I am in Athens just now, heading out on a tour giving lectures on ancient Greek philosophers in relation to the teachings of Jesus and Paul. I came over a couple of days before the tour to spend some time looking around on my own, and had a lovely afternoon at the fantastic Acropolis Museum.
Every time I come to Athens I think of my first time here, for several reasons, but one in particular. It was when I was struck by a realization about the relationship of the highly cultured, sophisticated Greek world and the rise of earliest Christianity, a realization that led to my book The Triumph of Christianity. In many ways it was a sad realization. I talk about it in the Afterword of the book. This is what I said there.
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The idea for this book struck me twenty years ago during my first trip to Athens. For my trip I was particularly keen to explore the archaeological wonders of the city, and most especially the Agora and the Acropolis. In the Agora can still be seen the amazingly preserved temple of Hephaistos, the old Athenian meeting place called the Metroon, the impressively reconstructed Southern Stoa, and dozens of other remains. The Acropolis is home to the glorious Temple of Athena Nike, the temple known as the Erechtheion with its six enormous female statues, the Caryatids, and of course, chiefly, the Parthenon, perhaps the most magnificent ruin of any kind to come down to us from classical antiquity. As a scholar of early Christianity, I was also intent to visit the far less frequented site that stands half way down the hill between the Acropolis and the Agora: the Areopagus. This barren rock outcropping was where the Apostle Paul allegedly delivered his famous speech to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers upon first arriving in Athens (Acts 17).
This was during Paul’s second missionary journey. He had come to the city alone to preach about Jesus and his resurrection. Some of his original audience wanted to hear more from him. So, as requested, he ascended the Areopagus to speak to a group of philosophers. He started his speech by mentioning he had seen a large number of temples and idols in their city, but was particularly struck by an altar dedicated to “An Unknown God.”
Scholars of early Christianity have long debated how to make sense of such an altar. Possibly it was erected as a back-up measure by a group of pagans nervous not to leave any god out from their collective worship – in case there was one god who had been left unmentioned, unnamed, and unattended in the city. This altar was in that one’s honor.
Paul uses this altar to an Unknown God as a launch pad for the rest of his address. The Athenians may not know who this God is, but Paul does. He in fact is the one God over all, the ultimate divine being, the God who created the heavens and the earth. As the creator of all things he has no need for any physical representation or earthly temple. This is the God who is soon to judge the world and everyone on it through the second coming of his son Jesus, whom God had raised from the dead (Acts 17:16-31).
Paul’s words did not find a welcome acceptance on the Areopagus. It is not that the philosophers there were shocked, dismayed, or challenged. They were simply amused. Paul was relatively uneducated — in comparison to them, at least — and was speaking nonsense about a physical resurrection of the dead. Most of them mocked, though some wanted to hear more later. Paul did make one or two converts.
Today the Areopagus looks much as it did in Paul’s day. There are no buildings on it, no structures of any kind. It is a rocky crag. Its only distinctive features are a plaque embedded in the rock below, giving the text of the speech Paul delivered, and a set of slippery steps leading up to the top. Standing on the rock one can look down to see the magnificent remains of the Agora and look up to see the even more magnificent remains of the Acropolis. It is a spectacular site, not because of anything on the barren outcrop itself but because on both sides can be seen the most important vestiges of one of the most spectacular civilizations the world has ever known. Athens, the home of some of the greatest philosophers, dramatists, artists, architects, and political thinkers of classical antiquity, encapsulated in a gaze downward and upward.
While standing on the site twenty years ago I thought about Paul, his sermon, and his surroundings. Paul was a lower-class artisan and itinerant preacher. From an external, material perspective, nothing stood in his favor. He was widely maligned and mistreated, frequently beaten, sometimes within an inch of his life, and lacking any worldly power or prestige. In many ways he stood on precisely the opposite end of the spectrum from the great cultural heroes of Athens, the heart of Greek civilization.
Then the realization struck me. In the end, Paul won.
What Paul preached that day on the Areopagus eventually triumphed over everything that stood above me on the Acropolis and below me in the Agora. No one, except, probably, Paul himself, would have predicted it. The very idea would have been completely ludicrous. Yet it happened: Christianity eventually took over Western Civilization.
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The reason I considered this realization sad is not because I think it was a bad thing for Christianity to become the dominant religion and culture of the west, but because in the process so much beauty and culture was lost (or destroyed): objects of art and architecture; literature; philosophy, and much more — some of the greatest accomplishments of the human race to that time, bound to disappear with the emergence of the Christian faith that, for centuries, cared little for the advances and glories of pagan Greece. I just think that’s too bad, and very much wish more had been preserved, since what we now still do have is often spectacular — as I’m reminded every time I come here.
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