Acts 17:18Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

At that time the Athenians were no longer governed by their own laws, since they were subject to the Romans.

Why did the philosophers begin disputing with him? They saw that others were conversing with him and that this man was gaining reputation.

And see how offensively they speak at once: "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Cor 2:14). "He seems," they say, "to be a preacher of foreign divinities."

They called their gods daimones, and their cities were filled with idols.

They thought the resurrection was some god, because they were accustomed to worship female divinities as well. They called the gods daimones, because the cities were full of daimones.

By the time of John Chrysostom, the Greek word daimones, "divinities," had acquired a negative shade that it had not previously possessed.

Although this tendency in the use of the word is already visible in the Septuagint (cf. Ps 95:5), only during the official Christianization of the empire at the end of the fourth century did daimones come to mean only fallen angels, demons.

Christians believed that their presence purified cities from the power of the latter. Such purification was considered more successful when martyrdom took place.

"And some said, What does this babbler wish to say?" They say that the name spermologos belonged to a worthless bird accustomed to gather seeds at crossroads.

The philosophers, who held their heads high and were proud of their grandiloquence, likened Paul to this bird. In Proverbs, the wise are called foolish.

Therefore, since the spermologos was a worthless bird, useful neither for food nor for amusement, empty people were called spermologoi, babblers.

"Others said, He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities." This was because they thought that by the resurrection he meant some goddess, since they also honored certain women as goddesses.

They set pleasure as the highest goal of human striving. They mocked existing religions as products of human weakness and as a terrifying phantom.

Taking all this into account, one might conclude that the Stoics were closer to Christianity than the Epicureans. Yet it did not follow that they could suddenly receive it favorably.

The teaching demanded repentance and traces of self-abasement. It preached remission of sins, grace, and justification through faith.

Against this teaching, the thought of the moral self-sufficiency of the wise man strongly resisted within them.

Their highest deity, an unconscious eternal mind living in the universe, was not the living God. It was not the heavenly Father with His love, whom the Gospel preached.

The Christian God had to seem to the Stoics a being too human. Finally, the Stoics and Epicureans agreed with one another in a way that further harmed Christianity.

Infected by their philosophical pride, they could not look without contempt upon a teaching offered in Jewish colors and not developed in philosophical form.

For them it was a popular faith, upon which the philosopher permits himself to look with pity.

Epicureans and Stoics entered into conversations with the Apostle Paul, and often into disputes. Yet neither the one group nor the other accepted the teaching he preached.

Some of them, refusing even to understand the apostle, asked with proud contempt, "What does this babbler wish to say?"

In others, the apostle's preaching aroused only curiosity by its novelty. "He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities," they said.

For, the writer of Acts observes, "he preached Jesus and the resurrection to them." Saint Chrysostom thinks that the Athenians understood not only Jesus, but also the resurrection of which Paul preached, as a new divinity.

Moved by curiosity (verse 21), they brought the apostle to the Areopagus, the meeting place of the supreme council of the Greek republic.

They asked him, before the assembly of the most educated people of their country, to unfold in greater detail the new teaching he preached.

The invitation for the apostle to speak was expressed in a tone as polite as it was subtly ironic: "May we know what this new teaching is which you proclaim? For you bring certain strange things to our ears."

A muffled murmur of annoyance passed among them. Some of the bolder philosophers tried to enter into dispute with the apostle and halt his speech with objections.

But the objections returned like burning coals and fell upon their own heads. There was no place for them in the apostle's speech.

Hiding in the crowd, the objectors again reasoned among themselves in perplexity: "What then does this babbler wish to say?"

Thus these "fools in their wisdom" wanted to brand the great preacher of the evangelical teaching with a shameful name. Yet they did not conceal their folly.

It appeared all the more clearly from beneath their philosophical exterior. Others, apparently, listened more closely to the new teaching and said, "He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities."

A malicious note sounded in these words. What? Does this bold newcomer think to stir up the people's conscience?

He does not honor Minerva, the sacred protectress of the city. He does not acknowledge the famed national gods, whose temples and statues adorn the streets and squares in multitude.

He dares to undermine the people's faith. He is a rebel against religion, the state, and the established order. He is a corrupter of the people and the youth.

Such was the malicious and treacherous language of those philosophers. For their base ambition, it cost nothing to resort to the most dishonorable means, if only they could remove a hated rival.

One of the greatest and most virtuous philosophers of the ancient world, Socrates, was forced to drink the cup of poison for this very charge.

He had been accused of undermining the people's faith and corrupting the youth. Blinded by malice, these wise men would have dealt with the unknown preacher on the spot.

Yet they feared the people, who by simple feeling understood better than they the truth preached to them. The people could have terribly avenged the offenders of their beloved preacher.

In view of this, the malicious haters covered their malice with innocent curiosity. They invited the Apostle Paul to the Areopagus, so that there he might set forth his new teaching in more detail before the leaders of the people.

Did they secretly remember that in this very supreme tribunal, the sage who had exposed sophists like them was once condemned to drink the deadly cup?

The judgment these philosophers drew from their conversation and disputes with Paul was twofold. Some, probably the Epicureans, regarded the truths Paul preached as empty talk or madness (1 Cor 1:23).

These truths were wholly opposed to their supposed wisdom. They did not wish to have anything more to do with him, since they did not understand him and rejected the truths he preached.

Others, probably among the Stoics, became interested that this foreigner was preaching about foreign, non-Greek divinities.

Paul was preaching Jesus Christ as God and the resurrection, Anastasis. They seem to have understood the resurrection also as a separate divinity, as Chrysostom says.

At least these did not turn away from the preacher with contempt. They wished to hear him, though they considered his words strange (verse 20).

Or, as they said in superficial judgment, he was speaking about foreign divinities. Paul, however, spoke to them of the Savior of the whole world.

Through Him alone salvation is possible, which the Stoics vainly tried to attain by their own efforts. But they did not understand this teaching of the apostle.

Nor did they understand his teaching about the resurrection, which seemed ridiculous to them. In general, the wisdom of that age, in the persons of the capital's sages, became foolish (cf. Rom 1:22).

"And could those understand Him, among whom some regarded God as a bodily being, while others regarded sensual pleasure as blessedness?"

"Never, it seems, was the philosophical and literary movement in Athens as strong as at the time described. From many testimonies of the ancients, for example Propertius, almost a contemporary of the Apostle Paul, this can be seen.

Athens was then the central point toward which very many who wished to study philosophy and oratory were drawn. Yet the spirit of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle was present in none of the great crowd.

The whole city was then literally swarming with philosophers, orators, grammarians, and teachers of every kind. As for learning, it was generally in decline."

From this one can understand why the visitors of the marketplace, with whom Paul first had occasion to speak, treated his words so lightly. Only empty dilettantes of philosophy and science could have acted in this way.