This is the second of Craig’s lectures, regarding Luke’s missiology, at Beeson Divinity School in February:
http://youtu.be/z9FzsR6rY6w
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Paul’s letters never compromise God’s message, but he uses the language of his culture to articulate that message whenever possible. Sometimes God’s message is compatible with our culture; often it challenges our culture. But we hear both its affirmations and its challenges most clearly when we understand it in the language of our day.
By Paul’s time, Athens was no longer the greatest academic center of philosophy, but it retained that reputation from its earlier days. It also had a market and citadel full of idols, which revolted a worshiper of the true God like Paul (Acts 17:16). This drove Paul to preach there. But Athenians did not license just anyone to teach “philosophies” in their city, so they brought Paul before the Areopagus, the leading court of the city (17:19), demanding to know about his “strange deities” (17:18). Ancient readers who knew how Athens got its philosophic reputation would remember that Socrates was earlier brought before this same court—and that he was condemned to death on the charge of sacrilegiously denying Athens’ deities.
But Paul had seen altars of unknown gods around Athens. Centuries earlier, the Athenians had sacrificed to all their deities to stop a plague, yet the plague had continued. Finally they sacrificed to whatever unknown deity may have sent judgment against them, and the plague stopped. God had prepared Athens for his gospel, and Paul preached to them about the God unknown to them.
He began with a respectful address (Acts 17:22), as was standard, and quoted their own poets (Acts 17:28). He identified with their culture as much as possible so that the only stumbling block, if there was one, would be the stumbling block of the cross. Stoic and Epicurean philosophers comprised some of his audience (Acts 17:18), but the Christian worldview had very limited agreement with Epicureans (except that the divine was transcendent). Stoics were different; at many points, Paul could teach biblical ideas that the Stoics also related to. Stoics agreed that God is not limited to temples (17:24), needs nothing (17:25), created people (17:26-29), and so forth. When we share Christ with others, it is helpful to build on what insights they already have correct.
But Paul did not stop there. He was not simply “dialoguing” to let the Stoics know that he was a good philosopher whom they should welcome. At some points the gospel may agree with values in our culture, but at other points it challenges them. Philosophers knew about “conversion” to philosophy, but Paul summons them to turn to the one true God (17:30). Epicureans denied life after death; Stoics affirmed the soul’s immortality but could not conceive of bodily resurrection, and also believed that history was cyclical, with no final judgment. Yet Paul preaches a final day of judgment, which God proved in advance by raising Jesus from the dead (17:31).
In a sense, Paul may “divide and conquer” his audience, as he did later with the Pharisees and Sadducees (Acts 23:6-9). He had limited common ground with the Epicureans, but had at least some with the Stoics (17:18). Yet the culture’s assumptions were so different that even these intellectual conversation partners did not understand his message fully. Some wrongly thought he was preaching “strange deities”—plural—namely, Jesus and Resurrection (Acts 17:18; “Anastasis,” or “Resurrection,” was also a woman’s name in Greek!) Paul had to clarify that he announced one true God who had resurrected Jesus. When he finished, some scoffed (probably especially Epicureans), but others listened and, most importantly, some believed (Acts 17:32-34). It was a start, and eventually the Christian message spread throughout Greece.
Like Jesus and Paul, we should not avoid those outside the faith. We should labor to explain Jesus to them in terms they understand, yet without compromising the gospel’s truth. Whether we are bridging gaps with unchurched youth using some of the saner rap lyrics, secular thinkers with the best of their ethics, immigrants with genuine respect for their culture, and so on, we need to try to relate the good news of hope to people in their own language, lovingly yet unashamedly. Usually that means that we must learn to understand their culture first (as Paul must have done long before Acts 17), which comes through sensitive and caring relationships. It also means that we must labor to understand and faithfully articulate Christ’s work without compromise.
Craig Keener is author of a four-volume commentary on Acts. This post is adapted from a much earlier article in the Missionary Seer.
The first missionaries were not Europeans, but were from a part of Asia just a few days’ walk north of Africa. Yet even at an early time, they brought their message to Europe.
When God gave Paul a dream of a Macedonian inviting him to Macedonia (Acts 16:9), Paul and his companions set sail for Macedonia and began the first recorded missionary successes Paul had experienced since he parted ways with Barnabas. Yet there is a possible geographic significance of this journey that we might miss.
Paul was in Alexandria Troas when he had this vision, and Greeks and Romans typically associated this large city with nearby Troy. Greeks had long considered Troy the entry point for Greek invasions of Asia. In Greeks’ most prominent epic story, the Greeks warred against Troy. Centuries later, the Macedonian prince Alexander the Great claimed to repeat the earlier Greek conquests when he invaded the Persian empire—starting at Troy.
Troy was on the northeast coast of Asia Minor, and Greek and Roman sources regularly treated it as a major boundary point between “Europe” (their own continent) and “Asia.” These boundaries had always been arbitrary—early Greeks had defined everything to their east as Asia, and to their south as Africa, and themselves as Europe. By this period, Greek and Asian culture had interacted with each other for centuries.
Paul’s movement into Europe from Troas might strike many first-century readers as significant. By Greek and Roman standards, Paul and his companions were Asian, and preached an Asian religion (Judea and Galilee were part of the Roman province of Syria in the continent of Asia).
Greeks and Romans sometimes boasted that they were conquerors of Asia, although by this they could mean only part of Asia. (Rome’s most serious military challenge long remained the Parthian empire, which controlled regions now including Iran. Beyond Iran, Rome merely had trade ties, for example with India, Vietnam and China.) Yet now Asian representatives of a universal, but initially Afroasiatic, faith were moving in the reverse direction. Yet these messengers did not go simply as colonialists in reverse. In this case, they brought not violent conquest but good news about God’s universal, transforming kingdom.
Since that time the message about Jesus has spread among many nations. In the first few centuries, north Africa and what is now Turkey were the places where Christianity was strongest; later it spread elsewhere, sometimes diminishing in areas where it was once strong. The east African empire of Axum, in what is now Ethiopia, converted to Christianity in the early fourth century, and has remained predominantly Christian since that time; Syrian Christians evangelized further east, including parts of India. Later, for a period of time, the west was a dominant center of Christianity, but all scholars now agree that Christianity is stronger and growing much faster in Africa, Latin America and much of Asia.
It has never been correct to view Christianity as a “western” religion. Geographically, it originated in what Europeans called Asia, not far from what Europeans defined as Africa. Yet from the beginning, God intended it not only for Israel, not only for Asia, not only for the Mediterranean Roman empire. From the beginning God intended a people for his name from among all the nations. God who created all peoples also sent his Son to redeem members of all peoples. Paul’s dream in Macedonia was just one reminder of this: “Come over into Macedonia and help us.” God loves all peoples. If we love him, we must also love and serve all peoples.
Craig Keener is author of 17 books, including the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament and a four-volume commentary on Acts, as well as coauthor with Glenn Usry of Black Man’s Religion.
When Paul visited the church in Jerusalem, its leaders reaffirmed their acceptance of his Gentile mission: Gentiles did not have to become culturally Jewish to become followers of Jesus (Acts 21:25). Those in any culture who become Christians—whether the culture is geographically distant, immigrants near us, or even young people in our churches—are called to give up their sins, but not non-sinful elements of their culture.
What the Jerusalem church’s leaders understood, however, was more difficult for much of the Jerusalem church to fathom. Their local suffering had understandably shaped their approach to Gentiles. Roman governors had exploited Judea for years; the brief tenure of a Judean king, Agrippa I, had restored Judeans’ self-respect and desire for freedom, but his early death had been followed by even worse repression from irresponsible governors. Most Judeans, whose contact with Rome was entirely negative, felt they had good reason to mistrust Gentiles—and any Jews who compromised too much with them. Even in more recent history, this has been a natural response to colonial oppression.
Unfortunately, it rendered plausible rumors about Paul, a Jewish missionary among the Gentiles who was not back in Jerusalem often enough to defend himself (Acts 21:21). Today, no less than then, some Christians are ready to criticize other Christians without taking the time to understand how they often are relating to different situations than the critics face. Sometimes this criticism misrepresents those criticized and becomes slander.
Consciously or unconsciously, the church in Jerusalem had adopted some of the perspectives of its culture, just as most of us do in our various cultures today. Their identification with their culture was helpful in reaching their culture, to the extent that the values they shared were positive or neutral. After years of Jerusalem believers’ faithful witness within their culture (21:20), the message of Jesus was not as controversial there as it had once been; Paul’s audience in the temple later listened intently as he talked about Jesus (22:2-20). Once he talked about going Gentiles, however, many of his hearers demanded his death (22:21-22).
Paul himself was willing to accommodate local Jerusalem culture to reduce offense (21:20-26). He did this with Gentiles and was certainly ready to identify with his own heritage. (Even in the colonial era the best missionaries, who were often at odds with colonial authorities, related to local cultures much better than did contemporaries from the colonial cultures; e.g., William Carey, David Livingstone, Mary Slessor, and Hudson Taylor.)
But Paul was not willing to compromise the demand for unity with believers from other cultures or the need to preach to other peoples; to do so was to compromise the gospel itself. (From Paul’s letters we may even infer that he was in Jerusalem precisely on a mission of ethnic reconciliation, Rom 15:27.) When any local culture’s nationalism refuses to love people in other cultures, unity with one’s brothers and sisters in Christ comes before unity with our culture. Thus Paul spoke about going to the Gentiles even though it was likely to arouse his hearers’ anger (22:21-22).
The danger of overidentifying with our culture at the expense of the gospel was not distinctive to the Jerusalem church; it is a temptation in most cultures. Missiologists distinguish contextualization from syncretism. Contextualization involves making the gospel message culturally relevant, translating it in such a way that people in a given culture understand it thoroughly. Syncretism is where one replaces or mixes the gospel with cultural elements religiously incompatible with it. Paul identified with local culture, but would not compromise his gospel message. Elsewhere, he rejected false gods and sexual immorality even though they were widespread in local cultures. In Jerusalem, he refused to compromise the universality of Christ’s claim (seeking followers from all nations) to fit the expectations of his own culture.
Only God knew how much the future lay more with Paul’s mission than with the megachurch in Jerusalem. Within a decade, Jesus’ followers had to flee Jerusalem in view of its impending destruction. The Diaspora churches eventually outgrew the Judean churches. In the centuries that immediately followed, Christianity grew especially in western Asia, north Africa and southern Europe; then it spread further west in Asia, north in Europe and south into east Africa. In the nineteenth century, western nations sent most missionaries. Today, many younger churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America far outnumber churches in the west, often outpace them in devotion to prayer and evangelism, and often send more missionaries. More believers live in these regions than in the west, and much of the gospel’s future lies with them. Mission today requires heeding the voices of the church throughout the world. No one culture’s church has everything. We need one another, and must partner together for Christ’s gospel.
verse 23: Some jailers were public slaves. Prison directors (whether slave or free, as may be likelier here; cf. 16:33-34) could receive good pay.
24: Guards were often harsh with prisoners. Stocks were used for low-status prisoners not only to secure them but also for punishment and torture; legs could be locked into various painful positions. Apparently all the prisoners were confined to the “inner cell” overnight, which would suffer from overcrowding and poor ventilation.
25: The psalmist mentions being put in bonds (Ps 119:61), but then speaks of singing at midnight (Ps 119:62).
26: Earthquakes were common in this region, though they normally would not selectively target doors and chains while sparing people.
27: If faced with a dishonorable execution, Romans typically considered suicide the nobler way to die. The chief jailer may not have been held accountable for escapes in view of the earthquake, but in principle a guard who let prisoners escape through negligence could face severe consequences (cf. 12:19). Many Jews, however, considered it normally shameful (as people generally considered it under normal circumstances).
28: Prisoners may have remained because of the guards (implied in 16:29) or because Paul urged them to do so. Roman law treated escape from custody as a criminal act, but often treated with favor those who refused to escape.
29: Inner cells (16:24) were very dark; the jail official requests torches or perhaps lamps from his subordinates.
30: The jailer probably knows the charge (involving their Jewishness) and something of their message (about salvation, 16:17).
31: In Roman custom, the whole household would follow the religion of the head of the household, normally the worship of the respected Roman deities.
33: Prisoners normally were unable to wash or trim hair in jails. The jailer undoubtedly takes them out of the jail, which could have gotten him in severe trouble, especially if they tried to escape (16:23). Some suggest a fountain in the jail’s courtyard; since jails were usually in center cities, various public fountains are possible, although these increased the risk of being seen by Philippi’s night watchmen.
34: Jails and prisons typically provided only the barest sustenance, so that prisoners had to depend on outside help. The jailer takes a major risk: he could be severely punished for feeding and eating with a prisoner (in some cases death; in this case, certainly at least losing his job).
35: Sometimes public beatings, humiliation and a night in jail were considered sufficient punishment (though the earthquake may also play a factor here).
(Adapted from Dr. Keener’s personal research. Used with permission from InterVarsity Press, which published similar research by Dr. Keener in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)
Verse 19: There were large Jewish communities in Phoenicia, Cyprus (cf. Acts 4:36), and Antioch. Antioch on the Orontes was called Syria’s “mother-city,” was its most influential city, and was probably the third or fourth largest city in the Roman Empire (though its precise population is debated). Rome granted it the privilege of being a “free city,” mostly governing itself.
20: Perhaps 10% of Antioch was Jewish (though, like some other ancient population figures, this is merely an educated guess). Antioch, in contrast to most predominantly Gentile cities in the region, spared its Jewish inhabitants in the war of 66-70, though they did not fully trust them. Various cults flourished there; the most famous religious connection was the nearby cult center of Apollo at Daphne. Some Diaspora Jews were more concerned with making monotheism reasonable to outsiders than circumcising converts. Antioch’s cosmopolitan nature allowed for more interchange of different cultural ideas than possible, say, in Jerusalem. Many proselytes and God-fearers attended Antioch’s synagogues, helping facilitate the Jewish-Christian outreach to Gentiles (here, perhaps “Hellenizing” Syrians) there.
24: Similarly, later rabbis extolled the earlier sage Hillel for his gentleness, including his mercy toward potential Gentile converts.
25: Tarsus was about 100 miles from Antioch; by contrast, Jerusalem was over 300. This is no short journey, but Barnabas knows of Paul’s calling.
26: In the NT, “Christians” appears only as a nickname from outsiders (here; 26:28) and perhaps as echoing a legal charge (1 Pet 4:16). The nickname emulates the forms of names used for adherents of political parties, such as “Caesarians,” “Flavians,” “Herodians,” etc. Had it been interpreted politically (“partisans of the executed Jewish king”) it could have stirred persecution, but here it apparently functions merely as derision.
27: Although Greeks and Syrians had local oracles, the idea of a movement with numerous prophets is unparalleled and points to the early Christian belief that God had poured out the Holy Spirit. Josephus reports that many Essenes could prophesy, but he avoids calling them “prophets” in the present.
28: A person would rise to speak in an assembly. A number of famines afflicted the Empire during Claudius’ reign (Claudius himself barely escaped being mobbed in Rome due to the effects there, A.D. 51). Papyri reveal high grain prices in about A.D. 46; Queen Helena of Adiabene, a proselyte to Judaism, bought Egyptian grain at highly inflated prices to provide for Judeans (around A.D. 45-46).
29: Due to the nature of the Empire (and Roman suspicion of translocal activity), most Jewish ministry to the poor was local. Exceptions existed for severe cases, however, like Queen Helena’s aid to Judea (see comment on 11:28). Wealthy patrons often alleviated food crises in cities, but here all the believers participate. They act in advance based on a prophecy (cf. Gen 41:33-36), even though the hardship is likely to strike Antioch as well.
30: “Elders” reflects the traditional Israelite leadership structure for towns and villages, continuing in this period. Ancient historians had to compromise between following the action of their story and events occurring elsewhere at the same time; Luke postpones taking up the completion of the project until 12:25.
(Adapted from Dr. Keener’s personal research. Used with permission from InterVarsity Press, which published similar research by Dr. Keener in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)
In this eleven-minute video, Craig speaks about the meaning of Pentecost and the Spirit in the book of Acts.
Verse 41: Summary sections (such as 2:41-47 here) appear often in ancient literature. Luke’s estimate of conversions is a large number of people (Josephus estimated only 6000 Pharisees altogether!), though not impossible. In contrast to lower earlier estimates, recent estimates of Jerusalem’s population are often 80,000 or higher; pilgrims for Pentecost swelled the numbers higher still. Because worshipers needed to purify themselves ritually, the temple mount had a massive number of immersion pools, rendering the baptism of large numbers there plausible.
Verse 42: Ancient groups often ate together (for example, Pharisaic fellowships, cultic associations). Greek associations typically met and ate together once a month. Table fellowship created friendship and loyalty ties. Music or other entertainment, but also discussions and even lectures, were frequent at common meals in antiquity. Here the focus may be apostolic teaching and prayer.
Verses 43-45: Luke’s description here may adapt the language used by some philosophers for the ideal community (a utopia); others also compare the ancient ideal of “friends” sharing things in common. Qumran sectarians surrendered all possessions to their community and withdrew into the wilderness from the larger society. While Qumran does show the extent to which some groups could go, we should not ignore differences as well. Thus there is no withdrawal here, and believers apparently sell property simply when needs arise (4:34-35), continuing to use their homes (2:46). Christians’ sacrificial lifestyle continued in the second century, mocked by rich pagans until the church later absorbed society’s values.
Verses 46-47: People often congregated under the colonnades of temples, which were normally considered public places. Jerusalem’s temple also hosted public prayer during morning and evening offerings (see comment on 3:1). Greek associations (trade guilds, etc.) often met just once a month.
Paul “contextualized” the gospel for his hearers, showing how it related to their own culture without compromising its content. (Today we often err on either one side or the other–failing to be culturally relevant, or failing to represent accurately the biblical message.) Paul speaks to two groups of philosophers present, Stoics and (probably a smaller group) Epicureans; his faith held little common ground with Epicureans, but the Stoics could agree with a number of Christian beliefs.
Paul opens by finding some common ground with his pagan audience. It was customary to begin a speech by complimenting the hearers in the opening of a speech, the exordium. One was not permitted to flatter the Areopagus (the leading philosophical and educational leaders of Athens), but Paul would remain free to start on a respectful note. “Religious” meant that they were observant, not that he agreed with their religion (“superstitious,” in the King James Version, does not convey the right idea).
Then Paul turns to more common ground. During a plague long before Paul’s lifetime, no altars had successfully propitiated the gods; finally Athens had offered sacrifices to an unknown god, immediately staying the plague. These altars were still standing, and Paul uses this as the basis for his speech.
Paul borrows a technique from Jewish teachers who had been trying to explain the true God to Gentiles for several centuries before Paul. Non-Palestinian Jews sometimes reminded Gentiles that even they had one supreme God, and tried to show pagans that their highest religious aspirations were best met in Judaism. Stoics believed that God permeated all things and therefore was not localized in temples (cf. also Is 66:1). Stoics and Greek-speaking Judaism emphasized that God “needs nothing,” using the same word Paul uses in 17:25. Jews and many Greeks alike agreed that God was creator and divider of the earth’s boundaries and of seasons’ boundaries (17:26). (Stoics also believed that the universe periodically dissolved back into God, but on this there was no point of contact between them and the Bible or Judaism.)
Jewish people usually spoke of God as a father specifically to his people. But Greeks, Jews scattered among Greeks, and some second-century Christian writers spoke of God as the world’s “father” in the sense of creator; though Paul elsewhere uses the term more specifically, he adopts the more general sense of father as creator in this case (17:28-29). The quote from Epimenides in 17:28 appears in Jewish anthologies of proof-texts useful for showing pagans the truth about God, and Paul may have learned it there. (Greeks cited Homer and other poets as proof-texts in a manner similar to how Jewish people cited Scripture.)
But while Paul was eager to find points of contact with the best in pagan thinking for the sake of communicating the gospel, he also was clear where the gospel disagreed with paganism. Some issues might be semantic, but Paul would not ignore any real differences. Although philosophers spoke of conversion to philosophy through a change of thinking, they were unfamiliar with his Jewish and Christian doctrine of repentance towards God (17:30). Further, the Greek view of time was that it would simply continue, not that there was a future climax of history in the day of judgment, in contrast to the biblical perspective (17:31). Finally, Greeks could not conceive of a future bodily resurrection; most of them simply believed the soul survived after death. Thus Paul’s preaching of the resurrection offended them most (17:31-32). But in the end, Paul was more interested in winning at least a few of these influential people to genuine faith in Christ (17:34) than in simply persuading all of them that he was harmless and shared their own views.
Since Samaritans were considered half-breeds (8:4-25), this African court official is the first fully Gentile convert to Christianity (though probably unknown to most of the Jerusalem church, 11:18).
The angel’s instructions to go south toward Gaza (8:26) probably would have seemed strange to Philip; Samaria yielded many converts, but who would he find on a generally deserted road? Two roads led south from near Jerusalem, one through Hebron into Idumea (Edom) and the other joining the coast road before Gaza heading for Egypt, both with many Roman milestones as road-markers. Old Gaza was a deserted town whose ruins lay near the now culturally Greek cities of Askelon and New Gaza. The command to head south for a few days toward a deserted city may have seemed absurd; but God had often tested faith through seemingly absurd commands (e.g., Exod. 14:16; 1 Kings 17:3-4, 9-14; 2 Kings 5:10).
“Ethiopia” (a Greek term) figured in Mediterranean legends and mythical geography as the very end of the earth, sometimes extending from the far south (all Africa south of Egypt, the “wooly-haired Ethiopians”) to the far east (the “straight-haired Ethiopians” of southern India). Greek literature often respected Africans as a people particularly beloved by the gods (the Greek historian Herodotus also calls them the most handsome of people), and some sub-Sahara Africans were known in the Roman Empire. The most commonly mentioned feature of Ethiopians in Jewish and Greco-Roman literature (also noted in the Old Testament) is their black skin, though ancient Mediterranean art also depicted other typically African features and recognized differences in skin tone. Egyptians and other peoples were sometimes called “black” by comparison with lighter Mediterranean peoples, but the further south one traveled along the Nile, the darker the complexion and more tightly coiled the hair of the people. Greeks considered the “Ethiopians” the epitome of blackness.
Here a particular African empire is in view. While we might confuse “Ethiopia” here with modern Ethiopia, that is probably not in view. That kingdom, Axum, was a powerful east African empire and converted to Christianity in the early 300s, in the same generation the Roman empire converted. The empire here, however, is most likely a particular Nubian kingdom of somewhat darker complexion, south of Egypt in what is now the Sudan. “Candace” (kan-dak’a) seems to have been a dynastic title of the Queen of this Nubian Empire; she is mentioned elsewhere in Greco-Roman literature, and tradition declares that the queen-mother ruled in that land. (Ancient Greeks called all of Nubia “Ethiopia.”) Her black Nubian kingdom had lasted since c. 750 BC; its main cities were Meroe and Napata.
This kingdom was wealthy (giving a royal treasurer like this one much to do!) and had trade ties to the north; Rome procured peacocks and other African treasures through such African kingdoms in contact with the interior of Africa, and Roman wealth has turned up in excavations of Meroe. The trade also extended further south; a bust of Caesar has been found as far south as Tanzania. Still, the trade connection with Rome was limited, and this official and his entourage must have been among the few Nubian visitors this far north.
This Nubian court official was probably a Gentile “God-fearer.” When meant literally–which was not always the case (Gen. 39:1 LXX), eunuchs referred to castrated men. Although these were preferred court officials in the East, the Jewish people opposed the practice, and Jewish law excluded eunuchs from Israel (Deut. 23:1); the rules were undoubtedly instituted to prevent Israel from neutering boys (Deut. 23:1). But eunuchs could certainly be accepted by God (Isa. 56:3-5, even foreign eunuchs; Wisd. 3:14).
An Ethiopian “eunuch” in the OT turns out to be one of Jeremiah’s few allies and saves his life (Jer. 38:7-13). This African court official was the first non-Jewish Christian. Such information may be helpful in establishing that Christianity is not only not a western religion, but that after its Jewish origins it was first of all an African faith.