INTRODUCTION
So Paul was in Athens, waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible. While he was waiting, he found himself greatly vexed and provoked over the rampant idolatry there. Athens was disease-ridden, and their sickness was images. This passage tells us what happened next.
THE TEXT
“Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection . . . So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.” (Acts 17:16–34).
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
While Paul was waiting in Athens, he got worked up over all the idols (v. 16). And so he disputed with Jews, and with God-fearers, and with people in the marketplace (v. 17). He encountered representatives of the two main philosophical schools—Epicurean (pleasure the highest good) and Stoic (duty is). Some called him a “seedpicker” (spermologos), like a sparrow eating fries in the McDonald’s parking lot. Others thought he was preaching two gods, Jesus and Anastasis—the word for resurrection (v. 18). So they brought him to Mars Hill, and invited him to set forth his doctrine because they were curious (vv. 19-20). Luke then gets in a delightful jab about their pursuit of truth being little more than an intellectual hobby to kill time with (v. 21). So Paul stood up and began with the observation that the Athenians were really religious (v. 22). He had noticed walking around that there was even an altar to an unknown god (v. 23). This is the God that Paul was preaching (v. 23). This is the Creator God, who is not contained by any human temples (v. 24). Nor is He dependent upon man’s service, as though He were needy, because He is the source of all life and breath (v. 25). This Creator fashioned all men, who are descended from one blood, and assigned them their places of habitation (v. 26). He did this so that in our groping we might find Him, even though He was not really far off (v. 27). The “live and move” line is likely from the Cretica of Epimenides, a hymn to Zeus. The “offspring” line is from the Stoic poet Aratus, in another hymn to Zeus called Phaenomena. As God’s offspring, we must reject idols and images (v. 29). God winked at this foolishness before, but now He commands repentance (v. 30). He has fixed a day of judgment and reckoning, and has proven who that judge is going to be through His resurrection from the dead (v. 31). When Paul made the resurrection clear, some mocked, while others were still interested (v. 32), and so Paul left (v. 33). A handful believed and came along—Dionysus the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and some others (v. 34).
PAGAN POETS AND PROPHETS
Around 600 B.C. (the age of Jeremiah and Ezekiel), Athens was afflicted with a great plague, and they could do nothing to resolve it. The Pythonness at Delphi told them to send for Epimenides of Crete and to do whatever he said. Remember that the girl in the previous chapter had the spirit of a python. Epimenides came and as a result of his instructions, the Athenians built an altar to “the unknown God,” and sacrificed to Him. The plague then stopped. Centuries later Paul came through and saw the altar, and preached the Creator of all things to them.
In Titus 1:12, Paul quotes Epimenides, and says that he was a prophet (not a false prophet). We don’t have any complete works of Epimenides, but one reasonable reconstruction runs like this:
“They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one, The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies! But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever, For in thee we live and move and have our being.”
The fact that this was in a hymn to Zeus should not disturb us. There were very different narratives about Zeus that were current. There was the historic Zeus, the one that the impudent Cretans had built a tomb for. There was the Zeus of folklore, the skirt-chaser and over-sized fraternity boy. But then there was the Zeus of the philosophers, the Theos who created everything. Paul, a man who hated idols, was willing to work with this.
GENTILES WELCOME
In the Old Testament, Gentiles were not the equivalent of unbelievers. Many were unregenerate unbelievers, but then again, so were many Jews. The Jews were a covenanted nation of priests.
We have Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:27), and after his conversion (2 Kings 5:17) he was even given permission to push his master’s wheelchair into the house of Rimmon (2 Kings 5:18). We have the king of Nineveh and all his people (Jonah 3:6ff). We have Jethro, the priest of Midian (Ex. 3:1). We have Melchizedek, a Canaanite priest and type of Christ to whom Abraham paid tithes (Gen. 14:18; Heb. 7:1-2). David stored the Ark of the Covenant at the house of a Gentile, Obed-edom (2 Sam. 6:10)—and he was a Gittite, which meant he probably graduated from the same high school that Goliath did. Later on, this Obed-edom was made a porter at the Tabernacle of David (1 Chron. 15:18). And when Solomon built the Temple, in his prayer of dedication he assumed that various Gentiles would pray toward this Temple, and would be received (1 Kings 8:41-43). And then when Jesus made a whip and cleared out the money-changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals, He was clearing out the Court of the Gentiles in order to make room for them to worship. “And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves” (Mark 11:17).
THE DISTANCE IS ETHICAL
Paul says twice that there was a Gentile worship of the true God that was characterized by ignorance. Note: “whom therefore ye ignorantly worship” (v. 23) and “the times of this ignorance God winked at” (v. 30). God was kind to the nations, giving them their assigned habitations so that they might grope after Him, and even find Him (v. 27). But most of them veered into the rank idolatry that their best philosophers and poets rejected (v. 29).
The God that we cannot see or find is not ontologically distant from us. We live and move and have our being in Him, a fact obvious to astute pagans. We live in a God-environment. The problem is moral and ethical. The problem is not that God is way up in Heaven, or far across the sea. The problem is that we are “seeking after Him,” but with no intention of finding Him. This is how Acts 17 is reconciled with Romans 1-3. If we are to be found, Christ must fetch us.