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This Sunday Podcast S1:E6
24 Plays17 days ago
Pastors Brandt and Hardaway continue their discussion from the Acts of the Apostles for the 6th Sunday of Easter!
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Transcript
Opening Prayer and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Greetings and welcome back to the This Sunday podcast. This is Pastor Hardaway. Joining me is Pastor Brandt. We are going to be looking at the readings, specifically Acts chapter 17 for the sixth Sunday of Easter.
00:00:16
Speaker
um As usual, I'll open us up with the call out to the day as our prayer, and then I'll have Dr. Brandt start us with our reading and our discussion. We pray.
00:00:27
Speaker
O God, the giver of all that is good, by your holy inspiration, grant that we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding, accomplish them. Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, it now and forever.
Congruity and Hypocrisy
00:00:48
Speaker
Amen. man
00:00:52
Speaker
Very interesting collect for this reading today, you know, because it it talks about that we may think the things that are right and by God's gracious help accomplish them. It's this this congruity. You know, the the opposite of thinking one thing and doing another is, you know, the that's hypocrisy, right?
00:01:11
Speaker
Right. You know, when you've got an interior self that is at odds with your exterior self, you call that a hypocrisy. But I believe one thing but do another.
00:01:22
Speaker
or when I think one thing but do another. And so we're we're really praying that we have some congruity
Story of Julius Caesar and Piracy
00:01:27
Speaker
in here. And and the text that we're gonna read here in just a minute is the text of of Paul's encounter with this kind of philosophical world that that was thriving in the ancient Roman Empire of philosophers, of Platonists, and Aristotelians, and Epicureans, and Stoics, and all of these different ideas were floating around. And he's in Athens, which is the great
00:01:56
Speaker
um the great center of learning in the ancient world. If you were a ah young person of means and and influence your parents sent you to Athens to go to college.
00:02:12
Speaker
that was the That was kind of the Harvard or the Oxford of the of the ancient world for that. And so that's where that's where people went. One of the most famous students was, of course, Julius Caesar.
00:02:24
Speaker
he showed up in Athens as a as a young man, but on the way got waylaid.
Impact of Roman Peace on Christianity
00:02:30
Speaker
and Do you know this story, oh Matthew? No. This is a great story. This is a great story. So he gets waylaid by pirates on the way to on the way to Athens and gets kidnapped. And this was kind of a regular practice. It we was it was not unheard of at all. They would capture some wealthy some wealthy, a member of a wealthy family, and then they would demand a ransom.
00:02:56
Speaker
And so the pirates grab Julius Caesar, ah young Julius, he's like 18, 19, 20 years old at this time. He's pretty young. And they grab him, they yeah they they sit him down and they say, all right, write a letter, dear mom, dear dad, got captured by the pirates, please send 200,000 sesterces or whatever it was. And and they'll let me go.
00:03:19
Speaker
and And so they're dictating the letter to him. When they get to 200,000 sesterces, Caesar Julius turns around and says, i am worth way more than that.
00:03:32
Speaker
And they said, shut up, kid. Just write what we tell you. And he writes the two he writes it. They send the money. He gets out. The first thing he does is he goes to Athens, raises a fleet, and exterminates all the pirates. That's awesome. e wa And in fact, really, this this whole event really inculcated in him this hatred of piracy.
00:04:01
Speaker
And he passed that down to his adopted son, um Octavius, who would become Caesar Augustus. And so what you have as a result of of this college trip that got interrupted is inside the entire Mediterranean basin at the time, there was a remarkable freedom from seaborne banditry, or you would call it piracy.
00:04:28
Speaker
ah which enabled Paul and other Christian missionaries to sail all over. it's it's ah It's a remarkably narrow window when something like Paul's missionary journeys could have happened in history.
00:04:44
Speaker
and And I always take that as sort of ah a confirmation. Is it an absolute? No, of course not. But a confirmation that, yeah, God was making this happen. so that So that the gospel could get out, so that it could show up in all of these different people's lives and places, including Athens, that we're going to read here in a moment. But but it was it was a ah ah You know, this this Pax Romana we sometimes talk about, it it it actually was a a period of of ah kind of a rule or a law-based rule that enabled travel.
Paul in Athens: Engaging Philosophy
00:05:25
Speaker
I mean, Paul could legitimately get on a road, get on a boat, and expect to get there without traveling.
00:05:31
Speaker
getting murdered along the way, that's not actually the norm for the ancient world, particularly when you're talking about those kinds of distances in the in traveling by sea and things like that. um Yeah, there's just this narrow window when somebody like Paul could start in Antioch and go all over Asia Minor, Greece, and and and say, I'm going to go to Rome.
00:05:58
Speaker
And i'm goingnna I'm going to bring the gospel all the way to Spain. He could think about those things. He could do those things because it was because, well, God had. i say because God had instilled in the Caesars this this absolute hatred of piracy because these pirates foolishly charged too little or tea ran so I just think that's that's ah that's a wonderful but wonderful little ah little story. All right, let's read the text for this Sunday and see what's going on with it. We're in row in Acts excuse me chapter
00:06:37
Speaker
This is right after Paul has been forcibly expelled from Thessalonica. He was only there three weeks. um He goes on to Berea. They chase him down there. So Paul's kind of on the run a little bit. There's people who are who are after him. And he kind of goes to, I think, sort of disappear into the large city of Athens where they can't find him in a sense. um He has sent Timothy back up to Thessalonica to check on that congregation. And Timothy is going to come down and meet him in Athens and bring the good news and the questions of the Thessalonicans to him in Athens.
Paul at the Areopagus: Bridging Beliefs
00:07:20
Speaker
That's going to prompt what is probably Paul's first letter, maybe, depends on why how you think about Galatians, is The one we absolutely know as early is that first letter to the Thessalonians. He's writing right around the same time that he's
00:07:35
Speaker
ah that he's that that these events that Luke is recording are taking place. so So while Paul was waiting for them, Timothy and and his companions was waiting for them in Athens...
00:07:51
Speaker
His spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. Paul's a good Jewish kid. and all and And if you go to one of these ancient cities, you you would know there's just a temple on it every square thing. And not only a temple, but also every house had its own gods, you know its own household gods. And oftentimes these were put yeah on display. And so you just walking down was just a parade of idols. so he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews.
00:08:29
Speaker
and the devout persons, and in the marketplace, remember he's a he is a yeah um a tent maker, so he's out in the he's in the marketplace, he's he's in the public,
00:08:43
Speaker
um every day with those who happen to be there. Some of the Epicureans, that's a philosophical school, and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him.
00:08:57
Speaker
And some said, what does this babbler wish to say? ah There's not a good translation for that word we use as babbler there. ah Literally, it it means a seed gatherer.
00:09:12
Speaker
um ah that's kind of the But but the the implication is this is somebody who is ah sort of living on the fringe in the marketplace. They don't really have a job, and they're just sort of grabbing whatever they can get from that gets dropped from the stalls or from the ah from the merchants. and ah ah But they they don't have a coherent...
00:09:37
Speaker
like a job. But they're thinking of this, it's metaphorically, they're thinking about this intellectually, that that this guy doesn't seem to be making sense. Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
00:09:55
Speaker
This is also really important because he seems to be preaching Jesus and the rest. they They seem to be thinking he's talking about two different gods, Jesus and another god named Anastasis or resurrection.
00:10:09
Speaker
So they're they're they they've not Luke wants you to know they've misunderstood him. They are not hearing him clearly. And they took hold of him. That's an important word.
00:10:23
Speaker
And brought him to the Areopagus, saying, may we know this new teaching that you are presenting. So they took hold of him.
00:10:37
Speaker
That word is somewhat ambiguous. And depending on how the context you read it in, it probably means they arrested him. And and this this line they give him where they say, may we know.
00:10:54
Speaker
That's way more polite than the Greek. Okay. The Greek is, is much more of a declarative sentence. We will know now what you are talking about.
00:11:08
Speaker
This is most likely not as I think a lot of people understand this event that's coming up here. a, a, a, a um ah philosophical, open, freewheeling debate among these different philosophers. They've gathered together. The Areopagus was a handy spot for them to be. And so they were they were just curious about these new ideas.
00:11:33
Speaker
No, this is actually a juridical procedure. The Areopagus was a court. And and the and and it has it's a court with ah with with a certain um ah certain history to it Because it is the Areopagus, this courtroom, is where Socrates got sentenced to death or teaching about new gods or new things and was really sentenced for corrupting the youth of Athens.
00:12:09
Speaker
And so this whole thing is actually tainted, if you will, or or or pitched by Luke um with a certain ominous overtone. when Paul shows up.
00:12:22
Speaker
This is... Go ahead. i'm sorry I don't think I've ever heard it presented that way. Yeah, yeah, because, I mean, we we we we always, I mean, I always grew up with this text as sort of, um here's here's Paul making a philosophical argument speak among the the brightest and the best curious minds of the the Mediterranean world, and you and Paul holds his own in this in this context, da-da-da-da-da.
00:12:49
Speaker
No. app Paul is is is, we don't know to what extent they would have actually exercised some kind of juridical power over him. We don't know that. um But these people are responsible. This is a Jewish, or not a Jewish, this is a Greek, a Greco-Roman court. And they took these things pretty seriously.
00:13:11
Speaker
And He could have been, there could have been serious ramifications for this. As we know, it was for Socrates.
Critique of Idol Worship
00:13:19
Speaker
He was forced to drink hemlock and died. um It's just always been presented like it's a, almost like you're the new guy at the town flea market.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You know, and wait, wait, who, who are you and what's this product that you're right presenting to us? Because we've never had this before here. Oh, okay. Well, let's just go talk to you and find out about it.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's always been presented. kind of Yeah. Like a, like ah a curious interaction. know, these guys are curious about what Paul is saying. And so they just want to know. It probably is much more serious than that.
00:13:57
Speaker
And, uh, ah and And Luke wants you to know they've they've already misunderstood what he's saying. they they They think he's, they they they are not hearing him well.
00:14:10
Speaker
um You bring some strange things to our ears. That's exactly the charge brought against Socrates. Strange things. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean.
00:14:26
Speaker
Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So now Luke is pointing out the hypocrisy of this.
00:14:40
Speaker
Paul comes with something new and they bring him into court, but yet they're always just just addicted to new things. and to talking about new things. Really, um that that they are, they are they're they're they're kind of confronting Paul for saying new things, and yet that's their what they're doing all the time.
00:15:05
Speaker
ah This is, you know, by this point in in the book of Acts, this is pretty consistent with Luke's approach to persecution, is that persecution is almost always rooted in a misunderstanding of what is said, and in a hypocrisy.
00:15:22
Speaker
And so it's never, you know, that the people who are persecuting the Christian church in in ah ah in in Luke's book of Acts are as that, and it doesn't always start out that way, but it as he develops the idea of the persecutor, they are always people who are, who are ill-informed, and they oftentimes are doing this out of some self-interest or hypocritical ah reason, not out of out of a genuine pursuit of divine truth or something like that.
00:16:01
Speaker
Something we still fall prey to you quite often this these days. Yeah, yeah. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said... Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
00:16:17
Speaker
This little speech is a classic um synopsis kind of of what a good Roman speech would sound like.
00:16:28
Speaker
okay So as Luke's audience would have recognized certain parts of this, this first part is is a is this this opening thing is you compliment your audience. I perceive that you are very you are very religious.
00:16:44
Speaker
um For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. um We have actually found a few of these altars, not one in Athens, but All right. But we have found them in some other places.
00:17:03
Speaker
um What you therefore worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. So what Paul has just done here is he has undercut the charge. You are saying something new and strange.
00:17:17
Speaker
No, says Paul, this isn't new and strange. Look over there. You've got an altar to what I'm talking about here. You spent money to build a shrine right there to it.
00:17:30
Speaker
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.
Centrality of Resurrection
00:17:39
Speaker
Well, now he has just reached out to the Platonists and the Stoic and several of the other people who are there. They have been asserting this very thing all along.
00:17:50
Speaker
there they have been They have been really attacking this you know this idea that Zeus lives in the temple to Zeus or something like that. you know they they have that this This idea of a of a God who transcends temples is very, very familiar to them. So so Paul is is really saying you know that I'm not saying something all that new.
00:18:19
Speaker
Okay? um Nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, though he himself as since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
00:18:32
Speaker
Again, there's a whole bunch of people in the room who can agree with this. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.
00:18:50
Speaker
Again, this is this is going right along with a lot of the ways that that that ah that a philosophical that that a philosophical ah philosophically informed person of the ancient world would have thought.
00:19:08
Speaker
That they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. And so now Paul has just has just characterized,
00:19:21
Speaker
Everything that these guys are doing, you are groping, you're feeling your way along as if you're blind and a blind man trying to get to somewhere. You're feeling your way toward God. He has put a positive spin on it. You're going you're trying to get to the right place.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yet he is actually 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 are indeed his offspring.
00:19:54
Speaker
And here he's quoting ah ah kind of a minor little Roman or Greco ah Greek poet at the time.
00:20:02
Speaker
Being then God's offspring... We ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. This is back to he's provoked by all the all of the the idolatry, all the idols that are around there.
00:20:21
Speaker
The times of ignorance, God overlooked. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent. So he says, I'm coming here.
00:20:33
Speaker
calling people to repent of ideas. By the way, you are calling people to repent of too. I'm in agreement with, ah we're on the same page for a lot of this.
00:20:44
Speaker
Because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. Now all of a sudden, this is where Paul's getting into his new material. Not not so much in the idea of a day of judgment.
00:21:00
Speaker
ah In the ancient world, people very much had this idea that the world had gone off the rails and that God was not happy with the way things were progressing and that God would come and set things aright and that that would be bad, dangerous day.
00:21:20
Speaker
And so when Paul says, you know, there's there's a time coming when God's going to set this make this right, he was... He was, again, with them. But when he says, by a man whom he has appointed, that all of a sudden makes him go, what?
00:21:38
Speaker
that's the That's kind of the the step back and say what part. And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. Now, I find this really interesting.
00:21:51
Speaker
um One of the things about Paul is that in his letters, and in any of the speeches of his that are recorded in Acts, he almost never talks about the miracles of Jesus.
00:22:09
Speaker
You know, the feeding of the 5,000, the raising of the dead, the the healing of the blind, things like that. Paul does some of those miracles himself, but he never says, I'm doing what Jesus did.
00:22:25
Speaker
Is that because he wasn't a witness to it? That's quite likely part of their Yeah, that's quite likely part of it. I mean, ah one of the things about being a witness is you can only say what you saw.
00:22:39
Speaker
right And Paul all understands what he's doing. He's telling people. And so I encountered the living, resurrected Christ, so I can tell you about that. But it also really seems to be that that the resurrection of Jesus for Paul was really the defining authorization of Christ as the Messiah, of Jesus as the as the Christ or the Messiah. that that that That by raising Jesus from the dead, God was answering every question you could have about him.
00:23:15
Speaker
Because Jesus didn't stay dead. And we're not talking a ah resurrection and like like Lazarus or Dorcas or something like that. No, he was raised from death and he is still alive.
00:23:30
Speaker
And that's an eternal life.
Repentance: Cultural Perspectives
00:23:32
Speaker
that that That transcending of the death barrier, of the unrolling of death, for Paul, that is the validation that says that's the Messiah.
00:23:48
Speaker
Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. They said, no way. But others said, we will hear you again about this.
00:24:02
Speaker
So Paul went out from their midst. All right. There's that line says they they did not take a juridical action against him.
00:24:17
Speaker
Paul went out from their midst. They let him go.
00:24:23
Speaker
Some men joined him and believed. Among them Dionysius the Areopagite. So he's one of the people who's a part of that committee, that that juridical group.
00:24:35
Speaker
And a woman named Damaris and others with them. Don't know their names, but some others too.
00:24:46
Speaker
This is such an interesting text, both in terms of what it says, which of course is interesting, but also in how it gets used. and its subsequent impact on the, on the history of, of the Christian movement. This, this text has such a rich history that way. You know, we've, we've addressed a little bit of what it says. Some of it is kind of contrary, I think, to the way that we understand this, that Paul may have been more or less fighting for his life with some of this.
00:25:20
Speaker
um Not just engaged in a, in a give and take conversation with with intellectually curious people. um and And I think that that for Paul, even in that stressful situation, the get the the core piece of what he has to say always came back to God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, therefore he's the Messiah.
00:25:49
Speaker
He is the one who is to be the judge of the living and the dead. He's the one who's going to who's going to do all of these. He's the one to whom has been given the charge of setting things aright, of bringing the world back to what it is supposed to be. Because in the ancient world, everybody realized the world was a mess.
00:26:13
Speaker
and we have And God's going to have to fix this. And that it was through Jesus God was going to do that. And the validation of Jesus' claim to be that one was his resurrection. um Interesting, you know here we are six weeks into Easter.
00:26:30
Speaker
You know, the the world has forgotten all about Easter baskets and bunnies and eggs and and the pretty dresses and all of the stuff of of Easter Day. But, you know, Christianity is still saying, no, there's a lot more to unpack here.
00:26:45
Speaker
There's an awful lot to say yet about this resurrection thing because Jesus is risen from the dead. oh that means he speaks authoritatively to the Epicureans, to the Stoic, to the, to the philosophers, to the, to the Platonists and all of those other people who are gathered, uh, in the Areopagus that day and who continue to gather in university and other places, uh, uh, around the world today.
00:27:18
Speaker
that That his claim, that Jesus' claim of authority and and and wisdom is is is a claim which transcends every other claim.
00:27:33
Speaker
If there was a group on earth at this time who could say, we could stand in judgment of of anything that somebody says, it would be this bunch.
00:27:45
Speaker
And Paul is really claiming, but by the resurrection from the dead, he's done something for you with all of your knowledge and wisdom you can't do. And that gives him and authoritative voice you need to listen to.
00:28:01
Speaker
Repent and believe, for Jesus is risen from the dead.
00:28:07
Speaker
Repent or repentance. I think we frequently associate that, which I have, most frequently with Christ. He's here, but also based off the sacrificial system for for sins that God had the Old Testament. So so in essence, a a very Judeo-Christian theme or topic with Greco-Roman culture have understood what repentance was when he says to repent. Yeah.
00:28:39
Speaker
and And again, I think i think that's that's a case where we've got a word that that was that was parch part of the the general parlance of the day, the way people talked, ah which has now become a church word.
Evolution of Theological Terms
00:28:54
Speaker
Okay. ah Remember, the i mean, the Hebrew term for repentance is simply shuv, to turn around. um And that very literally was the case as most of the ah most of the of the ancient pagan altars or pagan worship sites all faced east and and the temple faced west.
00:29:17
Speaker
So literally, if you were going to worship God, you literally turned around. um in the greco In the Greek-speaking world, it was metanoita, which is simply change your mind. Okay.
00:29:32
Speaker
All right? So so this is this is a reorientation, a a change of mind, a change of the way you're thinking is what what repentance in its heart really means. And that is that is that you're no longer thinking, this is the way I should go. You're saying, that is the way I should go.
00:29:50
Speaker
um And that would have been very much understood by them. And they would have they would have understood, yeah, that this world needs to change. It's simply a call for something to change.
00:30:02
Speaker
Now, does it have within that also that that that narrower, I think, moral sense that a lot of people today associate with repentance?
00:30:14
Speaker
Yes, it absolutely does. But at the time, it would have been a much bigger, broader term, I think, for the people who were who were listening to it.
00:30:26
Speaker
I'm curious, because if and for as much as we... use that as the church word, especially in the context where we, you and I together spend a lot of time. Sometimes I wonder if those outside of the faith in our culture in particular, our society, don't fully understand or or because it's now primarily a church word,
00:30:54
Speaker
we we say it thinking that, well, I know what it means. You obviously should know what it means when they might not. Have any clue what it means. Absolutely. right i I think the same thing. I mean, there's a whole bunch of English theological terms or or or churchy terms that we use that that people kind of understand, but probably when we're talking to people outside the church, we shouldn't assume that they do.
00:31:22
Speaker
I mean, even something as basic as forgiveness, you know um you know, that word started out as a banking term. It's what they're not going to do to your car loan, right? And yeah no ah and and and Jesus and and the and the and the gospel appropriates a banking term to say, this is what God has done for you. He has forgiven your debt.
00:31:47
Speaker
And, ah but we've now so grabbed a hold of that word, it's become ah a a purely immoral, interpersonal, relational term that gets used.
00:32:02
Speaker
The bank will still talk about loan forgiveness. In fact, one of the great blessings we've had recently for preaching was that whole topic of student loan forgiveness.
00:32:14
Speaker
forgiveness that came up a few years ago at the beginning of the pandemic. They were talking about forgiving a whole bunch of whole bunch of student loans at that point. um yeah Whether you're in favor of forgiving student loans is not. The point is that at least it kind of reintroduced the issue of forgive ah a forgiveness being a banking term and ah and kind of reinvigorated that metaphor just a little bit for us.
Misinterpretation of Dionysius
00:32:42
Speaker
so I'm wondering if perhaps being ready to describe repentance from from the Greek instead of Hebrew in certain situations would be beneficial for us as we share what repentance is. and that It's not not just, okay, you sinned, you did something wrong, and turn around, stop doing it, but that taking up your cross and following Christ is a change.
00:33:15
Speaker
A reorientation. Right, the reorientation that your your whole worldview is getting ready. And it's not necessarily, it's going to continual process as it is for all of us. But get ready for a change.
00:33:28
Speaker
Right. not Not just go be the right best person you can be. Not just go stop making mistakes. But yeah, i fascinating.
00:33:40
Speaker
I might not have the languages like you do, but I love them. They're awesome. it's I really have, you know, since I've been writing this this dissertation or this this commentary, which is kind of a new dissertation for me on this, I have so enjoyed getting back into the to the Greek of Acts. It is really an elegant, beautifully written text. Luke is is exceptionally careful full about the language he uses. And I mean, even that ambiguity is they grabbed him.
00:34:10
Speaker
Well, does that simply mean they invited him or does it mean they arrested him? You can kind of go both ways with that word a little bit.
00:34:22
Speaker
um I think the the subsequent treatment that he gets when he's there, especially that that rather authoritarian phrase of we will know what you are saying, suggests it was much more likely an arrest.
00:34:36
Speaker
But ah yeah, he's he's such an interesting, careful writer with these things. I find him really fascinating to do that way.
00:34:47
Speaker
um I think you almost can't leave this text without ah noting a couple of things about how it got used. um Of course, i mean, you know, that that what I think is a misunderstanding of the text that this is this open intellectual conversation sort of a place is, i mean, there's been a there's been a whole church movement here. It's kind of been discredited lately in North America called the Mars Hill um Church.
00:35:18
Speaker
ah yeah I mean, that this is this is a really powerful image that Christianity has appropriated. It may not be entirely accurate of an appropriation, but we've appropriated it to understand just what is going on here. That goes back a long, long ways.
00:35:41
Speaker
So about four or 500 years after Paul lived, a neoplatonist Christian philosopher who lived probably somewhere in Syria started writing a series of treatises and helped some of them as letters. ah And he adopted the name Dionysius the Areopagite.
00:36:08
Speaker
All right. It was a pseudonym. Everybody knew he wasn't dying this Dionysius. he was it was It would be kind of like me writing under the name of, I don't know, Plato or um ah ah Aristotle or something like that. Everybody would know it.
00:36:26
Speaker
Well, this guy was a big, he was a serious thinker. In fact, he invents several really important ideas. One of them is this idea of hierarchy.
00:36:38
Speaker
He invents that word, by the way, he coins that term, hierarchy. um He also has a fascinating understanding and and description of of what you and I might think of as ah as a sacramental understanding of the word.
00:36:54
Speaker
where the word, he he he's really the father of what's known as apophatic ah theology, which is where you can't really say what God is, but you can say what he's not.
00:37:07
Speaker
And so by by saying what he's not, you define a field, kind of an area, God's in there, but there's no way you can ever have a word that can speak univocally of God.
00:37:19
Speaker
You can't say God is and have anything on the other side of that which is true. It's always going to be less than true. And so he was, he he really believed in this apophatic, but he says there's some times when you have a metaphor, when the word says more than what it says.
00:37:41
Speaker
It's a, it's a really dense, difficult passage to translate, but that seems to be what he's, what he's getting at. Well, fast forward a few, few years and, uh, uh,
00:37:55
Speaker
People have forgotten that this was a pseudonym.
00:38:00
Speaker
And so by the time you get into about the seven, eight, nine hundreds or so, people believe when they read these this stuff by Dionysius the Areopagite, they're reading the stuff of this Dionysius from the text.
Historical Misrepresentations
00:38:17
Speaker
And so here you've got this philosophically trained person who talked to Paul And has now written a whole bunch of stuff. And so his writings become almost elevated to just below a scriptural authority.
00:38:33
Speaker
um Throughout much of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas quotes him extensively. um All the way up into up into the ah up into the the the Enlightenment period, it won't be definitively proved that he was a fifth century neoplatonist until the 1800s wow okay that's when we finally figured out that he quoted an earlier an earlier philosopher from the 400s all right uh from the three and four hundreds that that fourth that said oh wait he had to be after this guy
00:39:18
Speaker
That does not actually get proved until the 1800s. So for almost you know six yeah know almost well a good thousand years, the church you know had ah had a serious misunderstanding about this guy, thinking we had a whole bunch of writings from this guy, and they were that they were almost scripturally authoritative.
00:39:45
Speaker
And this would, of course, this would have a little double whammy in that um an early martyr in the city of ah Paris in France, which would become a great intellectual center in the medieval period, an early martyr in in the in that that area was a fellow by the name of Denis, which is the French form of Dionysius.
00:40:16
Speaker
And so there was a a monastery dedicated to this St. Denis, who also, by the way, believed that he was this den Dionysius the Areopagite, who after he had come to faith had somehow migrated up to France and gotten himself martyred there where Paris is built. And so you now had this sort of double misunderstanding of all of this.
00:40:43
Speaker
um But that one would get debunked a little bit earlier. um a fellow by the name of Peter Abelard. Peter Abelard. who was just a piece of work all the way around, um ah would join the monastery after some personal misfortunes of his own and was ah was a pretty sharp thinker. and And he started looking into this and he said, yeah, I don't think the dentists we're talking about here in Paris. Yeah, he can't be the den Dionysius of of Acts chapter 17.
00:41:16
Speaker
That got him kicked out of the monastery. Yeah. But he was able to more or less definitively prove that. So separated out that dentist first, but they still thought this that the writings, the letters, the treatises were the the work of of this dentist. Yeah, I just think it it goes to show that this is a passage we really got to handle with ah a a ah good measure of care with it.
Conclusion and Future Topics
00:41:47
Speaker
you know and And really question some of the assumptions that we make about, what is this actually saying? What is it actually doing? um For me as a preacher, I i really think you know this is ah this is Paul in ah in a moment of stress where everything is on the line. And what won't he give up?
00:42:10
Speaker
Jesus is raised from the dead. And that means everything. That changes everything. He now is the one who has the authoritative voice to define what my life is supposed to be, where I'm supposed to go, and that I have life eternal.
00:42:34
Speaker
If he says it, I've got it because he has conquered death. And he's the only one who's done that.
00:42:44
Speaker
It's a great text to preach. It's a lot of fun.
00:42:50
Speaker
But I think, Matt, did we leave anything on the table for you, Matthew? Any questions you got about it Oh, no, no. i'm I'm just sitting back. This is better than Netflix, for sure. A fascinating text, I think. I mean, all all the scripture's fascinating, but definitely, this is one of the great benefits of of learning.
00:43:15
Speaker
o as simple and almost well just really simplistic better or as it is or sounds it's so easy for us just to read and and yeah I can understand what happened there you slow down a little bit it's really helpful you yeah have to just slow it down and think oh oh wow what what is what is at at work here and yeah cool cool Very much so. right. Any other thoughts you have before we wrap up this week's podcast? Let's wrap it up. I think, you know, we've we've laid a lot out there. let's ah let's let's Let's see where the seeds grow, you know?
00:43:59
Speaker
All right. Sounds good to me. Oh, have have a wonderful week, and i will, well, I'll technically see you in two seconds, but. right For those of us joining us, we can't wait to see you again next week, as always. And if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to either one of us. yeah We'd love to have that interaction with with you and engage with you in God's Word. Yeah, yeah. A little bonus next week. Remember, we're going to do a little bit on Ascension, too.
00:44:32
Speaker
Oh, yes, yes. that makes you catch one of the most One of the quietest but coolest holidays of the year. Yep. All right. all alright Until next time. Until next time. See you then.