Ellen White and Mars Hill

Room S215

When one reads Acts 17’s description of Paul’s speech at Mars Hill, one does not find council forbidding this type of evangelism. Instead the speech appears to give an example of how to do outreach in a skeptical environment. Paul does make statements about his method of work in Corinth in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians. However, do these passages offer commentary on Paul’s work in Athens? Ellen White appears to belittle Paul’s practice of making a point of contact with the skeptical audience at Mars Hill by quoting their philosophers. She does this by linking his statements in 1 Corinthians with what happened in Athens. However, she also made positive comments on the Mars Hill sermon. The apparent contradiction poses a problem with her consistency not only with the Bible, but with herself as well. It leaves one wondering if one is eisegeting White’s negative comments about Paul’s work in Athens as an attack against using it as a prescription on how to do evangelism. The purpose of this paper is to examine what the Bible and Ellen White say about Paul’s speech at Mars Hill, and to discover if there is anything prescriptive about the account of Paul’s sermon, or is it merely a descriptive narrative.