A BIBLICAL BASIS FOR INTERFAITH DIALOGUE

When one reads in Acts 17:17 that in Athens Paul was “reasoning” (NASB; cf. ESV) “in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be present,” what mental picture comes to mind? Are we to imagine something like a modern street-preacher who stands on a soapbox and shouts in a loud voice, hoping that many will hear and that some will stop and listen? Or is this Paul in his marketplace “stall,’ weaving tents, engaging potential customers in courteous religious conversation? Is he walking the colonnaded pavement of the ancient Stoa, stopping people and asking about their religious convictions or handing out (hard clay) tracts?

The word that Luke uses to describe Paul’s activity is in an imperfect tense form of the verb dialevgomai (dialegomai). The standard dictionary of the Greek of the New Testament and early Christian literature, authored originally by Walter Bauer, and subsequently revised and translated by Friedrich Danker, W. F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, in its most recent (2000) edition, gives the following options for translating this verb (p. 232): “(1) to engage in speech interchange, converse, discuss, argue,” elaborating after a variety of references, “esp. of instructional discourse that frequently includes exchange of opinions.” Bauer, Danker, Arndt and Gingrich list Acts 17:17 under this heading, noting further that when the verb is followed by a reference to a person or person in the dative, as here (i.e., “reasoning with someone”), that the term can mean “discuss” or “confer.” The second set of definitions provided for the verb, for which the structure of this verse does not allow, is “(2) to instruct about something, inform, instruct.”

A sampling of three standard, detailed commentaries on Acts yields the following renderings. F. F. Bruce, who until his death in 1990 was usually considered evangelicalism’s leading New Testament scholar, employs the translation, “conversed” (The Book of the Acts, p. 328). Ben Witherington, prolific commentator and professor at Asbury Seminary, an evangelical Methodist school in Kentucky, suggests “engaging in dialogue and debate” (The Acts of the Apostles, 504). Joseph Fitzmyer, one of America’s leading Roman Catholic scholars, now in retirement, whose commentary on Romans takes positions far closer to Martin Luther than to medieval Catholicism, renders the verb as to “hold discussions” (The Acts of the Apostles, p. 604).

The context of the very next verse in Acts (17:18) supports these understandings. It begins, “And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him.” The verb translated “conversing” (again NASB and ESV) again implies a dialogue with give and take Greek sumbavllw (symballō. The intransitive form, as here, means to “meet, encounter; discuss, confer; debate” (UBS Greek New Testament Dictionary, p. 170). Greek philosophers did indeed walk up and down the stoa (which is where the term Stoic originally came from) surrounded by their formal disciples and any others who would listen engaging usually (from the time of Socrates in the second half of the fifth century B.C. onwards), guiding conversations by asking their listeners questions, praising or reinforcing the answers they agreed with and disputing those they did not, often by means of further questions. Formal, uninterrupted speeches were not the norm for the philosophers; that was the role of the rhetoricians, especially the Sophists, who were often looked down upon by the philosophers as emphasizing form over substance (hence our English use of the word Sophistry).

If Stoic and Epicurean philosophers were strolling and conversing with Paul, then, the form of their conversation was almost certainly one of asking questions of one another in dialogue or debate fashion, each trying to convince the other of the correctness of their position but also seeking clarification about just what it was that each was claiming. Indeed, it was nagging confusion about the latter that eventually led the local city council to ask Paul to appear before it to give a more formal presentation of his beliefs, which Luke summarizes as Paul’s famous Mars Hill discourse (vv. 18b-31). But this “sermon” was not part of the beginning of Paul’s ministry in Athens but of the end. It all came about because of prolonged, daily exchanges of beliefs in the marketplace (the imperfect tense, which appears for all the verbs of Paul’s speaking in verses 17-18 suggests that Luke was deliberately emphasizing that these actions occurred over a period of time, whereas the Mars Hill message was a “one-off” sermon.

But what then of the end of verse 18, where we read that Paul was “preaching” Jesus and the resurrection? Does this contradict Luke’s earlier claims of a more dialogical form of ministry? Not in the least. The word, from eujaggelivzomai (euangelizomai), simply means to announce good news. Nothing in the root suggests the particular form that such an announcement might take. Often times Christians did “preach” in the sense of a more uninterrupted form of discourse, in contexts, like the synagogue, where that was expected and appropriate. Though even in the synagogue, it was commonplace for worshipers to ask questions of the one who had commented on the passage or passages of Hebrew Scriptures for the day, or even to intersperse those questions into the “sermon.” The most detailed record we have of the various forms that ancient Jewish preaching and commentary on the Hebrew Bible took appears in the various rabbinic books known as midrashim (commentaries) and one discovers a wide range of forms—from very dialogical to very monological—in those documents. The fullest example we have from the life of Jesus is the “Bread of Life discourse” in the Capernaum synagogue, outline in John 6:22-71, which contains a core of uninterrupted speech framed by questions and answers on each side.

Interestingly, Acts 17:17 notes that Paul was reasoning not only with those whom he encountered in the agora or marketplace but also “in the synagogue” In some communities, Acts tells us Paul preached on one or more Sabbaths, enabling us to deduce that the weekly worship service is meant. But here there is no indication of timing and, paired, with his itinerant marketplace ministry, we need not imagine him limiting his time in the synagogue to Saturdays. Synagogues in large Hellenistic communities functioned as schools for elementary-school age boys during the week, as meeting-houses for various social and civic gatherings at times on other evenings, as settings for local rabbis and rabbis-in-trainings to discuss, in yeshiva (paired give-and-take, debate) style conversations. Paul could easily have utilized any or all of these forms to try to impress his message and passion on a variety of audiences.

Every culture and subculture has what it deems largely acceptable and largely unacceptable forms of communicating what people believe to be important truth. There is no indication anywhere in all of the Bible that any Jew or Christian ever employed a form of communication that was not already deeply embedded as a largely acceptable form of communication in a given culture. It was the message of God that often proved inescapably offensive, most notably the foolishness of the cross, of a crucified Messiah (1 Cor. 1:18-25). Paul knew that message would be a stumbling block; he did not want to put any additional ones in front of people becoming followers of Jesus the Messiah (9:19-23). Whenever Christians share their faith in a form that is widely perceived by their audiences to be culturally inappropriate, they are violating fundamental Scriptural principles. Whenever their demeanor does not match the broken and battered, humble form of Paul’s understanding of apostolic ministry (1 Cor. 4:8-13), they deny by their actions and their spirit the heart of their message, every bit as much as the frustrated spouse does when shouting in an angry voice, “But I do love you!” There are many forms of announcing the good news of salvation in Christ that remain culturally acceptable in every culture of the world. One of the most deeply rooted and endearing of these forms is dialogue—respectful listening to another’s point of view, questioning them to make sure one has clearly understood them, and then equally clearly explaining one’s own point of view and fielding clarifying questions--what Richard Mouw and John Stackhouse have dubbed “convicted civility.” Remarkably, such conversations usually succeed in having all parties converse forthrightly and with understanding about their most meaningful religious convictions in ways that more confrontational (or even just proclamational) forms do not. Or as Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ used to put it so frequently, “successful evangelism is sharing Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God.” The Spirit will “clinch the deal” in his own sovereign and often surprising ways; we don’t have to resemble high-pressure used-car salespersons to do it ourselves!

Craig L. Blomberg

Distinguished Professor of New Testament

Denver Seminary

March 2006