Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast, and I've been doing this thing lately with my son that's kind of a big deal emotionally. I'm gonna tell you about it here. We're playing video games together. That's not the big deal emotionally part. We're playing old video games together. That's not really the emotional part either. We're playing old video games together with save files that are left over from my brother who passed away. These are old video games I used to play with him, and I left it in suspended animation. And to reopen those things with my son is a pretty big deal. These games have been sitting there on ice for more than two decades, and my son has got to such an age where it's fun to break those out again. These games that I used to play with my kid brother back in the day before he passed away in a car accident with three of his friends. These games were simple what's called role-play games where you have a bunch of characters and you can give them names. We'd always name one after me and one after him. And then you go through a story, and it's like reading a book, but you sort of play the book. And they're usually set in some sort of fantasy realm with knights and dragons and things like that that young boys love and resonate with, notions of heroism. They were great. We played games like Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger, and one of the greatest games ever. It's named after a Queen song, so it's a silly sounding name. It's named after a queen song from the 70s, but the game is called Ogre Battle, just delightful. So I got those games back out with my son, and it's a pretty big deal. It sounds ridiculous, probably, to some of you. Some of you are like, oh no, I understand the way to that. Not only do we get the games back out, we also got back out the old books that my brother and I bought. You could go to the store, and they would sell these big thick books, these guidebooks for how to navigate these games. I've got my brother's notes and handwriting all over them. It's also been very interesting that as we go through it, I'm reminded that all of these kinds of games have this basic assumption that's built into their worlds, and it's the assumption of the four elements earth, wind, and fire, and air. And all the monsters and the magic spells that you fight with, and the swords and weapons are imbued with one of those four elements, and you gotta match them up against each other the right way. But I remember when I went to grad school, somewhere in grad school, we did a bunch of stuff where we studied medieval philosophy, and we looked at how the medieval philosophers took Christian assumptions and tried to make sense of those in light of the scientific assumptions that still dominated their era, which were scientific assumptions that dated all the way back to the Greeks. Plato and Aristotle and Socrates. I mean, these guys were around in the age of Persia. We're talking late 400s BC, all the way up to the mid to late 300s BC. So it's crazy how far back we're talking. But I remember doing all this work, and we're reading these old Greek texts and all of this stuff is all terribly fancy and important, and everybody there is way smarter than me, and they're saying all these really smart things, and we're reading it, and everybody else in the class is better Greek and Latin, and they're all familiar with all the different philosophers. They just sound way smarter than me. But I'm totally distracted and having trouble catching up because as I'm reading through this old book by Plato, I'm realizing this is where the four elements thing comes from. Because they're talking about earth, wind, and fire and water and how they all fit together, and they're assigning mathematical equations to it. And like if you look at the value of air and you multiply it by two and divide it by the value of earth, you see the golden mean. I mean, that's not actually it, but it's stuff like that. They're trying to get to the heart of where everything came from. What are the elements that undergird reality, that undergird the world? What are the raw materials that the creative forces in the heavens used to pull imaginary ideas out of the realm of the unseen and put them into the physical world of the scene that we interact with today? That's very heady stuff for as super smart and everything as it seems. It's also stuff that really informs still how people think to this day. And the Bible is aware of all of this Greek thought about the elements and the nature of the created world. Both Plato and Aristotle seem to believe that somebody or some conscious force made things. Aristotle leans into the idea of a prime mover who set motion in motion. Plato is talking about these ethereal conscious forces who grab these unseen elements and make them into the physical world as we encounter it today. And the Bible knows that that conversation happened. There are lots of nods to Greek assumptions about creation and the elements and the nature of the world. In John chapter one, we see a pretty serious nod to Greek thought, even Plato thought, which we call Platonic thought. Maybe the high point of interacting with Greek ideas in the whole Bible in Acts chapter 17. Paul himself, the author of Galatians, the book that theoretically you and I are talking about when I'm not telling you stories about playing video games with my brother and my son, and when I'm not telling you stories about going to the class about Plato and stuff, and Paul is the author of the book of Galatians, and also Paul is the guy on screen in Acts chapter 17 in the city of Athens, the city of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. Paul went there. He took this whole, all this stuff we're learning about in Galatians, this whole message of the gospel and the message of Jesus. He took that to downtown philosophyville and marched himself right up on the big rock that the fancy philosophers had stood on for hundreds of years, all the way back to Plato and Aristotle and Socrates. Paul went there and he stood up in front of the people who were descended from this intellectual tradition of the brilliant Athenian philosophers, the brilliant Athenian minds, and he told them about Jesus. He told them about God. It was a very bold move, but what an interesting historical intersection that you and I get in Acts chapter 17, when Paul stands up at the Areopagus. The Areopagus is, I mean, it's Mars Hill. It's part of the big kind of butte. What do you call it? Bluff butte? Yeah, it's a butte that the Parthenon sits on top of in Athens. And right over the hill from where this scene in Acts chapter 17 is happening. You got the cave where Socrates was imprisoned for poisoning the minds, corrupting the minds of the young men of Athens with all of his outlandish philosophical ideas, and that's where he drank the hemlock poison. I mean, I say again, Paul is in downtown philosophyville here when he steps up at the Areopagus in Athens and he says the following, Acts 17, Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, to an unknown God. Now what you worship is something unknown, I'm going to proclaim to you. That's a nod to Plato, it's a nod to the Timaeus, this ancient dialogue, this book from Plato. It's a nod to the idea that the creative forces that made it all go, they have nicknames or two of them, but nobody really knows who they are. They're not personal, you don't really get to hang out with them. Maybe that's who the inscription was to, maybe not specifically to those creative ethereal forces. But either way, Paul is making a contrast. Your creative gods are unknowable. The real one has made himself known. The God who made this world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth. Wow, okay, so that's a throwing down a gauntlet in the face of Plato's assumptions about who made everything in the world. It's not quite as much of an affront to Plato's student, Aristotle, and his idea of the prime mover who made everything in the world, but still, dang, Paul, go for it, man. And this God does not live in temples built by hands, and he's not served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else, you know, in contrast to the Greek gods, who are kind of just exaggerated people with tempers and weaknesses and flaws that can be exploited and manipulated. Paul's saying, Yeah, this unknown god that you guys are sniffing around and getting close to figuring out. Yeah, it's this god, and he's not like your gods. He's better than that. He's perfect. And then he uses this language this god gives all men life and breath and everything else. Okay, he's introducing them to I am the Greeks, this strong notion of the essence of things, the essence of a man, all born out of their philosophy, their ethical philosophy, their study of natural sciences. You can see the strings that Paul is pulling on, you can hear the notes that he's playing here in Greek thought. This is so cool. From one man, he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he determined the time set for them and the exact places where they should live. I mean, you were over in Galatians talking about the fullness of time for the last week here. It's all the same themes. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he's not far from each one of us. He's saying, you guys aren't totally wrong. You're on to it. These things that you're seeing, that you're figuring out, this is from God. This you're looking at the natural order of things, and you're starting to get a sense. Your great thinkers have got a sense of who the true God is. Paul makes the same argument in Romans chapter one that what can be known about God is knowable from the created order, what he's made. Nobody's without excuse because God has made himself known, even just looking at the order of things. He's pulling on those same strings there. And then I'll wrap it up here. There's more to the speech, but he says, For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. For in him we live and move and have our being. He's speaking their language, that's coded language that's speaking to the curiosity, the big pregnant questions that the Greeks had continued to wrestle with. Some had proposed answers, but they hadn't landed on one. Paul's walking into their thing and being like, hey, you know all of those deep elemental forces from the ancient world that undergird everything, and y'all have always been trying to make sense of what they actually are and who made them and where they came from and what it means for you. Yeah, I have an answer to that question. Wow, that is bold. The New Testament is totally aware of the questions that, again, some Greek thinkers were like, this is definitely the answer, but there had not been a collective agreement where the Greeks were like, it is settled philosophically, this is the answer to what the things mean and where the things came from. Paul's taking swings at that, and throughout his language, there are all these little moments where he nods back to those Greek questions, those Greek assumptions, especially when he's talking to audiences in Greek territory. Like in Galatians, because the Galatians, remember, there were the Frenchies, there were the Gauls who moved from the France to the Galatia, which is an old school Greek area. So he's tapping into something here with this language that we're going to be talking about tomorrow in Galatians 4, as he touches on that old idea of the four elements that make the natural world in which we live. Now, in the NIV, the New International Version, which is the translation that I've been using in this podcast, I use an old school translation of it, 1984. This is the one I grew up with, so it's in my head, the rhythms of it. I just find my way around it faster. This isn't the perfect translation. I have a bunch of them that I use and like, but in the NIV, we get a pretty safe translation of what's going on here. It says, so also when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. That's Galatians 4, 3. That's right where you know we've been working on stuff. But in the ESV, it says under the elementary principles of the world, and in the King James version, the ESV is English Standard Version. In the King James version, you get more overt language about so we were in slavery under the elemental forces of the world, the elements. And obviously, if I'm taking a couple days on this, I think this turn of a phrase is important. I think Paul is doing something here. I think it fits into a bigger New Testament theme. And I think it takes us somewhere theologically that's really, really important as a point of contrast. Because Paul, right here in Galatians 4, 3, and then 4 and 5, he's contrasting two things. We used to be children, we were in slavery under the elemental forces of the world. But, and this is the point of contrast, then Jesus showed up. But when the time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive the full rights of sons. Okay, I think I get what he's saying about the Jesus thing. But what's with that phrase before, with the elemental stuff? What is he contrasting that with? What is he saying was our state before Jesus? We'll take a little more time on that tomorrow, and it's gonna be fun, fun, fun. And also, I think I just wanted to tell you about playing video games with my son and how it's kind of an important emotional moment for me and for him, and I miss my brother. And thanks for letting me be a human on our Bible podcast. I know it's not the most efficient when I'm a human, but it's more fun. It feels like we're hanging out, and it feels like actual people working through this material together. Thanks for always being so gracious about that. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.