Mars - Acts 17:16-21

Paul arrived in Athens much earlier than Silas and Timothy did and while there “his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” The IM gives background on Athens, saying, “Athens, the capital of Greece, was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Although in a state of decline by the time of Paul’s visit, Athens had formerly possessed more intellectual genius, philosophical wisdom, and architectural splendor than ay other ancient city. Its inhabitants, even during the period of decline, prided themselves on their brilliant heritage.”

Right now I’m listening to a podcast called “The History of Rome” by Mike Duncan, and we’ve just gotten to the part where Rome takes control of Greece and one of the pertinent parts that is brought up is how much the Greeks were admired for their intellectualism, progressive thinking and culture. Rome was pleased to incorporate that aspect of Greek society into not only the city of Rome itself, but also it’s other territories as well. The part I’m at right now is about one hundred or one hundred and fifty years before Paul gets to Athens, but being in a thriving metropolis that cultivates higher ways of thinking would have bred a very different and unusual environment in which Paul could share the gospel.
One of the reasons that I love the gospel so much is because it is the only thing that makes sense to me. And even though I clearly don’t know or understand everything, what I do know and understand is the only way life and eternity can be explained to my satisfaction. If we consider Athens to be the proverbial “college town,” then we can understand that the society in Athens would be about new ideas and explanations and expansions of old ones. In my mind, it is very possible that the citizens residing in Athens might have been some of the most prepared for the gospel out there because they were open to new ideas, they were able to dissect and discuss complex topics involving God and forever. But let’s see how that worked out for Paul.
At first, Paul “disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.” So like he usually does, he hits up the Jews first, giving then the first opportunity to hear about the gospel. He not only spoke of the gospel to the Jews and those gentiles ascribing to Judaism, but he also spoke with “certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks,” who were two groups who held very different beliefs. The Epicureans believed that our existence was a happy accident and that if there were gods, they were not interested in us humans. The Stoicks believed in divine creation and “a spake of reason and should seek harmony with the divine order of things, overcome passions, and live a moral and upright life.” Two widely differing opinions there.
With all the people Paul was teaching, the took him to “Areopagus” or the “Hill of Ares” who is the Greek god of war, or also known as Mars Hill, as Mars was the Roman god of war. Here they asked Paul to teach “this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest… For thou bringest certain things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.” They wanted to know more about the gospel, but Luke makes their reasoning clear, “For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.”
This goes back to why Athens was even important in the first place. Athens was the intellectual capital of the world, and when one idea is brought up it can be discussed and reasoned to death, then they need something new to talk about. I can understand this mentality because I like to talk and discuss ideas and concepts and once I’ve come up with my opinion about a subject, I like to move on. It’s not necessarily that I consider myself a “thinker” but I like new ideas, and I like to be able to explain stuff to myself. I would say that it’s a blessing and a curse.
The concept that Paul is bringing to the people of Athens, the gospel, would definitely have been new, even though there were Jews in the city of Athens, which we can deduce because there was a synagogue there, we know that Judaism was not open for receiving converts, so the missionary efforts before Paul were minimal at best. Surely the gods and religion would have been a consistent and controversial subject, but the idea of a new God, that would have been something else, especially one supreme and omniscient God, whereas the Greeks and Romans were traditionally polytheistic.
Paul stands on Mars’ hill and begins to preach, and I just want to take a minute to point out the irony of preaching about Jesus Christ on the monument to a pagan god of war. Jesus Christ is the ultimate peace maker, he is the only one who could and did reconcile us to God and make it so that we could live in peace with Him and with ourselves forever. But on the other hand, Christ is also a god of war, protecting his people with pacifism and then with defense. The Old Testament is full of times in which the God of Israel conquers his enemies with violence and victory in battle. It’s kind of an ironic demonstration of the type of person we should all strive to be, peace loving, slow to anger, and righteous to ensure God’s help in our defense.
I imagine the god of war having a volatile personality, angry, ruthless, cunning, manipulative, and dominated by the physical appetites. I imagine Mars as the ultimate Roman soldier who wins battle viscously, then rapes, robs and murders the vanquished and burns their house to the ground. But if we look at Jesus, he also wins battles, always but he does it in a completely different way. He gives multiple chances for surrender and multiple times during the fight. He treats his prisoners with dignity and humanity, the same way he would like to be treated as a prisoner. He restores freedom to his enemy as soon as they promise to keep the peace, and he takes them at their word, giving them the benefit of the doubt. No civilian populace need to fear the conquering Christ.
Of course, Jesus himself, in mortality was not a warrior, but we know that he can and did do these things because this is the way that his prophets conducted their military endeavors, and mostly this is found in the Book of Mormon, my favorite book about the art of warfare. By preaching on Mars’ hill, Paul symbolically taught the people to reject the ancient hedonism of their gods, and to embrace the new-to-them gospel of Jesus Christ. Kind of like when a conquering power climbs to the top of their victims’ high point and plants their battle flag, this is similar, with Paul scaling the high point of an idolatrous god’s monument and planting the flag of Christ indicating that Mars has been vanquished.