Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. (17) Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. (18) Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. (19) And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? (20) For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. (21) (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)
We shall be better able to form our conclusions of the Apostle's ministry among the Athenians, if we previously take a short view of this people; and, under divine teaching, from what is here said of them, behold the wretched blindness, in respect to the true knowledge of God, in which this famous city was then covered.
Athens, at the time Paul was there, stood high in repute for learning and philosophy, and all human sciences then in esteem in the schools. It prided itself also upon religion. And from the intercourse with the Jews at Jerusalem in trade, they had acquired some knowledge of the scriptures of God. And as a free toleration was granted to everyone to exercise whatever profession he thought proper of religion, the Jews had a Synagogue for worship in Athens. But the leading part of the people were divided, (as appears from this Chapter), into those two great sects, the Epicureans, and the Stoicks. The former sprung from a certain philosopher (falsely so called) of the name of Epicurus, who lived about three hundred and forty years before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. His doctrine was, that there was no first cause; no God; but that the world came by chance. And that a man's own pleasure was the only object of pursuit. The Stoicks were the followers of a philosopher called Zeno. They took the name of Stoic from the Greek word Stoa, which signifies a Porch. And as it is said that under a Porch Zeno used to walk, and teach his pupils his notion of things, they were called Stoic philosophers on that account. The tenets of this class of people differed from that of the Epicureans, in acknowledging a first cause. But they held that so much natural goodness was in every man, he had a power over his own passions; and he might, if he pleased, undergo the greatest pain with indifference. Such were the different characters of the Gentile philosophers with whom Paul had to contend; beside the blindness and prejudice of the ignorant Jews. No wonder so deeply distressed in soul the Apostle must have been, when he beheld the whole city sunk in idolatry, that his spirit could not refrain! Jeremiah 20:9. Reader! pause, if but for a moment, and contemplate, the awful effects of the fall! Oh! what an universal ruin was induced thereby, to our whole nature! The Church of God, as well as the whole mass of men, all involved in one common calamity: darkness covering the earth, and gross darkness the people, Isaiah 62:2.