The Gospel to the Philosophers

Overview

Even after the rise of Rome, Athens was still the intellectual capital of the Greco-Roman world in the first century. For those of us who are English speakers, Athens was like all of the Ivy League schools, plus Oxford and Cambridge, all rolled into one.

The passage today is Paul’s address to the philosophers of the Areopagus, which is on Mars Hill. It’s a rich place in the Bible for analysis, because Paul’s argument is extraordinarily well-crafted and structured. To really get into it, you need a background in various schools of Greek philosophy. You have to understand Greek rhetoric. We’re going to look at three high-level observations in the text: the problems of culture, the greatness of God, and the outrageousness of the resurrection.