Repenting from Syncretic Superiority

Observations from Acts 17 and Addressing our Inner Epicurean

Acts chapter 17 records Paul’s unexpected trek to Athens. Luke was clearly following a particular literary as he jumped between stories and moved the narrative along in the chapters leading up to it. There is a particular rhythm, flow and pace. But when Paul winds up in Greece everything changes, and Luke wants us to notice that not only is this situation different, but Paul is suddenly out of his comfort zone.

If we look carefully at the beginning of chapter 17, there is a pattern to:

-where Paul visits

-how he’s received

-& what the visit is like.

Notice the similarities between Thessalonica and Berea.

But in Athens there is a change. Paul, finding himself in the Las Vegas of the ancient world, realized that his trusted ministerial rhythms wouldn’t work— He needed to improvise.

In Athens, Paul didn’t preach his usual sermon at the local synagogue linking Abraham & the covenantal promises to Jesus as the Messiah. There are no Jewish people in sight. Noone would have had a frame of reference for that line of thought. So instead, Paul preaches about the good news of the resurrection.

He ventured out to the marketplace, speaking to whoever would listen.

But did he condemn them & preach judgement? No. Paul attempted to locate points of connection between him & his hearers & identify with them. He noted their religiosity and dedication to worship. He tried to find similarities, not differences.

Athens at the time was littered with idolatry, and the text tells us that this grieved him greatly. Imagine, Paul the ex-Pharisee-turned-apostle is suddenly attempting to witness in this new unfamiliar world, despite his own moral discomfort. But reality sets in. He’s grappling with the weight of Jesus’ call in Acts 1:8 to go to the ends of the earth in real time…The ends of the earth beyond Judea and Sumaria were different. He couldn’t rely on his polished presentations. The Holy Spirit would need to lead. The fruits of the Spirit would need to be evident.

So, what happens?

Then Scripture notes that the epicurean & stoic locals belittled Paul in response to his marketplace preaching. And I thought that detail was interesting because Paul was a highly educated man.

Yet all the Athenian Elites saw was a foreigner, “babbling.” Eventually they scoffed at him and sneered, so he left.

The epicureans and stoics automatically equated foreigner with “less than” and it matters that we notice this.

Paul wasn’t humiliated among them simply because he didn’t happen to be on his ps & qs— But he wasn’t taken seriously because they didn’t consider him to be like one of them. Paul was foreign.

Many scholars and pastors take the opportunity here to do one of two things. They either suggest that Paul’s change of missiological strategy is a cross cultural model, and they dissect the text that way… Or they don’t skip the opportunity to point out that the Athenians ran their mouths all day long, discussing philosophy and pontificating but doing nothing. It’s also important to resist the urge to lump the stoics and epicureans together. Ideologically, they were quite different, and thus their shared response to Paul the foreigner can be analogously understood as syncretic. The stoics valued managing their emotive responses and held ethics and virtue in high regard. The epicureans were largely materialistic and in many ways the way of the epicureans was the American dream of the ancient world. They valued happiness in life, general tranquility, and avoidance of fear. The reality is that they were curious to understand Paul purely to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.

But as we make observations, ask questions of the text & carefully begin our application, I think often our default response is often to look for the ways that we can behave like Paul. And I want to caution us here. Often, we evangelicals have this pesky hermeneutical habit of so desperately desiring to identify with the protagonist in the bible story we’re reading, that we almost automatically align ourselves with them, without thinking much about it. But it might actually be more helpful to observe the ways in which we’re more like the antagonist of the story. Why? Because reading the Bible without rushing to identify with the hero, helps us to see where we can repent in our own lives, how we can seek to remain submitted to the Spirit, and aids us in keeping God the center of God’s own story. When we let Paul be Paul we are better positioned to repent, rethink, reconsider, and reimagine the ways in which we can better receive one another, even the missionaries in our midst. Think about immigration, for example. The foreigners among us? Who are we willing to align ourselves with that we typically don’t agree with at all, simply because we want to feel superior to outsiders, strangers, and foreigners among us?

How often are WE the ones running our mouths but doing nothing? Think Facebook. Twitter.

The migrants among us aren’t less than. They aren’t less educated. Many are our siblings, all fellow image bearers, here by surprise, fleeing danger at the leading of the Spirit (like Paul). They’ve found themselves in a strange, land littered with our idols (idols including security, safety, individualism, liberty). And when we read this part of scripture & when we encounter the Pauls in our midst, we would do well to wonder, “How am I treating the foreigner among me? Or is the good news of the resurrection just strange babbling about Jesus of Nazareth from far far away?” Facing our inner stoic— our inner epicurean— requires a willingness to repent. And that repentance might look like refusing to continue to run our mouths on Facebook while doing nothing substantive in the real world.

The point: May we allow Paul to meet us where we are, may we be willing to pay attention to one another, and may we allow the good news of the work of the Spirit of God to transform our priorities, our relationships, and the ways we practice welcome.