Volume 22, Issue 2, June 2009

The “Paul” presented by Luke in the second half of Acts does not entirely cohere with the image of Paul emerging from the letters he himself had written a generation earlier. However, Luke's depiction of Paul’s use of rhetoric and rational argument before the Areopagus has a genuine basis in what we find in the Letters, read comprehensively and with attention to context. Paul is not an enemy to the life of the mind. He only insists that, like all other aspects of human life, it must be illuminated and challenged by the light of the Gospel.