What amazed me as I traveled across Greece this summer was how strongly opposed ancient Greek society was to Christianity. It contrast to the life and message of Jesus, the Greco-Roman world of Paul's day focused on power, status and beauty. The religion of the day was a vast accumulation of gods from various cultures; even the Roman Emperor was worshipped as a deity. Furthermore, Christianity was not the only new religion commanding people's attention and worship. 

In spite of all of this, people like Paul were able to communicate the love of God in Christ in ancient Greece. How did they do this? Obviously through the power of the Holy Spirit, but more concretely, how did they do this? This website looks at how Paul worked within his cultural world to spread a counter-cultural message. 

Paul did this in part by creating metaphors and using examples particularly suited to the group to whom he wrote. For example, when writing to the congregation in Corinth, Paul talks about seeing Christ "in a mirror dimly" (1 Corinthians 13:12). This image may make little sense to us today, but at that time, Corinth manufactured bronze mirrors. Even when highly polished, these mirrors only allowed dim reflections.  Paul's metaphor was not only creative but contextual, in that it explained something about God using everyday items. Paul takes a common "secular" item and makes it a metaphor to communicate one of the deepest religious mysteries - how this world and the afterlife intersect. Remixing the culture like this requires good theology but also imagination.  I put a symbol where I thought Paul was remixing his culture. 

However, Paul often directly challenged the people of his day. On issues of idolatry, ‘classism’, prostitution and others, Paul was not afraid to confront the cultural standards of his day. I put a sign where I thought Paul was confronting his culture.

Part of this website is also apologetic. As I did research for this website, I discovered a number of websites that were fairly anti-Christian. Perhaps because someone Christian hurt them at some point, the authors of these websites relished explaining some fact or story that showed how Christianity was false or unoriginal. Often times this work was done really poorly. An example of this actually comes from the book, Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. At one point he has the main character (the symbologist from Harvard) actually say that "The practice of 'god-eating'--that is, Holy Communion--was borrowed from the Aztecs."  (My eyeballs almost fell out when I read that). Obviously Paul and other early Christians did not have contact with Aztecs to borrow their practices! Where possible I try to explain the difference between the Christian understanding of God and various pagan understandings, especially in cases were I felt either the internet or even the signs at the museums drew unfair parallels. In these cases, I inserted a sign.

The cities in blue on the left are cities where Paul worked; the cities in white are centers of pagan religion. In both the Pauline and non-Pauline cities, one can gain a great understanding for the cultural world of Paul and how Paul interacted with it.

Finally, although this website looks to the past it teaches us much about how to approach modern culture with the life and message of Jesus.