Acts 17:15-34

Christianity offered to Athens , Acts 17:15-34 .

Sailing from Dium the apostle would look a regretful farewell upon the distant mountain tops of Thessalonica; and, more near, the snowy Mount Olympus, the mythical home of the Homeric gods, would recede from sight. He would sail by Thermopylae, where Leonidas, with his three hundred, died for Grecian liberty; and Marathon, where Miltiades repelled the invading Persian. Finally, after probably about three days’ sail, he sweeps round into the Piraeus, the celebrated harbour of Athens, and debarks to visit her streets. To the cultured mind few passages in the history of the early Church are more interesting or full of suggestions than this contact point between Christianity and classicism. It would have been beyond Luke’s powers to have fabricated so natural a history of so striking an occurrence. A romancer heroizing Paul would have made him more brilliantly successful.

As Paul enters the city from the Piraeus through the gateway, he finds the street lined with marble images, carved by the hand of the rarest genius, idealized into the forms of imaginary gods, Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, Mercury, and the Muses. He walks the main street to the Agora, forum, or “market,” Acts 17:17.

Standing in the Agora. and facing northward, Paul sees before him, in a sort of semicircle, the pnyx or slope of the town-meeting, the Mars’ Hill or Areopagus, and the tall Acropolis or state-citadel: and behind him the Museum.

The AGORA was margined with colonnades and porticoes, which were adorned with mythological images and statues of the historical great men of Athens, such as Solon, Conon, and Demosthenes. The AREOPAGUS was crowned with the temple of Mars, from whom its height was named. But it was upon the summit of the ACROPOLIS that the genius of Athens had lavished the utmost prodigality of art. Crowning all was the giant image of Athene (Minerva) in full armour, formed of the brazen spoils of the battle of Marathon, holding aloft a brilliant spear and shield, standing in majesty as the patron goddess, from whose Greek appellation, Athene, the city derived its name.

It was the providential mission of majestic Rome to furnish to the world the idea of a well ordered STATE, in which nations should be organized, law be rendered supreme, and order and security reign, down even to the humblest individual. It was the mission of Greece, and especially of Athens, to furnish the ideal of grace, beauty, and intellectual civilization, by which man is to be truly humanized to his noblest character. It was the mission of Israel to maintain the truths of conscience, the divine law, religion, GOD.

Of these three ideas, the political, the esthetical, and the Infinite, the three representative cities were Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. Accordingly, throughout the New Testament, we find the stern pressure of the Roman power beneficent as well as despotic. But this power is to be softened and subdued by the esthetic; and both are to be subdued, permeated, and spiritualized by the power of the INFINITE; and of that INFINITE we now behold Paul standing forth the representative in the Agora of Athens, as he soon will in the Pretorium of Rome.