Paul’s Speech in Athens
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This morning, we’re going to be looking at a text from Paul’s speech at Athens. Paul … It’s Act 17. Why don’t we turn there? We’ll be referring to it throughout the talk this morning. So let’s take a look at the Book of Acts Chapter 17. We’ll start at Verse 16 and read to the end of the chapter.
Paul has departed from his friends and he is going to be meeting up with Silas and Timothy, but he’s waiting in Athens. And so this is not a planned stop, but he makes the most of it. So let’s read from the Book of Acts, Verse 16.
Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was beholding the city full of idols. So he is reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God fearing gentiles and in the marketplace every day, with those who happen to be present. And some of the Epicurean and stoic philosophers were conversing with him. And some were saying, “What would this idle babler wish to say?” Others, he seemed to be a proclaimer of strange deities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. A little sidelight here. Anastasis, they thought that Jesus was teaching about a couple of deities, Jesus and resurrection or Anastasis.
And so they maybe thought that Anastasis is a female verb, a feminine verb. So thinking that maybe this is a consort or female companion to this Jesus that Paul was talking about. So there’s a lot of confusion on this, since they didn’t believe in bodily resurrection. So anyway, they took him and brought him to the Areopagus or Mars Hill saying, “May we know what this new teaching is, which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. We want to know therefore what these things mean.”
Now, all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new. And Paul stood in the midst to the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observed that you are religious in all respects. For a while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God.”
“What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world in all things in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth does not dwell and temples made with hands. Neither is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all life and breath and all things. And he made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him, we live and move and exist as even some of your own poets have said.”
“For we also are his offspring. Being then the offspring 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. Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because he has fixed a day in which you will judge the world in righteousness, through the man whom he has appointed having furnished proof to all men, by raising him from the dead.”
Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to snear, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.” So Paul went out of their midst. But some men joined him and believed, among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite. And a woman named Dameris and others with them.
Well, there’s some behind the scenes stuff going on here. The apostle Paul was actually in a formal proceeding before this council at the Areopagus or Mars Hill. If you’re proclaiming new deities in Athens, you’ve got to go through a formal ceremony or discourse in giving evidence for why this deity ought to be accepted into the Pantheon of gods at Athens. And if successful, if your deity is accepted by the council, then you can have a statue. You can have a shrine or an altar. You can have a feast to this god. You can also even perhaps have some sort of a temple built.
Well, the apostle Paul says basically in the council and is getting his defense so to speak, for why Jesus should be embraced as the revelation of the one true God. He says, “Well, we don’t need an altar because already found an altar in your city. An alter to the unknown God. Oh, and by the way, he doesn’t need a temple because he doesn’t dwell in temples made by human hands. You know, and he doesn’t need any sort of a feast for him to maybe symbolize feeding the deities or something like that. No, he doesn’t need anything from anybody. And, we don’t need a statue of this God, because he can’t be captured by gold and silver images or the art conceived by human beings.”
So Paul is actually stepping right into the expectations of the Athenian council at the Areopagus and he is actually utilizing what he finds there, and really bypassing some of these pagan expectations, and putting in proper context who the one true God is. Now there are practical lessons that we can learn from Paul’s approach to the Athenians. And I don’t know how much you’ve discussed about Paul’s speech in Acts 17. Have you discussed this a little bit? I mean, it’s certainly an important text as we’re dealing with issues of worldview, as we’re dealing with cross worldview communication, as Paul is being a Jew. Paul was well equipped to speak to the Athenians. He was very cosmopolitan.
Not only did Paul grow up under a leading rabbi, under his teaching in Jerusalem Gamaliel, but Paul was …. So he had the Jewish background. But Paul was also very familiar with the ways of paganism. He grew up in Tarsis, which is really where the roots of stoicism, the philosophy of stoicism came about. Stoicism was pantheistic, God is everything, everything is God. But there is a sense that everything … That there is a design to the way things are that there’s an order, that there’s a harmony and that you as an individual should not live according to your circumstances, but should kind of have a grit your teeth and bear it disposition, and not let your emotions rule. Reason was to rule.
Paul was very familiar with this philosophy, as we’ll see later. Paul quotes pagans. He does not directly quote the scriptures per se. But Paul is also … He’s a Jew, well schooled, a rabbi. He is one who has familiarity with Greek philosophy, and he is also a Roman citizen. So we see a convergence of these worlds. And of course, in a sense, there is a fourth world, a fourth realm that Paul is talking about namely life or the realm in Jesus the Messiah. But he is now at Athens, well equipped to speak to the philosophical minds of his day.
But the first lesson that we can learn from Paul, and hopefully you will take with you as you go out from here at summit is the importance of distinguishing between persons and the beliefs that they hold. Now, you’ve heard about relativism, the “true for you, but not for meism” that is so popular in our culture. The problem with the relativists is he collapses the person and the belief so that if you disagree with a person, it is as though you are rejecting that person, rather than simply rejecting that person’s beliefs.
So, the relativist takes it personally, if you don’t accept my belief as true, then you’re not accepting me. And what we can do is say, “You know, we can agree to disagree. Just because I don’t agree with your view, shouldn’t be taken personally.” And so we can, as Paul says in the Book of Ephesians, “We can speak the truth in love.” We see Paul who is angered at the idolatry in Athens. This is an utter corruption of what religion ought to be. And so Paul sees these aisles, he is stirred and angered in his spirit. But when he is engaging in the marketplace, we see Paul is dialoguing. There is a gracious tone, a gracious spirit. And so we ought to emulate or imitate that kind of a spirit that we see in the apostle Paul, distinguishing between persons and beliefs. We can accept persons because they are made in the image of God, even if we reject their beliefs.
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