Today we have been catching up with the apostle Paul on his next stop in his missionary journey: Athens. He arrived by boat on his own, having left behind in Berea his companions Silas and Timothy. We reflected that he must have felt quite lonely, used as he was to having companions with him.
It requires little imagination to appreciate how struck Paul would have been by what he saw. Although the glory days of Athens were behind her, and she was no longer the political power she once was, the buildings of this city, hundreds of years old though they were, would stillhave impressed the apostle Paul Above is the Parthenon that would have been fully intact at the time of Paul's visit. We imagined Paul being dwarfed by the huge columns as we were.
And although Athens was not the political power it once had been, it was still the centre of philosophical debate and discussion. So when, as Luke tells us in Acts 17:17, Paul reasoned in the market place with Jews and Greeks alike, he was following in a great tradition. Athens was a marketplace of ideas and Paul wanted to get his gospel across.
It would not have been easy for him. Luke tells us that Paul was actually 'greatly distressed to see the city so full of idols'; he was emotionally involved in what he saw. And his initial public speaking was met with some disdain by the philosophers; some referred to him as a 'babbler'. Yet what he said attracted enough interest for Paul to be invited to speak at a meeting of the Areopagus, one of the main debating fora in Athens. Paul accepted the invitation, yet what would his message be? Would he rail against the idolatry around him?
It was these questions we held in our minds as we climbed down from the Parthenon to the Areopagus itself.
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