Next we turn to the speech at Athens. So far was Paul from inveighing against the objects of Athenian veneration that he expressly commended the religious feelings of the people, and identified the God whom he had come to preach with the god whom they were blindly worshipping. He did not rebuke or check their religious
Sec. 3. Tone of Paul's Address to the Galatians. 147
ideas, but merely tried to guide them ; he distinctly set forth the principle that the pagans were honestly striving to worship " the God that made the world and all things therein" (p. 251 f.).
In this speech Paul lays no emphasis on the person- ality of the God whom he sets forth : " what ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto you," and "we ought not to think that the Divine nature is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by art and device of man ". The popular philosophy inclined towards Pantheism, the popu- lar religion was Polytheistic ; but Paul starts from the simplest platform common to both — there exists some- thing in the way of a Divine nature which the religious try to please and the philosophers try to understand. That is all he seeks as a hypothesis to start from.
At Athens the speech was more philosophical in tone, catching the spirit of a more educated populace. At Lystra it was more simple, appealing to the witness they had of the God " who gives from heaven rain and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with gladness". But the attitude is the same in both cases. " God who made the heaven and the earth in the generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways " ; and " we bring you the good news that you should repent ". That is the same tone in which at Athens he said, " The times of ignorance God overlooked ; but now He commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent ".
There is one condition, however, on which Paul insisted from the first, at Athens and at Lystra and everywhere. The worship of idols and images was absolutely pernicious, and concealed from the nations the God whom they were groping after and trying to find : they must turn from
148 Si. Paul in Galatia. Chap. VI.
these vain and dead gods to the God that lives. Hence the riot at Ephesus was got up by the tradesmen who made images of the Goddess Artemis in her shrine, and whose trade was threatened when the worship of images was denounced. But the denunciation of images was a commonplace of Greek philosophy ; and the idea that any efficacy resided in images was widely regarded among the Greeks as a mark of superstition unworthy of the educated man. Paul stands here on the footing of the philosopher, not contravening the State laws by introducing new gods, but expounding to the people the true character of the living God whom they are seeking after.
Such was the way in which Paul introduced his Good Tidings to the peoples of the province Galatia. From this he went on step by step, and his method is summed up by himself, Gal. Ill 1, "Christ had been placarded before their eyes". Now was the opportunity granted them ; " through this Man is proclaimed remission of sins " (XIII 38). But if they despised the opportunity they must beware (XIII 40-1), "inasmuch as He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world " (XVII 31).
Paul's teaching thus was introduced to his pagan audiences in the language of the purest and simplest theology current among educated men. He started from those thoughts which were familiar to all who had imbibed even the elements of Greek education. But even in the more advanced stage of his teaching he did not cut it off from the philosophy of the time. He never adopted that attitude of antagonism to philosophy which became customary in the second century, springing from the changed circumstances of that period. On the contrary, he says {Col. IV 5-6, cf. Eph. V 16) : " Regulate with wisdom