Acts 17:22 Then Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and examined your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:
“TO AN UNKNOWN GOD”
Therefore what you worship as something unknown, I now proclaim to you.
24 The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands. 25 Nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands.
27 God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. 28 ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man’s skill and imagination.
30 Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to mock him, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this topic.” 33 At that, Paul left the Areopagus. 34 But some joined him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others who were with them.
I have always been fascinated by the methods Paul employed to speak to this eclectic group of Athenians in the Areopagus. When arriving in a new city, he often first went to synagogues, commented on the Scriptures, and reasoned with the local Jews as his primary means of winning them to Christ. But in Athens, he was overwhelmed by how many pagan temples and shrines to various Idols filled this city. Dr. Craig Keener in his commentary on the book of Acts writes:
As soon as one entered Athens one would encounter idols and temples of Demeter, Poseidon, and soon Dionysus, Athena, Zeus, and Apollo. Further along one encountered Hestia, Ares, Aphro-
dite, Hephaistos, the Disocuri, Serapis, and again Zeus, Apollo, and Dionysus. En route to the Acropolis, Asclepius, Themis, Gaia, and Demeter. The imperial cult was evident throughout the city.
Additionally, Dr. Craig Keener says there were statues and monuments all along the roads and sidewalk/paths that even in our modern permissive society would be scandalous for most people, unless they were witnessing the raunchiest portions of a “Pride Parade.” As always in the ancient world (and even today) there was a mixture of unbridled hedonism and mystical spirituality on full display in places like Athens and Corinth.
It bothered Paul, but not so much because of the sinful spectacle assaulting everyone’s eyes. I believe he was grieved because the idols, temples and monuments represented a multitude of spiritual paths that lead the Athenians to only one spiritual destination. That destination was a Christ-less Eternity. As Dr. Luke mentions in verse 21; Now all the Athenians and foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing more than hearing and articulating new ideas. These highly respected philosophers spent endless hours arguing the finer points of opposing viewpoints that, in the final analysis, yielded the same results. No matter how sophisticated their philosophical ponderings, or how diverse their religious beliefs and practices seemed to be, they were just “different parts of the same elephant.”
So, we can learn much from Paul’s approach in this setting. He not only shares his faith in the “Agora” or marketplace, but also in the “Areopagus”, which is known as Mars ( or Ares) Hill.” In this setting, or some place close to it, the “Areopagites”, or city rulers actually heard Paul preach the Gospel. In those days, a new teacher/philosopher in town needed special permission and a license of sorts to “set up shop” there in Athens. So, what Luke recounts for us is the substance of what the Apostle Paul shared with them.
The chatter amongst some of them is that Paul is a “babbler” which actually means a little bird that flies around scavenging seeds on the ground and collecting them for later. The implication was that Paul was just an “amateur” who pieced together a syncretistic teaching/philosophy from various sources but lacked the kind of “new idea” quality that impressed the Athenian elites.
Luke actually gives us some comic relief in these passages and unless we examine some of the verses in original language we don’t see it. For all their supposed wisdom and sophistication, these philosophers misunderstood what Paul was saying on a number of different levels. It was when Paul started to preach about Jesus being resurrected (“anastasis”) from the dead that they essentially said; “ok…thank you. We’ll call you if you get the part.”
Dr. Luke tells us the two dominant schools of philosophy represented in the Areopagite council were Epicureans and Stoics. Epicureans believed in a God so transcendent that He had little or nothing to do with mankind, and that nature had been a sort of accident. They also did not believe in an afterlife, let alone a bodily resurrection of anyone.
The Stoics believed in a soul that would exit the body after death, but they believed it rejoined a “primordial cosmic fire” and was repurposed, but not necessarily in terms of reincarnation, but was only eternal in the sense that it was reabsorbed into the fire of creation from whence it came.
With that in mind, we can see why the subject of resurrection and final judgment of all people was a sore spot. Not only that, because there were so many male-female god/goddess pairings in Greek and Roman mythology, it appears that these philosophers thought Paul was preaching about “foreign gods” who existed as a pair. Some of them evidently thought Paul was preaching a message about a “Jesus and His female consort, Anastasis”, which means “Resurrection.” Anastasia was a female name then, and it still is used exclusively this way.
This would explain both their apparent dismissal of Paul’s preaching at that point in his presentation, as well as their differing evaluations as to what constituted the essence of his message.
Dr. Craig says there would have been about 100 in attendance for this “try out”, and miraculously, one of these important people named Dionysius heard the Gospel and apparently converted to belief in Jesus Christ that very day!
The early Church in the sixth century believed they had recovered and translated writings of this same convert. There are four treatises and 10 epistles by this author that are extremely deep and elegant in their style and insights. Both the Western and Eastern branches of the Church at that time considered the writings almost canonical, but more recent study has shown them to be written under a pseudonym, hence the name attached to these writings now which is, “Pseudo-Dionysius.”
This wonderful story in the book of Acts illustrates the difficulties inherent in cross-cultural ministry. Thank God for Bible translators that work tirelessly for decades to give people the Word of God in their own native language! But this story is also rich with “winsome ways” to reach the people from other countries, cultures and languages with the Gospel. This should be of great interest to all Christians but especially to the congregants of Valley Christian Church. Let’s take a closer look at Paul’s presentation, and learn some things we can apply in our own lives and ministries. Here are five things that stand out.
Paul begins with compliments, not insults.
He compliments their amazing architecture and beautiful city lay-out. He also compliments their spirituality without flattering or lying to them. He says they are very “religious.” This is not commending their idol worship, but neither is it roundly condemning their paganism outright. It is a great attention-getter and a bridge building technique that Paul employs here.
Paul points to a visible symbol of the Athenians' spiritual hunger.
Paul points out the altar to the “unknown god” and uses that as his rhetorical on-ramp to begin to talk about the God of the Bible. He appeals to the concepts these philosophers were already onboard with, like the transcendence, omnipotence and omniscience of God. This was also a great “hook” for people who spent their days looking for the latest and greatest “new idea.”
Paul makes the Gospel Message personal
He uses this altar to not only build a bridge to his next point, but he establishes it as a pivot point to move them from the familiar to the new concepts he wants to share. He also offers an answer to a mystery that loomed large in the religious ethos of Athens. These kinds of altars were established for the people to “hedge their bets” with regard to maintaining favor with ALL the gods, even the ones they did not know. Paul’s revelation would have piqued the interest of everyone there and drawn them into the message.
Paul knows and speaks their language
All English speaking missionaries attend language classes, either before they go to the foreign mission field, or while they are in the beginnings of their placement amongst the people in which they are called to communicate the Gospel. Some of our Pentecostal forebears got themselves in lots of trouble because they had an incorrect theology of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the accompanying gift of speaking in tongues. They believed that their modern day manifestation of glossolalia was a miraculous endowment of known languages, given for the purpose of communicating the Gospel message in foreign lands without the need for language study. There are sad stories of these pioneers leaving everything to do missionary work in far away places, only to discover, to their dismay, that the miraculous-tongues-speech they thought was a human language was anything but intelligible. There are stories of well meaning zealous Christians meeting natives from other countries, trying to communicate to them, and being written off as crazy, rude or even worse.
Now in Paul’s case, speaking Greek was kind of a requirement of most scholars, and the effects of Hellenization were all over the known world at that time. But, I am not simply referring to Paul’s language while preaching, I am also referring to the words he chose to say. Paul quotes at least two Greek Philosophers, Aratus, and Epimenides to give added weight to his Gospel presentation. This showed personal investment in their customs and values and would have been received as a further gesture of respect.
Even with the limited time they gave him, he preached the indispensable elements of the Gospel
He alluded to the Love of God
He alluded to Repentance
He alluded to the Cross
He alluded to the Resurrection
How thankful we should be to the Holy Spirit for this “instruction manual” on effective cross cultural ministry, taught by the Apostle Paul. It not only gives us great information, but also inspiration, and it helps us to be wary of “despising the day of small beginnings.” All soul winning requires a plowing phase, a seedtime and ultimately a harvest. These things take time. And even though one Areopagite out of one hundred seems like a small harvest, it was like the “cloud the size of a man’s hand” that appeared to Elijah the prophet. It appeared small at first, but brought a torrential downpour of rain.
Let’s pray that God will give each of us “one Areopagite” with whom we can share the life giving Gospel of Jesus Christ. One of our mottos and evangelism strategies continues to be: Each one Reach one.
PRN: Father there are multitudes in “the valley of decision”, and many who loyally and zealously persevere on paths leading to spiritual destruction. Some of these are our new neighbors coming from foreign lands, bringing their foreign gods with them. Help us to see them, to love them and to befriend them. And Lord, please use us to reach “the one” You have already placed in our lives. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
Comments