4/29 Old Ideas

Acts 17:16–31 NET

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was greatly upset because he saw the city was full of idols. So he was addressing the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles in the synagogue, and in the marketplace every day those who happened to be there. Also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him, and some were asking, “What does this foolish babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods.” (They said this because he was proclaiming the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.)So they took Paul and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some surprising things to our ears, so we want to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there used to spend their time in nothing else than telling or listening to something new.) So Paul stood before the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious in all respects.For as I went around and observed closely your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown god.’ Therefore what you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by human hands,nor is he served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives life and breath and everything to everyone.From one man he made every nation of the human race to inhabit the entire earth, determining their set times and the fixed limits of the places where they would live,so that they would search for God and perhaps grope around for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move about and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’So since we are God’s offspring, we should not think the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human skill and imagination.Therefore, although God has overlooked such times of ignorance, he now commands all people everywhere to repent,because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he designated, having provided proof to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Acts of the Apostles 1. Responding to Idolatry (17:16–21)

Stott suggests that the unusual expression kateidōlon means ‘a city submerged in its idols’.

Athenian Culture:

“Submerged” in its idols (Stott - see Pillar commentary)

High value on knowledge/good thinking. Always wanting to hear something new

Were still searching for the truth they desired (The Unknown God)

Epicureans were known for

‘their pursuit of happiness and contentment through detachment from social competition and denial of divine interference in human affairs, especially the threat of retribution’

Peterson, D. G. (2009). The Acts of the Apostles (p. 490). Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Stoics, on the other hand:

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Acts of the Apostles 1. Responding to Idolatry (17:16–21)

sought ‘to live in harmony with the natural order, which they believed was permeated by a rational divine principle or Logos’. They were essentially pantheistic and thought of the divine being as ‘the World-soul’

Paul comes to Athens offering something old, yet it seems new, because instead of trying to give them the new thing they want, he offers them what they need: a way to be made new.

Our world is a lot like Athens.

Submerged in our idols: the things that we value have become so woven into the fabric of our lives, it’s hard to imagine alternatives. Our idols are not deities in the same way as the Athenians, though. They’re all of the things that we tell ourselves and one another that we must have in order to be happy and complete.

We love knowledge and new ideas. Assuming, of course, that they are consistent with what we already want to believe. Even as Americans express less trust in experts than at any other time in our history, We’re still quick to latch on to whatever new study or expert opinion comes out that confirms what we want to believe.

And yet, we are still searching for something. For truth. For comfort. For contentment. For the things we keep telling us our idols and our great knowledge are going to give us, even though they never do. So we keep chasing after the latest and greatest; the hot new thing that’s going to fix it all.

Like Paul in Athens, the church doesn’t have a new thing to offer. We return, week after week and year after year, to the same ancient texts, and we do so with the knowledge that they will say the same thing they did last time.

We return to them, not in hopes of finding something new, but because we know that these stories show us the path to being made new. We know that all the time we spend chasing after our idols and seeking out new knowledge is really an effort to transform ourselves into who we want to be. But through Jesus, God has shown us the way to become who we are meant to be.