The schools of philosophy that were dominant in Athens at the time of St. Paul’s visit were the Stoics and Epicureans. The Stoics were pantheists, and the Epicureans were not far removed from atheists—poor representatives both of the noble systems of Plato and Aristotle. In their hands Greek philosophy was rapidly declining. Athens, which in the century before had been the school of Cæsar and Brutus and Pompey, whither Cicero and Atticus and Horace had gone to receive instruction, had now no higher wisdom to impart than the philosophy of pleasure and pride. Nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of Christianity than the system of Epicurus, which made the highest good of man to consist in the pursuit of pleasure alone, denying the immortality of the soul and rejecting all notion of a hereafter, and having for its first principle, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die.” Nor had the system of Zeno and the Stoics very much in it that was in harmony with Christianity, although there were some points of affinity. The Stoics taught that God was merely the soul or mind of the universe; that the soul of man was corporeal, and after death would be consumed by fire or absorbed in the infinite. The highest aspiration of man in the Stoic system should be to attain to the state of complete apathy, perfect indifference to all things. There should be in the human breast neither passion nor pity, no sense of pleasure or pain. Their moral doctrines, however, were based on those of Socrates, and hence they inculcated a practical rule of life and morality, and they laid great stress on fidelity to the dictates of reason. This, and the heroic spirit of fortitude which the Stoic discipline strove to impart, were its only points of affinity with Christian teaching. To be sure some of the later or Roman Stoics, such as Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, made a very near approach to Christianity in many things, but then they lived more in the light of Christian truth. The worst feature in the Stoic philosophy was the view it took of suicide. Self-destruction was not only permitted but was positively approved by the Stoics, and nearly all the great leaders of the sect set the example of it.
Such were the philosophers with whom St. Paul disputed every day in the market-place of Athens. The doctrines of the Stoics at least were not new to him; for Tarsus in Cilicia, where Saul was born and educated, was a great centre of Stoic philosophy, and from his youth up he must have been more or less familiar with the salient points of the Stoic system. The “Painted Porch,” the headquarters of the Stoics in Athens, was situated in the Agora, and the Garden of the Epicureans was close at hand, so that in the market-place St. Paul was in the midst of the rival sects of philosophers—in fact, on the battle-ground. We can have little doubt of the kind of reception the Epicureans would give him. It was a part of their system to make light of everything, and to treat nothing seriously except their dinners. He spoke to them about “Jesus and the resurrection.” Of course they called him a “word-sower” or a “babbler,” though Renan will have it that they called St. Paul a “babbler” because he spoke bad Greek. The Stoics were grave men, however, and they gave him a respectful hearing. He knew the current of their thoughts and how to address himself to them; and his doctrines must have excited their curiosity, if not their interest. They it was, doubtless, who invited him to the Areopagus, the supreme tribunal, where every important question in religion, law, and philosophy was heard and pronounced upon. It was an exceedingly great mark of respect for St. Paul and his opinions that he should be invited from the vulgar discussions of the Agora to speak before the most ancient and most august assembly of Greece; it shows the impression he must have made by his learning and eloquence on the cultivated men of Athens, and it is a proof that after all St. Paul must have spoken pretty good Greek. The Areopagus, or “Council of Twelve,” was a tribunal set up in the earliest days of Grecian autonomy to try capital offences. Solon, 600 B.C., made it a sort of high council of state and bestowed upon it the power of veto. Only men of unblemished reputation, who had rendered signal services to their country, were eligible to become members of it. The Athenians regarded it as the most sacred institution of their state, and it was, in truth, the most venerable tribunal of the ancient world. Though it had been stripped of many of its prerogatives, it still retained its prestige and took cognizance of all matters relating to religion and education in Greece. Had St. Paul been invited to address the Roman Senate in the days of its greatest glory, he would have spoken before a more powerful but not a more august assembly than was the Areopagus the day that he stood before it on the summit of Mars’ Hill.
It was one of the great events that mark an epoch in the world’s history when Christianity, in the person of St. Paul, was summoned to appear for judgment before that high tribunal wherein all the cultivation and wisdom and intelligence of the gentile nations were concentrated. It was a solemn moment for the Christian cause, and what must have been the feelings of the great apostle as he ascended the long flight of stone steps that led him up to Mars’ Hill and into the midst of the sacred circle of the Areopagus? The curious multitude pressed after him; the twelve venerable judges, seated in benches hewn out of the rock, awaited him, impatient to dispose of this “setter-forth of new divinities.” It was a scene around which was gathered the glory of the ancient world and the expectation of the new. From the summit of that hill which overlooked Athens St. Paul could, as it were, survey all the wisdom and philosophy and religion of the past. His eye could rest on the spot of the Academy where Plato taught, and on the Lyceum where was the school of Aristotle. Right before him stood the Temple of Mars and the Pantheon of Minerva, and rising close above him was the Colossus of Athens, cast out of the brazen spoils of Marathon. The Acropolis, Athens, Greece were before him, and they summed up nearly all that was great in the past.
It was not the first time that St. Paul had preached Christ before a great assembly, and we may be assured that he entered upon his subject with his accustomed boldness. Standing up in the midst of the Areopagus, with outstretched hand, he began his abrupt exordium. Even the pagan poet Longinus, in his list of the orators of Greece, includes the name of “Paul of Tarsus, the patron,” as he says, “of an opinion not yet fully proved.” And St. Paul’s speech on this occasion must have called forth the full powers of his oratory. By all accounts the personal appearance of the great apostle was not striking, and we can hardly conceive of him as possessed of the graces of oratory; but these count for little in addressing popular assemblies. His power lay in the divine earnestness of his faith and his burning zeal for its propagation. He always spoke with the light that struck him blind on the road to Damascus shining in upon his soul, and the Voice that he heard ringing in his ear. Jesus Christ and his Gospel were an actuality to him, and he made them an actuality to all who heard him. There was no doubting the sincerity of his conviction—every tone of his voice, every expression of his countenance, every motion of his body was a declaration of the supreme power of the faith that possessed him. It was a novel experience to the free and easy Athenians, who were never thoroughly in earnest about anything, to have a man so consumed with earnestness make an appeal before them, and it must have impressed them not a little. They must have been a good deal taken by surprise also by the manner in which St. Paul introduced his subject. Instead of feeling his way timidly in the presence of so august an assemblage, he made a bold dash, carried the war at once into the enemy’s country, fought them on their own ground and with the weapons they themselves had furnished him. The people of Athens were so religious or so superstitious, or both, that they wanted to make sure that no god should be left unhonored in their city; and after raising an altar to every god of whom they had heard, they bethought themselves that there might still be some god of whom they had not heard, and so they raised an altar and dedicated it “To the unknown god.” Pausanias states that there were several such altars in Athens, and Petronius declares that so bountiful were the Athenians in providing altars and statues for the gods “that it was far easier to find a god in Athens than a man.” St. Paul might take it for granted that every false god was honored in Athens by name, and the only god who was “unknown” was the one true God whom he came to preach to them. This gave him at once an opening and a way to escape the accusation that he was a “setter-forth of strange divinities,” which would have been prejudicial to his cause before the Areopagus. It was a master-stroke, and in it we discover a good illustration of that cunning of the serpent which the apostles were told to imitate. It is supposed that we have only the outline of St. Paul’s speech on Mars’ Hill preserved to us in the Acts of the Apostles; and yet the outline is in itself complete and perfect in its adaptation to the audience. The Athenians were above all things proud of their city, and St. Paul told them that he was struck by its aspect; he noticed the religious feeling manifested in the setting up of so many objects of worship; and after having thus engaged the attention of the people he proceeded to lay before them the Christian conception of the Supreme Being, which must have recalled to the philosophers present the highest flights of Plato and commanded their attention. He struck directly at the atomic theory of the Epicureans by asserting the creative act of God and the divine Providence that rules the universe and orders all things. He spoke of the “God in whom we live, move, and be.” And the Stoics were full of interest; he appeared to side with their pantheistic notions of the Deity; he even quoted one of their poets—Aratus of Cilicia—and we can almost fancy some of the grave philosophers of this sect rising to applaud him. But in the next breath he crushed them, for he declared that God is a personal being, that he is equally the Father of all men, and that there is only one way to approach him—the same for all—the philosopher must come down from his high conceits and do penance just the same as the poor and illiterate. He broke down the barrier of race and national pride by declaring “that God made of one blood all the nations of mankind,” and the past times, however glorious they might appear, were in reality times of ignorance when the truth was not known. And to their utter astonishment he makes the “foolishness” of Christ and his resurrection the basis and proof of all religious truth and righteousness. This was the least philosophical part of St. Paul’s discourse and created the most opposition; but it was the most irresistible, for it was a fact.
Athens had heard great orators before, but this was the most immortal speech ever uttered in her hearing; even apart from its sacred character it would hold its own for eloquence and skill among the greatest productions of the past. It is the true model of Christian eloquence, and illustrates that economy in the way of presenting divine truth which is the most striking feature in the teaching of St. Paul. “Instead of uttering any invective,” says Dr. Newman, “against their polytheism, he began a discourse upon the unity of the divine nature, and then proceeded to claim the altar consecrated in the neighborhood to the unknown god as the property of Him whom he preached to them, and to enforce his doctrine of the divine immateriality, not by miracles but by argument, and that founded on the words of a heathen poet.”
But the speech was not well received, nay, it was interrupted, cut short, and, powerful as it was, only a very few persons in that large assembly were converted by it, and of these two only are mentioned—Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, and the woman Damaris, of whom nothing is known. It created a profound impression, nevertheless. It took the philosophers of Athens completely by surprise; they were wholly unprepared to meet it, and the only part to which they could make an immediate objection was the Resurrection, and they took advantage of this to postpone the discussion and so escape the relentless logic of St. Paul.
Nor did they give him another hearing, as they had promised. They were insincere; like the modern triflers with truth, they were afraid they might hear too much, and so took refuge in evasion. Such are still the tactics of flippant philosophers and men of bad faith all the world over. They simply do not want to know the truth, and hence they mock at it and evade it. But even the conversion of one member of the high council of Greece was a great gain for Christianity. Dionysius was a conquest worthy of St. Paul, and to have given to France her glorious St. Denis was a result that well repaid the highest effort of Christian eloquence.
Thus it was that Christian philosophy encountered Greek philosophy on the summit of Mars’ Hill, and silenced and dethroned it; and during twenty centuries thus has it silenced and dethroned every system that has come in conflict with it; and although its supremacy has been constantly disputed, it still remains supreme in the domain of reason and of truth. In cultivated Athens we behold the highest point to which unaided human reason can attain, and it is in cultivated Athens that we first find Christianity asserting its claim to be the gospel of reason as well as of faith.
Christianity is the only system of religion that has made philosophy its handmaiden and used it to elucidate its doctrines. It is, in fact, the only religious system that can confidently appeal to the higher powers of reason, and hence it is the only creed that has ever made really intellectual conquests, that has ever compelled rationalism and scepticism to pause before it and believe, or at least doubt. Christianity alone, among all the religions of the world, has been able to exact the complete homage of the minds as well as the hearts of cultivated men.
But although philosophy to a certain extent prepared the way for Christianity, and Christianity constantly uses philosophy and appeals to it, it is a great mistake to suppose that philosophy played a very important part in the formation and propagation of the Christian faith. The religion that bears the name of Christ is not a theory gradually developed, but from the very first a definite system of religious teaching resting on facts. The logic of facts, not of philosophy, has propagated Christianity. St. Paul appealed to philosophy in Athens, and he converted two persons. St. Peter appealed to facts in Jerusalem, and he converted eight thousand. This is about the proportion of the relative influence of philosophy and fact in the propagation of the Christian religion. Jesus and the Resurrection, the facts at the bare mention of which the Athenians mocked, were the facts that a century later converted Greece when the tide of human testimony spread on from Judea and confirmed them. Philosophical theories have never founded a religion, they have never wrought any great revolution in the belief of mankind; facts alone can produce wide-spread conviction and change.