The unknown god
Paul at the Areopagus, Athens
Athens is the intellectual capital of the world, and Paul is walking through it alone, waiting for his friends, and getting increasingly upset.
The city is full of idols. Temples everywhere — to Athena, to Zeus, to Ares, to a hundred others. Altars on every corner. The air thick with incense and sacrifice. Luke says Paul's spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city given over to idols.
He goes to the synagogue, debates with the Jews. Then to the agora — the public marketplace — and debates with whoever will talk to him. Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engage him. Some mock: what does this babbler mean? Others are curious: he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities.
They bring him to the Areopagus — Mars Hill, a limestone outcrop just northwest of the Acropolis. You can still climb it today, still run your hand along the same rock Paul stood on, still look out over the same view of Athens spread below.
He looks out at the city and finds his opening. He has noticed, among all the temples and altars, one inscribed: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.
The Athenians had built it as insurance — in case they had missed one. In case some deity they didn't know about was out there, offended by the neglect.
Paul plants his flag there: What you worship as unknown, I proclaim to you.
He doesn't quote Moses. He quotes their own poets. He meets them exactly where they are.
“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”
— Paul, Acts 17:23
“that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live, and move, and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.'”
Paul didn't walk into Athens with a Jewish framework and demand the Greeks adopt it. He walked in with the gospel and looked for the place where it was already pressing against the surface of what they already believed.
Every culture has an altar to an unknown god. Every person has a question or a longing or an absence that points toward the one they haven't named yet.
The question for those of us who carry the gospel is the same one Paul faced on Mars Hill: are we meeting people where they are, or demanding they meet us where we are?
The unknown god is never as far from people as we assume. Often we are the distance.