Today’s first reading is the well known account of St. Paul at the Areopagus, the academic meeting place in Athens. While Athens was no longer a center for political power, it remained the center of the very wide-spread Hellenistic culture. Paul’s speech sounds quite different from speeches he gave in synagogues which argued from Hebrew Scripture. In this different setting Paul’s remarks are addressed to Greek philosophers, nevertheless, it too is steeped in Scripture, but sticks to the parts that sound like philosophy and natural theology, that is, evidence from nature pointing to the God who created it.

22 Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: “You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.23 For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.24 The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands,25 nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.26 He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions,27 so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’29 Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.30 God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent31 because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.”32 When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time.”33 And so Paul left them.34 But some did join him, and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. (Acts 17:22-34)

Among those with whom Paul met and conversed in the Agora were philosophers of the rival Stoic and Epicurean schools. The Stoics aimed at living consistently with nature, and in practice they laid great emphasis on the primacy of the rational faculty in humanity, and on individual self-sufficiency. In theology they were essentially pantheistic, God being regarded as the world-soul. Their belief in a cosmopolis or world-state, in which all truly free souls had equal citizen rights, helped to break down national and class distinctions. Stoicism at its best was marked by great moral earnestness and a high sense of duty. However, it regarded Christianity as irrational and a negation of individual agency.

The Epicurean school  presented pleasure as being the chief end in life with the goal of living a life of tranquility, free from pain, disturbing passions, and superstitious fears including in particular the fear of death. It did not deny the existence of gods, but maintained that they took no interest in the life of men and women. Christianity was superstitious and ruled by a fear of death – and hence the whole “resurrection thing.” Christians wanted peace, but postulated it’s only possible existence in a next life.

Existing before the arrival of the Christian era, Stoicism and Epicureanism represented attempts to come to terms with life, especially in times of uncertainty and hardship.Stoics and Epicureans might disagree with each other but they agreed that the message of Christianity was not one that could possibly appeal to reasonable people. At best Paul represented an unsophisticated, repackaging of old deities from cultures long banished to the dustbin of history.

This episode was perhaps a harbinger of what lay ahead for the Church. From the 4th century onward it might be said that Christianity was the dominant “culture” of Western Europe. However, in the second millennium contemporary culture arose largely in opposition to the Christian culture of the Middle Ages, putting the Church on the defensive. The Second Vatican Council sought to reset these relations through greater openness and dialogue, Pope John XXII opened “the windows of the Church.” What entered through the now open portals? Some hold that it was “fresh air” but others suggest it was the smog of modern life and thought.

Christianity teaches that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, granting them the ability to know the truth and the freedom to move toward it. Modern culture asserts the absolute primacy of human freedom — the ability even to remake oneself in one’s own image and likeness. This turning away from the source of our life to assert one’s own desires has not made us any happier, although it has made life more convenient. Modern science has given us the power to think that we can control life and, of course, it has given us much for which we can be thankful.

Today, life in the West, is a milieu of a wide variety of philosophies – far more than just Epicureans and Stoics. But until recently, there was one primary cultural dialog partner for the Church: the Enlightenment. It is said that there were three areas in which the Church/Christianity responded to the ideas and culture of the Enlightenment: conflict, engagement, and retreat. In conflict, Catholics and Enlightenment thinkers locked in a life and death struggle for supremacy in politics and culture. In engagement, Catholics took up the ideas of the Enlightenment from a Catholic perspective. In retreat, Christians sought renewal by focusing on the local community, especially the home, and religious revival. These types of engagement with the world are not new, of course, as even in the Bible we see the conflict of the Maccabees, Paul’s engagement of Greek thought, and Elijah’s retreat from Ahab and Jezebel.

Joseph Stuart, author of Rethinking the Enlightenment: Faith in the Age of Reason, sees all three as essential in relating to the modern world: “There is a need for all three strategies. There was in the 18th century, and there is today. Conflict without engagement is senseless. Engagement without conflict is weak. Either strategy without retreat lacks wisdom. Retreat without conflict or engagement is stultifying.” Put differently, we cannot simply reject everything modern and try to destroy it. We also should not blindly accept everything modern and may need to reject certain aspects of it, even central aspects of its thinking and culture. We cannot simply remove ourselves from modern life, even as a certain distance will remain necessary to reflect, pray, and evangelize.

There is a moment one reaches when the world is changing, old standards of behavior and civility are waning, and one thinks: “Stop the bus! I want to get off.” A refrain not unknown to senior citizens.  Perhaps that is a fourth response: abandon ship! But there is generational wisdom that needs to be handed on to help the Church and the faithful be willing to know when to be in conflict, when to engage, and when to retreat.

St. Paul engaged the prevailing culture/philosophy on the Areopagus, made his points which brought about conflict, and then for a time, retreated. It is a model that we can all keep in mind as we encounter a world that is changing in ways we never could have imagined.

Image credit: Saint Paul delivering the Areopagus Sermon in Athens, by Raphael, 1515 – Public Domain