Do you remember the film, “The Gods Must Be Crazy”? It centred on the reactions of a primitive tribe who hadn’t previously come into contact with Western civilisation. It was all so new and they couldn’t understand it — right from the discovery of the first Coca Cola bottle! Assuming you have learnt the language of such a tribe, how do you begin to explain the things we take for granted to people who don’t have the words and concepts to describe them?
It can be hard enough for people who have lived all their lives in the outback when they make their first visit to a big city. And they at least have heard about it, seen photos… The language is the same. It is just that it is part of their culture that they have never experienced before.
Paul’s second missionary journey brought him to
Next they came to Thessalonica. During three weeks of discussions in the synagogue, quite a number of Jews and Greeks believed. But some unbelieving Jews stirred up a riot and brought an accusation to the city authorities, “These men have caused trouble everywhere! Now they have come to our city, and Jason has kept them in his house. They are all breaking the laws of the Emperor, saying that there is another king, whose name is Jesus.”
Paul and Silas went on to
Now Paul was in
So Paul’s strategy was twofold — (1) he held discussions in the synagogue with the Jews and the Gentiles who worshipped God, and (2) he went into the public square every day and discussed with the people who happened to pass by…
Some of the teachers of philosophy — they thought themselves
very learned and clever indeed — debated with him, but regarded him as a
“babbler”. (The Greek word was used to describe a sparrow picking up scraps or a derelict scrounging scraps that might have “fallen off the
back of a lorry”! Most likely in a learned place like Athens there were many
who picked up a few ideas from some deep thinker or another and tried to put
themselves forward as someone of importance!) Others thought he must be talking
about “foreign gods”. These were two names he seemed to be using — Jesus and
Anastasis — except that Jesus was a person who had really lived, who had come
to reveal the one true God and Anastasis (resurrection from the dead) is what
literally happened to him on the third day after he died. The upshot of it all
was that he was invited to speak before the Council of the Areopagus. It got
its name from Areopagus, the hill of Ares (or Mars Hill), where their meetings
were first held. While some of its earlier powers had been cut back, it had
retained authority in matters of religion and morals and so exercised some
control over people like Paul.
Luke comments that the Athenians “liked to spend all their time telling and hearing the latest new thing.” Nearly four hundred years before, the Greek historian Thucycides reported Cleon as scolding them, “You are the best people at being deceived by something new.”
In Paul’s address to the Areopagus, he starts from where his
hearers are. What has he observed in
The story reported by Diogenes Laertius
in the early third century A.D. was that there had been a serious epidemic and
the Athenians had consulted Epimenides from
But this altar to the “unknown God” became the beginning point for Paul’s message. Here was a point at which they had acknowledged the inadequacy and incompleteness of their system of worship. Paul was not saying that their superstitious erecting of these altars to unknown deities was appropriate and good. And yet it was the one point at which they acknowledged, in a fairly indirect way, their unfulfilled spiritual hunger. So Paul is saying to them, it is this God to whom you have been reaching out in worship without knowing about him — this is the God I want to tell you about!
This is the God who made everything and he “gives life and breath and everything else to everyone” — even though you have not known him, he has still been caring for you. And God’s care for all races of mankind was “so that they would look for him, and perhaps find him as they felt about for him.” Yet God has not been remote from us. Paul doesn’t refer to the Jewish Scriptures for support here. Rather he takes lines from two Greek poets setting out the relation between human beings and the Supreme Being. The first of these was by Epimenides and is curious because Paul quotes another part of it in his letter to Titus. Perhaps as we hear its four lines we may think of other reasons why Paul referred to it!
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 from a poem by Aratus - “We too are his children.”
Both these poems were in fact originally written about Zeus, the ruling member of the Greek pantheon. But Paul is not identifying Zeus with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What he is saying is that, in their search for the ultimate meaning of life, the universe and everything, these poets have made true statements about the Supreme Being — who is not, however, the Zeus of Greek worship, but the Unknown God whom Paul is now making known to them…
If we are truly the children of God, Paul goes on to say, “we shouldn’t suppose that his nature is anything like an image of gold or silver or stone, shaped by the art and skill of man. God has overlooked the times when people did not know him, but now he commands all of them everywhere to turn away from their evil ways.” God, and God alone, knows the extent to which people have been sincerely reaching out to try to find him or simply expressing their rebellion against him. Missionaries have sometimes reported that whole tribes have seemed to be just ready to receive the gospel — the spiritual search has been fulfilled.
So God has revealed himself to us. The question is — how are we going to respond to him?
God is true, and we are not to make up our own gods, but to learn to know the true God. The true God has made himself known in the coming of Jesus Christ. And the time is coming when he will judge the whole world with justice by means of Jesus Christ. The guarantee of this is in his resurrection.
Because of the discovery of who God really is, it is now imperative to repent of sin and to turn away from false worship.
Some of the people who heard Paul thought it was a bit funny talking about someone rising from death. Some were curious and wanted to hear more. But there were others who joined Paul and believed.
We have heard the message. It has been made clear to us. How have we responded to it?
So we have believed in Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord. We believe that it the good news that everyone needs to hear. How do we begin to get the message across to them?
© Peter J. Blackburn,
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture
quotations are from the Good News Bible, © American Bible Society, 1984.
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