Tough Questions Answered: How Did Paul Find Common Ground with Greek Intellectuals in Acts 17?

This is my reply to a Tough Questions Answered article entitled

           

How Did Paul Find Common Ground with Greek Intellectuals in Acts 17?

Posted: 25 Aug 2017 06:00 AM PDT

Darrell Bock, in Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, provides an excellent analysis of Paul’s speech to the Athenian Areopagus in Acts 17. Bock demonstrates how the beginning of Paul’s oration found common ground with his Greek audience. By studying Paul’s technique, we can learn how to find common ground with members of our culture who are biblically illiterate.

And the desire to find common ground makes it seem you don't believe the Holy Spirit will be quite as successful with your audience without this secular persuasion technique.  This tells me that at least unconsciously you believe there's nothing more to your selling of God to others, than there is when Arnie sells a used car.  If the Holy Spirit can convict of sin without the human speaker establishing common ground with the unbeliever, why did Paul wish to seek common ground?  Could it be that this is the expected fruit of a man who thinks God can be assisted by employment of secular psychological tactics?

snip

    In addition, ‘we are his offspring’ (γένος ἐσμέν, genos esmen). The expression that we are God’s offspring comes from another pagan poet, Aratus (ca. 315–240 BC), Phaenomena 5 (some scholars also note Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus; Marshall 1980: 289; but Fitzmyer 1998: 611 rejects a connection to Cleanthes). Paul explicitly notes this connection in introducing the citation as coming from ‘some of your poets.’ Paul is working with ideas in the Greek world that are familiar to the Athenians and only alludes to Scripture in his speech instead of quoting it directly. The text from Aratus, as Paul uses it, recognizes the shared relationship all people have to God.

Paul was also taking it out of context, since the immediate context Aratus gave, clearly indicates the god is Zeus and "offspring" meant humans are little gods:

 PHAENOMENA, TRANSLATED BY G. R. MAIR 
[1] From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; and he in his kindness unto men giveth favourable signs and wakeneth the people to work, reminding them of livelihood. He tells what time the soil is best for the labour of the ox and for the mattock, and what time the seasons are favourable both for the planting of trees and for casting all manner of seeds. For himself it was who set the signs in heaven, and marked out the constellations, and for the year devised what stars chiefly should give to men right signs of the seasons, to the end that all things might grow unfailingly. Wherefore him do men ever worship first and last. Hail, O Father, mighty marvel, mighty blessing unto men. Hail to thee and to the Elder Race! Hail, ye Muses, right kindly, every one! But for me, too, in answer to my prayer direct all my lay, even as is meet, to tell the stars.

What would you do if you found out that in the immediate context of the pagan poem Paul quoted, Aratus was talking about people being the children of Zeus?

Would you continue asserting what you've confidently asserted your whole life, namely, that the person who takes a text out of context has engaged in obvious wrong-doing?

Or did you suddenly discover, just now, that taking things out of context can sometimes be a good thing? When is the last time you ever entertained such a stupid notion that taking things out of context could ever be acceptable? 

 

There's no denying Paul took Aratus out of context, so instead of doing the obvious and concluding Paul was wrong to take something out of context, just like you always insist this is wrong for everybody else to do, you instead insist that this act which everybody has always agreed is always wrong, an act that you've used to definitively prove the dishonesty of skeptics and cultists, and now you get a flash of knowledge that perhaps taking something out of context isn't necessarily always indicative of stupidity or dishonesty.

If Paul believed Hebrews 4:12 or the same as that verse, that the word of God is alive and powerful, would he have attempted to find common ground with the pagans by quoting their own devilish polytheistic and fictional literature?

Isn't it more likely that, if Paul believed the same as Hebrews 4:12, he would have concluded that finding common ground is the less forceful way to convince pagans, and the clear settled word of God is the most powerful took in his arsenal to fight through their ingrained paganism?

When you evangelize a Hindu, do you try to find common ground by quoting something from the Vedas? Stupid, right?

If any of this Acts 17 scene is historically true, then Paul clearly had less faith in the revealed word of God to convict pagans of their error, than he had in the purely naturalistic approach of establishing common ground with them. But there is no common ground possible anyway:

15 Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? (2Co 6:15-16 NAU)

 

Conservative Inerrantist commentators agree Paul was quoting a text that was originally about Zeus, see "Ashamed of the Gospel (3rd Edition): When the Church Becomes Like the World", By John MacArthur, Crossway Pub. 2010, p. 159), so you don't have the option of saying this part of Aratus' poem was inspired by God.

A Christian professor of classics admits that Paul did not use this quotation according to its originally intended Stoic sense:

It is noteworthy that Aratus commences his poem with the words, "let us begin with Zeus," for the gods who were conventionally invoked by Greek poets were the Muses, the goddesses of poetic inspiration. Aratus' contemporaries would have been struck by this change, by which the poet lends a religious Stoic tenor into the Phaenomena. To ancient Greeks Zeus was the sky-god whose control over the sun and clouds directly concerned human beings; mention of him at the outset of a work on constellations and weather is therefore appropriate. For Hellenistic Stoics, however, Zeus was another name for that force which controlled the universe and resided in man and beast. It is a kind of pantheism which Aratus advances in these opening lines:the divine Reason permeates every facet of human endeavour. The city-streets and market-places, the seas and harbours are filled with the presence of this deity (lines 2-3). Zeus must be praised at the start of his poem because this "world-soul" controls the cosmos. Mankind is, according to such belief, part of that environment and so "is indebted to Zeus." The omnipotence of Zeus is expressed with the words "for we are indeed his offspring." Literally the poet states that we are of the race (genos) of Zeus. Thus the ancient weather-god, once depicted in anthropomorphic terms, is replaced by the Stoics with an abstract force which pervades the entire world.

Having noted the context of the half-verse "for we are indeed his offspring," the reader will conclude that the apostle Paul does not quote this passage in complete agreement with its meaning and intent, but in order to show that even to some Greek thinkers and writers the idea of an anthropomorphic Zeus is false.

Verses 24-31 of chapter 17 clarify Paul's use of the quotation in declaring the gospel of repentance to the Athenians. When he cites the saying that man is God's offspring, Paul employs the words in light of God's self-revelation in the Old Testament. Mankind was created in the image and likeness of God, as revealed in Genesis 1 :26-27. Paul does not give the phrase "for we are indeed His offspring" the meaning which Stoics do; rather, he uses it to preach that God abhors idolatrous worship. Paul had stated earlier in his speech that God does not "live in shrines made by man" (24). After quoting Aratus the apostle says that the Deity is not "like gold, or silver, or stone" (25). Surely Paul has in mind the second commandment here, as stated, for example, in Leviticus 26:1 "you shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no graven image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land." The Stoics had rightly reasoned that if mankind is the offspring of God, then the living God cannot be represented by an inanimate object. Paul himself writes elsewhere that God's eternal power and deity are visible in creation (Romans 1 :20). And in yet another context the apostle restates in general terms what he says specifically to the Athenian populace in Acts 17: "What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, 'I will live in them and move among them' (2 Corinthians 6:16)." Thus on the Areopagus Paul points out that the Athenians had exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man.

Verses 24-31 also makes clear that Paul does not adopt the Stoic theology of a guiding principle as expressed by Aratus; the apostle depicts God as the Creator, whose person is real. In verse 25 the missionary reminds his listeners that God is the creator of the universe, who has no need of human idolatrous adoration. Here Paul may have in mind Psalm 50:7-15, where the Lord states that He does not require sacrifices from mortals, for all the world and everything in it is His by virtue of His work of creation. And to underscore the personal quality of the true God Paul states that God has "overlooked" the times of ignorance (30), "commands" all men to repent (31), since He has fixed a day when He "will judge" (31) the world by Christ whom He "has appointed" (31). Thus the apostle in no way identifies with Stoic or Epicurean theology, but declares the God who is Creator and Judge.

Do you agree with this professor that "the apostle Paul does not quote this passage in complete agreement with its meaning and intent"?

If so, what else are you doing when you quote a passage not in complete agreement with its meaning and intent, except quoting it out of context?

The desire to vindicate Paul regardless of how good the evidence against him is, is rather difficult to resist, amen?

 

Clement of Alexandria believed Paul was quoting from Aratus.  From Stomata, Book 1, ch. XIX:

Since, then, the Greeks are testified to have laid down some true opinions, we may from this point take a glance at the testimonies. Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, is recorded to have said to the Areopagites, “I perceive that ye are more than ordinarily religious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with the inscription, To The Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. God, that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him; though He be not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we also are His offspring.”
Whence it is evident that the apostle, by availing himself of poetical examples from the Phenomena of Aratus, approves of what had been well spoken by the Greeks; and intimates that, by the unknown God, God the Creator was in a roundabout way worshipped by the Greeks; but that it was necessary by positive knowledge to apprehend and learn Him by the Son. 

Does a pagan take Genesis 1:1 out of context by using it to show that Zeus created the world?  If so, then necessarily, by the same logic, you believe that when Paul quoted a pagan text about Zeus for the proposition that the biblical god is the father of all people, he was taking that pagan text out of context. 

 

Either way, the revealed word of God provides plenty of ammo to fight against ingrained paganism, so Paul's attempt to evangelize using more methods than simply the sure-fire word of God, indicates his lack of faith that God's word is powerful. You don't see Peter coddling the scruples of any Jews in Acts 2, do you? Apparently, successful evangelism of those most against the gospel does not require establishing any common ground whatsoever.

Augustine didn't hold back from admitting Paul quoted Aratus out of context.  From Schaff's edition, Augustine, Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily 38  Acts 17:16, 17:

 And he does not say, “Through Him,” but, what was nearer than this, “In him.” - That poet said nothing equal to this, “For we are His offspring.” He, however, spake it of Jupiter, but Paul takes it of the Creator, not meaning the same being as he, God forbid! but meaning what is properly predicated of God: just as he spoke of the altar with reference to Him, not to the being whom they worshiped. As much as to say, “For certain things are said and done with reference to this (true God), but ye know not that they are with reference to Him.” For say, of whom would it be properly said, “To an Unknown God?” Of the Creator, or of the demon? Manifestly of the Creator: because Him they knew not, but the other they knew. Again, that all things are filled (with the presence) - of God? or of Jupiter - a wretch of a man, a detestable impostor! But Paul said it not in the same sense as he, God forbid! but with quite a different meaning. For he says we are God’s offspring, i.e. God’s own, His nearest neighbors as it were. 

DeSilva cites E. Ferguson's noting the pantheistic nature of the Aratus quote: 

E. Ferguson notes another conceptual similarity to be the idea of kinship with the divine. 29 The citation from Aratus in Acts 17:28 (“for we are of his offspring”) documents the Stoic concept 30 as does, for example, Epictetus, who speaks of Zeus as the father of humankind (whom Odysseus even regarded as a personal father-like guardian). 31 Paul’s similar statement in Gal 3:26 (“for you are all children of God”) distinguishes itself from the Stoic counterpart by the addition of “in Christ Jesus” and “through faith” as the qualifiers. For the Stoic, there were no qualifiers on kinship with the divine, a relationship all held to the deity by virtue of being the deity’s workmanship together with the rest of nature. Similarly the Stoics held that all parts of the universe formed a whole, and to describe this they employed the metaphor of a body and its component members. 32

29 29. Ferguson, Backgrounds 293.

30 30. Aratus Phaenomena 5.

31 31. Epictetus Dissertations 3.24.

32 32. Cf. ibid. 2.10.4-5; Seneca Ep. 95.52: “All that you behold, that which comprises both god and man, is one—we are the parts of one great body,” cited by Fee, First Corinthians 602.

 JETS 38/4 (December 1995 ) 554,

"Paul And The Stoa: A Comparison", David A. Desilva*

The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.

1998 (electronic edition.). Garland, TX: Galaxie Software. 

In 1995 David deSilva was assistant professor of NT

and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary 

J.D. Charles admits Paul's source is Aratus, and that similar language is found in other Stoics, but the point is that the fundie Christian cannot escape Paul taking Aratus out of context merely by whining that Paul's dependence on specifically Aratus for the quote isn't concretely established:  The Stoic view was pantheistic, so it doesn't matter if Paul was quoting any of them directly or indirectly, he still took the pantheistic statement out of context, given the pantheistic intentions of the Stoic authors writing such stuff.  When you quote a Stoic view of God to get Stoic interested in hearing your perspective, you are leaving them with the false impression that you approve of the theology in the quote, and indeed, Paul nowhere expresses or implies that the pantheistic Stoic view is incorrect:

The second citation, “We are his offspring,” stems from the third-century BC Stoic philosopher Aratus, who, significantly, hailed from Paul’s native Cilicia. Aratus penned these words in a poem in honor of Zeus. Titled Phaenomena, the poem is an interpretation of constellations and weather signs. It reads that “in all things each of us needs Zeus, for we are also his offspring.” Without question, “his offspring” is sure to resonate with any Stoic present in the audience.67

----67 “Phaen 5. It is difficult to confine with precision these words to Aratus of Soli alone, given the fact that this language appears in numerous ancient sources. For example, the words of Cleanthes, another third-century BC. Stoic, are comparable: “You, O Zeus, are praised above all gods… Unto you may all flesh speak, for we are your offspring” (the text is reproduced in M. Pohlenz, “Kleanthes Zeushymnus,” Hermes 75 [1940] 117–23). Similarly, the third-century BC poet Callimachus, in a hymn “To Zeus,” speaks of humankind as “offspring of the earth” (Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments [Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University, 1988] 3).

"Engaging the (Neo)Pagan Mind:   Paul’s Encounter with Athenian Culture as a Model for Cultural Apologetics"  (Acts 17:16–34, J. Daryl Charles, TrinJ 16:1 (Spring 1995) 58,
Trinity Journal. 1998 (electronic edition.). Deerfield, IL: Trinity Seminary.

If Paul has no problem quoting pagan literature out of context, what exactly is wrong with concluding that he likely didn't have a problem quoting the OT out of context either? If Paul didn't think he did something wrong in taking Aratus out of context, he likely wouldn't believe that taking the OT texts out of context was something wrong either.

 

 Paul even misquoted the sign "to the unknown god", as Jerome says that sign had read "to the unknown gods" plural, and he says Paul changed it to a singular god to make the intended comparison easier to maintain than it really was. 

 

 In Jerome's Commentary on Titus 1:12, Jerome says the signs in question would have been in the plural, such as "To the Gods of Asia and Europe and Africa, to unknown and strange gods":

It has often been discussed whether Paul took a certain degree of “homiletical license” in his reference to the inscription “to an unknown god.” Jerome thought so, arguing in his Commentary on Titus (1:12) that there were altars in Athens dedicated to “unknown gods” and that Paul had adapted the plural “gods” to the singular “god” in light of his monotheistic sermon.78 Pagan writers also attested to the presence of altars “to unknown gods” but always in the plural. For instance, the Traveler Pausanias, writing in the middle of the second century A.D., described the presence of altars to gods of unknown names on the road from Phalerum to Athens and an altar “to unknown gods” at Olympia.79 Written in the third century, Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana also refers to these Athenian altars “to unknown gods.”80 There is thus ample literary evidence that Paul did not fabricate his allusion, that there were in fact such altars in Athens. Whether they were invariably inscribed in the plural or whether there was one dedicated to a single “unknown god” remains an open question.

Polhill, J. B. (2001, c1992). Vol. 26: Acts (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 371). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

  snip

In like manner, when we engage anyone with the truths of Christianity, we must find common ground first.

That doesn't cohere with biblical statements that God's word is powerful on its own (Isaiah 55:10-11, Hebrews 4:12) and conflicts with Peter's alleged ability to successfully evangelize Jews without needing to coddle their scruples in Acts 2.   Really now, if you think you need to quote something from the Vedas to establish common ground with the Hindu you are attempting to evangelize, you are saying you think the Holy Spirit can be helped with secular persuasion techniques.  But if the Holy Spirit truly is moving through your preaching, it is highly unlikely that he needs you to employ naturalistic bridging-tactics to successfully convict them of their sin.