The apostle Paul:
Part 9.
The philosophers encountered Paul with a measure of curiosity and contempt. But anyone with a novelty teaching was welcome to those who,
Acts 17:21, “Spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.”
So, they brought Paul to Mars Hill (the Areopagus,) that he might make a formal exposition of his doctrine to an assembled audience.
Here the apostle delivered that wonderful discourse, reported in Acts 17:22-31, which seems as fresh and instructive for today as it was for the intellect of yesterday. In this we have the Pauline Gospel as it addressed itself to the speculative mind of the cultivated Greeks. Paul did not begin with calling the Athenians “too superstitious.” He began with “I perceive that in all things you are too religious.”
Paul had noticed an altar inscribed, “To the unknown God.” No doubt it meant, “To some unknown God.” Paul said, “I come” as the messenger of the unknown God, he than proceeded to speak of God in terms which were not altogether new to Grecian ears. Paul gained a few new converts at Athens, and soon left for Corinth. Athens still retained its old intellectual predominance; but Corinth was the political and commercial capital of Greece.
Here as at Thessalonica, he chose to earn his own subsistence by working at his trade of tent-making. This trade brought him into close connection with two persons who became distinguished as believers in Christ, Aquila and Priscilla. Working six days, the apostle went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and there, by defended the Scriptures, sought to win both Jews and proselytes to the belief that Jesus was the Messiah.
He was testifying with unusual effort and anxiety, when Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, and joined him. We are left in some uncertainty as to the movements of Silas and timothy since at Berea with Paul. From the statements in Acts 17:15-16, compared with those in 1 Thessalonians 3:1-2, it can be argued that they had come to Athens, but had soon been dispatched from there; Timothy to Thessalonica and Silas to Philippi or elsewhere. From Macedonia they came together, or about the same time, to Corinth; and upon their arrival came the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, the year, 52 A.D.
This is the first example of Paul’s work serving the Church in as eminent a degree as he labored in his lifetime. It’s a shame that the order of the Epistles in the N.T., are not their real chronological order. The two Epistles to the Thessalonians belong – and these alone – to the present missionary journey. The Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, were written during the next journey. Those to Philemon, the Colossians, the Ephesians, and the Philippians, belong to Paul’s captivity at Rome.
With regards to the Pastoral Epistles, there are considerable difficulties, which require separate discussion. There is no reason to assume that the existing Letters are all that Paul wrote. The First Epistle to the Thessalonians was probably written soon after his arrival at Corinth and before he turned from the Jews to the Gentiles.
It was drawn from Paul by the arrival of Silas and Timothy. The largest portion of it consists of an impassioned recalling of the facts and feelings of the time when the apostle was personally with them. What interval of time separated the Second Letter to the Thessalonians from the First is unknown except that the later was certainly written before Paul’s departure from Corinth.
Phillip Laspino www.seekfirstwisdom.com