17:16 Athens stood five miles inland from its port of Piraeus, which was on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea. Athens had reached its prime 500 years before Paul visited it, in the time of Pericles (461-429 B.C.).705However it was still the cultural and intellectual center of the Greek world. Paul observed many of the temples and statues that still stand there today. Now these objects are of interest mainly for their artistic value, but in Paul's day they were idols and places of worship that the Greeks regarded as holy.
"It was said that there were more statues of the gods in Athens than in all the rest of Greece put together, and that in Athens it was easier to meet a god than a man."706
Paul's Jewish upbringing and Christian convictions made all this idolatry repulsive to him.
"The intellectual capital of the world was producing idolatry."707
17:17 Paul continued his ministry to Jews and God-fearing Greeks in the synagogue but also discussed the gospel with any who wanted to do so in the market place (Gr. agora; cf. Jer. 20:9). These people were probably not God-fearing Gentiles but simply pagan Gentiles. The Agora was the center of civic life in Athens. There the philosophers gathered to discuss and debate their views. It lay to the west of the Acropolis, on which the Parthenon still stands, and Mars Hill.
17:18 Epicureans were disciples of Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) who believed that pleasure was the greatest good and the most worthy pursuit of man. They meant pleasure in the sense of tranquility and freedom from pain, disquieting passions, and fears, especially the fear of death. Epicurus taught that the gods took no interest in human affairs. His followers also believed that everything happened by chance and that death was the end of all. This philosophy is still popular today. One of its modern poets was A. C. Swinburne.
". . . Epicureanism is most fairly described as the ancient representative of modern utilitarianism."708
Stoics followed the teachings of Zeno the Cypriot (340-265 B.C.). The name "stoic"comes from "stoa,"a particular portico (Gr. stoa) where he taught when he lived in Athens. His followers placed great importance on living in harmony with nature. They stressed individual self-sufficiency and rationalism, and they had a reputation for being quite arrogant. Stoics were pantheists who believe that God is in everything, and everything is God. They were also fatalistic. Their teaching is also common today. A modern poet who set forth this philosophy of life, W. E. Henley, wrote, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul,"in his poem Invictus. Stoics were also idealists.709
The Greek word spermologos, translated "babbler,"refers to someone who picked up the words of others as a bird picks up seeds. Paul's hearers implied that he had put together a philosophy of life simply by picking up this and that scrap of an idea from various sources. Others accused him of proclaiming new gods, though his critics seem to have misunderstood his references to the resurrection (Gr. anastasis) as being references to a person, perhaps a female counterpart of Jesus.
17:19-20 The exact location of the Areopagus (Gr., Areios Pagos; lit. court or council of Ares, the Greek god of war) is difficult to determine. The Athenians used the word in two ways in Luke's day.710It referred to the Hill of Ares (i.e., Mars Hill) on which the Council of the Areopagus conducted its business in ancient times. It also referred to the group of about 30 citizens known as the Council of the Areopagus who met in the Royal Portico of the Agora. The question is, does "the Areopagus"refer to the people or the place? Luke's description is ambiguous.
The Council of the Areopagus had authority over religion, morals, and education in Athens. Its members wanted to know what Paul was advocating. Enemies of Socrates had poisoned him for teaching strange ideas in Athens, so Paul was in some danger.
17:21 Luke inserted this sentence to help his readers who might not be familiar with Athenian culture know how unusually attracted the Athenians were to new ideas.
"We Athenians stay at home doing nothing, always delaying and making decrees, and asking in the market if there be anything new."711
This interest gave Paul an opportunity to preach the gospel.
Luke probably recorded Paul's address (vv. 22-31) as a sample of his preaching to intellectual pagans (cf. 13:16-41; 14:15-18; 20:18-35).712In this speech Paul began with God as Creator and brought his hearers to God as Judge.
17:22 Paul was not flattering his audience by calling them "very religious;"this was a statement of fact. The Greek words simply mean that they were firm in their reverence for their gods. Paul again followed his policy of adapting to the people he was seeking to evangelize and met them where they were in their thinking (cf. 1 Cor. 9:22).
17:23 Paul may have meant that he was going to tell his audience more about a God whom they worshipped but did not know much about, namely Yahweh. This interpretation assumes that there were people in Athens who were worshipping the Creator. Alternatively Paul may have meant that he would inform them of a God whom they did not know but had built an altar to honor. In either case, Paul began with the Athenians' interest in gods and their confessed ignorance about at least one god and proceeded to explain what Yahweh had revealed about Himself.
"An altar has been found at Pergamum inscribed to the unknown deities'. Such altars had no special deity in view. The dedication was designed to ensure that no god was overlooked to the possible harm of the city."713
"His point, as in Rom. 2:14-16, is that God has revealed some knowledge of himself and his will to all men, but that this has been clarified and illuminated by his special revelation through the Scriptures and now finally in the Gospel."714
17:24 The true God created all things. Since He is Lord of heaven and earth, human temples cannot contain Him. He is transcendent over all (cf. 7:48-50). This harmonized with the Epicureans' idea of God as above the world, but it corrected the Stoics' pantheism. Some Greek philosophers agreed that temples did not really house their pagan gods, but many Greeks thought they did.
17:25 The true God also sustains all things; He does not need people to sustain Him. In other words, He is imminent as well as transcendent. He participates in human existence. This contradicted the Epicureans' belief that God took no interest in human affairs as well as the Stoics' self-sufficiency.
17:26 The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, prided themselves on being racially superior to all other people. Still Paul told them that they, like all other people, had descended from one source, Adam. This fact excludes the possibility of the essential superiority of any race. God also determines the times of nations--their seasons, when they rise and fall--and their boundaries. In other words, God is sovereign over the political and military affairs of nations. The Greeks liked to think that they determined their own destiny.
17:27 God's purpose in regulating times and boundaries was that people would realize His sovereignty and seek Him (cf. Rom. 1; John 6:44; 12:32). God, Paul said, is not far from human contact. This again harmonized with some Greek philosophy, but it contradicted the teachings of other philosophers.
"It is implied in Acts xvii that the pagan world had made little progress in searching for its Creator. In Romans it is more vigorously stated that, for all God's visible presence in His creation, the world at large had failed to find Him."715
17:28 Here Paul cited lines from two Greek writers who expressed ideas that were consistent with divine revelation. The Cretan poet Epimenides (c. 600 B.C.; cf. Titus 1:12) had written, "For in thee we live and move and have our being."716The Cilician poet Aratus (c. 315-240 B.C.), and Cleanthes (331-233 B.C.) before him, had written, "We are also his offspring."717Paul's purpose in these quotations was to get his audience to continue to agree with him about the truth.
17:29 Paul's conclusion was that idolatry, therefore, is illogical. If God created people, God cannot be an image or an idol. Paul was claiming that God's divine nature is essentially spiritual rather than material.
17:30 Before Jesus Christ came, God did not view people as being as guilty as He does now that Christ has come. They were guilty of failing to respond to former revelation, but now they are more guilty in view of the greater revelation that Jesus Christ brought at His incarnation (cf. Heb. 1:1-2). God overlooked the times of ignorance (i.e., when people had only limited revelation; cf. 3:17; 14:16; Rom. 3:25; 2 Pet. 3:9) in a relative sense only. Before the Incarnation people died as unbelievers and were lost, but now there is more light. Consequently people's guilt is greater this side of the Incarnation. Obviously many people have not heard the gospel and are as ignorant of the greater revelation of God that Jesus Christ brought as were people who lived before the Incarnation. Nevertheless they live in a time when God has revealed more of Himself than previously.
This makes it all the more important that Christians take the gospel to everyone. Greater revelation by God means greater responsibility for people, both for the unsaved and for the saved. God previously took the relative lack of understanding about Himself into consideration as He dealt with people. Now that Christ has come, He will hold people more responsible for their sins.
"Paul appeals to the relation of Creator and creature, and to God as universal judge, in order to provide a foundation for a gospel that can address the whole of humanity. The internal impulse for this speech (internal to the implied author's perspective) comes from the need to speak of all humanity sharing an essentially similar relation to God as a basis for an inclusive gospel, a gospel commensurate with the inclusive saving purpose of God announced in Luke 2:30-32."718
"The Bible requires repentance for salvation, but repentance does not mean to turn from sin, nor a change in one's conduct. Those are the fruits of repentance. Biblical repentance is a change of mind or attitude concerning either God [Acts 20:21], Christ [Acts 2:38], dead works [Heb. 6:1], or sin [Acts 8:22]. When one trusts Christ it is inconceivable that he would not automatically change his mind concerning one or more or even all of these things."719
17:31 The true knowledge of God leads to (encourages) repentance because it contains information about coming judgment. Paul concluded his speech by clarifying His hearers' responsibility.
"He has presented God as the Creator in His past work. He shows God as the Redeemer in His present work. Now he shows God as the Judge in His future work."720
Note that Paul referred to sin (v. 29), righteousness (v. 31), and judgment (v. 31; cf. John 16:5-11; Rom. 1-3). The resurrected Jesus is God's agent of judgment (cf. 7:13; Ps. 96:13; John 5:22, 27), the Son of Man (Dan. 7:13) Paul stressed that Jesus was a man, rather than an idol or a mythological character such as the Greek gods, whom the true God has appointed as His agent of judgment.
The proof of Jesus' qualification to judge humanity is His resurrection. Jesus' resurrection vindicated His claims about Himself (e.g., His claim to be the Judge of all humankind, John 5:22, 25-29).
Most Greeks rejected the possibility of physical resurrection.721Many of them believed that the most desirable condition lay beyond the grave where the soul would finally be free of the body (e.g., Platonists). The response of the Athenians to Paul's preaching was typical: some mocked, others procrastinated, and a few believed. Among the believers were Dionysius, a member of the Council of the Areopagus that had examined Paul, and Damaris, a woman about whom we know nothing more.722
Some Bible students have interpreted Paul's statements in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 as evidence that the apostle believed he had taken the wrong approach in Athens.723In that passage Paul repudiated worldly wisdom. He wrote that he determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified when he preached. He also said that he had entered Corinth, his next stop after Athens, with fear and trembling. In Athens, Paul had preached Christ, but he had spent considerable time, assuming Luke's summary of his sermon accurately reflects the whole, discussing natural revelation and philosophy. I agree with those interpreters who do not think Paul's statements in 1 Corinthians reflect belief that he had taken the wrong approach in Athens. The lack of response in Athens was due to the fact that the Athenians loved to discuss issues but did not like to take action. Moreover unsaved educated, intelligent people generally tend to be more critical and non-committal than others when they first hear the gospel. Paul's statements in 1 Corinthians seem to reflect his general commitment to elevate Jesus Christ in all aspects of his ministry including his preaching, which he also did in Athens. I do not believe we should infer from what he wrote in 1 Corinthians that he believed he had taken a wrong approach in Athens.
The absence of any reference to a church being planted in Athens in this passage or elsewhere in the New Testament is hardly an adequate basis for concluding there was none. As we have seen repeatedly in Acts, Luke made no attempt to provide a comprehensive history but selected only those facts and events he wished to emphasize. In this section (vv. 16-34) he emphasized Paul's preaching to cultured pagans. We do not know if Paul planted a church in Athens; there is no record that he did.
Donald R. Meisner argued that the structure of the record of Paul's missionary journeys in Acts 12:25-21:16 is chiastic.724
Chiasm is "a stylistic literary figure which consists of a series of two or more elements (words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or longer sections) followed by a presentation of corresponding elements in reverse order."725
Writers use this device to highlight the central elements in the structure and or to clarify the meaning of paired elements. The central section of the 12:25-21:16 chiasm, as Meisner saw it, is Paul's sermon in 17:16-34.
"The chiastic structure of the missionary journeys narrative suggests that, of all the places on the itinerary, Athens is the most significant intermediate point as the gospel moves to the end of the earth. . . .
"The Areopagus speech . . . is the only sermon reported by Luke which is preached to Gentiles by the apostle to the Gentiles' (except for the brief Lystra sermon [14:15-17]). . . . Now that Paul had preached the word in the spiritual capital of the Greek world, he turned his face toward the imperial capital of the Greco-Roman world. It is only after the Athens climax that Luke noted Paul's expression of his necessity to go to Rome, which he stated both at Ephesus (19:21), and at Jerusalem (23:11)."726
To the Philippian jailer Paul preached Christ as the personal savior of individuals. To the Jews in Thessalonica he presented Him as the promised Messiah. To the intellectual Gentiles in Athens he proclaimed Him as the proven judge of all humankind appointed by the one true God.
