Achaia

Berea was Paul's last stopping place in the northern province of Macedonia. He left it accompanied by some of the newly won disciples, Silas and Timothy not being with him. Turning at first toward the sea, they went finally to Athens, and here, for a time at least, Paul seems to have been left alone. What stirred him most in this great city was not its far-famed works of art, whose broken fragments still move our wonder today, nor yet its traditions of a noble philosophy. Of that noble philosophy not much was left. The Epicureans whom Paul met, though they counseled moderation and virtue, found the meaning of life in pleasure. Stoicism was the self-centered philosophy of a few strong souls. It had no message of service to fellow men and no word of help from God. For the Athenians as a whole, however, these questions of truth or faith had become simply matters for fine speech and interesting debate. They "spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." What moved this Jew of pure faith most was the scene of shrines and temples and statues, "the city full of idols."

Here at Athens also there were Jews, and Paul met them and "the devout persons," or proselytes, at the synagogue. Athens, however, gave him a freer opportunity to speak to the people. The central market place was where they were accustomed to congregate, and here the apostle spoke with all that would listen. Luke reports to us a special address that Paul gave. Scholars are not agreed whether the Areopagus was a hill to which Paul was taken, Mars' Hill, or whether it means a council, or court, which was to pass upon Paul's teaching. Probably it was the latter.

The few words that Luke gives are at most a fragment or a summary. But even so they are very suggestive. With fine tact Paul finds a point of contact, the altar to the unknown God. He tells them of the God of all nature and all life, who is not shut up in temples. This brings him to his message of Jesus, through whom the word of righteousness and repentance comes now to men, and whom God has approved by his resurrection.

What we have is really the introduction to Paul's true message. It may be that he was interrupted. In any case, Paul seems to have found no large response. A few converts are spoken of, but we learn nothing at this time or later of a church at Athens. There is no reason to be surprised at this. Paul's message demanded moral earnestness and humility. Jesus himself had set these as the gateway to life in such passages as the Beatitudes: the meek were to inherit the earth, and those that hungered and thirsted after righteousness. To all this the Athenian spirit was in greatest contrast.

From Athens Paul goes to Corinth. The way had not yet opened for him to go back to Thessalonica. It pointed clearly to Corinth, and yet Paul at the beginning seems to have contemplated only a brief stay in the great city. It was a special vision, such as that which called him to Macedonia, that now showed him that he was to remain a longer period in Achaia before going north again.

Here at Corinth Paul was again at one of the centers of the empire. Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus were the great cities that he touched before he reached Rome. From Athens to Corinth was a brief journey, but a great change. Athens was the quiet city of culture, proud of its past, the university town. Corinth was the busy metropolis. It had been destroyed, had lain in ruins for a century, and been rebuilt but a hundred years before. The old population was largely gone. It was a modern city. Roman colonists were here and Roman officials, for it was the capital of Achaia. It had its philosophers and rhetoricians, as well as Athens. It had a strategic position for trade, lying on the isthmus and commanding two harbors. Goods were commonly transhipped to avoid the dangerous journey around the coast. It was a great commercial center and had large wealth. Like all such cities of the time, it had its masses of the poor, vastly outnumbering all the rest. A writer somewhat earlier than this reports four hundred and sixty thousand slaves. It was upon such a pyramid of oppression and wretchedness that the wealth of the great Roman cities rested. And that wealth brought in its train profligacy and vice. Corinth had even more than her share Her very name had become a byword: men who led lives of indulgence and vice were said to Corinthianize.

It was in a state of depression that Paul entered the city. His work in Macedonia had been broken off. He had not been able to get back to Thessalonica. He had had little result from his labor in Athens. "I was with you," he tells the Corinthians, "in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling" (1 Cor 2:3). If he was stirred by the idolatry of Athens, he was deeply moved here by the shame and sin of the life about him. What could he do with his gospel of the cross, coming to these Greeks with their wisdom and their eloquence? And what could any gospel do with a city so sunken in sin? If such questions came to Paul in moments of depression, he had his answer. He may have distrusted himself, but he did not doubt his message. He could not compete with these Greeks in fine speaking; he had only what they would call the foolishness of the cross. But that message he would give simply, directly, "not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

The result justified the faith. What the fine rhetoric of the Corinthians could not do, or the philosophy of Athens, that his simple message accomplished. It seemed a message of weakness; it was, in fact, a message of power. It seemed foolishness; it had in it, in reality, the deep wisdom of God. Its great test was this, that it could meet the wickedness even of Corinth, and overcome it. All this Paul brings in the letter which he writes later on to the Corinthians. We understand his daring speech, his paradoxes, by remembering these circumstances. "For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor I. 18-25; 2:1-5). Corinth showed Paul the power of the new faith over against the worst conditions of the old world.

Paul's work began at Corinth much as elsewhere. He first sought a place in the Jewish quarter where he could carry on his trade. Here he found one Aquila with his wife, Priscilla. The emperor Claudius had driven the Jews from Rome but a short time before this, and these people had come from Rome to Corinth. Whether they were already Christians or not, we do not know. Paul's first reason for stopping with them was because they had the same trade. Gifts from Philippi supplemented what he thus earned. He did not win many of the Jews, for the church that we see later at Corinth was mainly Gentile. His work, when he left the synagogue, was carried on in the house of a proselyte who lived next to the synagogue, and the nearness probably helped to aggravate the anger of the Jews. Paul also won over Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue. With these he gained many converts among the Corinthians, and quickly established a strong church.

The proconsul of the province at this time was Gallio, a brother of the noted Stoic philosopher Seneca. The hostility of the Jews culminated at last in an effort to convict Paul of serious charges before this Gallio. It is probable that here, as elsewhere, they tried to make it appear that there was something politically dangerous in Paul. To Gallio it was a quarrel among the Jews, and he drove them out with scant patience. The Jews were never popular. In this case their discomfiture emboldened some of the Corinthian bystanders, who improved the occasion by beating up Sosthenes, who had been elected ruler of the synagogue to succeed Crispus when the latter became Christian.

Directions for Reading and Study

Read Acts 17:13 to 18:18.

Write a paraphrase of Paul's speech at Athens.

Read 1 Cor 1 and 2.

Note what Paul has to say in praise and in criticism of the Corinthians in these two chapters.

From what Paul says in these two chapters, try to determine what his style of preaching was, and the qualities which it possessed and which it lacked.