NOTES for Act 17:32
The reaction of the Athenian lovers of philosophy to Paul's words about the resurrection is revealing: they begin to laugh at him. Of course, one could attribute this to the fact that Paul was trying for the first time to preach in an environment in no way connected with the Synagogue, an environment for which words such as "Judgment," "Messiah," and "Kingdom" were empty sounds. But was that the only reason? After all, even here there were two who managed to hear and at least wanted to understand. The matter, therefore, was not only the environment, unused to testimonies of this kind. The matter also lay, as is evident, in the very atmosphere of assemblies of this sort, of which the Athenian Areopagus was perhaps the most famous in antiquity. And the problem here is not philosophy as such. The problem is the philosophers, or, more precisely, those who considered themselves such. Above all, the problem is that for the Athenian lovers of wisdom philosophy had long ago ceased to be a search for truth, as it had been for those whom these people considered their spiritual predecessors. For Socrates his philosophy was a matter of life and death, and once he gave his life for the truth he had discovered. For those listening to Paul, philosophy was merely an interesting intellectual pastime. None of them intended to give his life for any truth, and in general they did not imagine that philosophy could become for them a source of any discomfort in life. And now, in Paul's words, they must have caught a certain seriousness. The very seriousness that even an idle reader or listener sometimes senses behind words read or heard. This sensation may be not very clear or distinct, but it makes one understand that what has been read or heard now demands an answer. If one begins to read or listen closely to these very words, they will necessarily and irreversibly change one's life. The reaction to such words can be either spiritual awakening, when the reader or listener, shaking off intellectual half-sleep, begins to read or listen more and more attentively, trying to understand what he should do next, or rejection of what has been heard and read, rejection so that nothing will disturb the customary calm in the future. Two people were awakened by Paul's words. Is that many or few? God knows. In any case, the first step was taken.