With irony Paul gives his assessment of the Athenians. He "sees" (theoreo, in the sense of perceives or understands; 17:16; 21:20; 27:10) that they are very religious (hos deisidaimonesterous). The Athenians' reputation for religious piety is well attested (Pausanias Description of Greece 1.17.1; 1.24.3; Strabo Geography 9.1.16). Hos desidaimonesterous may be understood either negatively as superstitious fear of the gods (Plutarch Moralia 164E-71F) or in a neutral, even positive sense, as the NIV (Aristotle Politics 5:9:15, p. 1315a). Paul puts the ambiguity to good use. In light of verses of 23 and 30, he probably wants to say "they have a religion . . . but it is wrongheaded" (Bock 1991:119). Here we have a respectful recognition of religious endeavors but not an acknowledgment that they lead to true, saving faith. Paul is telling a simple but limited truth and creating a basis for further comment.

Paul now uncovers the Athenians' admitted need: the knowledge of the one true God. As he walked around and observed (literally, "looked at again and again, examined carefully") their objects of worship, he found an altar with the inscription TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Though there are a number of reports of such altars (Pausanias Description of Greece 1.1.4; 5.14.8; Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana 6.3), only Diogenes Laertes (Lives of the Philosophers 1.110) gives a reason for their origin. Once when Athens was plagued by pestilence in the sixth century B.C. and the city rulers had exhausted all their strategies to abate it, they sent to Crete, asking the prophet Epimenides to come and help. His remedy was to drive a herd of black and white sheep away from the Areopagus and, wherever they lay down, to sacrifice them to the god of that place. The plague was stayed, and Diogenes Laertes says that memorial altars with no god's name inscribed on them may consequently be found throughout Attica. Wycherley proposes, with some archaeological justification, that such altars may also have been raised to appease the dead wherever ancient burial sites were disturbed by the building projects of later generations (1968:621).

Paul now makes his point of contact, saying that what [they] worship as something unknown (literally, "what they worship being ignorant") he will proclaim to them. Those who take these words as expressing both a positive and a negative relation between the religious pagan and the one true God see the positive relation as an ignorant worship of God (Haenchen 1971:521; Talbert 1984:74; Stott 1990:285). No new god is being introduced; it is simply that God's identity is being unveiled to those who admit, if only unconsciously, their ignorance.

And what about those in cultures who have never heard the gospel? Does the "positive" relationship Paul points to mean these ignorant worshipers are saved? Clark Pinnock is agnostic and says Acts 17:23 does not speak directly or decisively to this question (1991:110).

Yet the phrasing of the statement and the immediate context point to the conclusion that there is no such positive relation with the one true God. Paul is stressing the ignorance with which they worship, and this is again a limited point of contact; it is just a way to raise the basic question, Who is God? (Williams 1985:297). If Paul's audience has been worshiping the one true God all along, why is their ignorance culpable, something they must repent of (v. 30; compare vv. 27, 29)? Paul carefully uses the neuter "what" (ho . . . touto) in reference to his starting point: their objects of worship. He is probably making a transition to the subject of the divine nature (to theion, neuter). In so doing Paul stands clear of a direct equation of the unknown god and the one true God (Dupont 1979b:541).

Today we must note where post-Christians admit ignorance and study how the light of God's good news dispels that darkness.