘invisible’ in Hebrew.Footnote ¹⁴ The same can also be said for the word ‘immaterial’, as well as ‘incorporeal’.Footnote ¹⁵ In the Greek Septuagint (hereafter LXX), the translation of Jewish scripture on which Luke relies, the word ‘invisible’ (ἀόρατος) occurs only three times, but never in reference to God, and the words ‘immaterial’ (ἄϋλος) and ‘incorporeal’ (ἀσώματος) do not appear at all.Footnote ¹⁶ The sharp dichotomy between visible and invisible, material and immaterial, embodied and disembodied, though common today, is foreign to the world of Israel's sacred texts, in both its Hebrew and Greek versions.

In Jewish scripture overall, God's lack of an ontologically visible form does not figure into discussions of divine images, but the specific rationale for the rejection of such images remains debated among scholars (with the majority arguing that divine images constitute errors of substitution and/or incorrect representations of God).Footnote ¹⁷ Regardless, scriptural critiques of ‘idols’ often serve a rhetorical purpose: they affirm the presence and power of Israel's God, while denying the presence and power of other gods.Footnote ¹⁸ In other words, idol polemic functioned as a means of self-identification; it drew boundary lines between the God of Israel and other gods and between God's people and other peoples. The LXX drew these boundary lines via its vocabulary for idolatry itself when the translators rendered the many Hebrew words that denote ‘idol’ with the Greek term εἴδωλον. In regular Greek usage, εἴδωλον means an ‘insubstantial phenomenon’, a ‘phantom’ or a ‘likeness’, yet the translators used this term to reference the images of gentile gods, suggesting that the gods of the nations have no more reality than the images used to represent them.Footnote ¹⁹ In other instances, idol polemic drew boundary lines between the God of Israel as creator and the created order. Idol parodies in particular draw this distinction, and in the LXX, the term ‘made with human hands’, or ‘handmade’ (χειροποίητος), appears in reference to divine images in order to highlight the difference between God the creator and humans who attempt to create gods, or at least images of the gods (e.g. Lev 26.1, 30; Wis 14.8; Isa 2.18; 10.11; 16.12; 19.1; 21.9; 31.7; 46.6; Dan 5.4, 23; 6.28 LXX).Footnote ²⁰

Although Luke himself reflects a deep familiarity with the Greek translation of Jewish scripture,Footnote ²¹ he was also living during a time when aniconic rhetoric took on an increasingly important role as a marker of Jewish identity. Indeed, idol polemic intensified during the Second Temple period and beyond, most likely as a result of increased exposure to Hellenistic culture. Texts such as the Letter of Jeremiah, Wisdom of Solomon 13–15 and Bel and the Dragon include biting invective against idols, amplifying themes from the idol parodies.Footnote ²² Philo and Josephus also criticise divine images, but do so by explicitly situating their critique in relation to Greek philosophy, with Philo in particular drawing on Platonic sentiments concerning art and representation in his opposition to images.Footnote ²³ All of these authors, including Luke, would have lived in a world filled with material images, whether they were images from the Greek and Roman pantheon or from the imperial cult.Footnote ²⁴

Like a number of these authors, Luke likewise demonstrates familiarity with larger philosophical debates that swirled around divine images. Some philosophers and intellectuals of Luke's day, such as the first-century historian and philosopher Dio Chrysostom, thought that divine images could point to invisible realities beyond themselves, while others, such as the second-century satirist Lucian, disdained the unsophisticated materialism of popular piety.Footnote ²⁵ Regardless, Luke's elite, philosophically minded contemporaries were fairly unanimous on the point that divine images were representations of the divine, not the divine itself. Yet as Dio Chrysostom demonstrates, there was also a belief that images could potentially facilitate communication with the divine.Footnote ²⁶ A similar sentiment can be discerned among Jews during this time, for images figured in their own religious life, as research on Jewish material culture has shown.Footnote ²⁷ Such images demonstrate that visual piety was a part of Judaism during the Greco-Roman period and that the second commandment itself was interpreted in a myriad of ways.

Among Jewish and Christian authors who rejected divine images, however, the idea of God's inability to be perceived by the senses (popular especially in Platonic discourse) began to emerge as a rationale for this rejection around Luke's time. Philo and the Sibylline Oracles, for example, critique divine images in these terms, as do Origen and Clement of Alexandria.Footnote ²⁸ Not all Jewish and Christian authors, however, make this move. In the New Testament, for instance, we never see the explicit connection between divine images and divine invisibility.Footnote ²⁹ Aside from Paul's extended discussion of ‘idol meat’ in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10, most of the references to ‘idols’ or ‘idolatry’ in the New Testament are briefly mentioned as practices or vices to avoid.Footnote ³⁰ The closest juxtaposition between images and invisibility occurs in Romans 1. Here Paul describes God's ‘eternal power and divinity’ as ‘his invisible aspects’ (ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ) that can be seen in creation (1.20), and he then discusses how humans ‘exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image (εἰκόνος) of a mortal human being and birds and four-footed animals and reptiles’ (1.23).Footnote ³¹ Paul, however, attributes this ‘exchange’ to human disobedience (1.21–3); there is no suggestion that images mistakenly represent an invisible God. Indeed, when he discusses the ‘exchange’ itself, he incorporates immortal/mortal (ἄϕθαρτος/ϕθαρτός) terminology, not invisible/visible terminology. Outside the New Testament, even Josephus, who is so eager to persuade his elite gentile audience of Judaism's merits, aligns himself with the Greek philosophers in their traditional critique of divine images, but does not deny that God has a form. Instead, he writes that humans simply cannot replicate God's form (Ag. Ap. 2.190–1).Footnote ³² Like Josephus, not all Jewish and Christian authors during the first and second centuries ce cite God's invisibility as a reason for resisting divine images; not all Jews and Christians seem to have assumed the philosophically grounded notion of God's ontological invisibility and instead evince an understanding of God's visible, though hidden, form.

2. Divine Images and Idol Polemic in Acts (Acts 7.1–53; 17.22–31; 19.24–7)

When we turn to the Book of Acts, the volume in which Luke concentrates his anti-idolatry rhetoric, we find that Luke likewise does not depend upon the idea that God is by nature invisible in his critique of divine images.Footnote ³³ Like Jewish idol polemic more broadly, Luke's depiction of divine images mainly functions as a means to differentiate God from foreign deities and God's people – Jews and now also Christians – from other nations. Like idol parodies, Luke's depiction of divine images also functions to differentiate the creator God from creation itself.Footnote ³⁴ Luke's depiction of divine images, of course, also serves a variety of other rhetorical functions in their respective locations, especially since all three accounts occur in speeches; namely, Stephen's speech to the Jewish council (Acts 7.1–53), Paul's speech to the philosophically minded Athenians (Acts 17.22–31) and Demetrius’ speech to his fellow artisans who make shrines for the goddess Artemis (Acts 19.24–7). But, overall, Luke's three principal stories involving idols – a polemical term that Luke himself adopts (Acts 7.41; 17.16; cf. 15.20, 29; 21.25) – mainly function to set apart Christians, like Jews, from their surrounding culture and to make claims about the nature of Israel's God. Luke does not indicate that divine images are prohibited because of God's invisibility or incorporeality. With these three stories, Luke instead reflects his larger reliance on traditions that image God in more embodied terms.

Luke's account of the golden calf in Acts 7 is the first point in the narrative where he uses idolatry as a boundary sign, here between Israelites and non-Israelites. Falling near the end of Stephen's speech, the account of the golden calf critiques the Israelites for wanting to make other ‘gods’ (θεοί) and for their manufacture of the calf ‘idol’ (εἴδωλον), an event that signifies their rejection of Moses and ‘return to Egypt’ (7.39–41). As the Israelites turned back to Egypt (7.39), Stephen says, so God turned from them and handed them over to worship ‘the host of heaven’ (7.42; cf. Rom 1.22–8) and ‘images’ (τύποι) that they created: namely, the tent of Moloch and the star of Rephan (7.42–3). The Israelites’ formation of foreign gods is a rejection not only of Moses, but of Israel's God, and is responsible for the Jewish exile, as the quotation from Amos makes clear (7.42–3; cf. Amos 5.25–7 LXX). Stephen's words function as an intra-Jewish critique, recalling Israel's history to remind his listeners of the past faults of ‘our fathers’ in adopting foreign gods (such as Moloch and Rephan) and of the present dangers still involved in such cultural accommodation.

After Acts 7, Luke's admonitions against idols are directed solely towards gentiles, suggesting that within Luke's narrative world divine images are primarily a Greek, or ‘pagan’, problem.Footnote ³⁵ When the Jerusalem council decides to include gentiles, they stipulate that gentiles must abstain from idol meat, or food that is ‘polluted by idols’ (τῶν ἀλισγημάτων τῶν εἰδώλων) (15.20), a decision that is reiterated twice more in Acts (15.29; 21.25). When Paul arrives in Athens, the centre of the Greek world, he is vexed to find that the city is ‘full of idols’ (κατείδωλον) (17.16), telling the Athenians that God cannot be represented in material form (17.29). Finally, during Paul's stay in Ephesus, the silversmith Demetrius incites a riot by accusing Paul of saying that ‘gods made with hands are not gods’ (19.26). Demetrius warns that the artisans’ trade may fall into disrepute and that the goddess Artemis will be scorned and deprived of her majesty (19.27). Demetrius’ words whip the entire city of Ephesus into an uproar, a mob-scene that reflects the greatest clash in the entirety of Acts between what Luke calls ‘the Way’ and the larger religious ethos of the Greco-Roman world. In Acts overall, then, idol polemic primarily points to the boundaries between the God of Israel and other gods; between God's people and other peoples.

To be clear, Luke, in his effort to signal the difference between ‘the Way’ and other ‘ways’, does incorporate philosophical discourse against divine images from the wider Greco-Roman world. This is nowhere more evident than in Paul's Areopagus speech.Footnote ³⁶ Paul, for example, is careful not to use the term ‘idol’ in his speech. The narrator uses this word when he says that Paul was distressed to see that the city was ‘full of idols’ (κατείδωλον, 7.16), but Paul himself calls these images ‘your objects of worship (σεβάσματα)’ (17.23). Paul is also careful not to equate divine images with the divine itself, merely saying that God is not ‘like’ (ὅμοιον) an image (17.29).Footnote ³⁷ (And though Demetrius will later accuse Paul of saying that ‘gods made with hands are not gods’ (19.26), note that we never actually witness Paul saying this.) Yet while Paul's Areopagus speech demonstrates an awareness of the philosophical critique against images, it nowhere draws upon the rationale concerning God's invisibility as found in some philosophical circles.Footnote ³⁸ Paul does provide a rationale, but he does so by citing a well-known Greek proverb that depicts the divine in anthropomorphic terms: namely as a parent.Footnote ³⁹ In 17.28, Paul writes, ‘For we too are his offspring (γένος)’, a quotation that derives from the poet Aratus’ Phaenomena (v. 5) but had gained proverbial status by Luke's time,Footnote ⁴⁰ and he goes on to write that ‘therefore (οὖν), being the offspring (γένος) of God, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold …’ (17.29). With his ‘therefore’ (οὖν), Paul links the Aratus quotation to his rejection of images and argues that we ought not to liken God to gold, silver or stone because we are God's γένος, a word that means ‘offspring’, or ‘family’, or ‘descendants’.Footnote ⁴¹ Luke interestingly refrains from saying that humans are the image of God,Footnote ⁴² but he fastens on to a familial term that points to the relationship between God and humanity. God's paternity – not God's invisibility – serves as the reason to reject images; Luke nowhere indicates that humans should avoid images due to God's lack of a visible form.

Although Luke never cites God's invisibility as a rationale for avoiding divine images, one might argue that Luke still takes issue with the idea of seeing God in his three ‘idol accounts’, as well as with the visual piety that divine images can elicit. With respect to seeing God, Stephen in Acts 7 prefaces his account of the golden calf with the story of the burning bush, wherein Luke evinces a certain reluctance to identify God with this vision of flame. (Unlike his Exodus intertext, for instance, Luke differentiates to a greater degree between God, who speaks, and the angel, who does the appearing (7.30–5; cf. Exod 3.1–4.17).) In Acts 17, Paul also describes humans as ‘groping’ (ψηλαϕήσειαν) for God (17.27), a verb that can connote the actions of a blind person or of one trying to find something in the dark,Footnote ⁴³ suggesting perhaps that God cannot be seen.

With respect to seeing images, Stephen identifies the golden calf as an εἴδωλον (7.41), a sight-related term that does not appear in the Exodus account of the LXX,Footnote ⁴⁴ and he says that the Israelites worshipped ‘the host of heaven’ (7.42), a phrase that can denote stars and other heavenly bodies (7.42).Footnote ⁴⁵ Stephen also identifies the tent of Moloch and the ‘star’ (ἀστήρ) of Rephan as τύποι (7.43), a word that frequently means ‘types’, but can also mean images, statues or forms.Footnote ⁴⁶ In Acts 19, the town clerk ostensibly makes an oblique reference to Artemis’ statue that fell from heaven (19.35), a legend associated with the goddess Artemis, as well as Athena.Footnote ⁴⁷ In Acts 17, the visuality of divine images plays an even more prominent role. Paul underscores this visuality, for he ‘sees’ (θεωροῦντος) that Athens is full of idols (17.16) and he begins his speech by saying, ‘Athenians, I see (θεωρῶ) how extremely religious you are … for … I went through the city and looked carefully (ἀναθεωρῶν) at the objects of your worship’ (17.22–3). Later in the speech, he also negates the notion that the deity itself is like an ‘image’ (χάραγμα) (17.29). As the etymology of the term ‘idol’ itself suggests (i.e., they are ‘insubstantial’ visual representations of the divine), each of Luke's idol accounts touches on the visibility of images.

Yet while such details may lead us to assume that Luke rejects visual piety altogether, a closer look complicates the assumption that Luke depicts God as invisible or that he entirely rejects images as a means of communicating with the divine. Indeed, Stephen may distance God from the burning bush in some ways, but he also frames his speech with theophanies: God appears to Abraham at the start of his speech (7.2), and Stephen himself has a vision of God at the conclusion of his speech (7.55–6). Likewise, Paul's description of the nations ‘groping’ for God does not necessarily convey that God remains beyond human sight. Within the context of Luke's two-volume work at least, the verb ψηλαϕάω (‘to grope’) primarily connotes tangibility, not invisibility, for its one other usage in Luke's narrative occurs when the resurrected Jesus says ‘touch (ψηλαϕήσατε) me and see’ to verify his embodied state (Luke 24.39; cf. 1 John 1.1).Footnote ⁴⁸ Paul's comment about ‘touching’ God in Acts 17, therefore, more likely connotes God's tactility, not humanity's blindness and inability to see God.

Furthermore, while Luke certainly evokes the visuality of images at points, he does not indicate that the images are negative because they can be seen. In Acts 7 and 19, for example, the visible quality of the images is not even his central focus. Stephen calls the golden calf an ‘idol’, but Luke's usage of εἴδωλον terminology as a whole is consonant with the language of the LXX and appears to be more of a polemical point.Footnote ⁴⁹ Stephen also mentions ‘the host of heaven’ and Rephan's ‘star’ (7.42–3), but he does not highlight their visibility. Instead, the phrase ‘host of heaven’, literally ‘the army of heaven’ (τῇ στρατιᾷ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ), most immediately recalls the heavenly host of angels – not stars – that sing God's praises in Luke 2.13, and Rephan's ‘star’ simply appears alongside Moloch's ‘tent’ in the Amos citation.Footnote ⁵⁰ Moreover, the town clerk's reference to Artemis’ so-called statue is unclear, for the substantive τὸ διοπετές – literally ‘that which fell from Zeus’ (τοῦ διοπετοῦς, 19.35) – may refer to an image of the goddess or, as commentators often note, to an aniconic meteorite.Footnote ⁵¹

In Acts 17, Luke's failure to critique the visuality of divine images becomes especially apparent, for the images he sees in Athens are the medium through which Paul attempts to convert his listeners. In his Areopagus speech, Paul incorporates the visual religious culture of the Athenians to his advantage, for their divine images become a segue for him to discuss the God of Israel; their altar to ‘an unknown god’ becomes a means for him to identify this god as the one true God (17.22–4).Footnote ⁵² For Paul, the problem is not the visuality of the images, but the identity of the deity to whom the images point. By stating that ‘what’ (ὅ) the Athenians ‘unknowingly’ worship is ‘the Lord of heaven and earth’ (17.23–4), Paul signals that the images are indicative of a larger issue: namely, the Athenians’ polytheistic frame (i.e., there is only the one God, not many).Footnote ⁵³ Paul, of course, also claims that the deity does not resemble an ‘image (χαράγματι) of human craft and thought’ (17.29), thus indicating that images do not accurately represent God. But such a statement is standard philosophical fare and is also consonant with Jewish idol polemic; it does not deny that God has a form, but affirms that humans cannot replicate that form. Moreover, in making this statement, Paul primarily highlights the material substances of images, not their visibility, for he says that the deity is not like ‘gold or silver or stone’ (17.29).

Indeed, rather than critiquing the visuality of divine images, Luke more consistently critiques the tactility of idol-making. He does take issue with (at least some) divine images, but uses the sense of touch, not sight, to level his critique. In doing so, Luke does not therefore suggest that visual images incorrectly represent an invisible God, but that the act of creating images effaces the division between God and humanity, or creator and creation. In other words, Luke focuses less on the visibility of images and more on their human construction, the latter of which expresses his central concern with such images.

Luke lifts up the tactility of idols by incorporating ‘hand’ (χείρ) and ‘to make’ (ποιέω) language throughout all three of his idol passages. In Acts 7, Stephen repeatedly references the human manufacture of foreign gods: the Israelites commanded Aaron to ‘make’ (ποίησον) gods for them (7.40); they ‘made a calf’ (ἐμοσχοποίησαν, 7.41); ‘revelled in the works of their hands (χειρῶν αὐτῶν)’ (7.41); and worshipped images that they ‘made’ (ἐποιήσατε, 7.43). With the mention of revelling ‘in the works of their hands’, Stephen also links this idolatrous act to the building of the Jerusalem temple: he explains that though Solomon built a ‘house’ (οἶκος) for God, ‘the most high does not dwell (κατοικεῖ) in things made by human hands (χειροποιήτοις)’ (7.48), echoing a sentiment expressed in 1 Chron 17.4.Footnote ⁵⁴ God is not contained by the temple or other things crafted by human hands; instead, God's ‘hand’ (χείρ) makes all, as Stephen makes clear in his citation from Isaiah 66 (Acts 7.50; cf. Isa 66.1–2).

In Acts 17, Paul makes a similar claim about humanity's manual attempts to manipulate the creator God. Here Paul declares that ‘the God who made (ὁ ποιήσας) the cosmos and all the things in it; he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by hand (χειροποιήτοις) nor by the hands (χειρῶν) of humans is God served’ (17.24–5). Luke affirms once again that God does not live in things crafted by humans, whether they are the Jerusalem temple or pagan shrines. Instead, God is the one who ‘made’ all the nations from the first human; God is the one who gives to all mortals ‘life and breath’ (17.25–6) and who is not like an image of human ‘craft’ (τέχνης) (17.29). Finally, in Acts 19, Demetrius, who is identified as someone ‘who made (ποιῶν) silver temples of Artemis’ and brought ‘no little business to the artisans (τεχνίταις)’ (19.24), accuses Paul of saying that ‘gods made by hands (χειρῶν) are not gods’ (19.26). Demetrius then goes on to say that Paul's proclamation threatens the reputation of the artisans’ trade and undermines the majesty of Artemis herself (19.27; cf. 19.37–8). As a maker of Artemis’ shrines, Demetrius sets up a conflict between the goddess Artemis and the God of Israel, the latter of whom Paul, of course, proclaims as the ultimate ‘Maker’. Here we find the sharpest conflict between human and divine ‘hands’, as well as the implication that while pagan gods may live in ‘shrines’ or ‘temples’ (ναοί, 19.24; cf. 17.24; 19.27), the God of Israel does not.

By emphasising the sense of touch in all three passages, Luke indicates that God's ‘hand’ is more powerful than human ‘hands’. In other words, Luke is not so much critical of the visual piety that divine images can produce, but of how such images can distort an understanding of where power truly lies. God is the ultimate creator in Luke's view, and humans are a part of God's creation. Human attempts to ‘create’ gods are simultaneously attempts to usurp power that belongs to God alone. Even attempts to create localised spaces for the God of Israel fundamentally misunderstand God's nature. Humans do not create dwelling places for God or determine where God lives, for God is the one who made all the nations ‘to dwell’ (κατοικεῖν) upon the earth and who ordered the boundaries of their ‘dwelling places’ (κατοικίας) (17.26). God remains outside human control and cannot be confined to spaces of human making.

With this rhetoric, Luke, on one level, reinforces the distinction between God and humans. God is the creator and humans the creature, and this distinction marks God as ‘other’ from humans.Footnote ⁵⁵ Yet on another level, Luke's emphasis that God cannot be limited to singular spaces uses the language of embodiment – including human embodiment – to depict why God cannot be limited in this way. First, in Acts 17, Paul's claim that God can be sought after and possibly touched heightens the sense of God's material tangibility, a tangibility that is close to every human being and not found in temples (17.26–7). As noted above, ψηλαϕάω (‘to touch’) occurs one other time in Luke-Acts in a manner that substantiates the physicality of Jesus’ resurrected state. In order to verify this physicality, Jesus tells his disciples to ‘touch (ψηλαϕήσατε) me and see’ (Luke 24.39) and thus proves that he is not a ‘spirit’ (πνεῦμα). Paul similarly uses this sensuous verb in Acts 17 (here in the optative) as a means to substantiate God's presence, and in doing so, conveys not only the nearness, but the palpability of God: ‘[God] made every nation of people to dwell upon the face of the whole earth … and to seek God. If only, then, they might grasp (ψηλαϕήσειαν) him and find [him], the one who is in fact not far from each one of us’ (Acts 17.26–7).Footnote ⁵⁶ For Paul, touching God is within the realm of possibility;Footnote ⁵⁷ God is not an intangible being who remains beyond the sensible realm, but is ‘not far from each one of us’ (17.27).

Secondly, and most striking of all, there is Stephen's depiction of God in anthropomorphic terms in Acts 7. Here Stephen quotes from the prophet Isaiah to substantiate his point that God, or ‘the most high’, does not dwell in houses made with human hands, saying, ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is a footstool for my feet. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?’ (Acts 7.49–50; cf. Isa 66.1–2). Not only is God's ‘hand’ a standard anthropomorphic metaphor that denotes God's power (e.g. Acts 4.28, 30; 7.25),Footnote ⁵⁸ but God's ‘place’ (τόπος) is clearly in heaven, with the earth serving as a footstool for the divine feet (an explicit identification of a divine body part that most English translations obscure). In his work on divine embodiment in Hebrew scripture, Mark Smith identifies Isa 66.1 as an example of God's ‘cosmic body’, the third of God's three bodies that he identifies in Hebrew scripture and the one that is evident in the later prophets and carried forward into post-biblical Judaism and early Christianity.Footnote ⁵⁹ According to Smith, God's cosmic body is located in heaven (or ‘above’ heaven) and partakes of a bodily form, although the nature of its physicality remains unclear. Regardless, this divine body is a heavenly or super-heavenly reality, and it is striking that, in Luke's context, a scriptural reference to God's body appears in a larger discourse on idolatry. Indeed, it is God's body – not God's invisibility – that becomes a rationale for why humans should not place too much worth in the work of their hands.

In sum, Luke may critique visual representations of the divine, but he nowhere claims that God is invisible or beyond human perception. Luke's critique is consonant with other Jewish accounts of idol polemic and functions to differentiate God's people from non-believing gentiles and God (the creator) from other gods and from humans (the creation) more broadly. At the same time, Luke also represents God in ways reminiscent of humans. Luke uses language that points to God's tangibility, and he uses divine anthropomorphisms from Jewish scripture to explain why God cannot live in human-made houses. Indeed, God's paternity and God's body provide the rationales as to why images and temples should be rejected. Notions of an invisible God – both ancient and modern – do not map onto Luke's representation of God, for Luke is more indebted to traditions that depict God in embodied terms.