NOTES for Act 17:1-34

We are used to thinking that prophets can, for the most part, only be "good people." After all, one must listen to the Spirit of the Lord; one must be God's person in order to be able to convey His will, His words, to the world. But sometimes people who resist God also become prophets "against their will." A person, regardless of whether he is directed toward God or in some other direction, still somehow comes into contact with the spiritual world. Something is revealed to him, although he himself may not notice it. And with his own words, as a result, he testifies in favor of the one he may even be fighting.

Today before our eyes there are even two descriptions of such people: the high priest Caiaphas and the persecutors of Christians in Thessalonica. The first, without knowing it, conveyed the very essence of why Christ came: to save everyone by His death. The second call Paul and the disciples "worldwide troublemakers," that is, in modern language, those who turned the whole world upside down. In both situations the persecutors put an exclusively negative meaning into their formulations.

But that is exactly the point: both Christ and His disciples are not of this world (see John 8:23, 17:14). And often the positions of the world completely contradict the position of Christ. Therefore what for the world is evil, madness, and offense (see 1 Cor. 1:23) may turn out to be the very thing that is most important and saving for it.

The arguments used by the opponents of the Christians in the communities of the diaspora did not differ from those used by their opponents in Judea. And that argument was first of all political: they shifted the testimony about the Messiah and the Kingdom into the political sphere. What was this: a malicious lie or a mistake?

It is not simple to answer this question unambiguously, at least when the diaspora is in view. The fact is that messianism in general was far more influential in Judea itself than in the large and wealthy cities of the Roman Empire. And the wealthier the city, the fewer messianists there were, at least active ones. That is no surprise: in those days messianism was a religious and political movement, at least if we are speaking of traditional messianism. This means that when people spoke about a messianic movement, they always also had in mind the messianic war that would be inevitable in the end.

It was a war no one wanted: neither the Jewish community itself, which often lived quite well in a wealthy trading city, though not without problems, nor still less the Roman authorities, both local and central. Messianic political movements and messianic uprisings were in those days an integral part of the religious life of Judea, but by no means of the Jewish diaspora. Therefore the reaction of the local Jewish communities to messianic preaching in the cities of Macedonia and Achaia, as well as Asia Minor, was predictably negative. Of course, both Paul himself and his companions kept repeating that the matter concerned a Kingdom "not of this world," but this apparently did not fully dispel the fears of the local Jewish leaders. Hence their harsh reaction to the apostles as messianist preachers, and therefore as disturbers of the peace.

But one cannot, of course, exclude the simple desire to get rid of dangerous competitors through the hands of the local authorities, since there was a convenient pretext: the Roman authorities did not like messianists. And since they usually did not delve into the subtleties of internal Jewish debates, it was not especially difficult to frighten them with the possibility of an uprising even where one could not possibly occur. Here, of course, we must speak already of an open lie and a provocation, like the one organized before Pilate by representatives of the temple elite when the question of Jesus' execution was being decided.

After all, then too the question was shifted into the political sphere, and only in that way did Jesus' enemies manage to get what they wanted. Be that as it may, one thing is clear: moving questions of spiritual life into the political sphere is always spiritual degradation, and in any case it ends in nothing good. And who will use that degradation, and how, depends on the sincerity of a particular person's intentions. That very sincerity is what distinguishes a conscientious error from a malicious lie.

The events accompanying the apostolic preaching develop similarly in two different cities. Following the preaching in the synagogue, some Jews and some Gentiles accept the Good News, while at the same time a division occurs both among the Jews and among the Gentiles. Those who reject the message of Christ join forces against His disciples. The brotherly unity of Jewish and Gentile Christians is natural, but an alliance between zealous Jews and defenders of the purity of paganism appears unnatural. Yet in the struggle for the purity of principles, that very purity often suffers.

Although the separation between Jews and Christians had already begun, many Jews were still willing to listen to and receive the preaching. The apostles, who a little earlier had announced that they were turning to the Gentiles, continue to address the Jews and find a response among them. This often happens: you think it is already clear what sort of person stands before you, but he unexpectedly shows another side, and you see that everything about him is not as clear as it seemed a moment ago...

Notice that we do not know for certain whether everyone to whom the Apostle Paul preached in Berea was converted. It is quite possible that not everyone was. But they all showed nobility of mind as they examined the Scriptures, tested Paul’s testimony, and sought to understand the truth with open hearts. Such an approach to Revelation is perhaps one of the rarest human qualities. Most often, we either accumulate grievances against God, yet even an enormous and terrible list does not prompt us to demand an answer from Him personally; or we look with a certain embarrassment at grown and seemingly intelligent people who passionately try to explain obvious nonsense to us; or we believe that we have already learned everything—after all, if we have already been converted, why should some outsiders and strangers try to “treat” us? But the Lord, bringing us back again and again to the Book of Acts, shows us how a person should conduct himself before God. He must continually delve deeply into Holy Scripture, with an open heart, ready to accept everything the Lord wishes to reveal to him.

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.

The Apostle Paul, addressing the Gentiles, affirms that although they do not know God, they nevertheless worship Him. It seems obvious that the altar bearing the inscription “To an Unknown God” was not intended for the God of Israel at all. Such altars were erected “just in case,” so as not to offend anyone—what if there were some other deity to whom no sacrifices had been offered, and it decided to punish everyone for such disrespect?... Did Paul understand this? Certainly. Then why does he say that his preaching concerns the One whom they worship? Perhaps because he does not reduce the worship of the true God to sacrifices at all. The Gentiles, of course, did not offer sacrifices to the God of Israel. But in the words of Saint Augustine, the human heart knows no rest until it rests in God. Every person seeks Him, even without knowing what they are seeking. And obeying the commandments not because they are written, but because doing so is right, is already a beginning of worshiping God. Perhaps this is precisely what Paul means: those relationships with God that cannot be seen from outside, but which every person nevertheless has in one way or another.

It is typical for gentiles to believe that their gods are in need of something, that they need something, and man bringing sacrifices or building temples, satisfies these needs of the gods, and the gods help in return to satisfy the needs of man. Therefore, gods and the men are at the same level, besides, gods cannot do without men. Don’t we have sometimes in us such imagination? Doesn’t it seem to us at times that we make a favour to God, when doing what He asked us for?

It is the still non eliminated paganism which speaks in us, a pride conception of the world, the opposite of a pious awe in front of God's face, internal unwillingness to recognize God’s absolute sovereignty. That is why these words of Apostle Paul are not only address to the gentiles of Athens, but to us also: God doesn’t need us, but loves us. We aren’t the ones doing good to Him, when accomplishing worship in temples built by us, but on the contrary, He does more good to us, by giving us life and the Spirit. He is the Creator of everything; He is Lord of all; He is Bearer of all goodness.

Paul's preaching in the Athenian Areopagus is one of those events that, when we read about it, does not feel separated from us by two thousand years. This is not only because many foundations of our civilization lie in Athens, but also because, looking at the Athenians of Paul's time, it is not hard to see many of our own skeptical contemporaries, who love to discuss sensational news.

It is significant that the Athenians, who were capable of listening to any point of view, listened to Paul while he set forth basic ideas about God acceptable to followers of various teachings, but interrupted him as soon as Paul began speaking about the Resurrection. What matters to Paul is not received by his listeners, and not only, it seems, because his words do not fit the ideas of those gathered in the Areopagus. Perhaps they sensed that what they had heard was not a verbal exercise, but a message demanding a change of life...

Can Paul's first attempt at preaching in Athens be called unsuccessful? It seems not, and not only because there were after all some people who became interested in Paul's words, and among them even one member of the Areopagus, Dionysius. That day Paul sowed seeds that were destined to sprout, and we know that they did sprout and brought a rich harvest on Greek soil.

The reaction of the Athenian lovers of philosophy to Paul's words about the resurrection is telling: they begin to laugh at him. Of course, one could explain this by saying 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 issue? After all, even there two people were found who were able to hear and at least wanted to understand. So the issue was not only an environment unaccustomed to this kind of witness.

The issue, as one can see, was also in the very atmosphere of gatherings of this kind, of which the Athenian Areopagus was perhaps the most famous in antiquity. And the problem here is not philosophy as such. The problem is philosophers, or rather those who considered themselves philosophers. First of all, the problem is that for the Athenian lovers of wisdom, philosophy had long since ceased to be a search for truth, as it had been for those whom these people regarded as their spiritual predecessors. For Socrates, his philosophy was a matter of life and death, and one day he gave his life for the truth he had discovered. For Paul's listeners, philosophy was only an interesting intellectual pastime. None of them was going to give his life for any truths; in general, they apparently did not even imagine that philosophy could become for them a source of any real discomfort in life.

And now, in Paul's words, they must have sensed a certain seriousness. The very seriousness that at times even an idle reader or listener feels behind words read or heard. This feeling may not be very clear or distinct, but it makes one understand that what has been read or heard now demands a response. If one begins to read or listen closely to these very words, they will surely and irreversibly change one's life. The reaction to such words can be either spiritual awakening, when the reader or listener shakes off intellectual half-sleep and begins to read or listen more and more attentively, trying to understand what to do next, or rejection of what has been heard and read, rejection so that nothing will ever again disturb one's accustomed peace. Two people were awakened by Paul's words. Is that many or few? God knows. In any case, the first step had been taken.