Translated From the Italian of J. N. D.
Now at Athens the sight of the idolatry ardently practiced in that city pressed heavily on the spirit of the Apostle. He reasons in the synagogue with the Jews, and daily in the market with them that met with him. Athens had been a city famous for the glory of its arts and of its arms, and for its schools of philosophy, Having succumbed to the Roman yoke, it had lost its importance, and lived in idleness, seeking for some new thing, still philosophizing, and boasting in the memory of its ancient glory in pagan philosophy, surpassed perhaps by that of Alexandria and Tarsus (where Paul himself had been educated), although where the leaders of Roman society studied. The fruit was not great in this vain and idle city, but the instruction for us is precious.
The Apostle’s discourse at the Areopagus was not the preaching of the Gospel. It was his apology before an ancient tribunal whose decisions had., in times gone by, possessed great weight, but which then, though still allowed to exist, no longer retained its ancient importance. But the fact that the Apostle was obliged to present himself before the tribunal, gave him the opportunity of manifesting the wisdom and grace he possessed through the Spirit of God. As we have seen he preached in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia. In the market-place, where the philosophers and town’s people met together, he announced Jesus and the resurrection, His person, His victory over death, the testimony that God had accepted the sacrifice of Christ; and moreover that in Him we are admitted into a new creation (a position which Adam, even in innocence, never occupied) the kingdom of the second, of the last Adam.
I do not say that all these points were unfolded, but the Apostle announced the grand foundations on which all these truths are built up. He did so according to the need and capacity of his hearers; and nobody is so incapable as a philosopher, and those under his influence, and who walk in the vain thought of being something, when in reality they are nothing; and such was the true character of the Athenians. Knowledge is blinding. Human intelligence does not know God. God enters the conscience when he speaks in order to make Himself known; and in proportion to the pretension of the human mind to intelligence, is the hardness and inaction of the conscience. It is as though dead, and man as though he had none, and therefore no capacity to receive the truth whereby he may know God. These wise men thought that Jesus and the resurrection were gods, so far were they from the truth. The mind of man, and the activity of his intelligence, when it is a question of morality and of God, can do nothing but always drive him farther and farther away. He finds no basis for _morality, and consequently no true rule; and when God is submitted to the human understanding, He is no longer God in any sense. God does not present Himself to man in order to know what he ought to be. Conscience and faith put God in His own place, and man in his true relation to God; and the Word is the means of doing so, the Word in which God reveals Himself, and shows what man is.
Some mocked the Apostle, saying, “What will this babbler say?”
Ridicule is often a means in the hands of the enemy to turn away souls from the truth, because men are afraid to identify themselves with what others despise. Conscience and moral courage are the very last things to be found in the heart of man; grace awakens conscience, and gives strength to follow it.
Still here was something new; and that was always enough for the Athenians, fatigued by the nonentity of their existence. Accordingly they lead. Paul to the Areopagus, once honorable and honored, in order to know what this new doctrine might be. Because however frivolous philosophical opinions may be, they cannot quietly endure either truth or Christ.
One human opinion may be as good as another; but the testimony of God operates on the conscience, and demands the heart.
Paul, surely taught by the Holy Ghost, replies in the Areopagus with admirable wisdom, and a calm love which lays hold on the sole circumstance to which he could attach the truth he desired to communicate to them. His practiced eye had observed in the city the only little remnant of truth by which he could lead them to recognize their true position.
It was not simply a declaration of the salvation of the soul, which had already occupied him in the synagogue and public marketplace; here he explains the true character of the religion of idols, but with perfect delicacy; and seeks to bind that remnant of truth which the enemy had not been able to destroy, with truth more positive, with the name of Jesus, and with that which appealed to the conscience.
The people of the city, idle and at heart skeptical, were given up to idolatry; and the circle of the gods being exhausted, they had dedicated an altar to the unknown God. It is said that in former times a fatal malady had reigned in the city; and that the inhabitants, having prayed in vain to all the gods to remove the plague, had consulted an oracle, who directed them to dedicate an altar to the unknown God. It is unnecessary, however, to seek for any special source of this worship. At the bottom of all idolatry there is the idea of God, corrupted, and taken possession of by satan, so that men may worship demons; but the idea cannot be eradicated from the heart of man. Infidels seek to do so, but it always remains at the bottom of the heart, in spite of all their efforts. It is born with the birth of man, and creation bears witness too clear and too strong to allow the heart to believe that everything was made by nothing. And then conscience speaks too loud to allow it to be unharkened to. Man does not want God, and tries to forget Him; he reasons, and seeks diversions, but the thought always returns, and possibility makes itself felt. He endeavors to get rid of the thought by every means, but still it is always there; and the thought of God always makes us feel guilty.
God is to be found in all idolatries, neglected and forgotten, it is true; but He exists in all mythologies, and is found in the conscience when awakened by fear. When men are in agony (so says a Christian of pagan times) they do not say, “Oh, immortal Gods,” but “Oh God, a proof, I would add, of a soul naturally Christian.” They made great gods and little gods, placed a god or a goddess at fountains, in woods, and everywhere they could see the operations of nature; but behind everything remained the deep feeling that there was one only and all powerful God. Thus among the Brahmins in India, in Egypt, among the Sabeans, among the Scandinavians, there were gods without end, but one God not worshipped, but owned as the source of everything. This God, the author of all, rested in darkness. In India not a single temple was ever dedicated to him, but still He exists and is the source of everything. Among the Sabeans, the ancient Persians, there was another kind of pagan religion which recognized Ahirnian and Ahrmasda, a bad and a good god, and in which God was worshipped in fire, and which had no idol; there was another god as the source of these. I say source, because a creation was not owned among the pagans. (See Heb. 11:3.)
The imagination, under the influence of satan, created gods everywhere, but at the bottom the idea of God was there. And yet this God, the true, was unknown—deplorable state of mankind, deprived of God, of whom they stood in such deep need; thus enemies to His true knowledge, because the conscience, which makes responsibility felt, could not endure His presence, because the heart desired things which the conscience in the presence of God condemned. They made gods who would help men to gratify their passions. Man cannot suffice to him, self; he has lost God, and fears Him; his heart stoops to that which is more degraded than himself. He seeks, but in vain, to satisfy the need of his heart by means of objects which degrade him, and make him forget God, of whom the thought is anguish to his heart.
God, the unknown God, now reveals Himself; and the Apostle, laying hold, with great happiness of thought, of the inscription on the altar, announces the true God, whom they did not know. This is not the Gospel; but he identifies the God he had already preached in the Gospel of Jesus and of the resurrection, with the truth they themselves admitted, and defending it, speaks to the conscience. The unknown God would judge the world by this Jesus, in that He had raised Him from the dead. This truth he applies to their conscience and to idolatry, under the yoke of which they were subjected. By the power of the Spirit in Paul they stood accused, convicted of having falsified the idea of God and denied His glory, the glory of the only Creator, for they had only recognized Him by the confession that He was unknown.
Here was what was done by the apostle, He announced to them clearly this true God. He had manifested Himself in the gift of life, and in the things necessary to sustain that life. Through the conscience, He was then not far from each of them. During the times of ignorance, God had borne with the wanderings of man; He had passed them over, without judgment. Now He was calling to all men everywhere to repent, because a day was appointed in the which He should judge the world (this habitable earth, for he speaks of the judgment of the ὁικουμένη) in righteousness by the Man whom He had ordained; whereof He had given assurance unto all men, in that He had raised Him from the dead. In this way He reveals by the power of the Spirit the one true Creator-God, the Sustainer of all things, the knowledge of whom had been lost in the folly of idolatry, into which man had been deluded by the enemy, who, by means of the passions of deceived beings, had made himself God. Then he declares the approaching judgment of this world by Jesus, the risen Man, but that grace, in the patience of God, invited all men to repent.
Such was the Apostle’s defense; not of himself, truly; but he brings his hearers into the presence of God, and sets forth that which the conscience could not deny, and that this was what they ought to have known (Rom. 1:19,20). Then he reveals what was new, namely, that judgment was approaching, that it was to be executed by the Man established by God, of whom He had given assurance, in raising Him from the dead, as the public proof of His ways and power, which ended the path of man on earth, and enfeebled the power of satan. The accusers receive their own sentence. To the existence of God they say nothing, but many mock at the idea of resurrection.
It is the present exercise of the power of God that man cannot receive; let there be a God, and it is well; but let Him do something, let Him intervene presently, and man cannot willingly receive it. But the mighty word of the Apostle touches some hearts even among this frivolous people. The harvest is small, but God does not leave Himself without testimony. A few, believing the Gospel, join themselves to the servants of God; but the testimony being rendered, the Apostle remains there no longer. Philosophy and frivolity united, as is always the case, give a high opinion of self, are bad soil for grace, and do not deserve that God should wait long for the good will of vanity. Grace can be effective everywhere; but here judgment and testimony are given against philosophy and the pretensions of men.
Everlasting Glory.
Everlasting glory unto Jesus be!
Sing aloud the story of His victory!
How he left the splendor of his home on high;
Came in love so tender, on the cross to die.
Yes! He came from heaven, suffer’d in our stead!
Praise to Him be given, our exalted Head.
Jesus, meek and lowly, came the lost to save,
He, the Victim holy, triumph’d o’er the grave.
We in death were lying, lost in hopeless gloom,
Jesus, by His dying, vanquish’d e’en the tomb!
Burst its iron portal, roll’d away the stone,
Rose, in life immortal, to the Father’s throne.
Christ the Lord is risen, sing we now today!
Freed are we from prison, Christ our debt did pay!
Sing aloud, and never cease to spread His fame;
Triumph, triumph ever, in the Saviour’s Name.