- From a.d. 51–54. Second missionary journey. After the council at Jerusalem and the
temporary adjustment of the difference between the Jewish and Gentile branches of the church,
Paul undertook, in the year 51, a second great journey, which decided the Christianization of Greece.
He took Silas for his companion. Having first visited his old churches, he proceeded, with the help
of Silas and the young convert, Timothy, to establish new ones through the provinces of Phrygia
and Galatia, where, notwithstanding his bodily infirmity, he was received with open arms like an
angel of God.
From Troas, a few miles south of the Homeric Troy and the entrance to the Hellespont, he
crossed over to Greece in answer to the Macedonian cry: "Come over and help us!" He preached
the gospel with great success, first in Philippi, where he converted the purple dealer, Lydia, and
the jailor, and was imprisoned with Silas, but miraculously delivered and honorably released; then
in Thessalonica, where he was persecuted by the Jews, but left a flourishing church; in Beraea,
where the converts showed exemplary zeal in searching the Scriptures. In Athens, the metropolis
of classical literature, he reasoned with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and unveiled to them on
Mars’ Hill (Areopagus), with consummate tact and wisdom, though without much immediate
success, the "unknown God," to whom the Athenians, in their superstitious anxiety to do justice to
all possible divinities, had unconsciously erected an altar, and Jesus Christ, through whom God
will judge the world in righteousness.^416 In Corinth, the commercial bridge between the East and
the West, a flourishing centre of wealth and culture, but also a sink of vice and corruption, the
apostle spent eighteen months, and under almost insurmountable difficulties he built up a church,
which exhibited all the virtues and all the faults of the Grecian character under the influence of the
gospel, and which he honored with two of his most important Epistles.^417
In the spring of 54 he returned by way of Ephesus, Caesarea, and Jerusalem to Antioch.
During this period he composed the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the earliest
of his literary remains excepting his missionary addresses preserved in the Acts. - a.d. 54–58. Third missionary tour. Towards the close of the year 54 Paul went to Ephesus,
and in this renowned capital of proconsular Asia and of the worship of Diana, he fixed for three
years the centre of his missionary work. He then revisited his churches in Macedonia and Achaia,
and remained three months more in Corinth and the vicinity.
(^416) "Paul left Athens," says Farrar (I. 550 sq.), "a despised and lonely man. And yet his visit was not in vain .... He founded no
church at Athens, but there-it may be under the fostering charge of the converted Areopagite-a church grew up. In the next
century it furnished to the cause of Christianity its martyr bishops and its eloquent apologists (Publius, Quadratus, Aristides,
Athenagoras). In the third century it flourished in peace and purity. In the fourth century it was represented at Nicaea, and the
noble rhetoric of the two great Christian friends, St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, was trained in its Christian schools.
Nor were many centuries to elapse ere, unable to confront the pierced hands which held a wooden cross, its myriads of deities
had fled into the dimness of outworn creeds, and its tutelary goddess, in spite of the flashing eyes which Homer had commemorated,
and the mighty spear which had been moulded out of the trophies of Marathon, resigned her maiden chamber to the honour of
that meek Galilaean maiden who had lived under the roof of the carpenter at Nazareth-the virgin mother of the Lord." Yet Athens
was one of the last cities in the Roman empire which abandoned idolatry, and it never took a prominent position in church history.
Its religion was the worship of ancient Greek genius rather than that of Christ. "Il est been moins disciple de Jésus et de saint
Paul que de Plutarque et de Julien," says Renan, St. Paul, p. 208. His chapter on Paul in Athens is very interesting.
(^417) In Corinth Paul wrote that fearful, yet truthful description of pagan depravity in Rom. 1:18 sqq. The city was proverbially
corrupt, so that κορινθιάζομαι means to practise whoredom, and κορινθιαστής, a whoremonger. The great temple of Venus on
the acropolis had more than a thousand courtezans devoted to the service of lust. With good reason Bengel calls a church of God
in Corinth a "laetum et ingens paradoxon (in 1 Cor. 1:2). See the lively description of Renan, St. Paul, ch. VIII. pp. 211 sqq
A.D. 1-100.