According to Luc's words, the Athenians of the evangelic era were in many like our contemporaries. It is in particular about this relation in the philosophy and generally about the question about truth, which was appropriate for them. Athens has long been known for its philosophic school: it is enough to remember the names of...
According to Luc's words, the Athenians of the evangelic era were in many like our contemporaries. It is in particular about this relation in the philosophy and generally about the question about truth, which was appropriate for them. Athens has long been known for its philosophic school: it is enough to remember the names of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. And although the history of the Greek philosophic idea begins not at all in Athens, it is particularly Athens that became the symbol of the antique philosophy. And however, already in the time of Socrates and Plato in the Greek philosophy began these processes, which in the end brought it to substance degeneration.
No, of course, the Academy of Athens continued to exist, it was only liquidated by Justinian in VI s AD by a special decree, wishing to do a service to the Church (the service indeed turned out a clumsiness, but it is already another history). But here is, the philosophy itself changed fundamentally. It is just to say that five hundred years before Paul, at the time of Socrates, he, Socrates, was the only one of his kind seeker of the truth. Already then, arrived the sophists in the city, ready for a similar payment (usually not little) to teach all the interested "wisdom", which in their interpretation was usually reduced to the verbal balancing, the skills which helped the one who possesses this art "to prove" anything. Seekers of truth like Socrates, in those days, and in all the others were little.
But if the antiquity knew all the same Socrates, and Plato, later they stopped generally looking at the philosophy as the search of truth, it became an ordinary profession, and in the time of Paul the philosophers were already either interested in the questions about good and evil or the meaning of life, as Socrates, but in the exercises of the intellectual balancing, making philosophy an original intellectual sport, and the philosophers - participants of the competitions in the construction of the metaphysical systems and the verbal duels, the purpose of which was on one hand the protection, and on another - the denial of certain theses mostly having few relations to the spiritual life and to life in general.
The spectators, coming to look at such competitions, attended the philosophic discussions about as well as their less educated and more unrefined contemporaries went to the circus to look at the fight of the gladiators. It is not surprising that in such a public, where nobody thought either of God, or the Kingdom, or even the truth, Paul had practically no grateful listeners. The question about the truth can be seriously given only by the One, for whom the search for the truth is a matter of life or death. And among the amateurs of the philosophic discussions in Athens, as we see, these people were very little.
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17:16 While Paul was waiting for the - Having no design, as it seems, to preach at Athens, but his zeal for God drew him into it unawares, without staying till his companions came.
17:18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosopher - The Epicureans entirely denied a providence, and held the world to be the effect of mere chance; asserting sensual pleasure to be man's chief good, and that the soul and body died together. The Stoics held, that matter was eternal; that all things were governed by irresistible fate; that virtue was its own sufficient reward, and vice its own sufficient punishment. It is easy to see, how happily the apostle levels his discourse at some of the most important errors of each, while, without expressly attacking either, he gives a plain summary of his own religious principles.What would this babbler say? - Such is the language of natural reason, full of, and satisfied with itself. Yet even here St.Paul had some fruit; though nowhere less than at Athens. And no wonder, since this city was a seminary of philosophers, who have ever been the pest of true religion. He seemeth to be a proclaimer - This he returns upon them at the Act 17:23; of strange gods - Such as are not known even at Athens.Because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection - A god and a goddess. And as stupid as this mistake was, it is the less to be wondered at, since the Athenians might as well count the resurrection a deity, as shame, famine, and many others.
17:19 The Areopagus, or hill of Mars, (dedicated to Mars, the heathen god of war,) was the place where the Athenians held their supreme court of judicature. But it does not appear he was carried thither as a criminal. The original number of its judges was twelve; but afterward it increased to three hundred.These were generally men of the greatest families in Athens, and were famed for justice and integrity.
17:21 And the strangers sojourning there - And catching the distemper of them. Some new thing - The Greek word signifies some newer thing. New things quickly grew cheap, and they wanted those that were newer still.
17:22 Then Paul standing in the midst of the Areopagus - An ample theatre; said - Giving them a lecture of natural divinity, with admirable wisdom, acuteness, fulness, and courtesy. They inquire after new things: Paul in his divinely philosophical discourse, begins with the first, and goes on to the last things, both which were new things to them. He points out the origin and the end of all things, concerning which they had so many disputes, and equally refutes both the Epicurean and Stoic.I perceive - With what clearness and freedom does he speak!Paul against Athens!
17:23 I found an altar - Some suppose this was set up by Socrates, to express in a covert way his devotion to the only true God, while he derided the plurality of the heathen gods, for which he was condemned to death: and others, that whoever erected this altar, did it in honour to the God of Israel, of whom there was no image, and whose name Jehovah was never made known to the idolatrous Gentiles. Him proclaim I unto you - Thus he fixes the wandering attention of these blind philosophers; proclaiming to them an unknown, and yet not a new God.
17:24 God who made the world - Thus is demonstrated even to reason, the one true, good God; absolutely different from the creatures, from every part of the visible creation.
17:25 Neither is he served as though he needed any thing - or person - The Greek word equally takes in both. To all - That live andbreathe; - in him we live; and breathe - In him we move. By breathing life is continued. I breathe this moment: the next is not in my power: and all things - For in him we are. So exactly do the parts of this discourse answer each other.
17:26 He hath made of one blood the whole nation of men - By this expression the apostle showed them in the most unaffected manner, that though he was a Jew, be was not enslaved to any narrow views, but looked on all mankind as his brethren: having determined the times - That it is God who gave men the earth to inhabit, Paul proves from the order of times and places, showing the highest wisdom of the Disposer, superior to all human counsels. And the bounds of their habitation - By mountains, seas, rivers, and the like.
17:27 If haply - The way is open; God is ready to be found. But he will lay no force upon man; they might feel after him - This is in the midst between seeking and finding. Feeling being the lowest and grossest of all our senses, is fitly applied to the low knowledge of God; though he be not far from every one of us - We need not go far to seek or find him. He is very near us;in us. It is only perverse reason which thinks he is afar off.
17:28 In him - Not in ourselves, we live, and move, and have our being - This denotes his necessary, intimate, and most efficacious presence. No words can better express the continual and necessary dependence of all created beings, in their existence and all their operations, on the first and almighty cause, which the truest philosophy as well as divinity teaches. As certain also of your own poets have said - Aratus, whose words these are, was an Athenian, who lived almost three hundred years before this time. They are likewise to be found, with the alteration of one letter only, in the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter or the supreme being, one of the purest and finest pieces of natural religion in the whole world of Pagan antiquity.
17:29 We ought not to think - A tender expression especially in the first per son plural. As if he had said, Can God himself be a less noble being than we who are his offspring? Nor does he only here deny, that these are like God, but that they have any analogy to him at all, so as to be capable of representing him.
17:30 The times of ignorance - What! does he object ignorance to the knowing Athenians? Yes, and they acknowledge it by this very altar. God overlooked - As one paraphrases, "The beams of his eye did in a manner shoot over it." He did not appear to take notice of them, by sending express messages to them as he did to the Jews. But now - This day, this hour, saith Paul, puts an end to the Divine forbearance, and brings either greater mercy or punishment. Now he commandeth all men every where to repent - There is a dignity and grandeur in this expression, becoming anambassador from the King of heaven. And this universal demand of repentance declared universal guilt in the strongest manner, and admirably confronted the pride of the haughtiest Stoic of them all. At the same time it bore down the idle plea of fatality. For how could any one repent of doing what he could not but have done?
17:31 He hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world - How fitly does he speak this, in their supreme court of justice?By the man - So he speaks, suiting himself to the capacity of his hearers. Whereof he hath given assurance to all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead - God raising Jesus demonstrated hereby, that he was to be the glorious Judge of all. We are by no means to imagine that this was all which the apostle intended to have said, but the indolence of some of his hearers and the petulancy of others cut him short.
17:32 Some mocked - Interrupting him thereby. They took offence at that which is the principal motive of faith, from the pride of reason. And having once stumbled at this, they rejected all the rest.
17:33 So Paul departed - Leaving his hearers divided in their judgment.
17:34 Among whom was even Dionysius the Areopagite - One of the judges of that court: on whom some spurious writings have been fathered in later ages, by those who are fond of high sounding nonsense.