Deja vu, all over again

Before I disappeared into the vast blogless void early last year, I had begun planning a series of posts delving into Paul’s preaching at the Areopagus in Athens, as described in Acts 17. Then, when I came back on the scene a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned this series as one of the things that might get some ‘airtime’ here on the blog. Before we get started, you might want to open up a new window with Acts 17:16-33 for reference.

In later segments, we’ll talk about the essential groundwork that Paul lays down in order to break down the worldview of his hearers before he even gets to the gospel. Of course, we’ll also cover the brief, but clear, gospel message that Paul preaches. However, in this first installment, I want to point out how eerily similar first-century Athens was to our own modern world - it is those similarities that will help us see just how Paul’s apologetic can be used as a framework for our own.

Religious pluralism

“... the city was full of idols.”   “... I perceive that in every way you are very religious.”

There were two primary causes of the pluralistic society into which Paul came to preach the gospel. First was the Roman Empire’s historical tendency to adopt “local” gods into their pantheon, and to require the local populace to worship the Roman gods as well. This practice helped ensure that a subjugated people would be less likely to rebel; after all, the “gods” were now on both sides! 

The other reason for the pluralism he encountered in Athens - and one which is far more recognizable in our own post-modern culture - was simply the result of urbanization. The close quarters in which so many people had to live and work created a sort of ‘coerced civility’, or what today we would call 'tolerance'. Of course, this has many good aspects - like the fact that we don’t seek to kill or imprison someone who thinks differently than we do - but it also tends to soften the distinctive edges of various belief systems.

Tolerance is a good thing when applied to the behavior of individuals, but a bad thing in our belief systems.

To put it more clearly, tolerance is a good thing when applied to the behavior of individuals within a culture, but it can become a very bad thing when it appears in our belief systems.

We now live in a culture that is steeped in religious pluralism; a culture that demands “tolerance” for every perversion of truth imaginable, all while simultaneously redefining the term. This is why so many who claim to be Christians no longer want to acknowledge the clear and unavoidable claims of exclusivity that Christ made regarding himself. But, as we’ll see in a later article, Paul did not flinch from this fact as he spoke to those in the Areopagus.

Hostility towards a biblical worldview

In whichever towns Paul went, he would always begin his preaching in the Jewish synagogue (Acts 13:5, 13:14-43, 14:1, 17:1-3, 17:10-12). Even here in Athens, that’s where he started (see Acts 17:17). In that context, he would (rightly) assume that his hearers had a biblical worldview; he would then use Scripture to prove that Jesus was the Messiah.

But his dealings with the various philosophers shows that Paul was now preaching to people who were not merely biblically illiterate, but to people who held worldviews that were in direct contradiction with Scripture (and with one another, for that matter). Only two are mentioned in the text itself - Epicureans and Stoics - but understanding the way they viewed the world is essential to understanding the nature of Paul’s preaching.

Understanding the way Epicureans and Stoics viewed the world is essential to understanding the nature of Paul’s preaching.

(A quick aside before I go on: I should mention that “philosophy” in ancient Athens did not mean “the subject you major in if you don’t want a job when you graduate”. Philosophy, in this historical context, meant the same thing that we would mean when we talk of a person’s “worldview” today - it’s an entire way of life, an all-encompassing, over-arching understanding that defines how a person sees, interprets and responds to the events of their life.)

Epicureans viewed reality as the random combination and dispersion of atoms; they would find the concept of a bodily resurrection absolutely laughable (see Acts 17:32). Stoics, on the other hand, were pantheists, and identified the divine as the principle of reason within all and - via the concept of an impersonal ‘fate’ - ruling all.

These disparate worldviews lead Paul’s hearers to insult him: “What does this babbler wish to say?” The Greek word for “babbler” here literally means “one who picks up seeds” and suggests one who pecks at ideas as a chicken, and then spouts them off without fully understanding them. There is a strongly condescending attitude coming from these learned men of Athens.

Similarly, we now live in a time where we can no longer safely assume a basic biblical worldview here in America, let alone anywhere else in the world. To the contrary, those with whom we must share the gospel now possess a worldview that, like those of the Epicureans and Stoics, is completely contradictory to Scripture. Whether it’s the secular humanist belief that we live in a world created by random chance (Epicurean), or the New Age pantheistic beliefs of postmodernism (Stoicism), we face worldviews that are strikingly similar to what Paul encountered. Finally, I don’t think I need to point out the condescension, if not outright hostility, with which most of the world views Christianity. Go and share the gospel with strangers in a public place for even five minutes and you’ll quickly be called worse things than “babbler”!

Fascination with the novel and unusual

“Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”

Luke gives us a preview of the response Paul will receive by portraying the Athenians as intellectual dilettantes more than actual truth-seekers. Skepticism had made major inroads by this time in history, and Athen’s intellectual life was marked by uncertainty and turmoil. They were fascinated with the trivial, obsessed with the new, and often enamored of the inconsequential.

Today’s culture is no different; as evidence, I point to the success of the banal, so-called “reality” television programming flooding our airwaves... or to the rise in the last decade of 24-hour news networks... or to the constant need to know what relatively useless thing our ‘friends’ are doing on facebook or twitter.

Our fascination with the new and different is pursued with more vigor, and on a larger scale, than anything the Athenians could have ever dreamed!

Our fascination with the new and different is pursued with more vigor, and on a larger scale, than anything the Athenians could have ever dreamed! Sadly, we see some in the church fall victim to this mentality - the emergent and emerging church movements are prime examples of how an obsession with being ‘cutting-edge’ can go much too far.

Conclusion

We could have gone into far more detail about the idolatry in Athens and how similar it is to our current “spiritual, but not religious” world - but that may be its own post someday down the line. For now, we’ll go with these three similarities: religious pluralism, a worldview antithetical to biblical truths, and fascination with the new and different. It seems clear that our world is far more similar to first-century Athens than one might initially believe.

In our next two segments in this study of Acts 17, we’ll take a closer look at how Paul directly addresses the worldview of his hearers, taking it on and dismantling it piece by piece. He does not try to fit the gospel message into the worldview of his hearers, as so many in our modern church seem to do. Instead, he does the hard and necessary work of tearing down worldviews that are incompatible with the biblical gospel before he even gets to the gospel itself!

As always, your thoughts, comments and questions are welcome. Stay tuned...