“Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”[1]
This was the explanation for the philosophers wanting to hear what Paul had to say when he was in Athens. They brought him to the Areopagus so they could hear “the new teaching” he was explaining in the synagogues and market places.[2] They wanted to hear what he had to say, presumably, because it was new.
I have a friend who is always looking for a new way of looking at things. He is a very philosophical and thoughtful person, but he thinks he would be bored in heaven (as he imagines the heaven of clichés would be – clouds and harps… and he is probably right about that[3]).
But the writer of Ecclesiastes said about 1000 years before Christ “of the writing of many books there is no end”; yet “there is nothing new under the sun”.[4] Ironic, isn’t it, that my friend who is always looking for some new thought to chew on is no different than the Athenians in Paul’s day who were interested in “nothing except telling or hearing something new” (nearly 2000 years ago), and 1000 years before that people were doing the same thing. Yet, what is there that is really new?
Another good friend of mine, Gary Hill, who is a chief author of the Discovery Bible (an incredible NASB Bible packed with scholarly resources for the serious Bible reader[5]), described to me how seminaries require doctoral students to choose theses that have never been covered before. The pressure to come up with something new encourages people to go searching for premises that often stray from the the narrow path that Jesus talked about, who is in his very nature the way, the truth and the life.
The desire for something ever new is nothing new under the sun. It is an age old desire that the writer of Ecclesiastes criticized 1000 years before the Athenians idolized new ideas 2000 years before post modernists championed the idea “that truth is relative and truth is up to each individual to determine for himself.”[6] The idea that each individual can manufacture his or her own truth is simply an extension of this lust for something always new.
Though the writer of Ecclesiastes said about 3000 years ago that there is nothing new under the sun, the Athenians were still looking for something new 1000 years later. Two thousand years after that, one thing hasn’t changed: people in the current, postmodern world are still looking for something new .
Oh that people would long for truth, rather than novelty, for faithfulness rather than change for the sake of change.
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[1] Acts 17:21
[2] Acts 17:19
[3] In reality, heaven is something we couldn’t even imagine. “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,
And which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
[4] See Ecclesiastes 12:12 and 1:9
“That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.”
[5] The philosophy behind The Discovery Bible is to empower people to appreciate the rich beauty of Scripture contained in the original Hebrew and Greek languages by gleaning insights from the original languages that don’t translate well into English. The Discovery Bible maps out all the emphasis in the original languages of Scripture. It contains a symbol system for marking the original verb tenses that are quite different from English, adding depth and understanding of the word of God, along with other features.
[6] Postmodernism as described at http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/postmodernism.htm
