The Man of Athens – The Man of Jerusalem

So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. Acts 17:22 NASB

Religious – We realize, of course, that Paul didn’t use the word “religious.” Why? Because the word “religion” didn’t exist in the first century. It came into being with the Latin religare, meaning “to bind under a vow.” Paul actually used the Greek deisidaimon from the root daimon. Yes, that’s correct. It is the same root for the word “demon,” and “demonic.” But Paul isn’t accusing the Greeks of being demon-possessed. He is noting that they are keenly aware of the spiritual realm. Paul combines the Greek word deido (fear) with this root to speak about the respect and awe these men show for everything supernatural. He is definitely not talking about anything like our idea of religion. This only underlines how far our thinking is from any first century ideas.

One of the reasons that we have such a hard time putting our faith into practice in the everyday life is that we have never taken time to understand our own roots. We are part of a heritage that reaches back to ancient Greece; hundreds of years before Christ walked the Palestine pathways. We are also part of a society that was reshaped by Judeo-Christian influences from two millennia before we were born. As a result, we are the product of a cultural clash.

The world of the Greeks was not at all like the world of the Hebrews. The Greeks are the fathers of western thought. The Hebrews are from Eastern backgrounds. The Greeks were a culture of city-states, a government of the rule of Law, a population of diverse ethnic groups and an intellectual history of scientific measure and theory. The Hebrews were a pure genealogy of tribal descent, a government by God’s revealed character, a culture of nomadic wanderings and an intellectual history of wisdom and cultic ritual.

We are the product of both of these streams. Our problem is that we haven’t taken time to see what these two great streams mean for us. We haven’t listened to the difference between the Greek and Hebrew answers to the biggest questions of life. And since we have not realized that there is a very big difference, we have all sorts of problems when we try to practice a belief in God based on the Hebrew culture within a framework of the world based on the Greek culture.

These two cultural streams answer our fundamental questions of life very differently:

What is Man?

What is the nature of the universe?

Who is God?

Any significant differences in answers to just one of these fundamental questions will cause problems, but when you put all three together at once, confusion and chaos follow.

The Greeks would answer our questions like this:

1. Man is unique in the world because he is the only creature who can exercise reason. It is reason that makes Man who is truly is.
2. Man has a spark of the divine within him.
3. Man can know the universe through his reason.
4. Knowledge is power.
5. Societal institutions are extensions of Man’s knowledge and abilities.
6. Man is capable of solving the world’s problems.
7. Man has no cognitive limits.
8. Self-sufficiency is the only attitude needed to accomplish whatever can be imagined.
9. The destiny of Man is to control his world.
10. The world can be fully understood through scientific investigation.
11. Belief in God is unjustified because it is not capable of scientific proof. It might be useful fiction, but ultimately this added baggage must be discarded by the truly educated man.

How would the Hebrews answer these questions? They might say something like this: (pardon me if we use a Greek technique to do this).

1. All creation begins and ends with God.
2. Man’s only uniqueness is a result of God’s choice to gift him with authority.
3. Man shares fundamental aspects with all of creation.
4. Man is completely dependent on God even if he does not acknowledge this dependence.
5. Every aspect of Man’s life is under God’s sovereignty and control.
6. Man is essentially and fundamentally a being who chooses to rebel against His creator.
7. Man is not a spark of the divine. He has “fallen” from the original design and is now a wicked and disobedient violator of God’s perfect harmony.
8. Man cannot solve his most fundamental problem on his own.
9. God is responsible for human societal institutions.
10. God will judge Man’s deeds on the basis of absolute holiness.
11. God is the central focus of all creation, not Man.
12. Knowledge, self-reliance and self-sufficiency are vanity and folly with regard to Man’s real problems.
13. God’s Truth is power.
14. Wisdom is the application of God’s Truth.

This helps us see how completely different these two views of Man really are. Fundamentally, the Hebrew view is that God is the principal player in this universe. Everything revolves around Him, His purposes, His will and His control. The Greek view is that Man is the central player on the world’s stage. Man’s goals, creations, abilities and decisions are the most important elements in this world. These two approaches are simply not compatible. Their differences are so far apart that no compromise can even be imagined.

We can picture some of these thematic differences with the following word pairs:

            Greek                              Hebrew

Believe correctly         vs.       Behave correctly

Education                    vs.       Submission

Knowledge                  vs.       Wisdom

Reason                        vs.        Revelation

Mind                           vs.        Heart

Material                      vs.        Spiritual

Outer recognition        vs.     Inner/Outer Harmony

Fulfilled                       vs.       Fruitful

Psyche                          vs.       Person (nephesh)

Enlightenment             vs.     Repentance

Destiny                       vs.        Purpose

Of course, there are overlaps in concepts. Whenever entire cultures are reduced to a dozen words, many of the nuances are lost. But in general, we can see the striking differences between these two views. And the differences are not just about the nature of Man. They are different in their outlook regarding history, purpose, epistemology (how you know what’s true), ethics and religion. Oops! There’s that word again, the one that didn’t exist when Paul made his speech.

How many others like “religion” do you suppose you have incorporated into your vocabulary?

Topical Index: religion, deisidaimon, demon, fear, Acts 17:22

Much of this summary can be found in the opening chapter of my book, Spiritual Restoration, Vol. 1.