The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas

Paul Copan, Kenneth D. Litwak

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783592036
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

1

Welcome to Athens

We live in a multicultural world with many races and ethnic groups. To add to this already interesting mix, there are a huge number of religious and philosophical beliefs, from the monotheism of Judaism, to the do-it-yourself New Age spirituality or the strident New Atheism, to the “I don’t care” attitude of apatheism. At least in the Western world, there are so many religious and philosophical ideas that it is hard to know about, much less fully understand, them all.

Western culture has begun to resemble the relativism repeatedly described in the book of Judges: “Everyone did was what right in his [or her] own eyes” (Judg 21:25 NASB). To say that the basic Judeo-Christian ethic that has generally served as the basis for law in the Western world has been in many ways discarded is an understatement. The situation in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century prompts us to ask, how can we authentically and effectively present the message of Jesus the Messiah to those around us? As we move more and more into a post-Christian age, our neighbors, classmates, coworkers and even extended family members know less and less about what it means to believe in Christ. What they do know is often a caricature gained more from MTV or some television sitcom or from a hostile anti-Christian college professor than from the Bible. How can we communicate to them the truth of the gospel in ways that they can understand?

This is a difficult question, and there are many possible answers. We could throw up our hands in despair at ever reaching those around us because they are hostile to what they think that Christians believe. Others continue to use methods from earlier decades, such as asking people, “If you died tonight, do you know if you would go to heaven?”—a question that is only meaningful if both parties know what heaven is and share some basic premises, such as there being a personal G/god who holds us accountable for our actions. Whether believers are vilified because of the many unchristian things we supposedly or actually say and do, or do not do, or are ignored because “all roads lead to God/salvation,” we have a challenge before us if we are to carry out Jesus’ last command: Go make disciples among all the nations (Mt 28:19).

Today we are aware that an array of belief systems and social structures exist that differ greatly in their major themes as well as their details. But the same was true in the first-century Mediterranean world. The apostle Paul also lived in and carried out his evangelism in a multicultural setting in the first century. From Jews to Gentiles, elite to poor, slaves and slave owners, many rights for men but few rights for women, olive-skinned Jews or native Ephesian Gentiles to dark-skinned Ethiopians, the Greco-Roman world was a huge mixture of races and ethnic groups. There were many religions practiced —from the imperial cult of emperor worship, to temples for the traditional Greek pantheon, to the secret rituals of the mystery religions—and there were all manner of theological views. There were devout worshipers of Asclepius, a god of healing, and at the same time a growing trend that held these gods, if they existed at all, to be irrelevant. The Roman Empire was filled with beliefs in evil spirits and magical practices one might use to protect oneself from these spirits. Among some, the ideas about deities were modified as people, not least those in Athens, constructed philosophies to live by and understand the world.

Figure 1.1. Asclepius, Apollo’s son and the god of medicine, had devout followers since healing from illness and protecting oneself from malevolent spirits were major concerns for many in the first century.

A “worldview” is a philosophy of life that reflects a deeper heart commitment. Every­one has a worldview that attempts to answer questions such as: Why am I here? Why does anything exist at all? What am I to do or think? How can my life have meaning? Across the Roman Empire, people attempted to answer these questions by mixing and matching ideas and religious teaching. They grappled with fear of evil spirits, among other things, and generally came up with many “construct your own” worldviews.

When Paul found himself in Athens, it was not primarily to carry out evangelism, but Paul did not waste the opportunity. Grieved by the false religion he saw expressed through temples and idols, Paul went into the main marketplace of Athens and began speaking with anyone who came by and was willing to have a dialogue. It was clear to Paul that these people did not know the true God, while Paul knew himself to have been commissioned by Jesus to proclaim the good news about Jesus to Gentiles. Like many cities to which Paul traveled, Athens had its own unique history. It had been the center of the birth of Greek philosophy. In fact the viewpoints of Plato and Aristotle were so influential that we often still use their ideas as the basis for our intellectual pursuits. For example, the Platonic idea of the immortality of the soul is a common belief even in Christian circles. So is the Platonic notion that the physical world is less real than, and inferior to, the soul and the transcendent realm of the “forms,” like justice and goodness. Although some of Plato’s ideas have been adapted by such Christian theologians as Augustine to make sense of biblical doctrines like evil and God as “spirit,” Plato’s views had a negative impact on the early church (the heresy of Gnosticism), which has continued throughout church history and strongly resembles much in Eastern spirituality today. Athens, whatever else it was, was still seen as a center of learning and wisdom in the Greco-Roman world, and we are still feeling its effects.

Paul was knowledgeable about the philosophical and religious beliefs of the Athenians. One prominent Athenian school was Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Cyprus and developed by a later Zeno from Paul’s hometown—Tarsus, another of the three great centers of learning in the Roman Empire (the third being Alexandria in Egypt). Paul would have had plenty of opportunity to learn about Stoicism and competing worldviews.

No wonder, then, when Paul was challenged to explain the new foreign gods that the Athenians thought he was proclaiming, he brought together his knowledge of Scripture and Jewish traditions and theology with the practices of Gentile idolaters and philosophers. Paul used their language and quoted their poets in the process of proclaiming the story of God’s action in and for the world, though his thinking was grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures. He approached his audience carefully and cordially, perhaps complimenting them on their religious devotion, and told them about the one true God who had demonstrated his concern for and expectations of humans by raising Jesus from the dead, a concept that some of his audience could not handle.

The Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament offers us wise guidance in knowing what to do in response to Jesus’ call, and about how to describe God’s rescue plan for the once-good, now-damaged creation. Unfortunately, the sermons in the book of Acts wouldn’t be readily understood by non-Christians in our secularized culture. If you walk up to someone randomly on a university campus or at the local coffee bar and attempt to reach that person by quoting Bible verses, and the person you are addressing neither knows what’s in the Bible nor really cares, or has a faulty image—a caricature—of God that is unpalatable, you will not get any further than someone who speaks only German talking to someone who speaks only Chinese.

In this book, we want to address this “translation” problem head-on. The approach we will take is to look at the background and contents of Paul’s speech to the Athenians, which is recorded in Acts 17:16-34. We will look first at the validity of using Paul’s example (chapter two). Next, we will examine the cultural, religious and philosophical situation in the physical city of Athens during the first century A.D. (chapter three).

Dominant schools of thought in Paul’s day, including Platonism and Epicureanism, have had a lingering influence in Western culture up to the present; so we should examine how Paul engaged with thinkers of his day to help us engage with our own culture. Plato’s views led to the unbiblical Christian belief that disembodied souls spend eternity without bodies in heaven. Plato’s denigration of the material world, and bodies in particular, led to the Christian view of the body as a prison of the soul instead of the body being God’s good creation that will one day be raised to immortality. Learning about Plato and other early Greek philosophers can help us not only understand Paul’s speech better but avoid unbiblical teaching. Chapter four will shift to the Athens of today, using Athens and Athenians metaphorically to refer to people and their cultural, religious, academic, political, philosophical and social context in our own world.

Chapter five describes the nature and role of Paul’s speech within the Acts of the Apostles: What was Luke trying to do with this speech? Chapter six describes the religious and philosophical beliefs of the Athenians who would have listened to Paul, followed by chapter seven, which describes the beliefs that Paul as a Jew and a Christian held. Like Paul, we need to know what non-Christians believe and be clear on the truths of the Christian faith and how to express them.

Chapter eight examines Paul’s approach to his Athenian audience in detail so that we can see what principles or practices Luke wants us to follow. All this information on Acts 17:16-34, while we think it is interesting in its own right, has one primary aim, namely to give readers the necessary background for approaching today’s Athenians in a biblical way. Chapter nine puts this all together by showing how we can do the same sorts of things in our culture as Paul did in his, framing his presentation of what God has done in and through Jesus in ways that would be comprehensible to his audience. Finally, we apply a number of these lessons from Paul to our situation—going to our own Mars Hill—which complements chapter four (“Our Athens”).

Some readers might be anxious to get to the modern-day part and not spend time on the historical, religious and philosophical world of Paul’s day. Indeed, both of us have had more than one student who has said that their pastor or elder has asserted that no one needs to study the ancient world. All one has to do is read the Bible and that will be enough. If the Bible reader who makes this claim has a thorough grasp of the cultural, social, political, philosophical, religious and linguistic (the person is fluent in Koine Greek) background of the New Testament, to say nothing of the many centuries, peoples, customs, lands and languages relevant to understanding the Old Testament, we would agree fully.

The problem is, we have never met anyone like that, not even a senior biblical scholar. For the rest of us, it’s necessary to do some study. If we don’t learn about the world in which Paul evangelized, it will be hard to understand his speeches in their original context, and much harder to apply the principles that he used. Consequently, we will spend time digging down into what Luke is doing with the speeches in Acts, Paul’s theology that informed his speech in Athens, and the competing beliefs of members of his audience.

That does not mean that you need to prepare for a long, dry history lesson. We have both read more than our fair share of academic books, including very tedious ones. Instead, the following chapters offer readers enough information to understand what Paul is doing in his speech in Athens so that they can follow his example in learning about what non-believers in today’s world think in order to shape, not compromise, their presentation of the gospel.

We can no longer rely (if we ever could rely) upon other people understanding our “Christianese,” or believing anything other than caricatures of what committed, orthodox Christians believe. We cannot expect unbelievers to learn our ideas first so that they can understand us. We need to go to them, learn what they think and find ways to present them with the truths of the gospel in ways that will be meaningful to them.

All of this is presented in the hopes that you, our readers, will gain practical help in presenting the gospel in your context. This is not a timeless recipe that is being offered by making specific suggestions for today’s world and today’s Athenians. Rather, we offer patterns and models from which you can learn or that serve as a springboard for exploration in other areas. To some extent, Paul’s speech in Athens served to make room on the table for the ideas he was presenting about God. We likewise may need to do some pre-evangelistic table clearing ourselves in order to earn the right to be heard. It is our hope that this book will help give you wisdom in presenting the gospel to today’s Athenians.

Acts 17:16-34

¹⁶And while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him when he observed that the city was full of idols. ¹⁷Therefore, he was arguing in the synagogue with the Jews and God-fearers and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be present. ¹⁸And certain people, both of the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophers, were conversing with him, and some were saying, “What might this foolish babbler wish to say?” but others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange gods,” because he was announcing good news about Jesus and Anastasis. ¹⁹And after having taken hold of him they led [Paul] to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that is being spoken by you? ²⁰For you are bringing certain astonishing things into our hearing. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.”

²¹Now all the Athenians and foreigners staying there were spending their time in nothing other than (trying) to say something or to hear something new. ²²And after he stood in the middle of the Areopagus, Paul said, “In every way I see that you are very religious. ²³For while I was going through [Athens] and looking carefully at your objects of worship, I came upon even an altar on which had been written, ‘to an unknown God.’ Therefore, that which you, being ignorant of it, worship, this I proclaim to you.

²⁴“The God who has made the cosmos and everything that is in it, this one, since he is the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by human hands, ²⁵nor is he served by human hands, as if he needed something, since he himself gives to all life and breath and indeed all things. ²⁶And he made from one person every nation of humankind on the whole face of the earth, having determined fixed times and the boundaries of their dwelling place, ²⁷in order that they might seek God, if perhaps indeed they might grope for and find him, though he is not far away from each one of us. ²⁸For by him we live and do what we do and exist, as some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are his offspring.’

²⁹“Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to suppose that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human skill and thought. ³⁰So although God had formerly disregarded the times of ignorance, now he instructs all people everywhere to repent, ³¹because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he has appointed, having offered proof to everyone by raising him from the dead.” ³²Now when they heard “resurrection from the dead,” some began to scoff, but others said, “We would like to hear you concerning this matter again!”

³³So Paul went out from their midst. ³⁴Now some people, having joined him, believed, among whom were also Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

(Translation by Kenneth D. Litwak.)

2

Was Paul’s Speech at Athens a Mistake?

Paul went to the city of Athens, where there was a hill known in Greek as the Areopagus—a rocky hill named for Ares, the Greek god of war. Paul was then brought before the Areopagus. Areopagus was used to refer both to a place on a hillside—the “hill of Ares” (or “Mars,” the Latin equivalent...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• 1 Welcome to Athens
• 2 Was Paul’s Speech at Athens a Mistake?
• 3 Paul’s Athens
• 4 Our Athens
• 5 Paul’s Speeches in Acts
• 6 Paul’s Audience
• 7 Paul’s Gospel for the Educated
• 8 The Art of Persuasion
• 9 Acting on the Truth
• 10 Going to Our Own Mars Hill
• Resources for Further Reading
• Discussion Questions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Image Credits
• Praise for The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas
• About the Authors