Acts 17:22-31 (NIV)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
Did the apostle Paul quote the Bible to the people of Athens? No he didn't. Paul most certainly did quote the Old Testament when he taught Jews about Jesus, because Jews believed in the authority of the scriptures. But the ancient Greeks did not. If a Christian tells you that we're going to convert atheists and agnostics by quoting them scriptures, they've missed the incident at Mars Hill. Did you notice what Paul did in his apologia?
He did several very important things:
1. Notice how he was polite. He went out of his way to compliment the Greeks. He calls them a deeply religious people (v. 22). Paul is polite and nowhere does he rebuke the Greeks.
2. Notice how Paul built a bridge by describing the altar to the unknown god (v. 23). He continues to build the bridge by correcting the Greeks in several areas, and indicating what God is truly like. He completes the bridge by relating the truth about God to what the Athenian poets are already saying about men being the offspring of god (v. 28). Paul then invites the Greeks over the bridge through a request to have a change of mind and move to God through Christ (v. 30, 31).
3. Paul suggests the idea of seeking God, and finding him (v. 27).
The Christian of today seeks to do the same with the current western culture through Apologetics. We look into the natural world and see God's footprints. In astronomy we see design. In history we see evidence. In archeology we see confirmation. In biology we see information. In mathematics we see probability. In logic we see reason. In philosophy we see truth. In the practice we see love. In the manuscripts we see inerrancy. In the scriptures we see God.
-Justin Steckbauer
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