A Study of Acts: Paul Arrives in Athens, Reasons in the Synagogue, and Debates Philosophers
Acts 17:16-21 - Could you bring the case for Christ to a roomful of arrogant philosophers?
“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know 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.)”
Acts 17:16-21 NASB1995
Paul has arrived in Athens, a distance of approximately 200 miles from Berea. He is waiting for Silas and Timothy and his spirit is provoked observing the city full of idols. According to commentary I read, Athens in its heyday had shrines and temples to 30,000 gods! It is a beautiful city even now, with the spectacular ruins of the Parthenon and other temples on the Acropolis and other ancient sites scattered about. We last visited Athens in August 2018 and spent some time exploring some of the ancient historical sites; as we found, those human-created gods and idols turned to dust and ruin over time. Our God, the true God, is eternal!
At the time of Paul’s visit, this important city was waning a bit in cultural influence under the Romans, but was still full of visitors and people sitting around debating many different philosophies. Here’s a map of ancient Athens from Wikipedia:
Paul doesn’t waste time while waiting. He finds the synagogue and reasons again with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles. He also debates anyone who is present in the marketplace (agora) every day. Some of the philosophers are conversing with him and a few call him an “idle babbler” while others say that he is a proclaimer of strange deities. The Scripture passage talks about two of these groups, Stoics and Epicureans. Here is a short explanation from Gotquestions.org about both of these philosophies:
Stoicism, which emphasizes rationalism and logic, is commonly considered to be the opposite of Epicureanism, which is seen as promoting feeling and comfort. Many people think Epicureanism is all about pleasure in life while Stoicism is all about rejecting pleasure. This view is over-simplified to the point of inaccuracy. In reality, Epicureanism teaches to arrange one’s life in such a way that it is completely free of stress—including the stress brought about by over-indulgence and pleasure-seeking. True Stoicism says to align one’s expectations with the logos—the natural law of the cosmos—and not to worry about the rest.
Other commentary I read noted that the Epicureans were mostly atheistic (“live life now”) and the Stoics believed that God was in everything and everywhere but it didn’t really matter (“grin and bear it”). Two thousand years later, these two philosophies are still quite prevalent in our secular culture. Jack Arnold, quoted in Precept Austin below describes the courage that Paul had, through his deep faith, taking on these philosophers; would we have the same courage today?
Suppose God called you, as a Christian, to present a case for Christianity before the philosophy professors at Harvard and Yale Universities. How would you react? Would you shy away, concluding that you had nothing to offer these intellectuals? Would you think that these brilliant brains would want nothing to do with Christianity, for they almost to the person deny the supernatural? Would you shake with fear believing that these men or women with massive IQ's might laugh at you as a babbling idiot? It would be a somewhat frightening experience to sit across from these Harvard and Yale professors who are existentialists, atheistic evolutionists, materialists, determinists and relativists committed to the new morality.
Yet, this is exactly what Paul faced in his day at Athens. Athens was the university seat of the world. This city had fostered great philosophers such as Pericles, Oemosthenes, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and Euripides. These famous humanistic philosophers taught patterns of human thought which affected philosophers in Paul's day and still affect philosophers today. In fact, almost all modern day philosophies follow, in some degree, the teachings of these ancient philosophers. Humanistic philosophy has not changed much in three thousand years. Philosophers come and go, and philosophies change their names, labels and terms, but the philosophies of Paul's day are essentially the same humanistic philosophies of our day. What Paul told these first century philosophers is the same thing we must tell the twentieth century philosophers.
This is an excellent example! Probably most of those philosophy professors would be extremely hostile to a Christian, full of pride and deceit and barely-disguised wrath about such “idle babble”. The Athenian philosophers referenced above certainly influence these present-day professors, but so would more recent philosophical “giants” like Marx, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Derrida and Foucault. The last two, if the names are not familiar, are post-modernists, which is a muddled and vaguely-defined philosophy that can be boiled down into the basic idea that there is no objective truth and there never has been. Rousseau and Marx (and his friend Engels) have done more to cause mass genocide and totalitarianism in history than any Athenian philosopher because their stock in trade is cultivating envy. Young people are going to universities where these philosophies reign supreme, even in the hard sciences. Paul was certainly not an idle babbler, but we sadly live with the consequences of minds being molded by self-important idle babblers.
Paul is invited to bring his teaching to the Areopagus (Mars Hill), which you can see on the map. Apparently, many would spend their time there doing nothing other than hearing or telling something new. I like what Enduring Word says about this trivial idleness:
For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or hear some strange new thing: It was the novelty of Paul’s message that earned him the invitation to the Areopagus. These ancient Greeks loved a constant and always changing stream of news and information.
In the early nineteenth century, Adam Clarke described the situation of his day, and it sounds like it is even truer of our own time. “This is a striking feature of the city of London in the present day. The itch for news, which generally argues a worldly, shallow, or unsettled mind, is wonderfully prevalent: even ministers of the Gospel, negligent of their sacred function, are become in this sense Athenians; so that the book of God is neither read nor studied with half the avidity and spirit as a newspaper…It is no wonder if such become political preachers, and their sermons be no better than husks for swine. To such the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.”
Adam Clarke lived before social media and the internet. I wonder what he would think of our “modern” times, when hours are spent every day scrolling through posts looking for something new, refreshing screens, and arguing with strangers about nothing on our own “Mars Hills” of Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram, X, and other trivial pursuits?
My next devotional examines one of Paul’s most intriguing sermons in Acts 17:22-34.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - I am grateful that my journey through the “idle babble” of many philosophies led me to return to belief in You. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Gotquestions.org was accessed on 12/6/2024 to answer the question, What is Stoicism?
Precept Austin was accessed on 12/6/2024 to review commentary for Acts 17:16-21.
Enduring Word commentary by David Guzik is used with written permission.