Confessional Missiology: A Tale of Temples—Discovering God Amid the Ruins

Today I am writing from a rooftop garden in the center of Athens, Greece. To my left high above the city is the Acropolis and the Parthenon that once housed a thirty-seven foot statue of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, some 2400 years ago. The Parthenon right here in Athens and many surviving statues from this area are displayed in the British Museum as ancient examples of classical Greek art.

To my right, on a patch of land within a stone’s throw is an archaeological site bearing a mere shadow of the Temple of Zeus, the Greek god of thunder. According to various online sources, the architecture of the temple, built around 479BC, is typical Greek Doric in style. In its heyday, it boasted no less than 104 fifty-six-foot marble columns arranged in three rows of eight across the front and back and double rows of twenty on each side. Only a fraction of these impressive columns still stands today.

History records that a forty-two-foot golden/marble statue of Zeus adorned the temple until the rise of Christianity in the fourth century. Once considered to be one of the seven wonders of the world, the statue met its demise in 462AD  either by earthquake or fire after being moved to Constantinople.

Today, the Athenians continuously maintain and restore these structures, and every year millions of tourists travel from the four corners of the world to wander among the ruins of Zeus’s temple and to wind their way up the Areopagus pathway to experience what remains of the Parthenon. There is something  otherworldly about beholding these wonders with our own eyes, touching the cold, smooth marble walls with the tips our fingers, and listening to the mythical stories of the supposed immortality of these Greek gods and goddesses.

Similar archaeological sights like this dot the Grecian landscape displaying remnants of massive monuments built in the name of other mythical gods and goddesses like Poseidon, Artemis, and Aphrodite. These cultural and historical artifacts take us back thousands of years and remind us that we are not the center of the universe and that we do not live in a vacuum.

At the same time, these sites are stark reminders of humankind’s rebellious drive to worship hand-carved idols, to build gargantuan monuments like the Tower of Babel (and temples built to worship mythical gods), and huge statues like Nebuchadnezzar (and Zeus and Athena) to display power and to strut with superiority. But there is only one Kingdom that remains eternal.

Yesterday, we made the climb to the Parthenon and on our way we stopped on Mars Hill and gathered around a plaque on a rock wall that posted the words of the Apostle Paul in Greek,

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship (the Temple of Zeus and the Parthenon). For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown God.’  What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

God’s Spirit empowered Paul to preach the gospel of God’s kingdom in first century Athens to Epicureans, Sophists, and the intelligentsia in the shadow of Athena. Within a few hundred years the good news took root and the church began to grow! The Spirit empowered believers to take the gospel from Athens, to Corinth, to Ephesus, to Thessaloniki, and beyond and all the way back again. Although Christianity, expressed through the Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical traditions, is predominant in Greece today, there is a need to revitalize and contextualize approaches and methods of sharing the gospel. There is a groundswell of believers in the city and on campuses today who are praying that God raise up a new generation of Christ followers.

In the twenty-first century there is no shortage of idol worship, no lack of man made monuments to power, or arrogant autocrats. God’s Spirit, among the ruins and the remaining rubble of the temples to Zeus and Athena, provoked me to worship our God who has never lived in a temple made with hands—he creates, lives, and reigns over all.

Look for God among the least likely of places—God is not far from any one of us.