Download Convincing the Men from Mars

Convincing the Men from Mars - Acts 17:16-34.
Acts 16 tells of Paul's vision calling him to Macedonia. This was a clear call from the
Holy Spirit to change direction and to begin a new ministry, yet he had seen little
evidence of any real success from his efforts. In Philippi he was stripped, beaten and
thrown into prison; he had to flee Thessalonica in the dead of night and he was then
chased out of Berea, being escorted to Athens for his own protection. Oh! What had
happened to the Apostle’s vision? One can but wonder what was going through his mind
at this time. He was so sure of his call to this new work, but now his mission was on
hold as he waited for his team to join him. Was he really where God wanted him to be
or had he fallen prey to Satan's deception?
As he wandered about the city with little to do but wait for Silas and Timothy he became
aware of the architecture and sculptures for which Athens was famous. Like any modern
day tourist visiting this great city he would have taken in Athens three 'A's (or its three
'α's). The Acropolis towered above the city with its various magnificent marble temples,
including the Parthenon. Part way down the hill was the Areopagus, a monument to
Ares, the god of war. On the plain below was the Agora, the town's civic centre, which
was surrounded by great stoa, or colonnaded porches, similar to the great colonnades
that surrounded the court of the gentiles in the Jerusalem temple (Acts 3:11). By Paul's
time most of the commerce had shifted to the Roman forum, a large outdoor arena and
market place. It became known for its giant clock tower containing both a sundial and a
water clock visible from all over the market. Culture and the arts were supported by a
stadium, a large amphitheatre and an odeon or music hall. The Agora remained the
town's cultural centre with its many temples and countless statues erected as
representations of the gods, especially Hermes, giving the city the appearance of great
piety, at least in pagan eyes. Petronius, a Roman satirical writer, quipped that it was
easier to find a god in Athens than a man.
While waiting for Silas and Timothy, Paul began his usual practice of witnessing to the
Jews in the synagogue (Acts 17:2). In doing this he worked alone; he had no helpers
and there is no record of any miracles. He reasoned with them, using the scriptures to
patiently explain the truth about Christ, for the Christian faith is open to reason at the
most profound levels of logic. This time he was able to witness freely, as the Jewish
community in Athens was too small to be able to stir up the level of opposition as had
happened in the other towns, but this was to come from an entirely different source. As
Paul noticed all the religious monuments he looked beyond the beauty of the art and saw
the extent of the idolatry to which the Athenians had fallen. For all its majesty and
beauty, human creativity had only served to further distance man from his creator. In
recognising the darkness of the people around him His heart was moved to the point
that he had become distressed and he could not wait in silence any longer. He found
himself moved to speak out and began to witness to whoever he could find, not just to
the Jews in the synagogue, but also to the locals in the market place. It was this that
led him into conflict with the leading philosophers. We live in an equally corrupt society,
daily rubbing shoulders with people who serve the gods of materialism and hedonism.
We live amongst people who have no time for God and who hold him up to ridicule, yet
our hearts remain unmoved and we keep quiet about it.
The Epicureans resembled the Jewish Sadducees in that they represented the upper
class, rejected the direct involvement of the gods in people’s lives and emphasised the
need to live for the here and now, for there was no afterlife. The gods then were
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uninvolved in the universe and irrelevant to people's lives, being neither willing, nor
able, to prevent evil for they lived in a realm that was beyond its influences. For
humans this means that unethical actions remain unpunished and neither is there any
reward for doing good. The best that man could aim for was to attain a state of
happiness, free from the affects of evil, just like the gods. This happiness is not found
through hedonism but by living in simple contentment, free from the effects of guilt,
remorse or worry and seeking to avoid emotional and physical pain.
"When we say...that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the
prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through
ignorance, prejudice or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of
pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not by an unbroken succession of
drinking bouts and of revelry, not by sexual lust, nor the enjoyment of fish and other
delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning,
searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs
through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul." - Epicurus, "Letter to
Menoeceus".
Epicurean cosmology was essentially materialistic. The totality of all matter was infinite,
being made of atoms which in turn were regarded as immutable and solid though
invisibly small. They can neither be created nor destroyed so the totality of all forms is
eternal and unchangeable. Even sensory perception, including sound and sight, was
seen as the result of atoms travelling from the perceived object to the sense organ at a
speed faster than the speed of thought. Modern physics regards sound as travelling in
waves and it distinguishes between photons and atoms. Neither are atoms now seen as
immutable nor solid, yet this ancient cosmology seems remarkably modern.
So too their attitude to the afterlife. Like the Sadducees they thought that death was
final. Though they regarded matter as eternal the soul was not. It, like the body, as no
more than a compilation of atoms, with human thought being caused by atoms in
random motion. Like the body the soul disintegrated at death, its atoms being available
to build a new soul in a new life. Human existence begins at birth and ends at death.
The epitaph on many Epicurean graves reads "I was not, I was, I am not, I don't care".
Paul would have had much more in common with the Stoics and the speech to the
Areopagus was designed to appeal more directly to them. Like the Pharisees, the
Stoics were more representative of the masses with their appeal to the direct
involvement of the gods in human affairs; so much so that the Stoics believed in
absolute predetermined fate. They regarded the Epicurean's seeking out of pleasure as
self serving. They emphasised moral and ethical living by submitting virtue to the will of
nature, while developing personal relationships that are free from anger, envy and
jealousy. While the universe is rigidly deterministic, humans have an autonomous free
will in deciding how they react to fate. They can either choose to give into despair or
they can rise above their circumstances and be happy regardless (cf. 1Thes 5:18, Phil
4:11). To be stoic is to accept fate in the face of all that life can throw at us.
Substance was regarded as ethereal and transmutable, being able to change from one
form to another. It exists as two types: it may be passive, as matter that can do
nothing on its own, or it may be active intelligent fate, which acts on passive matter.
This is a form of pantheism in which this intelligent fate, the divine logos or universal
reason is the universe itself. The universe is seen as being god with a will of its own. It
is this divine logos that forms the human soul giving us the power of logic and reason so
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as to be able to overcome base instincts. At death the soul returns to where it came
from, again becoming one with the universe.
In spite of their claim to superior reasoning these philosophers failed to understand what
Paul was on about. They derided him as a worthless babbler who makes as much sense
as the pecks of a bird as it feeds (spermologos), a pseudo-intellectual who plays with
words, plagiarising ideas without a coherent thought pattern. They were accusing him of
just pecking at ideas in random without any consideration of their context, a bit like the
way some Christians use their favourite bible texts. Yet it was they who spent their
time discussing the latest smorgasbord of meaningless ideas (Acts 17:2, 1Tim 1:6, 4:7)
and it was they who lacked the intellectual capacity to discern truth. In their failure to
comprehend Paul's teaching they thought that he was advocating two gods called Jesus
and Resurrection. This is because the Greek word for resurrection is anastasis, a word
that can be used as a girl’s name, so when Paul spoke about the anastasis of Jesus they
thought of Jesus as a god and Anastasis his goddess. It was this that resulted in him
being called before the Areopagus.
Areopagus means the rock of Ares = Mars, God of war (Mar's hill Acts 17:22 KJV);
pagos = rock. The name refers to a rocky outcrop on the slopes below the Acropolis and
was associated with Ares (Mars) and so became known as Mars Hill. It was also the
place where the Athenian council originally met, so that the name came to refer to the
council itself as well as to the place. The wording of Acts 17:22 in the KJV suggests that
Paul actually gave his speech on this rocky outcrop, though this is unlikely. By Paul's
time the council met in the Agora, or market place, which is where Paul had been
witnessing. The point is not where this address was given, but to whom. He was
brought before a meeting of the Areopagus, just as Peter had earlier been brought
before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem (Acts 4:5-7). The Areopagus had a strong
resemblance to the Sanhedrin and like the Sanhedrin, it was the supreme court of
Athens subject only to the Roman governing authorities, and was responsible for the
civic and religious affairs of the city. It had jurisdiction over matters relating to
education, commerce, immorality and sacrilege. While the Athenians liked nothing
better to do than to sit around discussing the latest philosophical fad, even though the
city was well past its ancient glory as the centre of philosophy, the Areopagus saw as its
duty the protection of the cities cultural and religious heritage from those who would
blaspheme their gods. Paul sounded like one of those heretics whose teaching needed
examination so he was having to explain himself before these men of Mars. As he did
so he would have been well aware that this same body, a few centuries before, had had
Socrates put to death because his philosophy contradicted their religious sensibilities.
This association with Socrates would have been reinforced by the fact that Paul was
being accused of advocating foreign gods. No doubt he would have noticed the irony of
the reversed situation as he remembered the Sanhedrin's response to Stephen's speech
and the part that he had played in it (Acts 7:54-8:1).
With the attitude expressed in 1 Cor 9:22 "I have become all things to all men so that by
all possible means I might save some" Paul provides the blueprint for Christian
apologetics: know your audience and communicate with them at their level. To do this
we need to find what we have in common with our audience and start building a bridge;
starting from their side of the chasm, not ours. No doubt that there would have been
many in the gathered audience who would have been there just so that they could hear
this new teaching for themselves, but the speech that follows is Paul's defense of the
gospel before Greek intellectuals. He demonstrates that he is no babbler as he crafts a
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coherent, well thought out speech designed to appeal to the philosophers in the audience
rather than to the Areopagus itself, though of course these councillors would have had a
good understanding of Greek philosophy. Using the style of classic rhetoric
he respectfully interacts with their views, showing that he is well informed, even quoting
from their literature.
He begins by recognising an obvious point of contact in acknowledging his hearers
religious devotion, making reference to an altar to unknown God. Pausanias, a 2nd
century Greek writer, records in his Description of Greece that there were "alters of the
gods named unknown" in Athens. Such was their piety that they made sure that no
divinity was unwittingly omitted from their worship. Paul points out that this unknown
god that they worship is really the one that he has been talking about. He makes the
inference that he knows something that they don't; that he has knowledge that they
have overlooked; that he has an authoritative understanding of this God. His is not the
speculative teachings of the philosophers. This God that they don't know he
now proclaims as none other than the supreme creator of all that exists, including
man. This God stands outside of creation, is separate from it and transcends it. Unlike
the pantheism of the stoics the universe is not an extension of his divine being. Nor is
He subsumed within the cosmic forces that make up the universe and which determine
its destiny. Everything that exists was created by him including space, time and matter.
This appeal to revelation through creation is similar to the approach taken with the
indigenous population of Lystra (Acts 14:15) and compares markedly to Paul's normal
approach with Jewish audiences where he appeals to Israel's election as revealed
through their history (eg. Acts 13:16-25). The same approach to preaching the gospel
does not suit everyone. There is no point quoting scripture to people who have no
respect for nor understanding of its contents. Paul uses Greek thought to introduce God
to the Greeks.
Athens may have some of the grandest and most beautiful temples in the world but even
they are not grand enough to provide a dwelling pace for the true God of heaven and
earth. He is so great that he does not live in human made temples like the Parthenon
(Isaiah 66:1). Neither is there any man made image that can adequately represent
him. Unlike the temple gods who needed people to be in regular service in their
temples, bringing them their sacrifices, food and water, this God has no need of anything
from us, as it is he who gives us life and it is he, not fate, who determines what happens
in the world. All this is expressed using terms to which the stoics could easily assent
but Paul found that he had nothing in common with the Epicureans and seems to
completely ignore them in this speech.
By the first century there was a growing trend among pagan philosophers to combine
the various deities into one supreme god who is sovereign over human history,
determining the timing for each nation's existence as well as its boundaries. This
universe is no longer considered to be subject to the capricious whims of a number of
warring gods but is under the predetermined laws of this one supreme God. Here Paul is
tapping into this belief. By stating that every nation was made from one man Paul is
proclaiming the brotherhood of all people regardless of ethnicity. This God is not just a
god of the Jews, nor is he a Greek god. He is the God of all of mankind regardless of
where they may live. In quoting from the poets Aratus and Epimenides, Paul is using
their own literature to point out that the Greeks too recognise that they are derived from
a supreme divine being who is intimately associated with our lives. This is not some
foreign god as they had assumed. This is the same God that they worshipped even if
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they had misunderstood him. As almighty and powerful as he may be, he is not the
distant irrelevant god of the Epicureans and neither is he the Stoic's unknowable
impersonal divine logos of the universe. He is so close to us that he considers us as his
children and he our father (Jer 3:4) as we are his offspring. He is so close that he knows
our hearts and he hears our prayers. As we grope around in the darkness he just wants
us to reach out and find him, if only we will.
Having established this contact with their culture, philosophy and core beliefs it is now
time to bring out the expressly Christian response. Paul began his speech by using his
hearer’s devotion to their idols as a basis for acknowledging their religious piety. He
now distances himself from them by denouncing their idolatry and pointing out the need
for change. If we are God's offspring then he made us, not the other way round. The
God who made man could not possibly be represented by man made images of gold,
silver or stone. He is superior to us and not the result of our craftsmanship. The issue
here is not the worship of other gods (Exo 20:3), but the creation of images to represent
God (Exo 20:4). These intelligent Greeks in no way thought of these statues as actually
being the divinities that they worshipped. These were just artistic representations of
their gods, but Paul's concern was that any representation of deity, in the end becomes
a misrepresentation of the Lord of heaven and earth and as such is an insult to him. In
the past God had overlooked their idolatry (Rom 1:23-24) for they didn't understand the
truth about him, but now he expects change. The change that is required is more than a
philosophical change in outlook since God commands repentance. This calls for such a
change in attitude that there is a genuine recognition of guilt and remorse over the past
way of life, not just for the Athenians; it is a universal call for everyone everywhere.
Everyone, no matter who they are, are expected to change their attitude toward God
and embrace his loving control over their lives, for the time is coming when God is going
to judge between those who accept him and those who continue to reject him (Luke
13:3).
This idea that history will have a future climax resulting in a final judgement would have
been foreign to Greek thought in that they regarded time as endless, but Paul stresses
that this judgement will come, and that means that everyone in the world will be held
accountable, including them. These men of the Areopagus, the supreme court of
Athens, who were sitting in judgement on Paul, will themselves one day have to stand
before the ultimate judge, the man Jesus who has been appointed as judge by God
himself (John 5:22); an appointment that is evidenced by God raising him from the
dead. In this statement Paul answers the Athenian's misunderstanding that he was
advocating two gods called Jesus and Resurrection. It is the resurrection that proves
Jesus's authority to be both Lord and judge (Acts 2:32-36).
It is likely that Paul intended to continue with a full presentation of the gospel but he
was interrupted for, in spite of his use of Greek philosophic reasoning, at the mention of
the resurrection from the dead he lost his audience and was ridiculed. This is something
that the Epicureans in particular with their materialistic view of the soul, would have
found laughable. Though the stoics believed that the soul lived on after death they
thought that it was absorbed back into the divine logos and so could not be reunited with
the body, making the idea of resurrection impossible. In the end the thought processes
of these men from mars was too different to be touched by Paul's logic and they
remained unconvinced. They may as well have been from another planet. On the other
hand there were some Greeks who believed in an afterlife and Plato even taught
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reincarnation. So there would have been some in his audience who would have
responded positively to his message, at least to the extent of wanting to hear more.
Yes, there were some converts. Dionysius was a particularly significant convert for, as a
member of the Areopagus, he would have held the highest status amongst the Athenian
community. It is possible that he was one of those who wanted to hear Paul again, but
Damaris was not. As a woman she would not have been permitted to attend a meeting
of the Areopagus. It is more likely that she and the others mentioned in Acts 17:34
became believers due to Paul's evangelism in the market place (Acts 17:17) rather than
from the impact of this speech. In the end Paul was laughed out of town. Having been
interrupted he left the meeting, gave up waiting for his mission team and moved on to
Corinth (Acts 18:1). Reading between the lines we find that he now despaired of
success in Greece to the point of giving up his full-time ministry. Meeting up with Aquila
was all he needed to tempt him to return to his old job. Yes there was the weekly
Sabbath meeting, but his full time ministry was now dead.
We can only speculate on the feelings of Silas and Timothy when they arrived in Athens.
No doubt they would have headed for the synagogue to gain news of the whereabouts of
Saul of Tarsus. Possibly they found someone who told them "Oh yes, I remember him;
he caused a bit of a stir around here with his strange ideas. Haven't seen him for a
while though. Perhaps you can try Councillor Dionysius from the Areopagus; he might
know where he is. They used to hang out a bit". Then once they find Dionysius they are
told "Paul, sorry, you've missed him; he's gone to Corinth".
Acts 16-17 tells a story of Paul's personal disillusionment with a ministry that did not go
as expected. Yet at the same time this is a story of amazing success. The point is that
in spite of all the trials that Paul went through God was still working in his absence. Paul
had to flee from every town that he commenced a work in, yet in each of these towns
there were converts, and this led to the establishment of a church. Paul's ministry had
sown the seed but in the end it is what the Holy Spirit did with that seed that mattered.
The real success had happened after Paul had left (1Thes 2:1). In the absence of
success it is too easy for us to feel that our witness is pointless. We may do our best to
explain our faith to others, but no one really listens. We may endeavour to express our
faith by living our lives in a manner worthy of our calling, only to come across as trying
to be superior and being social misfits, and then feeling like hypocrites when we fail to
live up to our own ideals. We may seek to bring about social change and hope to our
community by being Christ's hands to people in need, but in spite of our efforts we feel
unappreciated and nothing ever changes. The social needs just seem to get worse, not
better. The message from Paul's experience is just to keep on going. We might not be
able to see any results from our labours but that does not mean that we are being
ineffective. God still works in people’s hearts and change does happen, even when we
can't see it.
Of course, once Silas and Timothy did catch up with Paul they brought news of amazing
success in Thessalonica (1Thes 3:6). Then with renewed motivation the ministry gained
fresh momentum, but that is another story for another time. What we do need to note
though, is that Paul's Athenian experience certainly affected his approach to this future
ministry. His own critique on this Areopagus address was written about 6 years later
(assuming that Paul was in Athens in 50AD and that 1 Corinthians was written from
Ephesus just before Pentecost 56 AD).
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1 Corinthians 1:17-31 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel-not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 18 For
the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are
being saved it is the power of God. ----- 20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar?
Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the
world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him,
God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who
believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach
Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those
whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of
God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God
is stronger than man's strength.
Paul had tried using Greek wisdom to reason with the Areopagus and he was laughed
at. No doubt, having clearly defined his point of contact with his listeners, he would
have gone on to "preach Christ crucified" had he not been interrupted by ridicule, but he
was denied that chance. While we do need to communicate the gospel in terms that are
relevant to the culture of our hearers there will always be the scoffers who will not be
persuaded. In the end human reasoning will remain unconvincing, especially if we leave
out the central ingredient of the message. The church of today has gone out of its way
to be relevant to our modern society to the point that we have watered down the
message so much that we have lost our point of difference. What we have to offer is
unique and different to anything that can be found in the world. There are a vast
number of philosophies that offer hope, peace and wholeness but Christ alone offers the
answer to the greatest need of the human heart; the problem of guilt and the means of
finding genuine forgiveness. The cross of Christ remains the Christian's defining doctrine
and we must never lose sight of it.
Rob Schwarzwalder who is a senior American government official and a member of the
Evangelical Theological Society notes that "evangelical churches try so hard to be
palatable and relevant that we become distasteful and irrelevant. Desperate
contemporaneity has become the coin of the age as Evangelicals make gasping efforts to
draw in the disaffected. After awhile, manic superficiality in the name of “relevance”
induces cynicism, and rightfully so. --- We’ve taken a historic, 2,000 year old faith,
dressed it in plaid and skinny jeans and tried to sell it as ‘cool’ to our kids. It’s not cool.
It’s not modern. What we’re packaging is a cheap knock off. ---Evangelical leaders too
often don’t preach/teach on the essential doctrines of Scripture because of their lack of
confidence in the power of God’s Word to transform and because they don’t want to
offend." http://www.canonandculture.com/why-younger-evangelicals-are-leaving-thechurch-some-arguments-against-the-conventionalwisdom/?utm_content=buffere8499&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&u
tm_campaign=buffer
Building bridges with our hearers is one thing, but loosing our message altogether is
quite another. No matter how much we find that we have in common with our hearers
they still need to understand that they are sinners in need of God's forgiveness and that
Christ died on the cross in order to bring about that forgiveness. This is why Paul, as he
reflected on his Athenian experience, wrote to the Corinthians "for I resolved to know
nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor 2:2).