F. F. Bruce
[F. F. Bruce, D.D., F.B.A., is Rylands professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, England, and is the author of many articles and books on biblical and archaeological subjects.]
Paul in Athens
Luke’s vivid account of Paul’s stay in Athens (Acts 17:16–34), for all the accuracy of its local colour, has for a variety of reasons been assessed sceptically by several students of his writings. Happily, we have Paul’s assurance that he did spend some time in Athens, and that for part of that time he was on his own: he tells the Christians of Thessalonica how he sent Timothy back to visit and help them, while he himself was ‘willing to be left behind at Athens alone’ (1 Th 3:1). From all that we know of Paul, we can be certain that in Athens, as elsewhere, he allowed no opportunity for apostolic witness to pass him by. Luke describes some opportunities which he seized, and goes into considerable detail about one of them.
He pictures Paul as viewing the temples, altars and images of Athens through the eyes of one brought up in the spirit of Jewish monotheism and the aniconic principles of the second commandment of the decalogue (vs 16). ‘What pagans sacrifice’, Paul maintained, ‘they offer to demons and not to God’ (1 Corinthians 10:20), and those who ‘exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man’ or anything else ‘exchanged the truth of God for a lie’ because they ‘worshipped and served the creature rather
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than the Creator’ (Romans 1:23, 25). In the agora at the foot of the Acropolis, the citizens of Athens met to exchange the latest news, there was no lack of men ready to enter into debate with him about the nature of the divine being (vs. 17). Some of those professed attachment to the Stoic or Epicurean schools of philosophy (vs. 18), but none of them could come to terms with this strange visitor, so passionately in earnest as he talked about Jesus, ‘designated Son of God in power……by his resurrection from the dead’ (as Paul puts it in Roman 1:4). To some he appeared to be a retailer of scraps of second-hand learning (a spermologos, as they said, using an Athenian slang term); to others he appeared to be commending foreign divinities, and so rendered himself amenable to the jurisdiction of the Areopagus (verses 18, 19).
This body, the most venerable of Athenian institutions, going back into the mists of legendary antiquity, had at one time discharged the functions of a senate. With the growth of democracy in Athens, its earlier powers were greatly reduced, but it retained considerable prestige and continued to exercise responsibility in the realm of religion, morals and homicide. It derived its name from the fact that its original meeting-place was on Areopagus, the hill west of the Acropolis;
The agora at Athens where Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection (Acts 17:18).
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in Roman times, however, it held most of its meetings in the Royal Portico (the stoa basileios) in the agora.
The Areopagus speech
Before this court, then, Paul was brought and invited to expound his teaching. It is uncertain whether we are intended to envisage him as addressing it in the Royal Portico or on the Areopagus itself. The latter is the traditional view: the visitor to Athens to-day can see the text of Paul’s address to the court inscribed on bronze at the foot of the ascent to the hill (verses 22–31).
Paul’s message to the Athenians inscribed on a plaque at the foot of Mars Hill.
Some of the motifs of this speech have appeared earlier in the short summary of Barnabas’ and Paul’s protest to the people of Lystra who were preparing to pay them divine honours (Acts 17:15–17), but the Areopagitica is fuller, more detailed and adapted to the intellectual climate of Athens. At Athens, as formerly at Lystra, the Paul of Acts does not expressly quote Old Testament prophecies which would be quite unknown to his audience: such direct quotations as his speech contains are from Greek poets. But he does not argue from ‘first principles’ of the kind that formed the basis of various systems of Greek philosophy; his exposition and defence of his
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message are founded on the biblical revelation and they echo the thought, and at times the very language, of the Old Testament writings. Like the biblical revelation itself, his speech begins with God the creator of all, continues with God the sustainer of all, and concludes with God the judge of all.
The knowledge of the unknown God (verses 22–25)
He finds his text, his point of contact, in an altar-dedication which illustrated the intense religiosity of the Athenians — a quality which impressed many other visitors to their city in antiquity. The dedication read: Agnosto Theo (‘To an Unknown God’). Other writers tell us that altars to unknown gods were to be seen at Athens: if it is pointed out that no other speaks of an altar ‘to an unknown god’ (in the singular), it may suffice to say that two or more dedications ‘to an unknown god’ might be summarily referred to as ‘altars to unknown gods’ (in the plural).
Various tales were told to account for such anonymous dedications: according to one tale, they were set up by the direction of Epimenides, a wise man of Crete, one of the poets quoted in the course of the speech. Whatever may have been the original circumstances or intention of the inscription which Paul took as his text, he interprets it as a confession of ignorance regarding the divine nature, and says that the purpose of his coming is to dispel that ignorance.
He proceeds, then, to instruct them in the doctrine of God. First, God has created the universe with all that it contains; he is Lord of heaven and earth. This is the very language of biblical revelation: God Most High is ‘maker of heaven and earth’ (Gn 14:19, 23); ‘the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof (Ps 24:1). No concessions are allowed to Hellenistic paganism; no distinction is made between the Supreme Being and a ‘demiurge’ or master-workman who fashioned the world because the Supreme Being was too pure to come into polluting contact with the material order.
Second, God does not inhabit shrines which human hands have built. Stephen’s defence makes this point to the Sanhedrin with reference to the Jerusalem temple, built for the worship of the living God; much more could Paul see fit to impress it on the Areopagus in full view of the magnificent temples which crowned the Acropolis, dedicated to gods that were no gods. The higher paganism, indeed, acknowledged that no material structure could accommodate the
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The Acropolis at Athens.
divine nature: ‘What house fashioned by builders’, asked Euripides, ‘could contain the form divine within enclosing walls?’ But the affinities of Paul’s language are biblical and not classical.
Third, God requires nothing from those whom he has created. Here, too, parallels to Paul’s argument can be adduced from classical Greek literature: Plato’s Euthyphro comes to mind. But Paul stands right within the prophetic tradition. The prophets and psalmists in their day had to refute the idea that the God of Israel was in some degree dependent on his people and their gifts: his people were completely dependent on him. Thus in Ps 50:9–12 he declines their sacrifices in these terms:
I will accept no bull from your house,
nor he-goat from your folds.
For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the air,
and all that moves in the field is mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and all that is in it is mine.
This is precisely Paul’s emphasis when he declares that, if God
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accepts service from men, it is not because he cannot do without it. Far from their supplying any need of his, it is he who supplies every need of theirs.
The doctrine of man (verses 26–31)
Since the creator of all things in general is the creator of the human race in particular, Paul moves on from the doctrine of God to the doctrine of man.
First, man is one. The Greeks might take pride in their natural superiority to barbarians; the Athenians might boast that, unlike their fellow-Greeks, they were autochthonous, sprung from the soil of their Attic homeland. But Paul affirms that mankind is one in origin, all created by God and all descended from a common ancestor. Before God, all human beings meet on one level.
Second, man’s earthly abode and the course of the seasons have been designed for his well-being. This too is a biblical insight. The earth, according to Genesis 1, was formed and furnished to be man’s home before man was introduced as its occupant. Moreover, part of the forming and furnishing of man’s home on earth consisted in the provision of habitable zones to serve as living space for mankind and in the regulation of ‘allotted periods’. The former provision is implied in Dt 32:8:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he separated the sons of men,
He fixed the bounds of the peoples
The ‘allotted periods’ (vs. 26) are to be identified either with the sequence of seed-time and harvest (as in the speech at Lystra) or with the epochs of human history (as in the visions of Daniel).
Third, God’s purpose in making these arrangements was that men might seek and find him — a desire all the more natural because they are his offspring and he aids them in the attainment of his desire by his nearness to them. It is here that the terminology of the speech shows closest Hellenistic affinities, but to a different audience Paul could have expressed the same thought by saying that man is God’s creature, made in his image. To his Athenian audience he establishes his point by two quotations from Greek poets which set forth men’s relation to the Supreme Being.
The first quotation is based on the fourth line of a quatrian attributed to Epimenides the Cretan, in which his fellow-islanders are denounced for their impiety in claiming that the tomb of Zeus could be
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seen in Crete:
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 for ever.
For in thee we live and move and have our being.
The second comes from the poem on Natural Phenomena by Paul’s fellow-Cilician Aratus, a poet deeply influenced by Stoicism. This poem opens with a celebration of Zeus — Zeus the Supreme Being of Stoic philosophy rather than Zeus the head of the Greek mythological pantheon:
Let us begin with Zeus: never, O men, let us
leave him unmentioned. Full of Zeus are all the ways
and all the meeting-places of men; the sea and the
harbours are full of him. It is with Zeus that
every one of us in every way has to do,
for we are also his offspring.
It is not suggested that even the Paul of Acts (let alone the Paul whom we know from his letters) envisaged God in terms of the Zeus of Stoic pantheism, but if men whom his hearers recognized as authorities had used language which could corroborate his argument, he would quote their words, giving them a biblical sense as he did so. Paul’s concern was to impress on his hearers the responsibility of all men, as God’s creatures into whom he has breathed the breath of life, to give him the honour which is his due. And this honour is not given when the divine nature is depicted in material forms. Again we hear the echo of Hebrew prophecy and psalmody when pagan idolatry is under review (Ps 115:4):
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of men’s hands. . .
Finally, a call to repentance is issued. Their ignorance of the divine nature was culpable, but God had mercifully overlooked it. As the people of Lystra were told that God had hitherto ‘allowed all the nations to follow their own ways’, with the implication that now a fresh beginning had come about, so the members of the Areopagus are told that the recent resurrection of Christ is the pledge that by his agency God is about to ‘judge the world in righteousness’ — a further echo of the Hebrew psalmists, who announce that God ‘will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in equity’ (Ps 98:9).
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The ‘man whom he has appointed’ to execute this judgement is readily identified with the ‘one like a son of man’ who, in Dn 7:13f, is seen receiving world-wide authority from the Ancient of Days, and therefore with the one to whom, according to Jn 5:27, the Father has given ‘authority to execute judgment, because he is Son of man’.
The Paulinism of the Areopagus speech
There are many features in this speech which have caused it to be marked down quite confidently as non-Pauline. H. J. Cadbury remarked that ‘the classicists are among the most inclined to plead for the historicity of the scene of Paul at Athens’ — Areopagus address and all. Outstanding among such classicists was Eduard Meyer, who not only professed his inability to understand ‘how any one has found it possible to explain this scene as an invention’ but even claimed to have persuaded Eduard Norden to concede at least the possibility that Luke reproduced the genuine content of Paul’s speech. Norden had argued against its authenticity in his Agnostos Theos (1913), a work based on an exceptionally penetrating analysis of the speech: the Attic flavour of the passage betokened, to his mind, a literary construction made with the aid of an external model. And a more illustrious classicist than Norden or Meyer, the great Wilamowitz, had concluded that the religious sentiment of the Areopagitica was not that of the real Paul, who (unlike the composer of the speech) did not directly take over any of the elements of Greek education.
But it is theologians rather than classicists who have, one after another, most categorically denied any association of the Areopagitica with the Paul of the letters. Here, says one, the Pauline emphasis on being ‘in Christ’ by grace is replaced by a pagan emphasis on being ‘in God’ by nature. Instead of setting forth the Pauline gospel, says another, the speech anticipates the rationalism of the second-century apologists, in its attempt to establish the true knowledge of God by an appeal to Greek poets and thinkers. Its message, says a third, is set in a context not merely of salvation-history but of world-history, which is even more un-Pauline. According to a fourth, the ‘word of the cross’ is tactfully omitted, because it was known to be ‘folly to Gentiles’ (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:23).
Yet it is not too difficult to envisage the author of the first three chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans making several of the points
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which are central to the Areopagltica. The differences in emphasis can be appreciated if it is remembered that the letter was written to Christians while the speech was delivered to pagans. In the letter Paul insists that the knowledge of God, his ‘everlasting power and divinity’, is available from his works in creation, to the point where men are ‘without excuse, for although they knew God they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened’ (Romans 1: 19–21). Nevertheless God in his forbearance had passed over these and other sins previously committed, but now that he had manifested his way of righteousness ‘through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe’ a new responsibility rested upon those to whom the Gospel came (Romans 3:21–26). If in the speech God’s purpose in making himself known to men was that they might ‘touch him and find him’, in Romans 2:4 his forbearance and kindness are designed to lead them to repentance. Jesus Christ, through faith in whom the divine pardon and gift of righteousness were obtainable by men, was at the same time the one through whom, on a coming day, according to Paul’s gospel, God would judge the secrets of men’ (Romans 2:16).
Take the author of those words and bring him to Athens: invite him to expound his teaching not to fellow-believers but to cultured pagans. Remember that he has now for several years been a successful evangelist in the pagan world — a fact which, despite his own modest disclaimer, implies considerable persuasiveness in speech and approach, including the ability to find and exploit an initial area of common ground with his hearers, apart from which any attempt at communication would be fruitless. How will he address himself to such an audience? He will certainly try not to alienate them in his first sentence or two. It is underestimating Paul’s versatility, his capacity for being ‘all things to all men’, to think that he could not have presented the essence of Romans 1–3 to pagans along the lines Acts 17:22–31. True, Luke did not hear Paul address the court of the Areopagus, but he knew how Paul was accustomed to present his praeparatio evangelica to such an audience, and endeavoured, following the example of Thucydides, ‘to give the general sense of what was actually said’.
If it be borne in mind that this is Luke’s summary of a speech which may in any case have been more praeparatio than evangelium, then some of the objections to its substantial authenticity may not appear to be insuperable. The quotation ‘In him we live and move
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and have our being’ does not imply a ‘God-mysticism’, as Schweitzer argued; it is adduced simply to confirm that God is the author and sustainer of our life. The thought of being ‘in Christ’ by grace would have been meaningless to pagans. Epimenides and Aratus are not invoked as authorities in their own right; certain things which they said, however, can be understood as pointing to the knowledge of God. But the knowledge of God presented in the speech is not rationalistically conceived or established; it is the knowledge of God taught by. Hebrew prophets and sages. It is rooted in the fear of God; it belongs to the same order as truth, goodness and covenant-love; for lack of it men and women perish; in the coming day of God it will fill the earth ‘as the waters cover the sea’ (Is 11:9). The ‘delicately suited allusions’ to Stoic and Epicurean tenets which have been discerned in the speech, like the quotations from pagan poets, have their place as points of contact with the audience, but they do not commit the speaker to acquiescence in the realm of ideas to which they originally belong. Unlike some later Christian apologists, the Paul of Acts does not cease to be fundamentally biblical in his approach to the Greeks, even when his biblical emphasis might seem to diminish his chances of success.
The salvation-history of the Areopagitica finds its climax in Christ, as does the salvation-history of the Pauline letters. The salvation-history of the letters is naturally more detailed and comprehensive: the outline in Romans 1:18ff. of the progressive working of divine retribution against human sin forms the backcloth to the unfolding of divine grace in the Gospel; the Gospel itself was preached in advance to Abraham and foreshadowed by the prophets, and was fulfilled in Christ. To the ‘now God commands’ of the speech corresponds the ‘now is the acceptable time’ of 2 Corinthians 6:2. As for world-history, it plays no greater part here than it plays in Paul’s letters: in both the life of humanity moves forward between the poles of creation and judgment.
True, ‘the word of the cross’ is absent from the speech. This could be as much because the speech is more praeparatio than evangelium as because Luke’s theologia gloriae has taken precedence over Paul’s theologia crucis. The latter possibility used to be linked with Paul’s confessed decision, when he moved on from Athens to Corinth, to ‘know nothing’ among the Corinthians ‘except Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Corinthians 2:2), as though he realized that his tactics in Athens were unwise. But Paul by this time was no novice in Gentile
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evangelization, experimenting with this approach and that in order to discover which was most effective. It is probable that Paul’s decision at Corinth was based on his assessment of the situation there.
The resurrection of the dead
There is nothing, however, to commend the suggestion that ‘the word of the cross’ was tactfully omitted from the Areopagitica because it was known to be folly to Gentiles: no mention of the cross could have appeared more foolish to these particular Gentiles than did the note on which the speech concluded — the resurrection of the dead. God, it is stated, has confirmed the certainty of the coming day of judgment by raising from the dead the man through whom that judgment will be delivered.
If the speech be treated realistically, some of the hearers could be pictured as asking to be told more about this man — to be told, in particular, what there was about him that occasioned his being raised from the dead. If it is viewed stylistically, then it is seen to end with a fitting peroration. But the content of the peroration was totally uncongenial to the majority of the hearers. If Paul had spoken of the immortality of the soul, he would have commanded the assent of most of his hearers except the Epicureans, but the idea of resurrection was absurd. When the Athenian tragedian Aeschylus, half a millennium before, described the institution of that very court of the Areopagus by Athene, the city’s patron deity, he had made the god Apollo say:
When the dust has soaked up a man’s blood.
Once he is dead, there is no resurrection.
— and the word for resurrection there (anastasis) is the word which Paul used. To what purpose did this man come to Athens with his talk of resurrection when every Athenian knew, on the highest authority, that there could be no such thing?
Outright ridicule and polite dismissal were the main responses to Paul’s exposition of the knowledge of God. Of the few whom it persuaded to positive response it might be said, as Paul said of his Thessalonian converts, that they ‘turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, our deliverer from the wrath to come’ (1 Th 1:
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9f.). There is as little explicit mention of the theologia crucis in this testimony as there is in the Areopagus speech, but it would be precarious to infer that Paul at Thessalonica said nothing about the cross. We hear, however, of no church in Athens in the apostolic age, and when Paul speaks of the ‘firstfruits of Achaia’ it is to a family in Corinth that he refers (1 Corinthians 16:15).
(Reprinted by permission from The Expository Times, Vol., LXXVII, No. 1, Oct. 1976.)
AUDIO-VISUAL PROGRAMS ON ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE
The programs listed below are available to interested groups on a loan basis. Each program consists of 35mm slides and a cassette tape and is 25 to 30 minutes in length. The programs are interesting, educational and have a dear Christian message. When ordering, indicate first, second and third choices and the date to be shown. To cover production and handling costs, a minimum contribution of $5 must accompany your order. Order from: Word of Truth, Box 288, Ballston Spa, N.Y. 12020.
OLD TESTAMENT
F
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? (Early chapters of Genesis and Daniel)
A
TREASURES OLD AND NEW (Abraham)
B
FROM PRISON TO PALACE (Joseph)
C
TREASURES GREATER THAN EGYPT (Moses)
D
JOSHUA AND THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN
O
A GREATER THAN SOLOMON IS HERE
E
ASSYRIA AND THE REIGN OF TERROR
G
STONES THAT CRY OUT (Nation of Judah)
J
WHO TOLD THE PROPHETS (Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre)
H
THE SCROLLS OF THE DEAD SEA, PART I
I
THE SCROLLS OF THE DEAD SEA, PART II
U
ISRAEL IN PROPHECY
T
DIGGING UP THE PAST (Archaeology at Tell Gezer)
V
SEARCH FOR NOAH’S ARK (Filmstrip)
NEW TESTAMENT
K
A KING IS BORN
M
LISTENING TO JESUS
N
STORIES OF JESUS
P
JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT
L
HE LOVED THEM TO THE END
S
THE PLACE OF A SKULL
O
LUKE THE HISTORIAN
R
POINTERS FROM PAUL
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