Artificial Longevity

When the Apostle Paul came to Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.

Paul could hardly have been surprised that Athens was pagan. Nor could he have been unaware of how far Athens had fallen from its earlier glory. But knowing something from a distance and seeing it up close are two different things. Walking through the city and seeing the depth of its decline must have been another matter.

Athens was still there. In some respects, it was still impressive. It remained a center of philosophy and learning, and people still came there to discuss ideas. But the Athens Paul encountered was living under what might be called artificial longevity.

Rome had taken over the need to govern.

Athens no longer had to maintain itself as an independent political power. Rome provided the larger political order that allowed the city to continue. Without that protection, Athens might have disappeared long before Paul arrived. The city survived, but the civilization that had once given it life was largely gone.

That raises an interesting question: What had happened to Athens?

Centuries earlier, Athens had been a source of life. It had been a center of cultural life for Greek civilization, which is one of the main reasons the Greeks were able to take up the challenge of the Persian invasions (depicted by Herodotus). They had something to live and die for. The Greeks who resisted Persia were defending more than territory. They were defending a way of life.

But in the aftermath of those invasions, the civilization did not last.

Why?

Arnold Toynbee sees an economic and political challenge that the Greek city-states ultimately failed to answer. Their civilization had successfully responded to earlier challenges, but eventually the challenges became greater than their ability to respond creatively. The result was breakdown, followed eventually by the imposition of a universal state: Rome.

Thucydides takes us deeper into the character of that breakdown. In his account of the Peloponnesian War, we see pride, fear, competition, and the pursuit of glory gradually tearing the Greek world apart. The same civilization that had united sufficiently to resist Persia could not resist turning upon itself. Athens in particular pursued power and glory until the qualities that had helped make it great contributed to its destruction.

But there was a deeper problem still.

Greek civilization had philosophical questions that could not finally be resolved within the Greek dualistic framework. One of the most basic was the problem of permanence and change. If everything changes, how can we really know anything? But if ultimate reality is permanent and unchanging, what are we to make of the changing physical world in which we actually live?

Greek thinkers wrestled profoundly with these questions. Heraclitus emphasized change. Parmenides emphasized permanence. Plato sought an answer by distinguishing the changing world we experience from the eternal Forms. Aristotle brought form back into the things themselves and moved the discussion considerably further.

But the underlying problem remained.

What was needed was something Greek philosophy could approach but could not supply on its own: God the Creator.

The biblical doctrine of creation provides a foundation for both permanence and change. The world is not ultimate. God is. He creates a world that genuinely changes, but that change takes place within an ordered creation. God creates according to fixed kinds. There is therefore both stability and development, permanence and change, unity and diversity. We can know the changing world because it is the creation of a rational God who has given it an intelligible order.

That brings us back to Paul walking through Athens.

Paul was not simply looking at a city with too many religious statues. He was looking at the remains of one of the greatest civilizations the world had known. Athens had produced extraordinary philosophy, art, literature, political thought, and historical reflection. It had asked some of the deepest questions human beings can ask, getting into the realm of epistemology in philosophy (Chinese philosophy focused on ethics and Indian philosophy on metaphysics, and neither delved far into epistemology, which asks how do we know).

And yet Paul found a city full of idols.

His response at the Areopagus is therefore remarkable. He does not merely condemn Athens. He begins with what the Athenians themselves recognize they do not know: an altar “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.”

Then he tells them who that God is.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth.”

That is precisely where Athens needed to go.

The civilization had spent centuries wrestling with the nature of reality. Paul begins with the Creator.

Athens possessed artificial longevity. Rome could preserve its streets, institutions, schools, and public life. It could relieve Athens of the political burden it was no longer capable of carrying for itself. But Rome could not give Athens life, and neither could their idols. Paul arrived proclaiming the God who could provide lasting meaning.

The Athenians had responded creatively to challenges before, and those responses produced remarkable cultural life and vibrancy. But civilizations—and individuals—cannot simply coast on the progress made in response to yesterday’s challenges. When we stop responding creatively to the challenges before us, relying instead on what worked in the past, disintegration will set in. What happened to Athens can and does happen in individual lives as well.