Paul Against the Idols

A Contextual Reading of the Areopagus Speech

Flavien Pardigon

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781625647955, 9781498287425
• eBook ISBN: 9781725249486
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

The story of Paul's visit to the city of Athens with its speech delivered before the Areopagus council is one of the best-known and most-celebrated passages of the Acts of the Apostles. Being the only complete example of an apostolic address to "pure pagans" recorded, it has consistently attracted the attention of historians, biblical scholars, theologians, missionaries, apologists, artists, and believers over the centuries.Interpretations of the pericope are many and variegated, with opinions ranging from deeming the speech to be a foreign body in the New Testament to acclaiming it as the ideal model of translation of the Christian kerygma into a foreign idiom. At the heart of the debate is whether the various parts of the speech must be understood as Hellenistic or biblical in nature--or both.Paul Against the Idols defends and develops an integrated contextual study of the episode. Reading the story in its Lukan theological, intertextual, narrative, linguistic, and historical context enables an interpretation that accounts for its apparent ambivalence. This book thus contributes to the ongoing hermeneutical and exegetical scholarly discussions surrounding this locus classicus and suggests ways in which it can contribute to a Christian theology of religions and missiology.

part one

Contextualizing and Orienting Our Reading of the Areopagus Speech

If there is anything pleasant in life, it is doing what we aren’t meant to do. If there is anything pleasant in criticism, it is finding out what we aren’t meant to find out. It is the method by when we treat as significant what the author did not mean to be significant, by which we single out as essential what the author regarded as incidental. Thus, if one brings out a book on turnips, the modern scholar tries to discover from it whether the author was on good terms with his wife; if a poet writes on buttercups, every word he says may be used as evidence against him at an inquest of his views on a future existence.

—Ronald Knox, Essays in Satire, 98

The principle of contextual interpretation is, at least in theory, one of the few universally accepted hermeneutical guidelines, even though the consistent application of the principle is a notoriously difficult enterprise. Occasionally, however, one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that biblical scholars take exception to the principle itself.

—Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning, 138

Matters of Introduction

Though questions of introduction are of importance for the interpretation of any biblical document,1 a full discussion of those issues for Acts is beyond the purview of the present book. We consider that the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles have a common author,2 the Luke of the tradition3 mentioned in Col 4:14, 2 Tim 4:11 and Phlm 24.4 He was a serious historian,5 an original theologian,6 a skilled writer and storyteller.7 He is familiar with the canons of Graeco-Roman rhetoric and historiography (but is no slave to them), shows great knowledge of the Greek OT,8 and is conversant with Jewish traditions of scriptural interpretations.9 We consider that the book of Acts was composed “toward AD 70”10 in an unknown location.11 The Alexandrian text is almost universally considered to be the closest to Luke’s original, yet certain Western variants can be illuminating and deserve consideration.12 Though the Gospel of Luke and Acts are distinct writings, they were clearly conceived as one single work13 of “theological history” in continuity with OT historiography.14 Luke-Acts is aimed at a group of Christians who were familiar with the Christian kerygma as well as the OT and its interpretive traditions, though probably in various degrees.15

There is not one sole purpose that can account for the whole of Luke-Acts.16 Luke is not a single-issue writer! One can yet detect an overarching or undergirding concern in Luke’s two-volume work: Theophilus and his fellow readers appear to have been in need of reassurance concerning the legitimacy of the Christian church’s message and promise of (Israel’s) salvation.17 Luke’s response to this soteriological question is primarily christological and ecclesiological: Jesus of Nazareth is the prophesied/promised Messiah-Servant and his Spirit-inhabited ἐκκλησία is the eschatologically reconstituted—i.e., faithful and true—Israel. It is therefore the legitimate heir to Israel’s eschatological salvation. This ecclesiological argument is itself based on christological, historical, pneumatological, and theological developments.

1. “Attention to matters of introduction is important and necessary. For if the Bible is a historical document, then it is not an isolated phenomenon. No matter about the uniqueness of its origin and contents—precisely because these are historical, it is not isolated. That is, the biblical documents have contexts in which they are embedded. Each has a milieu in terms of which it is to be understood, a historical background apart from which it is intelligible only in a strictly limited fashion.” Gaffin, “Place and Importance,” 148. At the same time, one must recognize that the biblical text also has what could be called a “self-contained nature,” by which we mean that its message is intelligible on its own. The best discussions of introductory matters are those that rely primarily on an inductive study of the Scriptures rather than on speculative historical (or theological) reconstructions and subjective correlations with extra-biblical materials. Cf. the helpful discussions of the issue in Fitzmyer, Luke, 1.6 and Rowe, World Upside Down, 10–12.

2. Historically, only very few scholars—e.g., A. W. Argyle, A. C. Clark and J. Wenham—have denied a common authorship. The large majority of scholars consider that the same author wrote the two volumes, including those questioning the literary unity of Luke-Acts. Fitzmyer, Acts, 49, offers a good overview of the debate and the evidence for a single author. For a recent denial, see Walters, Assumed Authorial Unity, thoroughly critiqued by Joel B. Green, “Luke and Acts,” 109–12.

3. The main argument against this identification is a number of discrepancies perceived between the so-called “Paul of Acts” and “Paul of the (undisputed) Epistles.” The second is a late dating of the book. Many contemporary scholars accept the Luke of the tradition as the author of Luke-Acts, however. They typically consider that the perceived discrepancies were exaggerated by earlier scholars (in particular because of their own theological agendas, e.g., Wilckens, “Interpreting Acts”) and can be explained by the fact that Luke was a “sometime companion” of Paul who presents facets of Paul’s life and character not disclosed in his letters, due to different audiences, situations and purposes. See the discussion of authorship in Fitzmyer, Luke, 1.35–53; Witherington, Acts, 51–57, 167–70; and Keener, Acts, 1.402–22. For an extensive survey of the ancient church tradition regarding the authorship of Acts, see Barrett, Acts, 1.30–48. Contrast the discussion of the picture of Paul in Acts in Vielhauer, “Paulinism” with Jervell, “Paul in Acts”; Jervell, “Unknown Paul”; Porter, Paul in Acts; and Keener, Acts, 1.221–57.

4. See Witherington, Acts, 57–60.

5. See Sto...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: Contextualizing and Orienting Our Reading of the Areopagus Speech
• Part Two: A Contextual Reading of the Areopagus Speech
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Some Further Reflections on the Subject of Theology of Religions
• Bibliography