The Babbler’s Journey Part 2: Always Learning, Never Knowing
Reflection on Acts 17:21
Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. (Acts 17:21)
The picture Luke paints of Athens is almost comical—crowds of thinkers endlessly debating, chasing novelty like children in a candy store, their appetites for “something new” never satisfied. But beneath the humor lies a sober warning: the pursuit of knowledge, apart from God, can become its own form of idolatry.
Paul’s words to Timothy echo this danger as he describes false teachers and influencers in the last days—“having a form of godliness but denying its power… always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:5,7). Knowledge alone does not save. Education, intelligence, and eloquence—gifts in themselves—are powerless without faith to lead a soul into the light of Christ.
Paul knew this truth firsthand. He was no enemy of learning. A master of the law, Paul had achieved intellectual heights few in his generation could match:
I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors (Acts 22:3).
Yet all that knowledge did not reveal Christ to him. Instead, it hardened him. Blinded by pride and unbelief, Paul became a persecutor of the very truth he thought he was defending.
Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief (1 Timothy 1:13).
It took a blinding light, a voice from heaven, and the power of the Holy Spirit to break through Paul’s intellectual pride. The knowledge he thought he possessed turned out to be ignorance. His misplaced faith was counted as unbelief. Knowledge alone had not been enough.
This is why Paul could later write to the Corinthians:
We all possess knowledge. But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God. (1 Corinthians 8:1-3)
Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines philosophy as “the love of wisdom.” But modern philosophy—even in Paul’s day—often stopped short of that. The irony of Athens is this: they prided themselves on being seekers of wisdom, yet they had settled for the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself. It became a framework for explaining reality—without the Author of reality.
The Bible sets a different order:
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” But “fools despise wisdom and instruction (Proverbs 1:7; 9:10).
Knowledge divorced from the fear of God leads only to pride and futility. For many philosophers on Mars Hill, it seems the hunt was more thrilling than the catch. Their goal, at least for some, wasn’t wisdom or understanding or knowing God—it was the chase, the endless debates, the parade of “new” ideas.
But Paul’s message cut through their noise. Some scoffed. Others were curious. A few believed. And it wasn’t Paul’s brilliant reasoning that saved them, though he reasoned well—it was the Spirit of God piercing hearts and opening blind eyes.
We, too, can fall into Athens’ trap. We can become addicted to new ideas, new arguments, new insights—and the many virtual forums and online gathering places, our modern Areopagus, where ideas and information are shared ad infinitum, but true wisdom is obscured.
Without faith, knowledge becomes a cul-de-sac—a dead end.
Jesus came not to fill our heads with facts and theories but to give sight to the blind and life to the dead, through the simple and straightforward Gospel message that even the least educated among us can understand when received in faith:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19).
May we not be “always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.” May we seek wisdom and understanding, which flow not from intellect alone but from knowing Christ.
Without faith, knowledge puffs up. But grounded in love—rooted in Gospel truth—it builds up.