Founding a New Church
Acts 17:1-4
When departing from Philippi, Paul had to choose whether to go backward or forward, whether to return to Asia and solidify the gains already made there or to press ahead to Europe. Determined to evangelize new regions, he went forward. He set off along the westward road taken by travelers to Rome. This was the major Roman road known as Via Egnatia, which ran through Philippi as it followed a course connecting Byzantium (later known as Constantinople, today as Istanbul) to the east and Dyrrachium to the west. Dyrrachium was a port on the Adriatic Sea allowing travelers to embark on a short voyage to Brindisi in Italy, then continue on a fairly straight line to Rome.1 In its western portion on the Balkan Peninsula, the Via Egnatia followed a difficult track through the mountains, but it was easy going where Paul, Silas, and Timothy journeyed.2
The road led the missionary team through Amphipolus, a major city,4 as well as Apollonia, but Paul and his companions did not linger in either place. Their destination was Thessalonica, the capital of Macedonia. As the largest and most important city in the region, with a population perhaps as much as 100,000,5 it was a good strategic choice for their next presentation of the gospel.
After walking about one hundred miles,6 the travelers finally reached Thessalonica. For both Paul and Silas, who bore fresh wounds from the beating they endured in Philippi, the journey must have been severely taxing. Every step was further descent into weariness and pain.
Getting Practical
Tough or soft
Many men and boys today pride themselves on being tough. Before they swell up in vanity, however, they should compare themselves with the apostles. They should ask themselves whether they, like the apostles, could plod on day after day in the work of God despite unceasing body-breaking afflictions. Or would such afflictions, as they would most people in our day of soft living, reduce them to moaning in bed?
After arriving in the city, Paul, in line with his usual practice, went into the Jewish synagogue to preach Jesus. His strategy for reaching Jews was to show that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. So, for three Sabbaths he expounded the texts foretelling that Christ would die for our sins and rise again, and he argued that Scripture was referring to recent events. The long-awaited Christ was the man Jesus, who died and rose again exactly as prophecy required. Luke says of Paul’s preaching that he "reasoned with them." His method was properly called reasoning because he showed an agreement between prophecy and historical facts that a mind committed to sound judgment could not dismiss as mere coincidence.
The effect on his hearers was to force a decision to believe or not believe. Among the Jews, some believed, but among the God-fearing gentiles, the number who believed was a multitude, including some of the upper-class women.
Turmoil
Acts 17:5-9
Paul’s success provoked an angry reaction among the Jews who did not believe. The root motive of their opposition was envy, as it had been years before when unbelieving Jews denounced Paul in Antioch of Pisidia.7 Paul’s opponents in Thessalonica must have included leaders of the synagogue, who probably foresaw that local converts to his religion would band together and choose their own leaders, while turning away from the synagogue and its leaders. So, the Jews who refused to believe were afraid of losing power and influence.
Their opposition was carried to an extreme showing that these Jews who prided themselves on keeping the law had no concept of true godliness. God's Word to their forefathers required justice and mercy (Matt. 23:23: see, for example, Deut. 16:18-20; Ps. 18:25; Prov. 11:17), but the unbelieving Jews waged a campaign against Christ’s apostles that can only be described as unscrupulous and vicious. They found allies among "lewd fellows of the baser sort" (literally, "wicked men who spent their days loafing in the marketplace"8—in other words, thugs). Then, by gathering a crowd of citizens and haranguing them with false accusations against the men of God, they managed to whip up the whole city into a state of rage. With the hooligans they had recruited, who no doubt ran as their vanguard, they attacked the house where they expected to find Paul and his missionary team. It was the house of a believer named Jason. The intent of the mob was to take the preachers before the demos ("people" in v. 59). Thessalonica was not a Roman colony like Philippi, but a free city governed in part by an assembly of local citizens with broad authority, including the right to protect the city from vagrant troublemakers.10 But the evangelists viewed as troublemakers were gone.
Rather than leave empty-handed, the mob seized Jason together with some fellow believers and dragged them before the magistrates of the city. The likely reason for now bypassing the demos is that instead of unpopular outsiders in their custody, the mob held solid citizens with many friends in the larger community.
Delving Deeper
The rulers in Thessalonica
The Greek term translated "rulers" is politarchs, a title found nowhere in the writings of ancient historians. Yet it does appear in numerous inscriptions as a title for magistrates in Macedonian cities including Thessalonica. At the time of Paul’s visit to the capital city, it was under a governing board of five politarchs.11 So, we come to more evidence that Luke was familiar with the times and places that furnish a setting for his narrative.
Now the mob had to state charges serious enough to legitimize what they had done. The ringleaders cried out that these preachers of Christ were troublemakers, causing civil unrest wherever they went. Perhaps news of Paul’s evangelistic work in Philippi and other places had preceded him. But notice verse 6. "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." It is doubtful that Paul’s enemies would have represented his impact as worldwide. More likely, they were aware that the gospel had already gone well beyond the reach of Paul’s ministry, and by "these" they meant all Christian evangelists.
Perhaps news of the recent action taken by Claudius Caesar had spread as far as Thessalonica. The Roman historian Suetonius records that Claudius, who reigned from AD 41 to 54, issued a decree expelling the Jews from Rome because they were constantly making disturbances "at the instigation of Chrestus."12 Another historian, Orosius, dates the edict in AD 49 or 50.13 From a vantage many decades after the event, Suetonius garbled the facts slightly when he misspelled "Christus" (Latin for "Christ") as "Chrestus" and when he accused Christ of being the instigator of the riots, but the information he provides makes obvious what really happened. The riots started when Christian preachers came to Rome and tried to evangelize the Jewish community.14 There, as in many cities where Paul introduced the gospel, entrenched Jewish leaders incited their followers to violent protest.
Caesar’s crackdown to stop these disturbances must have quickly become common knowledge in all other major seats of government throughout the Roman world. The people in Thessalonica probably heard about it either before Paul's visit or while he was there. Thus, a fair inference from the facts is that the emperor's decree remembered by Suetonius was in the minds of Paul's enemies when they accused his team of doing "contrary to the decrees of Caesar."15
Delving Deeper
Early date for beginnings of historic Christianity
Many skeptics have, in an attempt to reconstruct the rise of Christianity, viewed it as a movement evolving gradually from something distinctly Jewish to something distinctly gentile, with corresponding changes in doctrine and practice. They do not accept the story found in Acts and church tradition that claims wildfire growth of a basically new religion. That story in their estimation is not real history, but propaganda designed to convince people that Christianity is a supernatural work of God. Yet the new movement became a significant presence in Rome only sixteen years after Jesus’ death in AD 33, and it came to the emperor's attention precisely because it differed radically from conventional Judaism.
The mob holding Jason and the other believers pressed their case further by alleging that the apostles were trying to set up another king besides Caesar; that is, they were traitors to Rome. This common distortion of Christian teaching that Jesus is King succeeded in upsetting the rulers. After all, they could not stand idly by if a dangerous conspiracy to overthrow Roman authority had gained a foothold in their city.
Yet the magistrates, perhaps swayed by what the accused said in their own defense, evidently decided that the charges were exaggerated, for instead of putting Jason and his friends in jail, they did no worse than take security from them.
Delving Still Deeper
The meaning in taking "security"
The word can refer to any guarantee that an accused person will fulfill an obligation imposed on him by a court of law. Experts agree that taking security was a common practice in the Roman world, but are vague concerning its usual terms.16 Since Scripture does not tell us the terms of the security arranged in Thessalonica, commentators have offered different interpretations.
- The most common is that the security was essentially bail money, a leverage employed by every modern system of justice. To assure that someone facing trial will appear at the appointed time, the court may demand payment of money that will be refunded only if he comes as required. Many commentators suggest that what happened at Thessalonica was similar. To meet the demand for security, Jason and his friends gave money to the court and pledged to keep their guests from stirring up more civil disorder.17 For the apostles, the security tendered by their friends purchased escape from punishment. The difficulty in this interpretation is that the money was not comparable to bail unless it was understood as returnable when Jason and his friends had fulfilled their promises to the court. Yet few are willing to affirm that the money was bail in this sense.
- Another interpretation, which I prefer, is that the apostles were "bound over" to Jason and his friends.18 In a modern court, someone considered a threat to others might be bound over to another person, who accepts responsibility to prevent criminal behavior. The person who provides security pays no money up front, although he may be subject to a fine if he does not fulfill his role.
The account in Acts does not furnish enough information to resolve all the uncertainties.
Although the matter is unclear,19 one probable stipulation when the court accepted security was that the apostles would leave town.20 Nothing else would have satisfied the mob and calmed the city.
Official action was mild, to say the least.21 The leniency of the magistrates may have rested on knowledge that the accused men were otherwise of good report, with no record of any dishonest or disloyal conduct.
Pondering a Question
Were the apostles banished permanently?
It does not seem so. In Paul's first epistle to the Thessalonians, he remembers that he has repeatedly tried to revisit them, but so far Satan has made his return impossible (1 Thess. 2:18). For further light on Satan's device, we properly search the context, and we find that it points clearly to continuing Jewish opposition (vv. 14–18).22 Presumably, if this opposition subsided, there would be no barrier to his going back.
Jason disappears from the narrative at this point, but possibly he is the Jason who served as one of Paul's helpers during his last visit to Corinth (Rom. 16:21).23
True Nobility
Acts 17:10-15
To fulfill Jason’s pledge to authorities, the believers in Thessalonica immediately sent the missionaries away. The city was still seething with hostility toward the visiting preachers, so the only safe departure was by stealing quietly through the streets in the middle of the night.
The apostles together with Timothy proceeded to the next city, Berea, which was one step closer to Athens. To reach Berea, Paul probably started by heading west on Via Egnatia, then turned off and traveled a less important road toward the southwest.24 Overall the team walked about fifty miles.25 Although a sizable city,26 Berea (modern Verria) was described by the Roman statesman Cicero as "off the beaten track."27 Perhaps Paul felt that going to a more isolated place would give him enough time to build a new body of believers before pursuing enemies would catch up and cause trouble.
Paul’s first move to evangelize Berea followed his usual pattern. He went to the synagogue and began to preach Jesus. Here, he found the Jews unusually receptive. Whereas at Thessalonica the number of Jews who believed was only "some," the number at Berea was "many." Also persuaded by the gospel were many upper-class Greek women and more than a few Greek men. By not calling them God-fearers, Luke probably means that before hearing the gospel, they were pagans.28
In accounting for Paul’s success in reaching the Jews in Berea, Luke describes them as "more noble than those in Thessalonica." They were more noble not because they held a higher position in society, but because they were more willing to dig for truth. They sat down daily with their copies of Scripture and examined it to see whether Jesus truly fulfilled the Messianic prophecies. They understood that the only reliable test of truth is whether it agrees with the Word of God. Because they exalted God, they did not fail to find that Jesus is God’s Son.
Getting Practical
God's measure of greatness
For us also, our ranking in the eyes of men is not the same as our ranking in the eyes of God. Men accord us high status if we have money, or power, or education, or talent, or good looks. But nobility in God's sight depends solely on one criterion: whether we exalt Him. In the grand scheme of things, we are great only to the extent that we honor the greatness of God. The practical way to honor His greatness is by giving Him our love, and one proof of our love is reliance upon His Word for both truth and guidance.
No doubt the Jews at Berea were nothing extraordinary in the view of their neighbors and fellow citizens. But because they honored God’s greatness by turning to His Word for wisdom in evaluating the claims of Christ, they have been forever memorialized in Scripture as "noble."
Another case of vast discrepancy between standing with God and standing with men is the poor widow who threw her last farthing into the treasury at the Temple (Mark 12:41–44). Jesus said that she was the most generous of all who gave, but it is doubtful that anyone else at the Temple singled her out for praise. Probably few people there even noticed her. In the eyes of other worshipers she was of no account, an object of pity or even of scorn. They all would have agreed that she was least in social importance. None would have dreamed that in God's sight she was the greatest among them. In eternity, she will have the biggest mansion on the block, so to speak.
Getting Practical
Seeking truth
The Bereans found that coming to faith in the claims of Jesus is not difficult. God never makes it hard for us to find the truth. On the contrary, He is eager to show the truth to whoever seeks it. Jesus articulated this principle in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7:7-11). The same principle is a theme of Scripture (Deut. 4:29; 2 Chron. 7:14; Prov. 8:17; Jer. 29:13).
If men fail to find the truth, the reason is not that God is hiding it from them, but that they do not really want it. The natural tendency of the human heart is to embrace lies (Rom. 3:10–12). These allow men to continue in the darkness of sin rather than expose themselves to the condemning light of God's holiness (John 3:20-21). But if a man touched by that light abhors his sin and wishes to forsake it, he will find that the same light also brings hope, for it illumines a new path to follow. Indeed, by following that path, he will come to a Savior from sin, Jesus Christ.
The power that turns a man from pride to repentance is the grace of God (Acts 15:11; Eph. 2:8).
The devil was not willing to allow Paul's victory in Berea to go uncontested. He brought news of what Paul was doing back to his enemies in Thessalonica. Some of these rushed to Berea to stop him. They went among the people and trumpeted the same false charges that they had used before to turn public sentiment against the new religion. No doubt they alleged that Christians intended to challenge the Roman government. As before, these charges made people suspicious and prejudiced them against the apostles. Also as before, these charges created the danger that Paul would be arrested and severely punished and perhaps killed. So, the new believers in Berea insisted that he leave town.
Yet they all realized that wherever Paul went, his enemies would follow him and disrupt his work again. They therefore decided to send away Paul "to go as it were to the sea" (v. 14)—literally, "to go as to the sea," the "as" implying "as it were."29 In other words, to keep his enemies from guessing his destination, they created a false impression that he was headed out to sea, whereas he had no plans to depart soon from mainland Greece.30
Delving Still Deeper
Resolving different readings
The phrase we have quoted from verse 14 is taken from the Received Text (TR). According to the Critical Text (CT), the brothers sent away Paul "to go as far as to the sea."31 With "εως" in CT replacing "ως" in TR, it is a slight difference in wording, but a sharp difference in meaning.32 CT changes a pretense to an actual destination.
The reading in TR could be an error in transmission, but so also could the reading in CT. Perhaps the eye of a copyist skipped over "ως" and his hand started the next word, "επι," before he realized that he had omitted the word before. An even stronger possibility is that what we find in CT originated as an editorial change. Someone did not want any reader to think that Paul used deception.
So the reading in which text is in fact corrupt? Several clues point to CT.
- Both readings have strong textual support. This was the likely outcome only if "ως" is the original. Otherwise, it would have faded into obscurity. In a choice between the two readings, a copyist or his supervisor would normally have taken "εως." Again, the desire to protect Paul from any suspicion of dishonesty would have been the decisive consideration.
- The phrase "to go as far as to the sea" is nonsense. Surely the brothers did not want or expect Paul to go only that far and no further. Some translations avoid fuzzy thought by substituting "to go to the coast." Yet they restore sense only by changing the meaning, making it refer to direction rather than distance.
- Elsewhere we have argued that TR is a far more dependable source of readings.33
Although Paul's exact movements are uncertain, a reasonable guess is that he left Berea on an eastward road leading to a port city on the Aegean Sea, either Methone or Dium. It appeared to observers in town that he intended to catch a boat, probably one going to Asia Minor. But when he reached the coastal road, he turned onto it and headed south toward Athens.34 Perhaps most travelers from Berea to Athens took a road joining the coastal road farther south. In Paul’s company were some Berean brothers, who came along to assure his safety. He left Silas and Timothy behind in Berea so that they might further strengthen the new church. They could safely remain because the enemies of the new religion regarded Paul as their chief target.
Pondering a Question
Why did Paul resort to deception?
Paul did not lie to his enemies. He knew that they would mistake his purpose, but that they did so was not his fault. He was under no obligation to take the shortest route to Athens. Their failure to discover his true intent was the result of their failure to seek it by taking the proper steps. They should have become his friends. Then they could have approached him and discovered his true intent readily enough.
Luke’s inclusion of a story that, after a superficial reading, might lead the reader to question Paul’s honesty guarantees that the writer is simply recording what really happened. If the Book of Acts were a work of fiction designed to portray Paul as a saint, no such story would appear.
One purpose of the Book of Acts is to teach believers how to deal with persecution. Here they learn that to protect themselves, they may give watching enemies a false impression of what they plan to do next.
The distance to Athens was about two hundred miles, normally requiring ten to twenty days of walking.35 After the travelers reached their destination, the men from Berea returned home, perhaps choosing the quicker route by sea. Paul sent a message to Silas and Timothy imploring them to come as quickly as possible.
Light in a Stronghold of Darkness
Acts 17:16-21
Paul had now reached the capital of Greek civilization. Politically, the city was no longer of great importance, and its population had probably shrunk to less than 50,000,36 but it was still a famous center of learning.37 Its schools of oratory ranked with the best.38 No place offered better lectures and debates on questions of philosophy. So, it was still a magnet for young men who felt themselves gifted with great minds, and an atmosphere of intellectual elitism permeated the city. Doubtless Paul felt that as God’s appointed apostle to the gentiles, he had a special duty to evangelize the city that had long exercised a shaping influence on gentile thought.
Paul knew perfectly well that he did not fit in. Despite his good education, he was far from being the kind of person who impressed the Athenians. His talk marked him not as an intellectual snob who dabbled in philosophy, but as an intensely earnest rabbi. Yet Paul was not intimidated into keeping silent. Rather, he was ready to speak, for he was grieved in his heart at the spiritual darkness he found in Athens.
The city was steeped in idolatry. The phrase "wholly given to idolatry" means "full of idols,"39 or, even more exactly, "a forest of idols,"40 and truly everywhere he looked he saw images of gods and goddesses. Many ancient observers found their prominence remarkable. Petronius, a Roman writer putting words into the mouth of an Athenian, said "that the gods walk about so commonly in our streets that it is easier to meet a god than a man."41 Another visitor was Pausanias, whose detailed description of the city is summarized by W. J. Conybeare and J. S. Howson. "Every god in Olympus found a place in the Agora. . . . And, as if the imagination of the Attic mind knew no bounds in this direction, abstractions were deified and publicly honoured. Altars were erected to Fame, to Modesty, to Energy, to Persuasion, and to Pity."42 Thomas Whitelaw adds, "Some of the streets were so crowded with those who sold idols that it was almost impossible to make one's way through them."43
Whitelaw continues with a deeply probing analysis of Paul's reaction.
"His spirit was stirred within him," provoked or filled with indignation; (1) at the profanation of the holy name of God implied, in the very existence of an idol; (2) at the prostitution of manhood exhibited in the worship of a graven image; (3) at the unspeakable source of moral corruption opened in the degrading rites by which such divinities were honoured; and (4) at the terrible display of Satanic power given in the subjection of a whole city to such a caricature of religion as idolatry really was. Nor would the apostle's indignation be lessened, but immensely heightened, by the fact that in Jerusalem he had never witnessed an idol.44
No doubt Paul's disappointment was especially keen because he hoped to find a true searching for God in the city that had once been home to some of the world’s greatest philosophers. He knew that such thinkers as Socrates and Plato had, in their quest for truth, attained much higher conceptions of God and righteousness than were now evident as he surveyed the city. Nowhere did he see light. Instead, darkness stood on every horizon.
Undaunted, Paul began a one-man assault on this stronghold of unbelief. As he usually did, he went first to the synagogue and sought to win both Jews and God-fearing gentiles. Yet Luke records that he only disputed with them. He does not say that Paul succeeded in winning converts or in founding a new church. It appears from Luke's wording that the local darkness had blinded even those who might be expected to hear the gospel with an open mind. Besides his efforts to evangelize the synagogue, Paul also preached Christ daily in the marketplace, known as the Agora, to a group that gathered about him. The Agora lay just northwest of the Acropolis,45 the elevated site of the original fortified city46 and in Paul's day a showcase of magnificent temples, monuments, and statues.47 The Agora was a good choice for public witness because it was where people congregated to conduct the business of daily life.
One day, a group encountered him who were teachers and students of philosophy. Whether they met him by chance as they went through the marketplace, or heard a rumor that a teacher of some new doctrine had entered the city, we do not know. The group included followers of the two schools of philosophy dominant in Paul's day, Stoicism and Epicureanism.
Delving Deeper
Worldviews of Athenian philosophers
Both Stoicism and Epicureanism developed as attempts to elaborate and refine the work of the famous Greek philosophers back when Athens was at its zenith as a cultural leader. At the foundation of both was a profound disbelief in a supreme God separate from the material world. But from this common foundation arose different worldviews.48
The Stoics' view of reality was similar to pantheism, but more complex, for while they conceived of God as a soul furnishing the essence of all that exists in the universe, they also believed that God's presence in existing things varies in kind and degree. They were not monotheists, however, for typically they did not deny the gods of pagan religion, instead viewing them as the highest realizations of the one God. They agreed with the Jews that God is the "creator," but gave that word a different sense. They meant only that He is the source of being. They did not acknowledge any discrete event of creation at a definite moment in time, yielding a product distinct from the creator. Moreover, they thought that in relation to something created, He was not merely immanent in the sense of supporting its continuing existence, but inherent. Although some Stoics claimed to see benevolence in the overall plan of the universe, the source they imagined was not a person showing love for persons separate from himself. In ethics, the Stoics taught that the only right strategy for coping with life is to develop a strong mind, capable of mastering base emotion and fulfilling moral duty.
The Epicureans were close in their worldview to modern materialism. They believed that the visible (or potentially visible) universe is all that exists; also, that it has always existed because it could not have come from nothing, and that it will always exist because it cannot be destroyed. Thus, they altogether denied creation in any sense. They did not deny the gods of popular Greek religion, instead supposing that these gods, although real, are merely material beings capable of self-renewal. Yet the Epicureans insisted that these gods do not involve themselves in the affairs of men, so it is impossible for men to find them or know them. The rule of life promoted by the Epicureans was to seek pleasure for its own sake—not crude self-indulgence, which in fact leads to grief and trouble, but rather true happiness. Leading teachers in this school of thought said that the best road to happiness accepts duty to a reasonable moral code. In actual practice, however, the Epicureans generally differed somewhat from the Stoics, who saw greater merit in discipline and self-denial.
Philosophers belonging to these schools of thought found Paul and began speaking with him. "Encountered" may signify either that they conversed with him or that they engaged him in argument.49 Whichever kind of interaction it was, they reacted with predictable contempt. The translation "babbler" does not carry all the scorn in the original word. Literally, they called him a "seed picker," as if he were a worthless bird scavenging for food.50 The suggestion was that he was a basically unlearned man who had picked up bits of knowledge here and there.
Yet they wanted to hear what he had to say. Like all who live in leisure, free from any obligation to engage in useful work, they were exceedingly bored, so they were always curious to hear something new (v. 21). In commenting on their passion for novelty, perhaps Luke was intentionally alluding to a famous speech given by the military leader Cleon to his fellow Athenians during the fifth century BC. As quoted by the historian Thucydides, writing in the same century, Cleon said, "No men are better dupes, sooner deceived by novel notions, or slower to follow approved advice. You despise what is familiar, while you are worshipers of every new extravagance."51 What Paul was preaching sounded new indeed, for they had never heard of Jesus and His resurrection from the dead.
The philosophers conducted Paul to the Areopagus ("Hill of Mars"), an ancient tribunal named after its traditional meeting place on a hilly rise west of the Acropolis.52 The Areopagus had fluctuating jurisdiction over the centuries, for a while serving only as a criminal court, but in Roman times it was a judicial body with broad authority extending even to control of who gave lectures in the city. Religious matters fell within its domain.53
Although church tradition has always preferred to picture Paul speaking on Mars Hill itself, scholars today agree that in Paul's time, the court sometimes convened in the Stoa Basileios (The Royal Portico) in the northwest corner of the same Agora where Paul had been preaching to passersby. Yet the hill was still used for sessions of the court and other public gatherings. Therefore, the same scholars are not sure where Paul actually spoke.54
Pondering a Question
Why did the court summon Paul to speak?
It is evident from Luke's account that when Paul appeared before the Areopagus, he was not on trial.55 At the outset, the spokesman for the court addressed him politely. Subsequent proceedings lacked any statement of charges, any questioning by members of the court, and any final verdict. Therefore, scholars have offered various other explanations for his summons.
Some have suggested that he did not go before an actual session of the court, but merely explained his teaching informally to some of its members as well as to others driven by curiosity to attend the gathering.56 Yet in naming those who were brought to faith in Christ by Paul's sermon, Luke includes Dionysius the Areopagite (v. 34). The clear implication is that Dionysius had listened in his official capacity as a member of the Areopagus.57 Thus, we need not doubt that Paul appeared before it in a public session.
Yet this session may have been exempt from any formal rules of procedure. Perhaps meetings of the court when not conducting an actual trial took whatever direction suited its leaders, often choosing to move ahead rather informally from a modern perspective.
Luke himself clearly tells why Paul was escorted to Mars Hill. Upon his arrival, the philosophers asked, "May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean." To discover the right interpretive slant on their question, we need only consult Luke's next comment: "For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing." In other words, the main reason Paul was brought before the Areopagus was that leading minds in the city wanted to be entertained by novel ideas.
Secondary reasons may also have been factors. The force driving many events in the public arena is economic self-interest. To explore this causal trail, we must set Paul's visit to Athens in the larger context of Athens's place in the world. In the middle of the first century AD, the city was in a state of decline not only in population but also in wealth. Its economic plight included recurring food shortages.58 It therefore could not afford to lose the gifts and revenue generated by its chief attractions, which were two: its magnificent displays of art and architecture, and its never-ending parade of stimulating philosophical debates and lectures. In this fuller light on the city, we see one probable reason why the Areopagus, or at least some of its members, wanted to examine Paul. They saw him as a potential threat to their income. The strange "gods" he was preaching were a cause of concern because, if they did not fit into the Greek pantheon, they could diminish interest in all the idols and temples tied to conventional religion. And if these "gods" stood outside the worldview of Stoics and Epicureans, they could, in the eyes of their followers, turn all the abstruse speculations of Athenian philosophers into a curious sideshow. Doubtless the members of the court already knew something about the God of Israel, for in the midst of Athens was a Jewish synagogue (v. 17). Probably they viewed Him as a figure dangerously alien to their cosmology. Any aversion to Jehovah would have made them suspicious of Paul, who was a Jew.
By God's ingenious design, Paul's speech to the court seemed to show that he threatened nobody's vested interest. What he said moved in the upper atmosphere of philosophical thought. Therefore, he did not sound like a voice that could win over the masses now enchanted by idols and temples. Also, his words came finally to some statements about judgment and resurrection that sounded ridiculous. Therefore, the philosophers felt safe as well, for they were certain that nothing so bizarre could draw followers away from themselves, the heirs of ancient Greek wisdom.
Also sensitive to economic forces at play in Paul's summons to the court is Eckhard Schnabel, who says, "The council initiated this inquiry to gather information that they would need if a new altar or temple were to be built, or if there were to be changes made in the city's festival calendar."59 In other words, they saw in Paul's preaching a possible opportunity for new commercial enterprise, bringing more wealth to the city. Yet in comparison with the huge scale of everything already in place, the minute scale of anything new they might have developed favors our position that their motive was fear of loss rather than greed for gain.
Who God Is
Acts 17:22-28
In response to the court’s inquiry, Paul delivered a message that rose to a very high mark. It was a beautifully constructed argument full of subtleties showing that he was no babbler, but their equal in every respect: indeed, their superior, for he was not only a master of their ideas, but a thinker so penetrating that he could demolish their ideas and offer them new ones more exalted than they had ever considered.
He started off by bluntly accusing them of being superstitious. He began with this rebuke of idolatry because he was speaking to the city fathers, responsible for the religious life of the city. He recalled that he had seen an altar in their city dedicated to "THE UNKNOWN GOD."
Delving Deeper
Confirmation
Among the ancient writers who testify that altars of this kind existed in Athens60 is Philostratus, Greek author in the third century AD. He said, "For it is a much greater proof of wisdom and sobriety to speak well of all the gods, especially at Athens, where altars are set up in honour even of unknown gods."61 Another was Pausanias, a Greek author in the second century AD. He said when describing one of Athen's harbors, "Here too is a temple of Sciradian Athene, and of Zeus at a little distance, and altars of gods called unknown."62
Such altars reflected a prevailing attitude toward religion. The average Athenian thought he could never attain personal knowledge of the most high god or, as generally imagined, the many other gods. They were all hidden from view. Even when he felt that the gods impacted human affairs, he did not know which ones were responsible or how to approach them. Paul boldly declared that there was only one God anyone needed to know and that he, Paul, had come to declare Him.
Paul devoted the first part of his sermon to describing this God, who was new to the Greeks. He was the creator of all things—not only the world but everything in it, not only tangible material things but also life and breath. In the pantheon of popular Greek religion, the highest god was Zeus, but the Greek masses did not conceive of him as the creator, nor did the philosophers recognize any creator like Paul was describing. But the God Paul was preaching was the Creator indeed, in the fullest sense. He was so great and self-sufficient that it was foolish to build temples for Him, as if He needed a dwelling place, and it was foolish to bring him offerings with human hands, as if he depended in some way upon man. Man himself is one of God's creations.
So far, Paul was making the point that God transcended his hearers' small-minded conceptions of deity. Notice that he was basically accusing them of being very limited and narrow in their thinking. He was trying to encourage humility before God. Then Paul stated that God created all races from the same blood and determined beforehand both the place of their habitation and the course of their history. Again, his point was that his God was much greater than any deity the Greeks imagined.
Paul was stressing the basic kinship of all men perhaps to overcome Greek prejudice against a Jewish preacher of a Jewish Messiah. Holding themselves to be superior, the Greeks would have been tempted to reject Paul's teaching simply because he was not Greek and Jesus was not Greek. Paul reminded them that all men have the same blood; in other words, that Jews were no less men than they were.
Paul continued by explaining why God created man. The Greeks did not imagine that the gods had a strong benevolent interest in the human race. In Greek religion, the gods were either remote, as the Epicureans believed, or expressions of a single God who was essentially impersonal, as the Stoics believed, or preoccupied with their own intrigues, as the common man believed. But Paul introduced the revolutionary and exciting idea that God actually cares for man, even to the extent that He wants to have a personal relationship with him—that God created man precisely so that man might find Him and enjoy His fellowship. Then Paul added the comforting thought that God is not hard to find. He is not far from us, for, as Paul said, "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."
Paul was presenting ideas that broke the categories of Greek thought wide open. So to help his audience accept his climactic statement, he reminded them that it was affirmed also by one of their own thinkers. The quotation that we are God's offspring derives from a work on astronomy and weather written by Aratus, Greek scholar in the third century BC.63 Paul's allusion showed how well-read he was, for Aratus was an obscure figure, and his skill as a poet was an obscure fact not seen in the work cited. Paul might have quoted other Greek thinkers as well, for in the same intellectual tradition may be found many other glimmerings of fuller truth than was commonly understood.
Pondering a Question
Why in an evangelistic sermon did Paul quote with approval a pagan thinker?
Paul was implementing a strategy he described in 1 Corinthians 9:22: "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." Before a Jewish audience, he assumed the role of a rabbi, but before an audience of philosophers, he talked like a philosopher. In his sermon to the Areopagus, he had two specific reasons for trying to bridge the gap between himself and his audience.
- Like any good teacher, he was trying to build new knowledge on a foundation of what they already knew. Any other approach would have missed the mark by going either too high or too low: either too high by presenting totally unfamiliar concepts that they would probably fail to understand and accept, or too low by boring them with the obvious. Thus, whenever possible he called upon truth envisioned by thinkers that many of them had read and admired.
- He was trying to erase the perception that he was a mere babbler. If he had allowed this perception to remain in their minds, they would have dismissed his sermon without giving it fair consideration. For the sake of their souls, he wanted to be taken seriously. Therefore, he did not hide his intellect, but brought it into full play, attacking their world view with sharp critical judgment.
Getting Practical
Bridging the gap
As we witness for Christ, we too should not scorn to adapt ourselves in some measure to our audience. When speaking to the simple, we should be simple. When speaking to the thoughtful, we should be thoughtful. The right way to reach Jews is to present Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Reaching the Muslims is always a special challenge, but a wise servant of Christ will start by acknowledging the truth in Islam. Although false overall, and although offensive in its demeaning view of women and in its countenance of jihad, historic Islam understands that there is one God, it grants an exalted status to Jesus, and it preserves conceptions of sin and righteousness, although these conceptions are impoverished by blindness to the true nature of love.
Getting Practical
The standing of true art and literature
Quotations of pagan writers in Holy Writ show that whatever their human source, all literature and fine art untarnished by sinful corruptions ultimately derive from divine grace and are works of God. They are therefore profitable for study and suitable for appreciation. We need not know whether Handel ever came to a saving knowledge of Christ in order to marvel at his composition The Messiah and use it as a vehicle of worship.
Invitation
Acts 17:29-31
In the second part of Paul's sermon to the court in Athens, he began with a powerful argument that his conception of God, not theirs, must be correct. The argument he used belonged to a type known in Christian apologetics as theistic. A theistic argument draws from the facts of creation some conclusion about God. The conclusion Paul drew was that God must be greater than any deity the Greeks worshiped.
Delving Deeper
Theistic arguments
Although ultimately we know God by faith, God Himself expects us to find out many things about Him through the evidence of His work in nature, in the human heart, and in history, especially in that portion of history recorded in the Word of God. According to Paul in his epistle to the Romans, nature reveals two attributes of God: that He is a great power and that He is a divine person (Rom. 1:20). These two attributes are so clearly displayed in creation that men will be held without excuse if they fail to see them.
As we seek to understand what nature reveals about God, we must follow the right road from observed facts to conclusions. This road is mapped out by two theistic arguments known as the cosmological and the teleological. By discrediting other explanations for the origin of the universe, the cosmological argument shows that the universe must have originated in a creative act by a great power. By demonstrating that the universe is everywhere marked by purpose and design, the teleological argument shows that the Creator must have been a thinking person of surpassing wisdom.
To demonstrate how great the real God must be, Paul built on his prior point that, even as some of their own thinkers recognized, man is God’s offspring. Then he said that if God was capable of creating man, their idolatry was inappropriate. Paul evidently expected them to see why the images they crafted to represent Him insulted His true greatness. By molding His presumed likeness in gold and other workable substances and treating the idol so constructed as a satisfactory picture of His real presence, they were putting Him in a place far below themselves, for they were creatures more complex and intriguing than any man-made sculpture. This line of reasoning was a theistic argument because it drew from a fact of creation—that is, man’s pronounced superiority to any material object—the conclusion that man’s Creator cannot be "like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device."
No doubt Paul wanted the philosophers to understand further that if man was the offspring of God, God cannot just be man’s equal; He must be far above man. A work of art implies an artist much greater than his product. Likewise, the intricate being known as man requires a designer and maker much greater than His creation. But none of the creative agencies recognized by Greek religion was equal to the task. Popular religion supposed that mere chaos was the ultimate source of all life. The Epicureans, like modern evolutionists, thought that man came spontaneously from matter. Although the Stoics placed a single god at the source of all being, it was a god deprived of its own mind—of a mind separate from all else. Paul intended his hearers to understand that none of the ultimate causes envisioned by either the masses or the philosophers was lofty enough, with enough individual enterprise and genius, to produce the enormously complex and beautiful structure we know as man. Much less could it generate the whole universe.
The thrust of Paul’s argument was that the true God must be vastly superior to any god of Greek mythology or philosophy. This true God, the Creator Himself, was the unknown God that Paul wanted them to know.
Having laid the groundwork for his final appeal, Paul told briefly what the God who is man's Creator expects from man. In the past, God allowed the Greeks and other nations to continue in ignorance. Paul’s bluntness here is startling. Although the court hearing him was made up of men who thought they embodied centuries of Greek learning and philosophy, he did not shrink from telling them the unpleasant but sorely needed truth that they were steeped in ignorance. We marvel at his courage. Paul said that "the times of this ignorance God winked at." The translation "winked at" is unfortunate. It suggests that God looked upon paganism with a kindly tolerance. The right translation is "overlooked."64 The meaning is that God chose not to bring immediate judgment on the nations, although they deserved it because they neglected Him. Rather, He postponed judgment until He provided a way for the nations to come into a right relationship with Himself.
Paul declared that the time for removing their ignorance had arrived. God was now revealing Himself to men everywhere and commanding that they repent of their sins. In His mercy God would still postpone judgment. Yet a day of judgment would come. Although God had temporarily overlooked sin in the sense that He withheld His wrath for a time, He would not overlook it forever. He had already set a Day of Judgment and appointed a Judge. The Judge would be a man, but not an ordinary man. God certified this man as extraordinary by raising Him from the dead.
Pondering a Question
Why did Paul fail to mention Jesus by name?
Perhaps he was afraid that the philosophers would make Jesus' name a byword in their jests and incur greater judgment upon themselves. Yet a better explanation may be that Paul did not finish his sermon. The account suggests that his hearers stopped him when he spoke of Jesus' resurrection. The interruption forced him to quit before he could tell them the whole gospel.
Mixed Results
Acts 17:32-34
Paul's sermon had taken a dramatic turn. When he suddenly introduced the idea of a man rising from the dead, he drew an outpouring of voices.
Many objected, treating the idea as an absurd departure from common sense. After all, had not Aeschylus in his play Eumenides put in Apollo's mouth the solemn, inviolable law, "And he's once dead, there's no uprising"?65 (The playwright Aeschylus, fifth century BC, was a towering figure in the history of Greek thought.) The mockers in Paul's audience were probably the ones who stopped him from speaking further. Like many intellectuals today, they put on skepticism as a badge of their intelligence. They felt that by disbelieving God's messenger, they were showing themselves smarter than other people. Their final opinion of Paul was that he was not a genuine thinker, but a raving eccentric. They had wanted to hear something new, not something outlandish.
Others who heard Paul reacted more politely. Since they made no effort to continue the hearing, they apparently did not find his message overall to be worthy of serious consideration. Yet, recognizing that he was a man of mind and character deserving of respect, they avoided insulting him, instead claiming an interest in hearing him again.
Paul evidently viewed their words as merely an excuse to escape from listening to him further at the present time, for he walked away and, so far as we know, made no further effort to reach them with gospel witness.
But as he walked away, a small band of Greeks followed him and identified themselves with Christ. Among them was Dionysius the Areopagite. His name means that he was a member of the court that had just heard Paul's defense of his teaching.66 Since membership in this court was considered a high honor, he was a distinguished convert indeed. The leading woman who believed in Christ was Damaris. Besides these two, there were others as well, so that Paul did not need to view his time in Athens as a complete failure. No doubt the believers he left behind continued in their newfound faith and started a church.
Getting Practical
The two names never forgotten
The highest ambition of the philosophers who heard Paul was to make a name for themselves that future generations would remember. The only persons in the audience who attained this goal were the man and woman who, instead of living for self, decided to live for Christ.
Pondering a Question
What did this road look like?
Like many other Roman roads, it was a well-constructed avenue about fifteen feet wide, occasionally wider, paved with one or more layers of cobblestones set in gravel, the whole structure in some places cemented by lime mortar. It was slightly humped in the middle to permit run-off. On both sides a line of large blocks formed a low curb to hinder wheels from wandering off the road. Another narrow line of blocks sometimes appeared in the center to divide the lanes.3