When Paul arrived at Athens in the province of Achaia, he came to an anomaly. Though its population was no more than ten thousand and it had been reduced to poverty and submission by its war with Rome (146 B.C.), it was granted the status of a free city in view of its illustrious past. "Accordingly, although the time of her greatest glory was gone forever, Athens could still boast of her right to be called a great center of philosophy, architecture, and art"—and, we might add, religion (Madvig 1979b:352). In fact, what assaulted Paul's spirit was the ubiquitous idolatry (Livy History of Rome 45.27.11). Guarding the entrance to houses and shrines was a square pillar with the head of Hermes, the god of roads, gateways and the marketplace. What Paul met in Athens was "a forest of idols" (Wycherley 1968:619).

Paul is more than greatly distressed, for he experiences a paroxysm in his spirit, a provocation of anger or grief or both, because the glory due to God alone is being given to idols. The Lord reacted the same way to idolatry in Israel (Deut 9:7, 18, 22; Ps 106:28-29; Is 65:2-3; compare Is 42:8), and so should we. Any paraphernalia of false worship should provoke in us such grieving anger that we, jealous for the glory of God and his Christ, reach out and share the good news, which includes a call to repentance (Stott 1990:279).

Paul reaches out in witness not only in the synagogue (17:2, 10; 18:4) but also in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. "The Athenian Agora [marketplace] was the center of the public and business life of the city, and people met there every day to learn the latest news and to discuss all manner of subjects. . . . Temples and government buildings, shops and offices, and altars and statuary filled the Agora, and stoas and colonnades gave protection against the summer sun and the winter rain and cold" (Finegan 1981:128). John Stott observes that the equivalent today is "a park, city square or street corner, a shopping mall or marketplace, a `pub,' neighborhood bar, cafe, discotheque or student cafeteria, wherever people meet when they are at leisure" (1990:281). We, like Paul, must go to where the people are, and to those settings where serious discussion of ideas, even religious ideas, is natural and expected.

Paul's evangelism again follows the pattern of "reasoning" about Jesus and the resurrection (compare 17:2-3). Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, representatives of two of the three major philosophical schools of thought in Paul's day, react to his message. The Epicureans mock, What is this babbler trying to say? The Stoics are curious: He seems to be advocating foreign gods.

Epicureans, atomic materialists, viewed reality as an endless chance combining and dispersion of atoms. They would find the concept of bodily resurrection laughable (Epicurus Epistle to Menoeceus 123-32). The Stoics, materialist pantheists, identified the divine as the principle of reason pervading all and, in the form of fate, governing all. Because of either their cyclic eschatology (belief that there were periodic conflagrations of the universe after which history simply repeated itself) or their later adoption of the Platonic concept of the soul's immortality, they could not conceive of resurrection (Chrysippus Fragment 625; Bahnsen 1980:11). Luke seems to indicate that they thought Paul was pointing to a female goddess, Anastasis, consort of the male god Jesus (McKay [1994] disagrees, finding no extrabiblical evidence for "Anastasis" as a female deity).

These reactions show us that Paul had proclaimed the simple gospel with integrity to the intellectual sophisticates of Athens. And we must reintroduce post-Christians to Jesus with freshness, without resorting to the traditional formulations they will call the "old, old story." But we must do so with faithfulness, telling it the way it was and is.

Paul's message has created such a stir among the Epicureans and Stoics that they bring him before the Areopagus, Athens's chief legislative and judicial council. This body licensed traveling lecturers, and Paul's hearers want to see whether he should be given freedom to continue to teach. They want to understand this new teaching, for some strange (rather, "surprising, astounding") ideas are coming to their ears.

The Athenians had an ambivalent relation to "foreign gods." On the one hand, they were famous for incorporating alien deities into their pantheon (Strabo Geography 10.3.18). On the other hand, they believed they must stay vigilant lest "new gods" undermine the morals of the state (Stahlin 1967:7). So the issue here is understanding followed by evaluation: is this something good or not?

The fearless and relevant witness that follows models an approach that some Christians in every society must take. They must engage the opinion-makers and shapers of thought and "do battle with contemporary non-Christian philosophies and ideologies and philosophies in a way which resonates with thoughtful, modern men and women, and so at least gain a hearing for the gospel by the reasonableness of its presentation" (Stott 1990:281).

Luke seems to prepare us for the relative lack of positive response to Paul's sermon by portraying Athenians as intellectual dilettantes more than genuine seekers after truth. With skepticism making major inroads in the first century, Athens's intellectual life was characterized by uncertainty, turmoil and lack of progress, so that hunger for and fascination with the new was very strong (Bahnsen 1980:12). The postmodernist phase of the post-Christian era manifests the same tendencies. W. D. Davies, veteran New Testament scholar, wonders, "Is ours one of those situations in which `Things fall apart; the center cannot hold' because there is no one center and often no centers? . . . The new pluralism can often become banal, trivial and pretentious, like a fish in that ocean [of the transcendent] always keeping its mouth wide open, afraid to shut it, and therefore never taking a bite" (1986:58).