The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

hellas and christianity
actually stood in the midst of the Areopagus (en meso tou Areiou pagou)? The
Areopagus was the highest authority whose seat was the hill of Mars (Ares)
behind the Acropolis. We may recall that it was in a cave beneath this same hill
that the Erinyes had once dwelt who, in the drama of Aeschylus, became the
Eumenides, the benevolent spirits of conscience.
Many scholars believe that Paul spoke only in the agora and never on the
hill of the Areopagus. 202 In any case he addressed the Areopagites directly. For
in the midst of the agora stood chairs for these dignitaries who sat there as the
executives of the authorities. When they sat thus in a semicircle, Paul could
speak to them and to the Athenians, saying: “Ye men of Athens, I perceive
that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your
devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, to the unknown god. Whom
therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you ... For in him we live
and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said. For
we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we
ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver or stone graven
by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but
now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Because he hath appointed a
day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he
hath ordained: whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath
raised him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead
some mocked; and others said: We will hear thee again of this matter” (Acts
17:25, 28, 29–32).
It was the fact of the resurrection which deeply touched and moved the
Athenians, but which also split them into two parties. The resurrection of the
spirit and the raising of the body are ideas that were very close to the spirit of the
Hellenes. Nothing stirred them more than the artistic form of the body from
which the individual spirit of man radiates. Their whole history was a unique
preparation for understanding the divine within ourselves as the daimon, the
voice of conscience and the entelechy of man, which in the sense of Aristotle is
indestructible. The entelechy is the form of forms, and the purest form is “God,
the purest entelechy.” (See chapter XI.)
In a way, similar to that in which the principle of our living existence was