Paul’s Praeparatio Evangelica: Thoughts on Acts 17:16-34
There is a bald rock in the shadow of the Athenian Parthenon called the Areopagus, or the Hill of Ares. This rock has played an important role through the centuries, serving as a seat for legal and political deliberations since (according to Aeschylus’ Eumenides) Orestes’ case was argued by Apollo and Athena. These days, cases—human or divine—are no longer argued on the Areopagus. The hill is a popular spot for Athenians to smoke and watch the sunset, and for tourists to take pictures of the Acropolis and the surrounding city. Although the Areopagus’ surface is now rocky and littered with cigarette butts, a reminder of its storied history persists in the form of a plaque affixed to the hillside. The plaque’s text is one of the most momentous defenses ever delivered on the Areopagus: the Apostle Paul’s sermon to a council of Athenian philosophers.
For Christians—especially for those who, like this writer, have an inordinate interest in Classics—this sermon’s importance is self-evident. For the first time in history, the message of Jesus Christ is brought to what was the undisputed cultural, philosophical, and literary capital of the ancient Mediterranean. The Athenians styled their city the center and origin of civilization, an outpost against non-Greek “barbarians.” The Romans, for all their mixed feelings about Greece, were inclined to agree, with wealthy Romans sending their sons to Athens to finish their education.
It is no mean stage, then, onto which the message of Christ erupts. We might be excused for anticipating a collision on the scale of Elijah’s confrontation of the prophets of Baal. Paul, of all people, is capable of fiery exposition. Now that he is given a chance to address the philosophical elites of his day, we might expect him to launch into a gospel presentation akin to that contained in his letter to the Romans—denouncing all humanity as under sin, condemned to death by the perfect law of God; declaring the hope of justification by faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the new Adam, who dies on our behalf and with whom we are raised to life eternal; and exulting in the purposes of God in salvation for all humanity, anticipating a final victory over sin, death, and the devil.
In light of these expectations, Paul’s sermon—as preserved for us in Acts 17:22-31—is underwhelming. It isn’t particularly lengthy, compared to other addresses Paul delivers in Acts. Paul’s entire stay in Athens is not especially notable in terms of miracles, imprisonments, or even narrative length as recorded in Acts. It is as if, for both Paul and Luke, this stay in Athens is just one step of many in a longer journey that will ultimately take Paul to Jerusalem and then to Rome. The content of Paul’s sermon itself might also seem disappointing. Far from the gospel exposition we expected, Paul focuses on the doctrine of creation, denouncing idolatry and describing God’s governance of human beings. The text suggests that Paul has already engaged in public conversations in the marketplace, which may explain some of the apparent omissions. But the fact that Paul, in this discourse, has a very prominent platform makes the “skew” of the sermon even more surprising. Not only does Paul neglect to mention atonement or crucifixion, he does not even mention Jesus by name, still less as the Son of God—he speaks of him only as “a man . . . appointed” by God.1
The doctrinal content of this sermon might seem to modern evangelicals unbalanced, if not dangerously incomplete. The narrative package surrounding it may also seem unsatisfyingly brief, given the status of Athens as described above. My contention, however, is that the underwhelming qualities of the narrative and the sermon can be explained as deliberate strategies on the parts of both Luke and Paul—strategies that have an important application for modern believers.
The brevity and apparent lack of weight given to Athens in the broader scope of the Acts narrative is part of a recurring pattern where the gospel is shown to ridicule or invert the priorities and expectations of the surrounding world. We see Luke adopt this strategy, for instance, in chapter 19, where the preaching of Paul puts to shame the expectations of both Jews—whose prior faith and baptism is powerless to give the Holy Spirit, and whose exorcists fail to drive out demons—and of Gentiles, with the citizens and silversmiths of Ephesus depicted as comically greedy and unruly. In other words, the narrative strategy of Acts embodies the Pauline principle that the gospel of Christ crucified is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.”2 The apparently brusque treatment of Athens is part of this deliberate strategy.
I say this strategy is deliberate because, although Luke’s handling of Athens is brief, it is in fact rife with literary allusions. Luke’s education has clearly made him familiar with many of the key texts of Greek education, and he would certainly be able to engage Athenian thought at greater length than he does—his decision to speed through it, and to present the Athenian philosophers as he does, is a conscious one. But several literary motifs still stand in this section, above all that of Paul as a new Socrates.3 Like Socrates, Paul is found in the marketplace, debating anyone who is nearby; like Socrates, Paul is brought before a “court” on charges of “introducing new gods.” Luke, by presenting Paul in a Socratic light, shows that he can, and does, engage with Athenian culture on its own terms and with a high degree of literary skill—but instead he structures his narrative in terms of gospel priorities.
This fine balance between cultural awareness and a deliberate countercultural stance also characterizes Paul’s sermon. Again, Paul has already spoken of Jesus, as Luke suggests in verse 18—the problem is that these philosophers have misunderstood his message.4 In other words, Paul’s apparent omission of Christ, redemption, atonement, and so on in his sermon to the Areopagus council does not stem from fear, but rather from a shrewd sense of the groundwork needed for those doctrines to be understood.
Athens has already been characterized as kateidolon, full of idols (v. 16). In the ancient Greco-Roman pagan context, the line between the divine and the human, Creator and creation, was fairly thin. Sons of gods abounded, as did humans who occupied semi-divine status—not least the Roman emperor. To arrive in this context and to immediately proclaim a new Son of God would have been simply to add to the pantheon, and to invite misunderstanding. This is why Paul is so adamant about the distinction between Creator and creation, and that the one God who created all things is not dependent on created things, nor to be worshiped by man made images. Though Paul quotes Greek poets, demonstrating his familiarity with Greek culture, the message he proclaims is foundationally countercultural, cutting against the defining trait of Athens as it has been portrayed to us. In a sense, Paul’s message in this discourse is a very Jewish one. The strict monotheism he proclaims, with its refusal to confuse the Creator with the created, is the lesson the entire Old Covenant was meant to inculcate. It is only in such a context, where God is understood as transcendent to and sovereign over his creation, that the Incarnation—the Creator’s donning of creation—can be understood in all its astonishing force.
The other points Paul makes are similarly culturally attuned precisely for the sake of being countercultural. For instance, Paul’s insistence on the descent of all human beings from one man cuts against the cultural elitism of the Athenians and the ethnocentrism of most of the ancient world. It would make no sense to speak of the “new Adam” to a people ignorant of the old Adam—but the descent of all humanity from “one man” (v. 26) is vital groundwork for understanding humanity’s redemption and judgment by the appointed “man,” Christ (v. 31).
Paul’s countercultural stance in laying his gospel groundwork is perhaps most clear in a staggering intertextual moment where Paul’s rhetoric and Luke’s literary presentation come together in especially sizzling fashion. The most famous trial held on the Areopagus was Apollo’s defense of Orestes, where Apollo discusses the finality of death, declaring that there is no resurrection (anastasis)—and so Paul’s affirmation of Christ’s resurrection, though seeming strange to us divorced of any mention of incarnation or crucifixion, is in fact a boldly defiant and delightfully theatrical move.5 Indeed, it is Paul’s mention of the resurrection that proves to be the turning point, dividing the council and bringing Paul’s sermon to an end (vv. 32-33).6
Paul, in short, is engaging in what has been called praeparatio evangelica—preparation for the gospel. As we consider what this might mean for our own evangelism, we must first be absolutely clear: Paul is not playing it safe. When Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians of becoming a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles, he certainly means to avoid giving unnecessary offense—but that is simply because the cross is such a great offense that it would be foolish to add more. Paul is no social chameleon—he tends to stick out in the crowd. If among the Jews he is accused of undermining the law and thus having “Gentile” tendencies, here in Athens, he is at his most Jewish, declaring the lordship of the one creator God as foundational to the message of salvation.
Paul teaches us, in short, to thread the needle between being “relevant” to the point of invisibility and countercultural for the sake of giving offense. Moreover, his example is a powerful one for us as college students, engaged in learning about cultures and philosophies that do not all acknowledge Christ. In view of Paul’s statements elsewhere about “the wisdom of the world,” some might question the value of such education.8 Why study these things when our focus should be on the simple gospel, which puts to shame all worldly wisdom?
It is true that the gospel of Christ crucified should be our focus and our continual point of return, and that philosophy, literature, and all else divorced from the cross are vain. But as we have seen, neither Luke nor Paul hesitates to deploy his extensive literary and philosophical knowledge in service of the cross—to proclaim the gospel, or prepare the way for the gospel. Focusing on the gospel means more than simply giving prepackaged summaries or finding pat gospel connections. We are called not simply to give gospel presentations, but to make disciples. This call entails thinking rigorously about how our presentation of the gospel will be received and what cultural misunderstandings must be addressed before the gospel is understood. Moreover, because we are called to make disciples of all nations, this work must be ongoing: what is shockingly countercultural in one culture may simply make no sense to another. The Great Commission, in short, is a call to be culturally attuned, yet countercultural and even cross-cultural; to do the difficult work of identifying a culture’s specific needs and speaking to those needs in terms that culture can understand. In this work, may we learn much from Paul’s example.
1 Acts 17:31.
2 1 Cor. 1:22-25.
3 Among many discussions of this motif, Justin Bass’s article for The Gospel Coalition is an accessible entry point: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/paul-new-wiser-socrates/. A more academic discussion on which I draw is Steve Reece’s article “Echoes of Plato’s Apology of Socrates in Luke-Acts” in Novum Testamentum (https://brill.com/view/journals/nt/63/2/article-p177_3.xml).
4 The Greek of verse 18 perhaps points to the extent of the misunderstanding, suggesting that the philosophers viewed Paul as introducing two new gods, one named “Jesus” (who might have been equated with a minor Greek deity) and one named “Resurrection.” For this point, see Reece 2021, p. 195.
5 See Aeschylus, Eum. 647-48. Cited in Reece 2021, p. 196.
6 Perhaps an interesting parallel to how Paul’s mention of the resurrection divides the Jewish council in Acts 23:6-10.
7 1 Cor. 9:20-22.
8 1 Cor. 1:20.
Ardaschir Arguelles is a senior in Columbia College double-majoring in Classics and East Asian Studies. When he's not writing, he enjoys reading, going to the gym, and exploring the city.