God’s Word for You
Acts 17:22-23 The Athenian Catechism (part 1)
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, October 17, 2020
THE ATHENIAN CATECHISM
22 So Paul stood up in the middle of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked along and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Now then, what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
Paul begins his response to the Athenians in a simple, brilliant, five-part statement about the Christian faith. As I read it, I see each of the five parts having three sub-points, and I think this shows that Paul had carefully planned his message beforehand. The five points are:
I, Who God is
II, What God is not
III, What God has done
IV, What this proves about God
V, What God wants and offers
Paul introduces this little catechism with a reference point for the people of Athens: their altars to “The Unknown God.” That inscription could be found on more than one altar around the city. During a time when a deadly virus had ravaged Greece, the Athenians released black and white sheep from this very hill, the Areopagus. Wherever a sheep would stop, they sacrificed to that local, neighborhood deity. But if they couldn’t find out the name of the local god, they would make an altar to “The Unknown God.” Many of these altars were still standing in Paul’s day and for centuries after. By referring to one, he is able to talk about the true God.
In verse 23, Paul presents the beginning of his first point: “Who God Is.” The ancestors of the Athenians had, like all mankind, once known about the true God. By now, though, the true God had been completely forgotten, and the Greeks had fallen into a complex pantheon of invented deities, all made up and created in the image of man. Each of the Greek gods had failings, flaws, and made mistakes they were never willing to admit. The Greek gods were frightening, and their compassion, if it ever seemed to come at all, was based more on luck than on anything else.
When had the Greek known about God, the true God? For that, we don’t need to travel back to Adam and Eve, but only to Noah and his sons. After the flood, Noah’s family dispersed as the grandchildren increased their numbers. The eldest of Noah’s sons was probably Japheth since his line is listed first in the table of nations, Genesis 10:1-5. Japheth’s fourth son was Javan (Genesis 10:2). The name Javan may have become “Ionia,” which is southern Greece (where Athens is). Moses seemed to know more about Javan than any of Japheth’s other descendants:
“The descendants of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim and the Rodanim. From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language” (Genesis 10:4-5)
As with every genealogy, Moses gives us a little story in these verses. While there is no record of how many children or grandchildren were born to Javan, four important nations came from his line. One was Elishah. They were probably the people of Sicily and southern Italy. Another was Tarshish, a place on the southwestern coast of Spain, beyond the Mediterranean, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the far limit of the known world in the Bible, often depicted as bringing Spanish silver (Jeremiah 10:9) or used to bring other exotic things like ivory, apes and peacocks to Solomon (2 Chronicles 9:21). The Kittim were the people who lived on Cyprus (where Barnabas was preaching, Acts 15:39). Finally the Rodanim were another sea-going people who probably gave their name to the big Greek island of Rhodes (whenever a word begins with “R,” the Greek will spell and pronounce it “Rh”). Sometime after the flood, these families lost contact with the preaching of Noah, Shem and Eber (Genesis 10:22-24). The line of believers was faithfully carried along with them. From Eber we get the name “Hebrews.” But those family divisions were ancient. Paul and the Athenians were as distant from Japheth and Javan as we are from Paul and the Athenians. They no longer remembered the true God at all. “Whoever does not continue in the teaching of Jesus Christ does not have God” (2 John 9).
But Paul was not willing to dismiss them as completely ignorant. There was still the urge in the Athenians to reach out and search for truth, and for the true God. So Paul’s second thought about “Who God Is” was that if the Athenians truly wanted to know who God is, then Paul was happy to acknowledge that this “Unknown God” is really the true God.
The desire to seek God and perhaps reach out for him (Acts 17:27) is present in all mankind. But apart from the gospel in the Holy Scriptures, we can’t know who God really is, or what he has done for us. This is the information we can fill in for one another and by pointing out Jesus in the Bible. As Joshua said, “Do not let the Book depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8).
Paul was carefully laying the foundation to preach law and gospel by finding common ground, somehow, with the pagans of Athens. Now he would be able to show them the grace of God, revealed in the mystery of the blood of Christ shed for our forgiveness. This is where our mistakes and our failures disappear by God’s mercy alone. This is the way of the resurrection, the way of eternal life. This is what we share.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.