{"id":5301,"date":"2025-01-06T06:44:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T11:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/learn\/?p=5301"},"modified":"2025-07-30T11:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T15:49:11","slug":"areopagus-address-acts-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/learn\/topics-themes\/commentaries\/areopagus-address-acts-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Proclaiming the Unknown God: Paul\u2019s Sermon on the Areopagus in Acts 17"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Paul\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Acts%2017%3A16-34&amp;utm_source=bg&amp;utm_medium=bglearn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Areopagus address<\/a>\u201d is one of the most famous set pieces in Acts and indeed in the whole New Testament. Luke seems to intend it to stand here at the heart of Paul\u2019s mission to the non-Judean world. When Paul describes himself in his letters as \u201cthe apostle to the Gentiles,\u201d he must be envisaging this kind of address.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have to assume that Luke has given us a summary of Paul\u2019s speech. You can read the speech out loud in Greek in under three minutes. Granted everything we know of Paul, there is no way that, if he was asked to address the high court in Athens, he would keep it that short! But Luke, in boiling his speech down to basics, hasn\u2019t spoilt its balance.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The speech has been endlessly studied, not least by theologians who have discussed what at first sight appear to be Paul\u2019s attempts to find \u201cpoints of contact\u201d with the pagan non-Judean world, shared assumptions on which he could build a gospel presentation.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Is the Areopagus in Acts 17?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Many people have supposed that the Areopagus was a kind of philosophical debating society. Luke has just mentioned in verse 18 that Paul had been arguing with the Stoics and Epicureans. It\u2019s been assumed that this address is Paul\u2019s attempt to put his own position in that debate.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, there are indeed philosophical arguments going to and fro here, as we shall see. But the Areopagus was not a debating society. It was a law-court: the highest court in Athens, composed of leading citizens, founded jointly (according to the local legend) by the god Apollo and by Athens\u2019s own tutelary deity, the goddess Athene.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The name \u201cAreopagus\u201d means \u201cHill\u201d or \u201cRock\u201d of Ares, Ares being the Greek version of Mars, the Roman god of war: hence the frequent translation, \u201cMars Hill.\u201d The craggy hill in question is a mile or so to the west of the Acropolis, the larger hill in the city center on which to this day you see Athene\u2019s great temple, the Parthenon, and sundry other temples and buildings. There are debates as to whether, in Paul\u2019s day, the court actually met on that hill or somewhere closer to the middle of the town. But the point is that it was indeed a <em>court<\/em>, not a discussion group.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Paul on Trial<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The court in question, the Areopagus, had been set up initially to try the most serious cases, including capital ones. Its first defendant was the legendary Orestes, on trial for avenging his father Agamemnon by killing his mother Clytemnestra. The point here is that Paul is being put on trial. When, in verse 19, Luke says they \u201ctook him\u201d up to the Areopagus, the word <em>epilambano <\/em>means to \u201cseize\u201d or \u201carrest.\u201d It certainly wasn\u2019t about Paul being invited to give a learned paper at next week\u2019s seminar.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So why the fuss? What is the charge? In verse 18, we hear the reaction of the Athenians to what Paul has been saying in the marketplace: he seems to be preaching \u201cforeign divinities.\u201d At one level, this seems trivial. They heard him banging on about \u201cJesus and Anastasis,\u201d and they imagined that <em>anastasis<\/em>, \u201cresurrection,\u201d might be a new goddess, perhaps Jesus\u2019s spouse. Well, Paul sorts that one out eventually.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the point was that ancient towns and cities, though playing host to many gods and goddesses, distrusted the import of \u201cforeign gods.\u201d That might mean political subversion, bringing in a new divinity who might try to take over, undermining the social fabric with its tightly woven religious elements.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Remember the shout in <strong>Thessalonica <\/strong>that Paul and Silas were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Acts%2017%3A1-9&amp;utm_source=bg&amp;utm_medium=bglearn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">turning the world upside down<\/a>, teaching Judean customs, and claiming that there was another king, namely Jesus.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Think ahead to <strong>Ephesus <\/strong>where the focus of the riot is that Paul and his friends are proving a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Acts%2019%3A23-41&amp;utm_source=bg&amp;utm_medium=bglearn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">threat to the goddess Artemis<\/a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And, with dark irony, when he gets back to <strong>Jerusalem<\/strong> he\u2019s accused of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Acts%2021%3A27-29&amp;utm_source=bg&amp;utm_medium=bglearn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">polluting the Temple<\/a> there. We\u2019re picking up a regular theme.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Charge of \u2018Foreign Divinities\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to Athens. The city\u2019s most famous trial was that of Socrates in 399 BC. He was charged with &#8220;impiety\u201d and \u201ccorrupting the young.\u201d The chief evidence offered against him was that he didn\u2019t acknowledge the city\u2019s official gods, and also \u2014 here it is \u2014 that <em>he was introducing new divinities<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we must read verse 19 differently. It isn\u2019t an innocent enquiry, with the officials merely asking, &#8220;Can you please explain what you\u2019re talking about?\u201d It\u2019s a suspicious, perhaps sneering, half-accusation: \u201cAre we <em>able to know <\/em>what this new teaching really is that you are talking about?\u201d The Greek here hints that Paul might have been introducing a new mystery religion, which only the initiates could grasp. Exactly the kind of thing that might arouse the suspicions of civic leaders.&nbsp; People meeting behind closed doors, sharing dark secrets. Learning to dance to a different drummer. Very bad for social morale, that kind of thing.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Granted, Luke suggests in verse 21 that the Athenians were simply out for novelty. But that looks to me like a way of scaling down the seriousness of what was going on. Luke can\u2019t disguise the fact that Paul gets into trouble wherever he goes. But at least, instead of setting the mob on Paul, or staging a riot, his accusers here do the decent Athenian thing and bring him to a proper court.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Paul Engages \u2014 and Confronts \u2014 Athenian Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>So what is Paul doing in this dense and fascinating speech? &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here we have to avoid bringing in the categories of fairly modern debate. Yes, we can say if we want that he is beginning by referring to the local culture, starting with the altar to the unknown god, and (in verse 28) quoting Aratus, one of their own poets from 300 years earlier. Maybe, like many Judean thinkers, Paul could see that pagan culture did sometimes come close to the truth of God and his creation, even if it then usually distorted it. After all, Paul was a creational monotheist.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Paul is also <em>confronting <\/em>the local culture. In a big way. The true God, he says, doesn\u2019t live in handmade temples (\u201cmade by hands\u201d was the regular Judean phrase to sneer at pagan idols). Nor does the true God, as Creator of all, need animal sacrifices.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now it\u2019s one thing to say this when you\u2019re sitting in a seminar room, or in a synagogue with Judean friends. It\u2019s quite another to say it on Mars Hill (or indeed almost anywhere else in central Athens), in full view of the Acropolis with its great temples&nbsp;\u2014&nbsp;the Parthenon, the Temple of Nike, and so on. You can see these stunning works of ancient architecture, these architectural statements of local theology and religious practice, from both Mars Hill and the marketplace. As Paul was speaking, there might well have been a procession going by, with singing and dancing, on its way to offer sacrifice. And Paul just waves his hand at these amazing examples of Athenian high culture and declares that they\u2019re a category mistake. They\u2019re a waste of space. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is hardly playing \u201cnice\u201d to the local sensibilities.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Answering the Charge<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So the question of \u201cPaul and culture\u201d can go both ways. That suggests that it\u2019s the wrong question, interesting though it is in its way. This is because that way of analyzing the speech begins at the wrong place. It begins by assuming that Paul is trying to make a philosophical argument for one type of god. But, as we\u2019ve seen, the Areopagus wasn\u2019t a debating society. It was a court. Paul\u2019s speech is an answer to the charge of bringing in foreign divinities. If we begin from that point, we will see that some of his arguments are quite close to the arguments of a certain type of \u201cnatural theology.\u201d &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His underlying point is that he couldn\u2019t be bringing in foreign divinities <em>because the God he was proclaiming was already being worshipped at Athens<\/em>, albeit in ignorance. This true God had indeed been glimpsed by poets, even though the philosophers had got him wrong. The God he was proclaiming could not be foreign, since he already had a shrine in the city. Once people realized who he was, they would realize that he was the creator and judge of all \u2014 and thus not, in other words, a Middle Eastern deity that Paul was trying to import into Athens. He was the God who already claimed the whole world, and who (to say it again) was already worshipped in Athens, even though in ignorance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ignorance!&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paul may be sailing close to the wind here. That, after all, had been Socrates\u2019 point: everyone else thought they knew the answers, but he knew that he didn\u2019t. Actually, the charge of ignorance means that the Apostle is putting the Athenians on the same footing as his Judean contemporaries: they have a zeal for God, he says, but it is not according to knowledge. So while the Athenians may be very religious, they admit their own ignorance by the existence of this altar to the unknown God. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And with that we arrive at the central substance of the speech.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Not Quite Apologetics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>All this places Paul in a subtly different position from those in our own age who have written about \u201capologetics.\u201d That word is frequently used to refer to the attempt to win over unbelievers by rational argument, presented in a supposedly \u201cneutral\u201d space or on \u201cneutral\u201d grounds. We make arguments, we present our evidence, and we hope to convince the sceptic that they ought at least to give the Christian faith a second look.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for Paul in Athens (this may be quite relevant now for many believers in today\u2019s world) it was a matter of explaining the faith to a <em>hostile <\/em>audience who were already suspicious that \u201cChristianity\u201d was a dangerous force in the world. It was about explaining that the gospel message was not going to be a \u201cforeign body&#8221; in the culture, to be rejected out of hand, but rather that it offered the key, already present but unrecognized, to a badly needed wisdom and truth.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We should not be surprised at this slant on what Paul was doing. Many in our world today assume that Christians are committed to believing dangerous nonsense. Anyone known to embrace the faith can easily be portrayed, in the supposedly well-ordered world of Western secularism, as introducing alien assumptions and allegiances.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We today who, perhaps to our surprise, have to defend our right to our beliefs and our moral stance may learn from Paul what a wise defense might look like \u2014 and how it might turn, after all, into a genuine gospel message.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/faithgateway.com\/products\/the-challenge-of-acts-rediscovering-what-the-church-was-and-is?variant=42697852256392&amp;utm_source=bg&amp;utm_medium=bglearn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"182\" height=\"280\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/staticblog.bgcdn.com\/learn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/31144700\/challenge-of-acts-wright.jpg?resize=182%2C280&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"&quot;The Challenge of Acts&quot; by N.T. Wright\" class=\"wp-image-5303\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staticblog.bgcdn.com\/learn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/31144700\/challenge-of-acts-wright.jpg 182w, https:\/\/staticblog.bgcdn.com\/learn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/31144700\/challenge-of-acts-wright.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 182px) 100vw, 182px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Excerpted and adapted from <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/faithgateway.com\/products\/the-challenge-of-acts-rediscovering-what-the-church-was-and-is?variant=42697852256392&amp;utm_source=bg&amp;utm_medium=bglearn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is<\/a> by N.T. Wright.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the renowned author of&nbsp;<em>Into the Heart of Romans<\/em>, N.T. Wright brings to the book of Acts his expert&#8217;s eye on theological nuance and cultural context, distilling it down into an introductory commentary, perfect for anyone looking to take their own reading a little deeper and discover the profound (and often forgotten) potential of the church and the Way of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;Areopagus address&#8221; in Acts 17 is a famous example of Paul&#8217;s apologetics to the gentiles. But the Apostle isn&#8217;t just evangelizing \u2014 he&#8217;s defending himself in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[206,314,315,71,236,297,221,113],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.4 (Yoast SEO v24.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Proclaiming the Unknown God: Paul\u2019s Sermon on the Areopagus in Acts 17 | Bible Gateway News &amp; Knowledge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The &quot;Areopagus address&quot; in Acts 17 is a famous example of Paul&#039;s apologetics to the gentiles. 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