The book of Acts contains at least ten substantial addresses delivered by Peter, Stephen, and Paul to a variety of audiences in diverse settings. This was by no means a random selection. Led by the Holy Spirit, Luke recorded these speeches, some at considerable length, to paint a detailed picture of what Gospel witness looked like during the formative years of the Church.
The core of these messages remained consistent throughout: the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the call to repentance and forgiveness of sins through faith in him. However, the approach of each message was tailored to the specific audience, delivered in a way the audience could understand and to which their members might respond.
Of all these messages, Paul’s address to the Areopagus in Athens is especially instructive for Christian witness in the 21st century. It offers a model for engaging people with the Gospel in our highly educated and secular Western culture.
Know and respect your audience
Rome may have been the political centre of the Roman Empire, but Athens was its cultural and intellectual centre. For centuries, the city had been the hub of artistic, scientific, and philosophical inquiry, the place where new ideas were born, developed, and disseminated to the rest of the Mediterranean world. At the grassroots level, people still worshipped the ancient gods of mythology or else practiced various private mystery religions. Cultural elites, on the other hand, considered such beliefs symbolic or superstitious, and were devoted instead to various philosophical schools that understood the world in terms of naturalistic or secular categories.
When Paul arrived in Athens, he was taken aback by the plethora of public monuments dedicated to the worship of pagan gods. At the same time, recognizing the Athenians’ commitment to reason and public discourse, he engaged in debate with people in the marketplace as well as with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, representing the two predominant schools of thought at the time.
At first, these thinkers ridiculed Paul for promoting a strange foreign religion and called him a “seed picker” – a derogatory term for a pseudo-intellectual who gathers bits of information in order to sound clever. Nevertheless, they were intrigued enough by Paul to bring him before the Areopagus so that he might explain his views in greater detail. The Areopagus was in essence a cultural court made up of scholars and thought leaders who would listen to new ideas and pass judgment on their validity. It was something like a TED Talk, except that failure to impress might land the speaker in trouble. Undeterred, Paul took the opportunity to share Jesus with this group in a way that recognized and respected where they were coming from.
Speak in a way they’ll understand
Even amongst the diverse contexts of the messages recorded in Acts, Paul’s address before the Areopagus stands out. The various audiences for Paul’s other messages included Hellenistic Jews, proselytes, Gentile Godfearers, and combinations of those. In each case, there was at least a bare minimum of familiarity with the Jewish religion and Scriptures.
At the Areopagus in Athens, there was none of that. The Areopagites were socially elite, highly educated pagans, essentially secularists by modern standards. They knew and cared next to nothing about the Jewish faith or its sacred writings. Citing chapter and verse about the fulfillment of ancient messianic prophecies would have been fruitless, as they had no context for that.
Consequently, Paul took a radically different approach in Athens. Rather than direct quotes from the Scriptures, which would have meant nothing to his audience, Paul instead built a framework for theological truth using concepts that they would understand. In place of mythical gods or a universe with no beginning, Paul declared that there was one God who created the world and everything in it, and who was sovereign over all of it. Because he is infinite and free, this God doesn’t need anything from humans but is the source of our entire existence. He has determined the boundaries and duration of every human life and civilization so that we might seek and find him.
Connect with cultural references
At the beginning of his address, Paul used an Athenian cultural reference to connect with his audience. Referring to a pagan altar in the city that was dedicated “to an unknown god,” Paul called the Athenians very religious and told them he’d explain this “unknown god” to them. This statement would have fascinated them and perhaps even ruffled their feathers a bit, but it got their attention.
Paul didn’t stop there with his cultural references. To demonstrate that God is both transcendent and immanent, far beyond his cosmos yet present and intimately involved with it, Paul quoted a pair of pagan philosophers: “In him we live and move and have our being” comes from Epimenides of Crete, and “We are also his offspring” is a quote from a poem called Phaenomena by Aratus, a Stoic philosopher from Paul’s home region of Cilicia. In their original contexts, these quotes both refer to Zeus, the chief deity of the Olympian Greek pantheon.
It may seem strange and even shocking to modern readers that Paul would appropriate these quotes about Zeus and apply them to the God of the Bible. In that culture, however, this was an accepted rhetorical practice for making a point during a public debate or presentation. The Areopagites knew precisely what Paul was doing and had no issue with it. They understood Paul’s argument; since humans are God’s offspring made in his image, it’s wrong to reduce God to a statue of gold or marble, made by humans in their own image.
Leave the results with God
The Areopagites had tracked with Paul’s argument up to this point. But then, Paul drove home the central message of his rhetorical presentation: God had overlooked the folly of pagan worship in the ancient world, but was now calling everyone to repent, because he would judge the world in righteousness through a man he’d raised from the dead.
This was the core of the Gospel message presented throughout the book of Acts, yet Paul had delivered it to a group of highly educated pagans without a single direct quote from the Law, the Prophets, or the Psalms. Instead, he used the language and the categories that his audience could recognize, and the implications of his address were not lost on them.
The moment Paul mentioned the Resurrection, members of his audience reacted in one of three ways. The first group dismissed him with ridicule and the second, intrigued but not persuaded, wanted to hear more out of mere curiosity. The third, however, came to faith and joined Paul, leaving the Areopagus behind.
Luke saw fit to single out two of the individuals from this final group, suggesting they had both become well-known throughout the early Christian community. Dionysius the Areopagite, given his epithet, was likely one of the leaders of this cultural court of ideas. Damaris was possibly a visiting foreign dignitary, but she was more likely a hetaera, an educated courtesan who moved in the circles of prominent men, offering them intellectual and social companionship.
The world of these pagan cultural elites was as far removed from provincial Judaism as today’s secular Western culture is from its Christian roots. In fact, historians have noted that Greco-Roman society from New Testament times has more in common with the contemporary West than with any other culture between then and now.
Even so, the Gospel remains the power of God for salvation to everyone, regardless of their cultural context. Paul recognized this when he wrote that he’d become all things to all people, so that by any means, he might win some of them to Christ (1 Corinthians 8:19-23).
For followers of Jesus in the 21st century, Paul’s approach in Athens offers the ideal model for engaging with secular, highly educated people who know nothing of the Bible. While keeping the core truth of the Gospel the same, we need to be sensitive to our audience and speak their language, drawing them in with cultural references they can relate to. Some will laugh, others will deflect, others still will come to faith in the Lord. Like Paul at the Areopagus, our creative task is to present Jesus as persuasively as we can and leave the results with God.
Sources and further reading
Darrell L. Bock, Acts, (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament), Baker Academic, 2007.
F.F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts, (New International Commentary on the New Testament), Eerdmans, 1988.
R. Kent Hughes, Acts: The Church Afire, (Preaching the Word), Crossway, 2014.
I. Howard Marshall, Acts, (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries), IVP Academic, 1980.
Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles, (Socio-Rhetorical Commentary), Eerdmans, 1997.
