up to the Areopagos hill and asked him: “May we know what this new
doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange things
to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.”
Can you imagine it, Sophie? A Jew suddenly appears in the Athenian
marketplace and starts talking about a savior who was hung on a cross and
later rose from the grave. Even from this visit of Paul in Athens we sense a
coming collision between Greek philosophy and the doctrine of Christian
redemption. But Paul clearly succeeds in getting the Athenians to listen to
him. From the Areopagos—and beneath the proud temples of the Acropolis—
he makes the following speech:
“Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this
inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,
him declare I unto you.
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 wor-
shipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth
to all life, and breath, and all things. And hath made of one blood all nations of
men for to dwell on all 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. And the
times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men
everywhere to repent:
Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in
righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given as-
surance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”
Paul in Athens, Sophie! Christianity has begun to penetrate the Greco-
Roman world as something else, something completely different from
Epicurean, Stoic, or Neoplatonic philosophy. But Paul nevertheless finds
some common ground in this culture. He emphasizes that the search for God
is natural to all men. This was not new to the Greeks. But what was new in
Paul’s preaching is that God has also revealed himself to mankind and has in
truth reached out to them. So he is no longer a “philosophic God” that people
can approach with their understanding. Neither is he “an image of gold or
silver or stone”—there were plenty of those both on the Acropolis and down in
the marketplace! He is a God that “dwelleth not in temples made with hands.”
He is a personal God who intervenes in the course of history and dies on the
Cross for the sake of mankind.
When Paul had made his speech on the Areopagos, we read in the Acts
of the Apostles, some mocked him for what he said about the resurrection
from the dead. But others said: “We will hear thee again of this matter.” There
were also some who followed Paul and began to believe in Christianity. One
of them, it is worth noting, was a woman named Damaris. Women were
amongst the most fervent converts to Christianity.
So Paul continued his missionary activities. A few decades after the
death of Jesus, Christian congregations were already established in all the