The view from Mars' Hill, where St. Paul addressed the Athenians about two thousand years ago, is an impressive one. Above, crowning the summit of that outcropping of rock known as the Acropolis, stands the Parthenon, a temple—magnificent even in ruins— dedicated to the goddess Athena. Below, leading to the summit, is a tree-lined road. In Paul's day it was also lined with altars honoring gods of the ancient world. From start to finish this was a pathway glorifying idolatry.
In their superstition, fearful that a deity unfamiliar to them might be offended by being excluded, the men of Athens also erected an altar bearing the inscription "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD." See Acts 17:23. Here was an opportunity, Paul realized, to expose the wholly false nature of idolatry and to proclaim the one and only God as man's creator, as his very Life. Here, in one of Paul's greatest discourses, he brought out a spiritual fact with profound implications for every age: neither God nor His creation is to be found within the confines of matter.
This view transcended all the natural and man made beauty so apparent from Mars' Hill and disclosed, instead, the beauty and certainty of God's wholly spiritual creation. Paul had encountered there two of the most influential philosophical groups of that era—the Epicureans and the Stoics, who advocated a tranquil endurance of, and indifference to, physical pain. What Paul offered then and for all time was not an accommodation to matter's claim to authority, but the recognition and acceptance of one God—Spirit—and of man as God's offspring. This is a perspective the world needs more of today.
