I have no idea what you’re talking about. In Acts 17, Paul isn’t referring to believers; he’s talking about all human beings. We know that “the divine nature” isn’t like silver or gold, the art of man, because Paul argues that you can look at humanity, his “offspring.” In context, Paul is arguing for a relationship between God’s nature and ours (springing from his), in which each possesses divinity in some respect. By looking at his children (all humanity), we can know what God is like.

John Johnson repeats this flawed interpretation of Acts 17, suggesting humans are “Divine” in some respect, but John doesn’t explain what that respect is.

22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ 29 Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. 30 Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.” 33 So Paul went out of their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

The unknown God isn’t the God of the Bible for several reasons. The shrine is meant to appease any deities they don’t know about. In the ancient world, deities controlled territories and elements. People wanted to appease them because it was thought they would be hostile if not. The inscription is just to generally unknown deities.

Paul’s argument is that they worship these gods in ignorance. Paul asserts monotheism as the answer in contradistinction to the polytheism and pantheism that floated among the Athenians.

Paul’s monotheism is grounded in the fact that God has created everything, and therefore everything shares a common creator. God is “Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.” God is the God of all creation, including their false gods. Unlike pantheism, the world is created in Paul’s mind. This ties into the Apostle’s next point: God isn’t dependent upon us for anything. If God creates everything and gives us everything, then what does he really need from us? In ancient times, deities used to eat sacrifices provided to them.

The phrase “does not dwell in temples made with hands” is a pejorative against their thoughts, similar to Isaiah’s statements about idols.

Paul states that all humans have a common origin, different from the Greek perspective that men descended from different gods. Contrary to the Athenians’ boast that they had originated from the soil of their Attic homeland and therefore were not like other men, Paul affirms the oneness of all people in their creation by one God and their descent from a common ancestor. And contrary to the primitive “deism” that permeated the philosophies of the day, he proclaimed that this God has determined specific times (prostetagmenous kairous) for humanity and “the exact places where they should live” (tas horothesias tēs katoikias, lit., “the boundaries of their habitation”), so that men and women “would seek him and find him” (v. 27).

Since all human life is dependent upon God, he also determines the time of our lives and where we are in our lives. This is reminiscent of when God sets boundaries in the OT (Dt. 32:9). But God does this so they can seek Him because He isn’t far from them.

The quote is from a Greek poet, and Paul uses it to further his argument. Some think it is being used to say that we are immanent in God’s “body,” a strange pantheism or panentheism. But commentators don’t think that that is the purpose:

The poet will have understood these words in a pantheistic sense, but Paul appears to have viewed them in the light of the image of God theology in Genesis 1:26–27 (see further below). He recognized that a search for God had been taking place in the Greco-Roman world, but condemned the result—the idolatry which was everywhere present and the ignorance of the true God which it betrayed (vv. 22–25). In short, he indicated that the search had been ineffective because of human blindness and stubbornness (cf. Rom. 1:18–32). Paul goes on to encourage a new seeking after God on the basis of his gospel about Jesus and the resurrection (vv. 30–31). —Peterson, D. G. (2009). The Acts of the Apostles (pp. 499–500). Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

In any case, this is not a pantheistic formula, or one that expresses the immanence of human beings in God; it merely formulates the dependence of all human life on God and its proximity to Him. —J. Fitzmyer, Acts of the Apostles, 610.

The Stoics connected life with movement (the Prime Mover being God) and movement with being. The en is an obvious example of the meaning “in the power of”; cf. Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus 1443, tauta d’en to daimoni, and other examples given by Liddell and Scott. Begs. translates, “By him we live and move and are.”

God is not remote but accessible, so near as to constitute the environment in which we live, but in a personal sense. In the Greek philosophical background, the words will have had a pantheistic meaning, God being hardly anything other than our environment. The change is likely to have been made already in Jewish-Hellenistic use. —G. K. Barrett, Commentary on Acts, 2:847-48.

Paul is not suggesting by the use of such maxims that God is to be thought of in terms of the god Zeus of Greek polytheism or Stoic pantheism. Rather, he is arguing that the poets whom his hearers recognized as authorities have at least to some extent corroborated his message. In his search for a measure of common ground with his hearers, he is, so to speak, disinfecting and rebaptizing the words of two Greek poets for his own purposes. Quoting these Greek poets in support of his teaching sharpened his message for his particular audience. But despite its form, Paul’s address was thoroughly biblical and Christian in its content. —Longenecker, Richard N. Acts (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary) (Kindle Locations 10401-10408). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

The text from Aratus, as Paul uses it, recognizes the shared relationship all people have to God. It also makes a more subtle point when the remark about being God’s children is repeated in verse 29: we are God’s creation; we do not create Him by making images of the gods (Witherington 1998: 530). Thus, the remark does express Paul’s view in this limited sense (pace J. Schneider, TDNT 3:718–19, who argues that this is not Paul’s view but a mere missionary accommodation). Paul contextualizes the citation and presents it in a fresh light, setting up his critique. He takes a Greek idea of the “spark of the divine being” in us as tied to Zeus and speaks of being made as God’s children by the Creator, alluding to our being made in God’s image. —Bock, Darrell L. Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) (Kindle Locations 12477-12482). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Paul continues with the thought that “the Lord of heaven and earth does not dwell in temples made with hands.” He explains that we shouldn’t think of the Divine Nature as “gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man” because they are products of man’s activity. Idols and temples are works of man. We know that God isn’t like them because we know those things come from us, but God doesn’t originate from human activity. If we are made in God’s likeness, then how can idols and temples be like God if they aren’t even like us? This ends on the note that all this is vindicated by the fact that God has raised Christ from the dead and Christ will return to judge the world.

As D.A. Carson lays out:

Paul introduces a certain view of time. Many Greeks thought that time went round in circles. Paul establishes a linear framework: creation at a fixed point; a long period in which God acted in a certain way; a now that is pregnant with massive changes; and a future (v. 31) that is the final termination of this world order, a time of final judgment. The massive changes of Paul’s dramatic now are bound up with the coming of Jesus and the dawning of the gospel. Paul has set the stage to introduce Jesus.

https://youtu.be/tmiFKU2ehjc?si=auVeYq_i1rNLYcy9

He establishes that God is the creator of the world and everything in it (17:24). The creation establishes that God is other than the created order; pantheism is ruled out. It also establishes human accountability; we owe our Creator everything, and to defy Him and set ourselves up as the center of the universe is the heart of all sin. Worshipping created things instead of the Creator is the essence of idolatry.

Paul insists that God is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands (v. 24). The sovereignty of God over the whole universe stands against views that assign this god or that goddess a particular domain. The God of the Bible is sovereign over everything. This teaching grounds the doctrine of providence. Because of the universality of His reign, God cannot be domesticated, not even by temples. Paul denies that God is limited to temples and that He can be domesticated or tapped into by any temple’s cultus.

God is the God of aseity: He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything (17:25). God is so utterly “from Himself” that He does not need us; He is not only self-existent but utterly independent of His created order. The God of the Bible would not come to us whimsically; the cattle on a thousand hills are already His.

We are utterly dependent on Him—He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else (v. 25b). This strips us of our vaunted independence; it is the human correlative of the doctrines of creation and providence.

Paul insists that all nations descended from one man (v. 26). This contradicts notions of human descent that conjectured different ethnic groups came into being in different ways. Paul’s stance has wider implications: there is no trace of racism here. However much he holds that God has enjoyed a peculiar covenant relationship with Israel, Paul’s monotheism means that God is sovereign over all nations.

Paul establishes God’s transcendence without drifting toward deism. The God he has in mind is not far from each one of us (v. 27). He is immanent. Paul recognizes that some of this truth is acknowledged in some pagan religions. When Greek thought spoke of one “God,” the assumption was often pantheistic, which Paul has ruled out. We live and move and have our being in this God, and we are His offspring—not in a pantheistic sense, but as an expression of God’s personal and immediate concern for our well-being.

The entailment of this theology and anthropology is to clarify what sin is and make idolatry utterly reprehensible (v. 29). Paul cannot rightly introduce Jesus and his role as Savior until he establishes the problem. He elucidates the bad news from which the good news rescues us.

Further Suggestions:

TheCouncil:

Panentheism and Christian Theology

Spooftexting Panentheism