Paul here is speaking to two very discrete groups of Athenian scholars. On the one hand, the Stoics, dutiful pantheists who literally give their name to being stoic. On the other, there are the Epicureans, essentially hedonistic deists, to simplify things. And all throughout, of course, you have the standard polytheists of paganism. They are all interested in what Paul has to say but accuse him of being a “spermologos, ” sperm meaning seed and logos meaning word or idea – the picture being of a bird picking and choosing between seeds.
And so Paul gets in front of the Aereopagus, both a governing body and a philosophical debate society. He dives into a “first principles” version of the gospel, one that touches on many names of God.
God “made the world and everything in it” – He is Creator. This is in direct opposition to the Stoics who saw God and nature as the same.
God “is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything” – a strike against paganism and polytheism that saw the need for service and sacrifice. He is the All-Sufficient One.
“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.” – God is the King of Kings, and this cuts directly against the Epicurean idea of a distant, uninvolved God.
Then Paul starts quoting the Greeks’ own philosophers. “For in him we live and move and have our being,” – He is the sustainer. “We are his offspring,” He is Father.
When we meditate on the attributes and names of God, it draws us closer to Him. Let us go forward and think on this in our daily life.
— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 21, 2024