Paul In Athens; Acts 17:15 – 34 Part 4

Church History: Date: A.D. 49-52

The Epicureans, who thought God was like themselves, an idle inactive being, that minded nothing, or put any difference between good and evil. They would not admit that God made the world or that he governs it; nor that man needs have any sense of right or wrong or of what he says or does. There is no punishment to fear nor rewards to hope for, all which lead to the atheistically notions leveled against Christianity. The Epicureans indulged themselves in all the pleasures of sense, and placed their happiness in them, in what Christ has taught us in the first place to deny ourselves.

The Stoics, who thought they were as good as God, and indulged themselves as much in the pride of life as the Epicureans did in the lusts of the flesh and of the eye. They made their virtuous man to be equal to God himself, even to be superior. There is that in which a wise man exceeds God, so Seneca: to which Christianity is directly opposite, as it teaches us to deny ourselves and abase ourselves, and to come off from all confidence in ourselves, that Christ may be all in all.

They differed in their opinions about him; just like they did with Christ. Some called him a babbler. They thought he spoke without any design, saying whatever came to mind, as men of crazed imaginations do. What will this babbler say next? They called him a scatterer of words, throwing out one idle word or story here and another there, without any trace of significance. Others said he was advocating strange gods, and thought he spoke with intentions of making himself important by that means. And, if he had strange gods to introduce to them, he could not bring them to a better place than to Athens. He did not, as many did, directly set forth new gods, nor avowedly; but they thought he seemed to do so, because he preached to them about Jesus, and the resurrection. From his first arriving among them he concentrated on these two things, which are indeed the principal doctrines of Christianity. "Jesus they took for a new god, and the resurrection, for a new goddess." Thus they lost the benefit of the Christian doctrine by dressing it up in a pagan dialect, as if believing in Jesus, and looking for the resurrection, were the worshipping of new demons.