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Context No. 957 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 17:16-21: in context

16Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city full of idols. 17So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who met him. 18Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also were conversing with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be advocating foreign deities,” because he preached Jesus and the resurrection. 19They took hold of him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is, which you are speaking about? 20For you bring certain strange things to our ears. We want to know therefore what these things mean.” 21Now all the Athenians and the strangers living there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Paul is waiting in Athens, the intellectual capital of the ancient world, and as he walks around he is deeply troubled to see the city crammed with idols. So he does what he always does: he reasons, in the synagogue with the Jews and every day in the marketplace with whoever will engage. Epicurean and Stoic philosophers take him on. Some sneer, what does this babbler want to say; others think he is pushing foreign gods, because he keeps preaching Jesus and the resurrection. They bring him to the Areopagus to explain this new teaching, and Luke drily notes that the Athenians loved nothing better than to spend their days telling or hearing some new thing.

Two things stand out about Paul in Athens. First, what moved him was not admiration but grief. Standing in the most cultured, sophisticated city of the age, surrounded by its art and philosophy, Paul's spirit was provoked, not by the beauty but by the idols, by a brilliant city that did not know God. He saw past the culture to the emptiness underneath it. Second, he did not withdraw in disgust or condemn from a safe distance; he went into the marketplace and the philosophers' meeting and reasoned with them, day after day, meeting the thinkers on their own ground. And Luke's little aside about the Athenians, always chasing the newest idea, is quietly pointed. A city can be endlessly curious, forever discussing the latest thing, and still be starving, treating even the gospel as one more novelty to sample and set down. Restless curiosity is not the same as seeking the truth.

Am I like the Athenians, sampling new ideas endlessly without ever committing to the truth, and does the world's brilliance impress me where it should grieve me for what it does not know?

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