Acts 17:22-34

Paul’s Speech at the Areopagus. 22Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said:*

“You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. 23For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’* What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands,h 25nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. 26He made from one* the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, 27so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.i 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’* as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ 29Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.j 30God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent 31because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.”k

32When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time.” 33And so Paul left them. 34But some did join him, and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.