Musings on Mars Hill

Last week I stood on Mars Hill in the centre of Athens. Above me, the Acropolis stood proud, its Propylaea, Temple to Athens Nike and Erechtheion glowing in the afternoon sun. Below you could see the Ancient Agora with the Temple of Hephaestus an island of white marble amid a sea of foliage; and on the lower slopes of the Acropolis, the cluster of famous olives that echo the lone olive tree that stands on the rock by the Erechtheion, said to be the gift of the goddess Athene to her city. Far away was the glint of ocean, the “wine-dark sea” Homer called it, but on this luminous afternoon more like a golden frame surrounding a tableau of marble sculptures.

You can’t see the Parthenon itself from Mars Hill, but it is the unseen presence whose power permeates classical Athens. I had not visited it before, and was not prepared for its sheer immensity. It’s by no means the best-preserved of Greek temples, but it is one of the largest, and the one that is most freighted with symbolism. It is the emblem par excellence not only of ancient Greece, indeed of classical civilisation, but also of the modern nation as it emerged in the early nineteenth century from Ottoman rule. 

Last week I saw it twice close-to. On the first occasion, Greece was being deluged by torrents of rain thanks to a rare Mediterranean cyclone. The Acropolis was dark, brooding and windswept, somewhat forbidding, it has to be said, and not a place to linger. I doubt many tourists have seen it in those conditions though when you come from North East England you are perfectly used to visiting antiquities like Hadrian’s Wall in the pouring rain. We went back there at the end of our week in Greece. It was as the picture postcards said it should be. The Parthenon was ravishing and serene. You could understand its hold on the imagination of the romantics who came to Athens as part of the grand tour. And you could appreciate the sentiment that longs to see the Parthenon Marbles, removed by Lord Elgin and now in the British Museum, reinstated in the new Acropolis Museum just below the rock, one of the best museums I’ve ever visited.

But back to Mars Hill, the Areopagus or Hill of the god Ares. He was the god of war, and one thing you learn when you come to Greece is now bellicose classical Athens was. To succeed in warfare was everything. The defining myth of Ancient Greece was the Iliad and the Odyssey. I read some of Homer on my iPad while I was there, and was reminded how readily the blood flows in that great work. You are not spared the details of how good men and bad perish alike in war, thanks to the intervention of the gods who notoriously take sides in their support of either the Greeks or the Trojans in this decade-long conflict. At Delphi we saw a frieze depicting the Trojan War and the part played in it by the capricious deities whom the Greeks worshipped.

I had thought that the Areopagus was a proper hill with a ruined temple or two on top, and an open space for argument and debate. In fact it’s no more than a outcrop of the Acropolis, separated from it by a narrow fault. You clamber up a steep ancient stair cut out of the rock and emerge on an uneven plateau - perilously slippery for the marble has been worn smooth by twenty-five centuries of human footfall. I stumbled around for a few minutes until I decided that the least hazardous way of experiencing this place was to sit down for a while.

Up here climbed St Paul one day some time around 50AD. He was brought here by the Athenians, for Mars Hill was where philosophers had argued and debated since the days of Pericles five centuries before. Perhaps he had come down from visiting the temples of the Acropolis, or up from the Agora; either way, his mind was full of the vivid experiences this first and last visit to the city had given him. Athens has that effect on travellers. And the Athenians, who had learned curiosity from Socrates, wanted to know more about this strange doctrine Paul was propounding that seemed to point to new deities they had never heard of, “Jesus” and “Anastasis” (Resurrection). And of all the novelties the Athenians loved so much, nothing pleased them more than new ideas they could discuss among themselves on the marble Areopagus.

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by
human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’

Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

I read these words from Acts 17 on my phone and wondered what Paul thought he was doing, according to St Luke’s account. Some think that this attempt to engage with Greek culture was a one-off experiment that failed. Brilliant rhetorician that he was, quoting poets and philosophers and winning intellectual arguments on the Areopagus was not the way to promote the gospel. From then on, it is suggested, the Apostle resolved not to tangle with Greeks who sought wisdom, any more than with Jews who looked for signs. His sole task was “to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified”.

Except that his time on Mars Hill, whether it was an hour or a day, was not seen as a failure by St Luke. When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. A street below the Acropolis is named after Dionysius the Areopagite, said to be the first bishop of Athens. There is a strong memory that Christianity began to take root in the city. After the collapse of Roman civilisation in the fifth century, Christians occupied part of the Parthenon and worshipped there. Movingly, at the foot of the steps up the Areopagus you will see a bronze tablet displaying the Greek text of this story of Paul’s visit.

On this Thursday afternoon, there were not many philosophers to be seen arguing about religion on the Areopagus. But it was still a crowded place animated by lively conversation. There were throngs of tourists taking selfies, of course. But there were also a great many young people, some enjoying lovers’ trysts, others talking among themselves and enjoying the warmth of an autumn afternoon. Everyone had their mobile phones and were sharing photos and social media posts and for all I knew, reading and discussing Acts 17. 

What would Paul do if he came there today? The same as he did on that day nearly two thousand years ago. He would engage with the culture of the day, contemporary wisdoms that clamour to be heard in the market-place of ideas, try to point out how they both cloak and yet give clues to our fascination with unknown gods. He would draw out of anyone prepared to listen how the universal human longing is for truth and reality and meaning in life. “To search for the God who is not far from any of us” - “closer to us than our own souls” says Mother Julian - “so that perhaps we might feel after him and find him”. And yes, speak plainly about Jesus and the resurrection, and about the reckoning we must all face because know it or not, we are all accountable to our Creator. 

These weren’t new insights to me, what we call “contextual theology”. But they took on a new significance as I sat on Mars Hill for a while. Being “missional” is, I think, a more sophisticated task than we sometimes imagine. Especially has this become true in our complex digital age, as Pope Benedict said when he described contemporary media as the Areopagus of our own day. The environment is as slippery as the polished marble on Mars Hill. It’s easy to put a foot wrong.

But it’s heartening that there’s a new energy for faith-sharing today, and that includes the project of helping people with no explicit religious background - worshippers of unknown gods? - make sense of Christianity and discover intelligent religion. If local churches can place themselves in mind and imagination on Mars Hill and ask what it means to bear Christian witness in this place and at this time, there’s every reason to be hopeful for the future of Christianity.