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St Philip And The Eunuch: Lessons For The Modern Church

August 12, 2025 by Matthew Allen

St. Philip with Eunuch

Royal Collection Trust

I heard a strange sermon recently that I couldn’t help but opine on. It was about Acts 8, in which St Philip the Deacon evangelizes and then baptizes an Ethiopian eunuch, a man who was on his way home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (vv. 26-40). I won’t say where I heard the sermon, but it wasn’t from the pulpit of my home parish!

Allegedly, the eunuch didn’t have “a living faith” because he visited the Jerusalem Temple “out of ritual, out of routine”. That’s how the preacher saw his actions, anyway, despite a lack of evidence to stand this accusation up.

It’s a bit slimy, to me, how blithely the man’s faith was called into question. It’s easy to cast a shadow of doubt on a man’s faith when he’s been dead for nearly 2000 years. It’s difficult for a man in that position to defend himself.

St Luke, the writer of Acts, clearly narrates how the eunuch was in Jerusalem ‘to worship’ (v. 27) and ‘was reading the prophet Isaiah’ (v. 28); what are these if not indicators of “a living faith”?

I can imagine several, equally valid themes to be gleaned from this passage; and the man from Ethiopia not having “a living faith” isn’t one of them. It’s like throwing an exercise ball down a bowling lane at full tilt but somehow missing all ten pins. For example, you could preach on how the Gospel is all-inclusive; it’s the Good News of Christ for people of every nation.

Reading Scripture with Apostolic Eyes

I’d like to take a different approach, focusing – in the first instance, at least – on what St Luke, in Acts 8, can tell us about how to read the Bible. After all, the passage seems to turn on the eunuch’s question, ‘How can I’ – that is, ‘how can I comprehend the Bible?’ – ‘unless someone explains it to me?’ (v. 31).

Richard Hooker, an important Anglican theologian, put his finger on the three things which inform our doctrine: (1) reason, (2) scripture, and (3) Church tradition. ‘The Anglican balance of authority’, write Armentrout and Slocum, ‘has been characterized as a “three-legged stool” which falls if any one of the legs is not upright’ (An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church). This is exactly what Hooker believed.

Traveling along in his chariot, conducting his own solo Bible study, the eunuch had reason and scripture in his arsenal, but he didn’t yet know the Christian tradition (to the limited extent it had been developed in the First Century). Christian tradition, you may know, has also been called ‘the apostolic tradition’, after the Apostles who received the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Eventually (325 AD, to be precise), the First Council of Nicaea summed up this apostolic tradition in the Nicene Creed, which is recited in parishes around the world to this day. Centuries before the Creed was framed, however, the Apostles and their lieutenants (like St Philip the Deacon) travelled the Roman Empire to proclaim the apostolic doctrines. Anyone who would like a straightforward answer to the question, ‘What do Christians believe?’, should read the Nicene Creed.

When the man from Ethiopia voiced a desire for ‘someone’ to explain the Law and the Prophets, the ‘someone’ he needed was a man or a woman well-versed in this apostolic tradition. God sent him St Philip the Deacon (often confused with St Philip the Apostle), a man ‘full of the Spirit and of wisdom’ (Acts 6.3), who was ordained by the Twelve Apostles themselves. He knew their teachings inside out; and this is why he was able to guide the eunuch to faith in Christ.

When, as we all have, we wrestle with scripture and come up empty-handed, we should put a statement of apostolic doctrine in that empty hand (the Nicene Creed), then take up our Bible again in the other. This way, we can read scripture in the way that it has historically been received.

Steeped in this apostolic tradition, which locates the atonement for sin within the crucifixion of Our Lord, St Philip is able to reveal to the eunuch that even the Old Testament – with its allusions to the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, in the Book of Isaiah (the very book the eunuch had been reading) – bears witness to Jesus Christ.

‘What can stand in the way of my being baptized?’, is the eunuch’s response to this revelation (Acts 8.36). Gospel Sacraments, as practiced by the Twelve, are a key part of apostolic tradition. St Luke weaves together the eunuch’s newfound knowledge of Christ as Lord, on the one hand, and his decision to be baptized, on the other, as equal parts of his conversion. Baptism saves us from original sin, allowing us to enter the Kingdom of God.

Word and Sacrament are the twin pillars of the Christian life. Both are present in Acts 8, as we have seen. The truth of the Word reveals the beauty of the Sacraments. The beauty of the Sacraments reveals the truth of the Word. If we neglect one, then we have neglected the other too.

Let me put it in Anglican terms. If you want to be a good low-churchman, then be a good high-churchman when it comes to the Sacraments! If you want to be a good high-churchman, then be a good low-churchman when it comes to the Bible! Together, they reveal the goodness of God.

St Philip is literally spirited away (v. 39), then goes forth to continue his evangelistic work – ‘all around the towns and everything’, to quote a certain X Factor contestant; or, as the Bible actually says, ‘preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea’ (v. 40).

Down to this day, men and women still minister as deacons like St Philip. ‘They are to strengthen the faithful, search out the careless and the indifferent, and minister to the sick, the needy, the poor and those in trouble. When called upon to do so, they may baptize, preach and give instruction in the faith’ (Church of Ireland Ordinal). Deacons exist within the Lutheran, Methodist, Orthodox (Eastern and Oriental), Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian traditions, also.

Bringing it back to the sermon with which this article began, it’s abundantly clear the eunuch went from having a living Jewish faith to having a living Christian faith (not from having no living faith at all to having a living Christian faith), which is a pattern repeated over and over again in the New Testament. Pentecost alone saw three thousand converts from Judaism to Christianity, following St Peter’s famous address to the crowd in Jerusalem (Acts 2).

It's facile to think every non-Christian is a husk of spiritual emptiness, who will only be too glad to hear the Gospel. People might have other philosophical commitments that we must respect. Indeed, non-Christians can have a rich, fulfilling inner world. Evangelism is important, yes, but we must always be gentle with different beliefs. Otherwise, we might alienate people from the Church, which is the opposite of evangelism.

St Philip received a revelation from God about exactly where to find a willing convert. It’s rarely that straightforward in everyday life. I know, having sponsored a friend’s baptism before, the joy that comes from being a small part of someone’s journey to faith, but faith isn’t something we can force. ‘God moves in a mysterious way, / His wonders to perform’.

Evangelism with Reverence

People deserve to be treated, above all, as human beings with free will and agency – not as points on our evangelism scorecard. It isn’t healthy for us to build a connection with someone if our one objective is to give their beliefs a makeover.

St Philip doesn’t offend the eunuch when he leaves right after his baptism because all the latter wanted was a temporary spiritual guide. There are other scenarios, by contrast, in which great offence would be caused if we befriended someone, shared the Good News, and then ceased communication.

Change has to flow both ways in a relationship: ‘What might God have to say to me, through this person, about my shortcomings?’, we should ask ourselves before we share the Gospel.

When, and only when, we have answered this question can we decide if sharing our faith is appropriate. It’s a beautiful thing when a friend or loved one begins to know Christ but even when they don’t share our faith, we can still enjoy the relationship we have and cherish the image of God in them.

That, in and of itself, is infinitely worthwhile.

8/12/2025 7:39:30 PM

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About Matthew Allen

Matthew Allen is a writer and musician based in Northern Ireland. He is a graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast, where he studied Theology and Liberal Arts.

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