Acts 17:21Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Even Pharaoh knew that striving toward God belongs only to one freed from cares. Therefore he reproached Israel: "You are idle, you are idle. Therefore you say, Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord" (Ex 5:17).

For the one who gives himself to inactivity, idleness is good and useful when it produces in him stillness for receiving saving doctrines.

Yet equally harmful is the idleness of the Athenians. They spent their time in nothing more eagerly than speaking or hearing something new.

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."

Day by day more listeners gathered around the God-inspired preacher. At last some philosophers, apparently left without an audience, had to take notice of him.

Malice and vexation boiled in their hearts against this unknown preacher. Yet curiosity overcame malice, and from behind the crowd they began listening to the preaching of the bold stranger who had dared to rival them.

His inspired preaching flowed over the masses like a mighty stream. By some wondrous power it fixed the people's attention. The crowds seemed to stand motionless.

The dead silence was a better approval of the apostle's preaching than the noisy applause with which a distracted and idle crowd usually rewarded the inflated speeches of philosophers.

The philosophers, with hidden envy, saw the extraordinary effect of the unknown preacher's teaching upon the masses. Yet strangely, these wise men themselves could understand nothing of it.

Their whole store of philosophical knowledge gave them no power to understand the new teaching. They had encountered nothing like it in Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, or the other pillars of philosophy.

In their view, those men had fathomed the whole sea of wisdom to its depths.

They did not think that one could speak and reason no less philosophically about religious truths, about God, His righteousness, and human justification or salvation.

It was only necessary to transfer philosophizing into another sphere than that in which their philosophy moved. Their philosophy was chiefly earthly, material, and sensory.

Socrates and Plato strove to rise to higher objects of thought. But their followers were now held in especially little honor.

Therefore it is not surprising that Paul's still more elevated teaching, despite its sharp novelty, pleased very few. Those who were interested in it at first later refused to listen to him.

Once again the wisdom of the age proved unequal to its calling. "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Cor 2:14).

"See," says Saint John Chrysostom, "how under the appearance of a desire to learn they reveal in everything their passion for novelties. Their city was a city of empty talkers."

The Areopagus, according to Blessed Theophylact, is so called because Άρειος means Mars and Πάγος means hill. Therefore the place was called the hill of Ares, or Mars Hill.

There, according to the story of the Greeks, the god Mars was punished for adultery. It stood not far from the great marketplace where Paul had spoken earlier (verse 17), on Mars Hill adjoining the Acropolis.

Here the members of the Areopagus, the chief representatives of Greek culture, and the people standing in the marketplace could hear Paul. The building of the Areopagus was rather open.

"The expression, 'You bring certain strange things to our ears,' according to Bishop Michael, breathes subtle irony and proud condescension. The supposedly most educated Athenians show it toward the supposed ignorance of barbarians. They considered all non-Greeks barbarians, except perhaps the Romans."

"We know everything, as it were, but we want to hear what you are preaching. This is especially so since you bring certain strange things to our ears."

The placing of words into ears is either another mocking expression or an adaptation to an Asiatic form of speech. There, when wishing to listen, people often said, for example, "We have hung our ears on the nail of attention."

Perhaps the Athenians also emphasized by this the force with which the apostle spoke. He seemed involuntarily to compel them to listen and even to place in their ears what they did not wish to hear.

Still less did they wish to understand that he did not want to tickle their ears (cf. 2 Tim 4:3), but to whiten their hearts and save their souls.