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Act_17:22-34
The Epicureans treated this with some scorn, saying to one another, “What doth the babbler mean?” The Stoics, as if they had caught a glimpse of his meaning, observed to him.—“Thou seemest to be a setter forth of strange gods!” This the sacred historian informs us, was “because he preached unto them Jesus and the Resurrection;” meaning, it would seem, that these two words, so frequent from his lips, were taken by them for names of the gods, male and female, Jesus and Anastasis (the resurrection), whose worship he proposed to their acceptance. Not that they were so stupid as to take Anastasis for the proper name of a person, but because the idea was familiar to their minds of erecting altars to qualities and conditions; and we know that there were in Athens, altars to Health, Peace, Fame, Modesty, Impetuosity, Persuasion, Democracy, and the like.
A perilous danger lurked darkly in the imputation that he was a setter forth of strange gods. The principle bearing upon this matter, which was lately explained, had its origin in Athens, and was still enforced there. No people were more courteous and accommodating than they to the worship of other nations. They had, indeed, at this time become anxious to enroll as their own all the gods of good repute upon the face of the earth. But still, the introduction of any new god was a matter of state privilege, and it was still death for any private person to introduce the worship of any god that had not been publicly recognized. It was under this law that Socrates had been tried and condemned, on the ground that he taught the worship of strange gods.
The tribunal that condemned him was called the Areopagus—from its place of session being upon the hill so named—translated Mars Hill. This hill was sufficiently noticed last evening. The court was composed of the most distinguished men in Athens; and in public estimation was regarded as the most august tribunal, not only of Athens, but of Greece, if not of the civilized world. The eminent men were wanting; but the tribunal subsisted, and its members were still persons of weight and dignity. Its ancient functions were also in the main preserved; for Athens was allowed after the Roman conquest of Greece to retain its freedom, with its old laws, and tribunals, and magistrates, though necessarily subject to the imperial edicts. This court had still, then, the exclusive jurisdiction of determining what objects of worship should be admitted, and of inflicting punishment upon innovators. The court met for three consecutive days in every month; and when it next met, Paul was arrested, and taken up the steps leading to the platform on the Areopagus, where the court was then sitting. It has, indeed, been questioned whether or not the apostle was formally arraigned, as a setter forth of strange gods, before the tribunal seated on the hill. This must remain doubtful, but the balance inclines to the affirmative; and it is hard to see how such a court as this could entertain the matter at all but in its judicial capacity. It may be discerned also that Paul speaks with a clear consciousness of the results of an adverse issue on the point really involved. Whatever view be taken of this, there can be but one opinion as to the oration of the apostle—though, altogether admirable as it is, the form in which it has reached us seems to be only a compendium or summary of his entire argument.
The delicacy of the opening words is entitled to attention. While Paul is willing to propitiate the good will of the judges, he remembers his own dignity as an apostle, and the gravity of the tribunal before which he stands; and although, on the one hand, careful to avoid any ground of offence, he takes care, on the other, to say nothing which can, by the most distant implication, be taken to sanction the evil worship of the heathen. Hence with admirable discretion he chooses a form of words that may be taken as a compliment of the highest order, while it may also be understood to convey a delicate reproof of excessive veneration for many gods. No translation can offer this alternative of sense in the same word. Our translators have chosen the bad sense: “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.” But modern translators prefer the better sense, seeing that it was the object of the apostle not to irritate his hearers, but to induce them to listen to him, “Ye are exceedingly devout,” or, “devout overmuch.” He then addresses himself to the charge that he was a setter forth of strange gods. To this he pleads “not guilty.” He says, “As I was passing by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God.” It is asserted that there were many altars consecrated to unknown deities at Athens, for when any public calamity was not removed by the invocation of the gods known to the laws, it was customary to let the victims loose into the fields, or along the public ways, and wherever they stopped there to sacrifice them “to the propitious unknown god.” It has been urged with great earnestness that among these, or apart from these, there must have been an altar to Jehovah, as the unknown god. It certainly might be so, for the Greeks regarded the god worshipped at Jerusalem as peculiarly hidden, mysterious, and unknown, his very name being a cherished mystery among his worshippers. They were not unlikely to have set up an altar to him at or about the time they gave a statue to his high priest; and if they did this, they could hardly describe him otherwise than as the unknown god, for if they had applied for his name it could not have been imparted to them. Still, we do not see the need of this. If the Athenians did receive relief in calamity, it could not have been from their own idols, which were “nothing.” It could only have been from the one true God; and the altar they set up to the God who had delivered them, and who was to them an unknown god, was virtually to Him. Paul had, therefore, a perfect right to appropriate all such altars to the Lord. In these altars the state had therefore, however unknowingly, recognized Him. Taken either way, it is plain that, by this one great master-stroke, Paul shows himself clear of the charge of declaring a god not acknowledged by the laws of Athens, or of the empire—“Him whom ye worship as the unknown God, declare I unto you.”
Having thus skilfully opened his case, Paul proceeded with his statement; and it is very safe to say that in all the choicest oratory of the heathen world there is nothing to compare with the splendor, majesty, and dignity with which he entered upon his explanation; and the felicity is no less admirable than the boldness with which he refers to the scene by which he was surrounded. The court of the Areopagus was uncovered, and above him was only the canopy of heaven. Around him was plain and mountain, and in the distance was the expanse of ocean. Immediately before him was the Acropolis, with the glorious Parthenon, and the colossal statue of Minerva and a thousand other images, many of them glittering with silver. How impressively then, but with what peril, must he have uttered these words: “God, that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He were in need of anything, seeing that He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell oil the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, and move. and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.”
Many persons in their acquaintance with old ideas and ancient things, have been apt to consider that the apostle, throughout his whole speech, utters truths previously unknown to the polite and learned assembly he addressed. But this would have been the certain ruin of his cause. Although he cites the poets but once or twice, the fact is that there is not one of his statements, separately taken, which might not remind his hearers of analogous declarations by their own philosophers and poets, whose evidence he could have adduced. The charm lies in the consummate skill with which this great master of reasoning interweaves, and binds up these indisputable positions, into a cogent and undeniable introduction to the really new matter he was about to produce.
We cannot here adduce the corroboratory admissions by the heathen writers. But in regard to his quotation from “certain poets of their own,” we may mention that he is judged to refer to Aratus, the Cicilian, and therefore a countryman of his own, and to Cleanthes, the stoic of Assos in Troas—for in the Phenomena of the former, and in the Hymn to Jove of the latter, the corresponding expressions are found. We give them in the translation furnished by Mr. Lewin. Note: Life and Epistles of St. Paul, i. 284.
“From Jove begin we—who can touch the string,
And not harp praise to Heaven’s eternal king?
He animates the mart and crowded way,
The restless ocean, and the sheltered bay.
Doth care perplex? is lowering danger nigh?
We are his offspring, and to Jove we fly.”
Aratus.
“Great Jove! most glorious of the immortal band,Worshipped by many names alone in might!
Author of all! Whose word is Nature’s law!
Hail! Unto thee may mortals lift their voice,
For we thine offspring are. All things that creep
Are but the echo of the voice Divine.”
Cleanthes.
The words, “for in Him we live, and move, and have our being,” are also regarded by some as a quotation, and an old iambic to the same effect is cited by commentators. This, however, may have been by a Christian writer, and founded upon this text. But the sentiment is not infrequent in ancient writers, and a large number of parallel quotations might be adduced.Having thus cleared his way, Paul proceeded to set forth the first elements of the Gospel, as a new development of the most ancient faith known to men, and a full explication of the matter charged to him as a crime, when he had before “preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection.” He informed them that the latter was no goddess, as they had supposed. But what he did mean to teach was—that the times of ignorance in which God, where worshipped at all, was worshipped as an “unknown God” had passed; and now He called upon every man to repent; for all men were to rise from the dead, of which an earnest had been given in the resurrection of that man whom He had appointed to judge the world in righteousness at the last day.
At this “some mocked.” These were probably the Epicureans, who denied a future state altogether, and to whom therefore the doctrine of a resurrection must have seemed absurd. Others were more favorably impressed by what Paul had said, and thought the matter worthy of further inquiry—these may have been partly the Stoics, who to some extent admitted a future life, and still more assuredly the Platonists, of whom there must have been many present, though they are not named in the narrative. The tribunal itself must have comprised all these three sects, and it is probably its collective decision which is embodied in the statement that—“Others said, We will hear thee again in this matter.” The court was in fact adjourned.
There were some minds upon which Paul’s address made a fully suitable impression—some souls whom the Lord allowed him to bear away in his spiritual spoil from Mars’ Hill. There were several, but those particularly named are “Dionysius, the Areopagite”—that is, one the members of that august court before which he had pleaded; and “a woman named Damaris.” His labor, therefore, was not wholly in vain; and it is probable that the persons thus converted formed the nucleus of that church which afterwards existed at Athens, though it does not appear that Paul ever again visited that city. He quitted it soon, probably firm in the conviction that it had not yet become a ripened field of labor, and that, with so many more promising fields around, it was not his duty to linger there—the less as he had not come there with any express views of missionary work.
He had also been joined by Timothy from Berea. He came alone, for Silas, in the critical state of the church there, had not thought it advisable to come away. The intelligence which Timothy brought, and for which he waited, deprived him of the hope he had cherished of being soon enabled to return to Thessalonica. He heard that the Jews there were still exasperated against him, and bent upon his destruction. Being thus prevented from going himself, and yet anxious for the spiritual safety of a flock left among wolves without a shepherd, he deprived himself of Timothy’s company, and sent him to Thessalonica. He had no one else to send, Luke being at Philippi, and Silas at Berea; and although he might have desired to send one to whom years and experience might have given more weight and authority, he knew that Timothy was faithful and true, and wise and able beyond his years. In the epistle written to this church soon after, he says that when he “could no longer forbear,” he had sent “Timothy, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith.” It is from this epistle that we gain the knowledge of these circumstances, which Like had passed over in the historical narrative.