6
INTRODUCTION
WHY CHRISTIAN STOICISM?
Why, indeed? After all, according to theologian Paul Tillich, stoicism is opposed to
Christianity. Stoicism, Tillich writes, “is the only real alternative to Christianity in
the Western world.”
1
For the Stoic, reason is both the means to an end and the end
itself, as philosophical virtue is the perfection of reason. For the Christian, reason is
merely the means to an end, namely, the end: that is to say, God, the perfection of
theological virtue. For the Stoic, the Christian overextends; for the Christian, the
Stoic is too shortsighted. Therefore, Tillich claims that Stoicism and Christianity are
necessarily incompatible. Their incompatibility, it seems, ultimately lies in their
theology. The Christian is a sworn monotheist (Trinitarian conceptions of the one,
true God aside). The Stoic professes pantheism: the spark of divinity that resides in
all things moves them toward the end previously mentioned.
Yet while their theology may be incompatible, their philosophy is more than
compatible. Several instances of compatibility will be examined in this thesis. By
way of introduction, consider the example of ethics. Like all schools of ancient
ethics, Stoic ethics is eudemonistic: the goal of moral living is to achieve ultimate
happiness for oneself and, to the extent possible, for others.
2
Christian ethics can
also be considered eudemonistic, at least in the Catholic patristic-medieval tradition
of Christianity that wills the primary point of comparison with Stoicism in this
thesis. The question is how far the similarity may be presses, because in defining the
1
Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 9.
2
See Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
7
content of human happiness, Christian and Stoic philosophies seem to differ. The
Stoic philosopher Seneca supposed that happiness is moving-with, not moving-
against, nature: One should not swim upstream, as it were, or else suffer distress, be
it from slower progress or greater effort exerted. St. Thomas Aquinas instead
supposed that happiness is being-with, not being-without, God: One should not sin
and, in so doing, distance herself from God, or else further alienate herself and make
of herself an island. Does it follow, however, that these two ways of thinking about
happiness are as opposed as they appear? The argument presented in this thesis is
that they need not be opposed. The Stoic and Christian visions of happiness are, in
fact, complementary.
While the Stoic is always looking resolutely at the grim realities of life, the
Christian tends to look away from present travails toward the future enjoyment of
God in a beatific vision. While Stoic happiness might be less concerned with these
future things, and Christian happiness might be concerned less with these present
things, it seems the former happiness can, and ought to, follow the latter, especially
for the virtuous. For both the Christian and the Stoic, virtue perfects reason, and
being reasonable ultimately leads to happiness. The system of morality that
concerns appropriate living in the natural world during the scope of human life has
been called natural law; it is a system of ethics that Stoicism and Catholic
Christianity make central. Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theorist of Christian
natural law, adds the forward-looking, Christian component, which is Divine law.
Human reason attuned to the natural law concerns itself with good and evil, as
Seneca describes, while human reason guided by Divine law looks to the One who
8
set the natural order in motion.
Though this is but one example of the potential compatibility of Stoic and
Christian thought, it makes some sense to investigate more thoroughly the shared
history of the two traditions. In doing so, this thesis will illustrate the ways in which
Tillich and much of modern theology may have overlooked a historically founded
lifestyle choice for Christians in the past, as well as demonstrating that such a
lifestyle—a Christian-Stoic lifestyle—is still a viable one for Christians today. The
approach to this demonstration will be in two main parts.
Chapter 1 provides historical background on Stoicism and Christianity,
demonstrating not only the similarities in their worldviews but the many historical
encounters and overlaps between them. For the purposes of this project, it is fair to
call Stoicism and Christianity “schools” of thought, because, over the first several
centuries of Christianity, thinkers from the two traditions interacted in ways akin to
the interaction of the ancient schools of philosophy: commenting on each other,
criticizing each other, and sometimes incorporating each other’s ideas. This chapter
illustrates that both Stoic and Christian writers often presented their moral
teachings in the form of manuals of guidance. Some writings are clearly in a manual
form—most famously, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus’s Enchiridion. Perhaps less
well known is the fact that much of the moral teaching in the New Testament takes a
manual form. In fact, Paul and other New Testament epistle writers at times
modeled their moral instruction on commonplace moral codes that were Stoic in
nature.
Chapter 1 is divided into three parts. The first explains the development from
9
Stoicism from its Socratic and Cynic roots. The second surveys the encounters of
early Christianity with Stoicism. The third makes the case that—for reasons
historical, conceptual, and ethical—it is a viable project to compile a Christian-Stoic
manual of living.
Chapter 2 does just that. The approach is to take several important themes
from each school and to identify a classic Stoic passage and a classic Christian
passage (a biblical text or passage from a Church Doctor, such as Aquinas) on the
theme. The commentaries that follow each pair of passages will argue for the overall
compatibility of the teachings and suggest the relevant insights that can be drawn
from them. The goal is to show the ongoing relevance of these ancient writings to
any reader who wants to better understand and achieve true happiness.
10
CHAPTER 1
BACKGROUND ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM
I. FROM SOCRATICS TO CYNICS TO STOICS
Just as Christianity came as a child out of Judaism, Stoicism rose out of Cynicism and,
in the same way, existed alongside its parent, even if sometimes contentiously. In a
likewise similar fashion, the early Stoics understood themselves as Cynics, though
later Stoics such as Epictetus believed that the ideal Cynic was really a Stoic, as
disciples of both schools modeled themselves on Socrates. As Epictetus writes:
A Cynic… must, then, if it should so happen, be able to lift up his voice, to
come upon the stage, and say, like Socrates: “O mortals, whither are you
hurrying? What are you about? Why do you tumble up and down, O
miserable wretches… like blind men? You seek prosperity and happiness in a
wrong place, where they are not; nor do you give credit to another, who
shows you where they are. Why do you seek this possession without?”
3
It is therefore appropriate that, before we undergo a brief overview of the Cynics,
we first undergo a brief overview of the Socratics. Once the basic views of the Sage
of sages is established and better understood, a selection of his students—Cynic and
Stoic alike—will likewise be established, accompanied by comparisons to Christian
ideas and historical responses.
The first Socratic, if he can even be named as such, was none other than
Socrates himself. According to Diogenes Laertius—who catalogued the lives of many
ancient philosophers, some of whose ideas would otherwise be lost to us—Socrates
3
Epictetus, The Works of Epictetus: His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and
Fragments, trans. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons,
1890), 3.22.
11
was the son of an Athenian sculptor and a midwife. This should hardly surprise us,
however, as Plato, in the Theaetetus, repeatedly characterizes Socrates as a sort-of
midwife himself, bringing to birth seemingly new ideas. The intellectual midwife
likely aided his peer Euripides in playwriting and was most certainly teased by
Aristophanes for it. Furthermore, as Laertius writes,
According to some authors he was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and also of
Damon…. When Anaxagoras was condemned, he became a pupil of Archelaus
the physicist…. Duris makes him out to have been a slave and to have been
employed on stonework, and the draped figures of the Graces on the
Acropolis have by some been attributed to him…. From these diverged the
sculptor, a prater about laws, the enchanter of Greece, inventor of subtle
arguments, the sneerer who mocked at fine speeches, half-Attic in his mock
humility.
4
This sculptor, prater, enchanter inventor and sneerer was a wordsmith of
unequalled measure, infamously said to be able to make the weaker argument the
stronger and, as a result, banned by the leading citizens of Athens from teaching. He
was nonetheless credited for teaching rhetoric and a sort-of philosophy of life
before being put to death for those very reasons by envious accusers.
Socrates rarely left his home state of Athens, except when he served in the
military. He was ever a moral exemplar, living very plainly, with great dignity, and
without ornament. In Xenophon’s Symposium, Socrates claims that there is “only one
good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance; wealth and good birth
bring their possessor no dignity, but on the contrary evil.”
5
He was known
throughout Athens as the wisest of all men living and was greatly envied as such.
4
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1972), 2.5.19.
5
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2.5.31.
12
After Socrates’s death, the wise man was honored as a hero: his accusers were
brought to justice and banished, and his supporters erected a bronze statue of his
likeness in the hall of processions. His students were many, and his influence on
Greek and later Roman thought staggering. While we will not speak further of the
Socratics proper here, focusing instead on the life and times of Antisthenes, Plato
and Xenophon, especially, are two of Socrates’ most famous students. It is for that
reason that a few of their contributions even to Laertius’s account are mentioned.
Antisthenes is quite another character altogether: On the one hand, he is
every bit the Socratic as Plato and Xenophon, though on the other he is a Cynic
throughout. The son of an Athenian and a Thracian, Antisthenes was a student of the
rhetorician Gorgias before meeting—and encouraging others to meet—the
sculptor/midwife extraordinaire Socrates. As Laertius remarks, “He lived in the
Peiraeus, and every day would tramp the five miles to Athens in order to hear
Socrates. From Socrates he learned his hardihood, emulating his disregard of
feeling, and thus he inaugurated the Cynic way of life. He demonstrated that pain is a
good thing by instancing the great Heracles and Cyrus, drawing the one example
from the Greek world and the other from the barbarians.”
6
This hardihood, as
Laertius writes, is the very foundation of the Cynic school. Antisthenes’ favorite
themes—and those of the Cynic school, perhaps named for their many
conversations in the gymnasium called Cynosarges (“White Hound”)—are as
follows:
6
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.1.2.
13
He would prove that virtue can be taught; that nobility belongs to none other
than the virtuous. And he held virtue to be sufficient in itself to ensure
happiness, since it needed nothing else except the strength of a Socrates. And
he maintained that virtue is an affair of deeds and does not need a store of
words or learning; that the wise man is self-sufficing, for all the goods of
others are his; that ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain; that
the wise man will be guided in his public acts not by the established laws but
by the law of virtue; that he will also marry in order to have children from
union with the handsomest women; furthermore that he will not disdain to
love, for only the wise man knows who are worthy to be loved.
To the wise man nothing is foreign or impracticable. A good man
deserves to be loved. Men of worth are friends. Make allies of men who are at
once brave and just. Virtue is a weapon that cannot be taken away. It is better
to be with a handful of good men fighting against all the bad, than with hosts
of bad men against a handful of good men. Pay attention to your enemies, for
they are the first to discover your mistakes. Esteem an honest man above a
kinsman. Virtue is the same for women as for men. Good actions are fair and
evil actions foul. Count all wickedness foreign and alien.
Wisdom is a most sure stronghold, which never crumbles away nor is
betrayed. Walls of defense must be constructed in our own impregnable
reasoning.”
7
Men that practiced what Antisthenes preached conversed with him at Cynosarges,
forming what would become a new academy there. These men of the White Hound
gymnasium were often called hounds themselves, and Antisthenes was chief among
them. These hounds grew fond of the nickname, and of the other, more historically
significant moniker: Cynic.
Laertius notes also that Antisthenes “gave impulse to the indifference of
Diogenes, the continence of Crates, and the hardihood of Zeno, himself laying the
foundations of their state.”
8
Antisthenes’ most famous student was Diogenes of
Sinope, the son of a banker and an exile living in Athens. It was there that he met
7
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.1.10-13.
8
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.1.15.
14
Antisthenes and eventually became his pupil. Like Antisthenes before him, he folded
his cloak over on itself as a coat, carrying what little he owned in an oversized wallet
and walking with a staff. Diogenes intentionally lived in poverty and engaged in
unusual practices meant to discipline his desires, such as living in a tub (not
altogether different from the later Christian ascetic from Syrian, Saint Simeon
Stylites, who lived on top of a narrow pillar) and rolling in the sand in the summer
and the snow in the winter. Throughout his life, Diogenes sought to do what
Antisthenes did, and what Antisthenes’s teacher before him, Socrates, did: In living
simply, Diogenes called others to a simpler life of simple virtue.
As Laertius writes,
One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away the cup
from his wallet [his bag] with the words, “A child has beaten me in plainness
of living.” He also threw away his bowl when in like manner he saw a child
who had broken his plate taking up his lentils with the hollow part of a
morsel of bread. He used also to reason thus: “All things belong to the gods.
The wise are friends of the gods, and friends hold things in common.
Therefore all things belong to the wise.”
9
For as many tales of Diogenes’ commonality of spirit and friendship, Laertius
lists twice as many antagonistic encounters. His retorts and quips rival on the
comical, often pushing Cynicism to extremes Antisthenes wouldn’t have dreamed of
(but giving later generations a convenient term for this biting sarcasm: cynicism).
Cynicism aside, the Athenians loved Diogenes, even if his philosophical peers, Plato
in particular, cared little for him. Laertius recounts an encounter between Diogenes
and the emperor Alexander, illustrating why the philosopher alienated people:
9
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.2.37.
15
“…Alexander, once came and stood opposite him and said, “I am Alexander
the great king.” “And I,” said he, “am Diogenes the Cynic.” Being asked what
he had done to be called a hound, he said, “I fawn on those who give me
anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.’”
10
Diogenes trained both his mind and his body, asserting that the one was
nothing without the other. Craftsmen and gymnasts are skilled in the sort of practice
he preached, and nothing in life was possible without practice. According Laertius,
Diogenes taught as follows:
Strenuous practice… is capable of overcoming anything. Accordingly, instead
of useless toils men should choose such as nature recommends, whereby
they might have lived happily. Yet such is their madness that they choose to
be miserable. For even the despising of pleasure is itself most pleasurable,
when we are habituated to it; and just as those accustomed to a life of
pleasure feel disgust when they pass over to the opposite experience, so
those whose training has been of the opposite kind derive more pleasure
from despising pleasure than from the pleasures themselves…the manner of
life he lived was the same as that of Heracles when he preferred liberty to
everything.
11
Diogenes’ most famous pupil was a Theban called Crates, a farmer of some
wealth. According to Diocles, Diogenes persuaded Crates to give up his farm and
throw his riches into the sea. He was often the subject of much abuse: He was ugly to
look at, and was physically assaulted often and openly mocked even more. Even his
own kinsman, furious that the Cynic had disposed of his wealth and ever-bent on
diverting him from his cause, would confront him, though Crates was unshakable
and could, as it is said, “Give ‘em as good as he could take ‘em.” His most famous
student, Zeno of Citium, related in his Anecdotes that, when Crates was being
10
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.2.60.
11
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.2.71.
16
laughed at in the gymnasium, Zeno would say, “’Take heart, Crates, for it is for the
good of your eyes and of the rest of your body. You will see these men, who are
laughing at you, tortured before long by disease, counting you happy, and
reproaching themselves for their sluggishness.”
12
Crates was nonetheless a student
of strenuous practice, understanding that scorn and ridicule are but an additional
grounds to train in virtue.
Zeno was, in every sense, Crates’ most famous student, though a poor Cynic
in many cases. Zeno’s tangos with Cynicism for the better part of twenty years,
though he finds that the shameless way of the hound is ultimately too shameful: As
Laertius writes, “Crates… gave him a potful of lentil-soup to carry through the
Ceramicus [The potter’s quarter, from which the English word “Ceramics” comes];
and when he saw that he was ashamed and tried to keep it out of sight, with a blow
of his staff he broke the pot. As Zeno took to flight with the lentil-soup flowing down
his legs, ‘Why run away, my little Phoenician?’ quoted Crates, ‘nothing terrible has
befallen you.’”
13
Gone is the shamelessness of Diogenes here, though the desire for
virtue through strenuous practice still remained, as did much of the ethical statutes
of Cynicism. What remained was the foundation of Zenoian thought.
After leaving Crates’ tutelage, Zeno would discourse while pacing up and
down the painted Stoa, or colonnade. His followers would do the same, earning
them the name Stoics, literally, “the men of the Stoa.” Like Diogenes, Zeno was
greatly loved by the Athenians, though he was not nearly as antagonistic to them as
12
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.5.91-92.
13
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.2.
17
his predecessor. He was honored by King Antigonus (Gonatas) for his great virtue at
the ripe old age of eighty. The king begged the old man to teach him—and, through
him, the whole of Macedonia—in the ways of ethics and eudaimonia. Unlike earlier
Cynics, Zeno was known to keep some money, for the shamelessness of begging, he
decided, was unbecoming of a philosopher, especially one who espoused self-
sufficiency. In order to better share with his friends and neighbors, Zeno lent them
money with great generosity throughout his life.
Whereas the earlier Cynics saw ignorance as humans’ greatest enemy, Zeno
despised arrogance and conceit even more. He was well known for chastising youth
for their pride and vanity, reminding them that they are no greater than the
homeless and the beggars whose shoulders they rub. He never stopped learning and
never asserted that he was more learned than another, as there was always
something he could learn from him. His dress and eating were simple, as was
common of the Cynics, though he perhaps imbibed more than Crates. Temperance
was his greatest virtue, and it became the central virtue of the Stoic school. Laertius
remarks, “And in very truth in this species of virtue and in dignity he surpassed all
mankind, ay, and in happiness; for he was ninety-eight when he died and had
enjoyed good health without an ailment to the last.”
14
14
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.28.
18
II. EARLY CHRISTIANITY’S ENCOUNTERS WITH STOICISM
With the rise of Stoicism came the decline of Cynicism, in part because Stoicism’s
departure from Cynic antagonism made it more appealing to a wider audience.
However, the transition was gradual, as early Christians gravitated toward Cynic
asceticism and poverty. Maximus of Alexandria, for example, was called both a Cynic
and a Christian for his asceticism. Jesus Seminar member Burton L. Mack supposed
that Jesus himself was something akin to a sagacious Cynic, even going as far as to
assert that Jesus’ peers would recognize him as such.
15
Despite some similarities
between Jesus and, say, Diogenes, neither of whom minced words when speaking to
men in authority, it seems quite unlikely that Jesus would be identified as a Cynic.
While both Jesus and the Cynics were brazenly anti-elitist and non-materialistic, the
Cynics lived this way to show status-quo sensibilities, while Jesus, in his Jewish
context, maintained a given amount of ritual cleanliness. The Cynics lived purposely
“unclean,” while Jesus challenged the Jewish leaders’ concepts of true cleanliness.
Commenting on the dietary purity laws, he said, “It is not what enters one’s mouth
that defiles that person; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one.”.
16
With that being said, Jesus still observed these purity laws and was not himself
unclean, even if he routinely surrounded himself with those who were: tax
collectors and prostitutes, for example.
15
B. L. Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 1993) 245.
16
Matthew 15:11 NAB
19
While the early Christians appreciated the Cynic ideal in much the same way
that Epictetus and later Stoics did, these Christians were, like Zeno, repulsed by the
Cynics “shameless” lifestyle. As Saint Augustine writes:
It is this which those canine or cynic philosophers have overlooked, when
they have, in violation of the modest instincts of men, boastfully proclaimed
their unclean and shameless opinion, worthy indeed of dogs… that as the
matrimonial act is legitimate, no one should be ashamed to perform it openly,
in the street or any public place. Instinctive shame has overborne this wild
fancy. For though it is related that Diogenes once dared to put his opinion in
practice, under the impression that his sect would be all the more famous if
his egregious shamelessness were deeply graven in the memory of mankind,
yet this example was not afterwards followed. Shame had more influence
with them, to make them blush before men, than error to make them affect a
resemblance to dogs. And possibly, even in the case of Diogenes, and those
who did imitate him, there was but an appearance and pretense of
copulation, and not the reality.
17
While the same could not be said of Zeno and his “shameful, blushing” Stoic
followers, their linked heritage was nonetheless known throughout the ancient
world. Laertius’s overview of the Cynics and Stoics ends with Zeno and his students,
known colloquially as the “Early Stoa.” These early Stoa preached physical, ethical
and logical doctrines, much of which were thought by Cynics, such as Diogenes, to be
highly impractical and, as such, a waste of time and effort. The three doctrines are
necessarily connected, and include rhetoric and dialectic.
Reason reigns supreme for the Stoic: As Laertius writes, “All things, they say,
are discerned by means of logical study, including whatever falls within the province
17
Aurelius Augustine, The Works, Volume 1: The City of God, trans. Rev. Marcus Dods
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1913), XIV.20.
20
of Physics, and again whatever belongs to that of Ethics.”
18
The ethical life—that is,
the virtuous life—is lived in accordance with nature. This nature is none other than
the law common to all things, also called reason. While Thomas might be inclined to
call this common law God, the early Stoa were content identifying it as the ruler and
lord of all, Zeus. It is for this reason that even Epictetus, himself a late Stoa,
identified the ideal Cynics—and Stoics—as divine messengers of Zeus. Happiness,
for these messengers, resulted from virtue alone, bringing harmony to the
individual and the universe.
As opposed to Cynic shamelessness, Stoics practiced a sort of indifference
characterized by preference and rejection. For example, some Stoics possessed
material wealth but, as we will later see, did not necessarily prescribe to any sort of
materialism: The Stoic owns his possessions and is, as a result, not owned by them
and owes nothing to them. It is this sort of indifference that carries well past the
early Stoa, including Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Diogenes of Babylon and
Antipater; middle Stoa such as Panaetius and Posidonius, and well into the period of
the late Stoa. By the Roman era, Stoic philosophy had flourished both in and beyond
Athens, and the works of the late Stoa are the only ones that survive intact. The
period is typically thought to have begun with Lucius Annaeus Seneca, born around
the time of Christ and ended with Emperor Marcus Aurellius in the third century.
Epictetus and his teacher, Musonius Rufus, fall between the two. In his Discourses,
Epictetus speaks briefly about one of Rufus’s most challenging lessons: being
18
Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 7.1.83.
21
consistently critical. Epictetus writes of one of his conversations with his teacher
Rufus:
“Suppose, after all, I should make a mistake… it is not as if I had killed my
father.”… This very thing I myself said to Rufus when he reproved me for not
finding the weak point in some syllogism. “Why,” said I, “have I burnt the
capitol then?” “Slave!” answered he, “was the thing here involved the capitol?
Or are there no other faults but burning the capitol, or killing a father?”
19
It is not enough for the Stoic to, as common sense would have it, refrain from killing
his father or burning the capitol: For the Stoic, logical and argumentative structures
are no less important than familial or governmental establishments.
While little more can be said of Rufus and Epictetus—the former, a famous
teacher and the latter, his even more famous student—their writings speak much
for themselves. Only fragments of Rufus’s Discourses remain, while Epictetus’s
student Arrian wrote down Epictetus’s discourses drawing from his teacher’s
lectures. Arrian then went on two compile a companion piece to his master’s
discourses, constructed from sayings, fragments and integral portions of the
Discourses; it is titled The Enchiridion. It is at this time that the early Christians begin
composing and compiling their New Testament, specifically St. Paul’s epistles; the
Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke; and the companion history to Luke, known as
the Acts of the Apostles. In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul makes his way through
Thessalonica and Beroea, spreading the gospel like wildfire before making his way
to Athens.
20
While Athens may have been less politically significant than Rome at
19
Epictetus, Discourses, 1.7.
20
Acts 17.
22
this point in history, it remained an important cultural center for Greek thought. It is
there, on the Royal Porch, that Paul encounters Stoicism head-on.
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he grew exasperated at the sight
of the city full of idols. So he debated in the synagogue with the Jews and with
the worshipers, and daily in the public square with whoever happened to be
there. Even some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged him in
discussion. Some asked, “What is this scavenger trying to say?” Others said,
“He sounds like a promoter of foreign deities,” because he was preaching
about “Jesus” and “resurrection.”
They took him and led him to Areopagus and said, “May we learn what
this new teaching is that you speak of? For you bring some strange notions to
our ears; we should like to know what these things mean.” Now all the
Athenians as well as the foreigners residing there used their time for nothing
else but telling or hearing something new.
21
After preaching the Good News to the Athenians, Paul wins a few new followers and
leaves them.
22
However, he does not leave the Athenians unaffected by them. The
Stoics, especially, greatly influenced his theology, as evidenced by the plurality of
strong parallels between Pauline and Stoic thought. Paul’s thoughts on sin and death
in his letter to the Romans, especially, strongly echo those of his contemporary,
Epictetus in the Enchiridion. By looking more closely at these passages, one can
discover connections between Paul and Epictetus. First, this is Paul’s reflection on
sin and death:
Did the good, then, become death for me? Of course not! Sin, in order that it
might be shown to be sin, worked death in me through the good, so that sin
might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold into slavery to
sin. What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what
I hate.
21
Acts 17:16-21.
22
Acts 17:33-34.
23
Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good. So now it
is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does
not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing
the good is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not
want.
Now if [I] do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in
me. So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at
hand.
For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my
members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me
captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my
mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin.
23
And this is Epictetus:
Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which
they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible, or else it
would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of
death that it is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or let
us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles.
An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon
others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some
who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on
himself.
24
Both passages revolve around an understanding of principle as guiding action.
While this is clear enough in Epictetus’s passage, the word “principle” doesn’t even
appear until the end of Paul’s. The subtlety lies in the language here: The Greek
νόμος (“law”) can also be translated as “custom,” “system,” or—most importantly—
“principle,”
25
more clearly in line with what Epictetus writes. That law and principle
23
Romans 7:13-25.
24
Epictetus, Enchiridion (New York: Classic Books America, 2009), V.
25
Romans 7:13-25.
24
are related insofar as both of these, by design, guide actions may not be immediately
apparent: The former concerns itself chiefly with the cardinal virtue of justice and
the latter with wisdom, but the latter is of greater import to the sage and, as a result,
also to this project. While the just, law-abiding man knows what is right and wrong,
the wise man knows what is best: That is to say, what will improve him and his,
which can only be – for Paul at least – the grace of God. He elaborates upon this
difference as follows:
Far from improving the sinner, law encourages sin to expose itself in
transgressions or violations of specific commandments…. Thus persons who
do not experience the justifying grace of God, and Christians who revert to
dependence on law as the criterion for their relationship with God, will
recognize a rift between their reasoned desire for the goodness of the law
and their actual performance that is contrary to the law. Unable to free
themselves from the slavery of sin and the power of death, they can only be
rescued from defeat in the conflict by the power of God’s grace working
through Jesus Christ.
26
Prior to this passage in Romans, Paul suggests that man necessarily finds
himself in a slave-master relationship either with God or with sin.
27
Through the
ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, a person of faith finds that the bonds of sin are
broken and bonds himself or herself to God. While sin bound humanity to death,
Paul explains, God binds humanity to life everlasting. The only thing that stands in
the way of attaining righteousness and purity is the impure body, which must be
sanctified or otherwise made holy. Before the Holy Spirit and the Son were sent, the
Father provided his chosen people with the Law, traditionally understood as the
613 mitzvot (“Commandments”) of the Torah, the first third of the Hebrew Bible. In
26
Romans 7:23.
27
Romans 6.
25
keeping these commandments, Jews believed they would be made holy. Christians—
Paul included—therefore turned or returned to the law, but found that, in light of
Jesus’ teachings, the law was more or less antiquated: “But now we are released
from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of
the spirit and not under the obsolete letter.”
28
It is the letter of the law, after all, that
taught man what sin was, as Paul says: “I did not know sin except through the law,
and I did not know what it is to covet except that the law said, ‘You shall not
covet’.”
29
Now, Paul is not suggesting that laws and principles are evil. After all, God is
good, and God’s law must therefore also be good. The letter of the law—the fine
print, if you will—can obscure the spirit of the law, even going so far as to seemingly
inspire the very act the law forbids. Though the law is spiritual by design, one trying
to abide by the law can do no better than to respond carnally, bringing to birth the
internal struggle that Paul continually highlights: Time and time again, Paul finds
that he does what he hates (Sin) and not what he loves (God’s will). Without Jesus to
save and deliver him from the bondage of sin, Paul asserts that he would powerless
to do otherwise, and his struggle is every human being’s struggle.
While it might initially appear that Epictetus disagrees on this point, this
need not be the case. Indeed, Epictetus makes no mention of salvation in this
passage, and appears to need no saving. Rationalist philosophers would say that
reason alone is sufficient deliverance from death’s terrors. Thus, Epictetus instead
28
Romans 7:6.
29
Romans 7:7
26
speaks of instruction, and could be argued that that Paul is, as he writes, “just
starting”: a novice, on the path to sagacity. The utterly uninstructed blames others
for his plight (Adam and Eve, for example, or Cain
30
), while the novice blames
himself (as Paul does here). The sage—one perfectly instructed, as Epictetus
writes—blames neither others nor himself. Perhaps in entering into a spirited
diatribe, as Paul does and in his style, we may be able to reveal the subtleties at
work here.
Are Adam and Eve responsible for humans’ morality because of their
disobedience of God’s rules? Not necessarily: or, as Paul would write, of course not!
It can be argued that they were simply curious, and were misled. Is the serpent, he
who misled the two, responsible? Of course not! He was cunning, as he was
created.
31
Is God, He who created the three, responsible? Of course not! If God is
good, his creatures are likewise created good. However, his creatures are not
created immortal, though God is. As it is written:
Then the LORD God said: See! The man has become like one of us, knowing
good and evil! Now, what if he also reaches out his hand to take fruit from the
tree of life, and eats of it and lives forever? The LORD God therefore banished
him from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he had been
taken.
32
Unless man had partaken from the fruit from the tree of life, as such, he could not
have immortality. In other words, though life is, indeed, the end goal of the divine
economy, death is not the cost of expulsion.
30
In Genesis 3-4.
31
Genesis 3:1.
32
Genesis 3:22-23.
27
If not they, then who is to be held responsible? Are we? Of course not! We
cannot, after all, partake of the tree of life now: immortality, here and now, is simply
beyond us. It is for this reason that death did not appear horrible Socrates, as
Epictetus points out, or to Paul, as he himself writes: Paul can, in more ways than
this one, be understood as a sort of Christian Socrates, speaking to the Athenians on
the Royal Porch as Socrates had been known to do. It was there that Socrates once
spoke of piety to Euthyphro and was later accused of promoting foreign deities by
Meletus.
33
The Athenians misunderstand Paul from the outset of his speech, as it is
written, in the same way that Socrates was misunderstood.
34
It is with this in mind
that we might not take Paul’s message to the Romans as instruction so much as
invitation into dialogue and diatribe, much as we have here.
This is, indeed, what Jesus did. In inviting his disciples into conversation, he
inevitably brings about a conversion, turning them ever away from themselves and
toward the Father. Jesus said:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in
me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go
and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so
that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.”
Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me.”
35
33
In Plato’s Euthyphro and Apology, respectively
34
Acts 17:18.
35
John 14:1-6.
28
Just as Jesus challenges his disciples to reevaluate his message—his way, as it
were—Paul challenges Rome to do the same. Epictetus simply remarks what Paul
implies: Death has no sting.
36
Both Paul and Epictetus—students-of-sorts of Jesus and Socrates,
respectively—go on to serve as excellent teachers for early Christians, despite
theological and philosophical differences. The union of the two brings about an even
greater understanding of the texts, one yielding insight into the other: Paul
contextualizes Epictetus within the Christian tradition, while Epictetus offers
practical guidance through the Pauline text. It is for this reason, it seems, that early
Christians carried this handbook and used it, though not without some adjustment:
Saint Nilus of Sinai, as John Lancaster Spalding remarks in the critical and
biographical introduction to George Long’s translation of Epictetus’ Discourses.
37
Nilus, he writes, paraphrased and ultimately Christianized the manual, establishing
it as a sort of rule of monastic living for himself and his brothers.
That these discourses and writings followed Paul’s epistles and the Gospels is
no accident, and it seems possible that Epictetus was aware of, and read, the
Christian New Testament, especially Paul’s epistles. Though not himself a Christian,
Epictetus’s quasi-theology was, at best, intentionally vague, neither clearly Stoic
pantheism nor Christian monotheism. As Spalding notes:
While the world view of the Stoic differs radically from the Christian, the
moral teaching of the pagan philosopher and of the follower of Christ is often
much the same. Both attach the highest importance to religious faith and
36
As in 1 Corinthians 15:55.
37
Epictetus, Discourses of Epictetus, trans. George Long (New York: D. Appleton and
Company, 1904), xiv.
29
sentiment; both hold that virtue is the chief good; both emphasize the
principle of liberty, and draw from it that of free personality; both declare
that man holds his earthly possessions as a steward of the divine owner, to
whom he is responsible for the use he makes of them.
38
Given the historical connections, conceptual similarities, and ethical common cause,
it is possible to forge a new Enchiridion, a new handbook, for modern Christians—
not paraphrasing the Stoic one, as Nilus did, but contextualizing it within the
Christian tradition as above. In the section that follows, I will argue for the creation
of this manual as opposed to a paraphrase in the style of Nilus.
38
Epictetus, Discourses, xiii.
30
III. The Case for a Christian-Stoic Manual
Why, if members of the early Church used the first manual, compose a
second? Though the answer has, perhaps, already been hinted at, the question
deserves to be explored in a bit more detail. After all, it could be argued that
Stoicism might somehow twist the Christian message, or that Christianity might
somehow distort the Stoic vision. The fact that Nilus used Epictetus’s manual at all is
significant: Christians, at least at the time of Nilus, were already making use of that
Stoic vision to better see the Christian way. Just as the Enchiridion served as a
launching point for Nilus, it makes some sense that Christians preceding Nilus
carried and used the manual, as did Epictetus’s students.
Furthermore, Nilus may not have been the first Christian to Christianize the
handbook. After all, Epictetus’s Enchiridion was compiled nearly three centuries
before Nilus’s rule was completed. While it is possible that the Enchiridion did not
reach Nilus’s home state of modern day Turkey until that time, this seems unlikely:
after Alexander Hellenized Asia Minor–including Turkey–much of Greek literature,
art and philosophy made its way through the empire.
If these early, Hellenized Christians were already using Epictetus’s manual, it
could be argued that the creation of a second manual is largely unnecessary. I argue
that a more-modern manual is, indeed, necessary to satisfy the needs of the modern
Church. The Church has, especially in the years following the Second Vatican
Council, sought to keep up with the times and, as Bob Dylan once sang, “The times
they are a-changin.’” Even the early Church did not receive the Enchiridion with
open arms. The very fact that Nilus needed to Christianize and paraphrase the first
31
manual tells us that, even to the early Church, Epictetus’ message was not exactly
compatible with Jesus’ and, perhaps even more importantly, with Paul’s. While Paul
would hold that we keep our eyes set on Jesus, our teacher, Epictetus suggests that
this is akin to childishness. As he writes:
Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself, abide by
them as they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety by violating
any of them. Don’t regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no
concern of yours. How long, then, will you put off thinking yourself worthy of
the highest improvements and follow the distinctions of reason? You have
received the philosophical theorems, with which you ought to be familiar,
and you have been familiar with them. What other master, then, do you wait
for, to throw upon the delay of reforming yourself? You are no longer a boy,
but a grown man.
If, therefore, you will be negligent and slothful, and always add
procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose, and fix day after day
in which you will attend to yourself, you will insensibly continue without
proficiency, and, living and dying, persevere in being one of the vulgar. This
instant, then, think yourself worthy of living as a man grown up, and a
proficient. Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law.
And if any instance of pain or pleasure, or glory or disgrace, is set before you,
remember that now is the combat, now the Olympiad comes on, nor can it be
put off. By once being defeated and giving way, proficiency is lost, or by the
contrary preserved.
Thus Socrates became perfect, improving himself by everything,
attending to nothing but reason. And though you are not yet a Socrates, you
ought, however, to live as one desirous of becoming a Socrates.
39
While this advice seems both at once wise and blasphemous to the Christian,
it begs thoughtful—and prayerful—contemplation in order to better follow it. Is it
not best to do both what Jesus says and also what he does? Is this much not at the
very heart of Christianity, to be as Christ? This manual will serve to do just that: a
valuable tool for modern Christians seeking to be as Christ to the a-changin’ world.
39
Epictetus, The Enchiridion, 50.
32
This second manual will complement the first in much the same way that
Stoicism compliments Christianity. It will be composed of a collection of essential
Christian-Stoic teaching, representative of the practical intersection of Christian and
Stoic thought. This manual will serve both as a practical guide to living, in much the
same way that Epictetus’s manual did, and also as a weapon of sorts (the word
Enchiridion can be translated as both “handbook” and “dagger”) with which
Christians today can better “fight the good fight,” as it were.
The teachings themselves will consist of seven short statements, each
supported by two texts—one Stoic, one Christian. The Stoic text will be of the later
Stoic period for largely practical reasons: Only complete manuscripts of the late Stoa
(Gaius Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius) have survived intact.
Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations was written last of these late Stoa, sometime between
170 and 180 CE. The Christian text will be a biblical passage whenever possible, in
order to best highlight the philosophy of the Apostles. The Christian New Testament
was supposed to have been written before 150 CE, which places these writings—
those of the Apostles and of the early Church—around the same time as the late
Stoa.
The texts will then be compared and contrasted, especially with regards to
the teaching, in a reflection. The reflection will be one part scholarly investigation
and one part prayerful meditation. The goal of this project, ultimately, is to distill
these Christian-Stoic teachings, making them as accessible as humanly possible in
order to make them as livable as humanly possible, without watering them down.
33
CHAPTER 2
A MANUAL OF CHRISTIAN-STOIC TEACHINGS AND COMMENTARIES
I. Seek Happiness
Teachings
The life that is happy is in harmony with its own nature. This can only come
about when the mind is in a healthy state and in permanent possession of its
own sanity, robust and vigorous, capable of the noblest endurance,
responsive to circumstances, concerned for the body and all that affects it but
not to the point of anxiety, conscientious about the other accouterments of
life without being too enamored of any one thing, ready to make use of the
gifts of fortune without being enslaved to them.
– Seneca
40
Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the
Divine Essence. To make this clear, two points must be observed. First, that
man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire
and seek: secondly, that the perfection of any power is determined by the
nature of its object. If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of
some created effect, knows no more of God than “that He is”; the perfection of
that intellect does not yet reach simply the First Cause, but there remains in
it the natural desire to seek the cause. Consequently, for perfect happiness
the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause. And thus it
will have its perfection through union with God as with that object, in which
alone man’s happiness consists.
– Thomas Aquinas
41
Commentary
While it might at first seem that Seneca and St. Thomas Aquinas disagree about the
nature of happiness, this could not be further from the truth. For both Seneca and
40
Seneca, On the Happy Life, III, in The Practice of Virtue: Classic and Contemporary Readings
in Virtue Ethics, ed. Jennifer Welchman (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006).
41
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (2nd ed,
1920, www.newadvent.org), II.1.3.8.
34
Thomas, one cannot be ultimately happy until she is first satisfied. Unless she wants
for nothing and her physical needs met, her focus and attention will be on those
physical needs. With her attention on those physical needs, her entire person begins
to go flat, as it were, as the mind, body and spirit become unharmonious. This
harmony is the essence of happiness for both Seneca and Thomas.
Happiness is therefore like music, and these instruments of mind, body and
spirit must be kept in tune in order to create beautiful pitches. Furthermore, one
must look ahead to the next bar in order to succeed at playing. If her instrument is
out of tune or she fails to look ahead, she will undoubtedly struggle to play the song
well. These are but a few of the most basic markings of a true musician. A musician
does not simply play music, but knows it intimately. Without an understanding of
harmony and tuning, for example, her music is but a happy accident: little more than
pleasant-sounding serendipity. One cannot be a musician accidently. Similarly, one
cannot accidently be happy.
The happy person, Seneca and Thomas would argue, knows these things,
does these things and, as a result, can play any song well. In both understanding and
applying these things, the happy person emerges as a better and, ultimately, a more
beautiful person, able to make for herself even better and more beautiful things.
Happiness is not simply the ultimate goal, after all: Happiness can be sought and
found in the everyday and the ordinary insofar as it is a reflection of the exceptional
and extraordinary, that is to say, God. How to best do this will be investigated in the
following teachings.
35
II. Cultivate Virtue
Teachings
True happiness…is founded upon virtue. Of what will this virtue persuade
you? That you should consider nothing either good or evil other than what is
characterized by virtue or vice. Secondly, that you become immovable from
the good and against evil so that, insofar as it is right to do so, you exemplify
the divine. What does virtue promise in return for this outlay? Huge
advantages, equivalent even to those of the gods: you will be under no
compulsion, you will not be in want of anything, you will be free, secure,
unassailable; you will attempt nothing in vain, be excluded from nothing;
everything will come out according to your judgment; no setbacks will occur,
nothing contrary to your wishes or expectations.
– Seneca
42
Man’s virtue perfects him in relation to good. Now since the notion of good
consists in ‘mode, species, and order,’ as Augustine states (De Nat. Boni. iii)
or in ‘number, weight, and measure,’ as expressed in Wisdom 11:20, man’s
good must needs be appraised with respect to some rule. Now this rule is
twofold…human reason and Divine Law. And since Divine Law is the higher
rule, it extends to more things, so that whatever is ruled by human reason, is
ruled by the Divine Law too; but the converse does not hold.”
– Thomas Aquinas
43
Commentary
Virtue, for both Seneca and Thomas, sets one’s sight on the good and holds it fast.
This good, Thomas asserts, is none other than God himself, the Divine Essence. By
obeying nature’s rules–what Thomas refers to as “natural law”–as well as human
reason and Divine Law, one becomes like God: After all, God, does nothing other
than that which is his divine nature. Humans can do the same insofar as they act in
accordance with their human nature.
42
Seneca, On the Happy Life, XVI.
43
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.1.63.2
36
This Divine Law is none other than what God does and is, as such, godly
activity insofar as God cannot act outside his nature. It is for this reason that Seneca
promises likewise godly rewards: Virtue brings freedom from compulsion and want,
secure and unassailable, the ability to do anything and be left out from nothing as
anything you judge, wish and expect will be as you judge, wish and expect without
setback.
While virtue is undoubtedly a discipline insofar as it is a good habit and, as
such, must be put into practice, it is anything but restrictive. To be certain, the
virtuous do only what is virtuous and never what is vicious. However, insofar as
viciousness runs contrary to natural law, viciousness is, as a result, inherently
unnatural. That one might hold fast to vice is ultimately more restrictive: If virtue
frees the virtuous, as Seneca notes, it follows that vice enslaves the vicious to
compulsion and want, for example. It is therefore against vice that the virtuous must
rally.
37
III. Avoid Vice
Teachings
Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are
opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own
actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command,
and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions…Aiming therefore at
such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself to be carried,
even with a slight tendency, towards the attainment of lesser things. Instead,
you must entirely quit some things and for the present postpone the rest. But
if you would have both these great things, along with power and riches, then
you will not gain even the latter, because you aim for the former too: but you
will absolutely fail of the former, by which alone happiness and freedom are
achieved. Work, therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, ‘You
are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be.’ And
then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this:
whether it concerns…anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is
nothing to you.
– Epictetus
44
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or
drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and
the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or
real, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a
single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn
from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you
that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God
so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the
oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?
So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or
‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly
Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom (of God) and
his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not
worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day
is its own evil.
– Jesus
45
44
Epictetus, The Enchiridion, I.
38
Commentary
The “greater things,” as Epictetus writes—things in our control—are not necessarily
virtuous, nor are the “lesser things”—things not in our control—necessarily vicious.
Neither Epictetus nor the author of Matthew address, let alone argue, the inherent
moral value of the things unto themselves. As Epictetus identifies, however, the
things in our control are greater than the things not in our control. As such, we
ought to set our sights on those greater things and not worry, as Matthew writes,
about those lesser things. To do so is wise, as American theologian Reinhold
Niebuhr noted in the famous prayer attributed to him, the Serenity Prayer.
46
Because wisdom is a virtue – one of the four Cardinal Virtues, for Thomas
and others
47
– it follows that to do so is also virtuous. To be concerned with those
things both greater and lesser, or to otherwise regard the lesser as greater and the
greater as lesser, is vicious insofar as it is concerned with today’s evils, as Matthew
writes. Virtue and vice have more to do with prioritization, therefore, making sure
to set one’s sights on those greater things and not on those lesser things or else
squander them both.
That wisdom is associated in this case with sight is no accident. Both
Epictetus and Matthew concern themselves with appearances: For Epictetus, what
he refers to as “harsh appearances,” the things that appear to be greater and may
well be lesser, is of chief concern; for Matthew, clothing serves as little more than a
45
Matthew 6: 25-34.
46
Which reads, “God grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to
change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
47
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.1.61.2
39
distraction, though it is ultimately a necessity. Your Father in heaven, as Matthew
writes, provides for these and all necessities. Therefore, they do not require your
attention and only appear to do so. With this in mind, and any other harsh
appearances seen in greater focus, what matters most also comes into focus.
40
IV. Care for Others
Teachings
Everything that you see, everything human and divine, is one. We are all
limbs of one all-encompassing body. Nature brought us into existence as
creatures related to one another, forming us from the same elements for the
same ends. She instilled in us reciprocal affection and made us innately
sociable. She also invested us with a sense of fairness and justice…our hands
are ready to assist those who need assistance… “I am human and I count
nothing human as disconnected from me.”
– Seneca
48
Now the body is not a single part, but many…as it is, God placed the parts,
each one of them, in the body as he intended. If they were all one part, where
would the body be? But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body…Indeed,
the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary, and
those parts of the body that we consider less honorable we surround with
greater honor, and our less presentable parts are treated with greater
propriety, whereas our more presentable parts do not need this. But God has
so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it,
so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the
same concern for one another. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it;
if [one] part is honored, all the parts share its joy.
– St. Paul
49
Commentary
Here, both Paul and Seneca write at length about the interconnectedness of human
beings, each singing the praises of communal living. Indeed, both the sage and the
disciple are necessarily and naturally social, equipped, as Seneca writes, with
reciprocal affection, a sense of fairness, justice and connection to others. All men—
and women—are endowed with these faculties and, as such, belong to the global,
48
Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 95, in The Practice of Virtue: Classic and
Contemporary Readings in Virtue Ethics, ed. Jennifer Welchman (Indianapolis: Hackett,
2006)
49
1 Corinthians 12:14, 18-20, 22-26.
41
human community.
That all are connected communally, however, is not all that Paul and Seneca
seem to be suggesting. The connection, for both men, is more than social: As “limbs
of one all-encompassing body,” and “many parts” of “one body,” the connection is
physical and visceral. The many parts, as it were, are interdependent as well as
interconnected, physically needing the others in order to operate as intended (as in,
at all). No part goes unnoticed, and no part can be considered extraneous.
The vulnerable are given special attention with this in mind, as those who
“need assistance,” our “less presentable parts,” are no less a part of the communities
Seneca and Paul described. In fact, for Paul, caring for the less presentable is the
responsibility of the more presentable. After all, these less presentable parts of the
body are all the more vital it, just as the heart is more vital than the hand. It is with
this in mind that we must care for one another.
42
V. Resist Caring Too Much
Teachings
In everything which pleases the soul, or supplies a want, or is loved,
remember to add this to the (description, notion); what is the nature of each
thing, beginning from the smallest? If you love an earthen vessel, say it is an
earthen vessel [that] you love; for when it has been broken, you will not be
disturbed. If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being
whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies, you will not be
disturbed.
– Epictetus
50
God has made everything appropriate to its time, but has put the timeless
into their hearts so they cannot find out, from beginning to end, the work
which God has done. I recognized that there is nothing better than to rejoice
and to do well during life. Moreover, that all can eat and drink and enjoy the
good of all their toil—this is a gift of God. I recognized that whatever God
does will endure forever; there is no adding to it, or taking from it. Thus has
God done that he may be revered. What now is has already been; what is to
be, already is: God retrieves what has gone by.
– The Book of Ecclesiastes
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Commentary
Everything of the earth is a gift from God, as it is written above. An earthen vessel—
a clay pot, for example, or a favorite mug—is by nature of the earth, and things of
the earth break. As the author of Ecclesiastes notes, this cannot be changed: This
was the state of things yesterday, is the state of things today, and will be the state of
things tomorrow. This is good just as the one who made it is good, and ought to be
celebrated as such.
50
Epictetus, The Enchiridion, III.
51
Ecclesiastes 3:11-15.
43
However, it is not always easy to celebrate this, especially with regards to
human beings—are we not, also, of the earth? Is it not disturbing when we break?
After all, human beings are not mugs! If human beings are of greater import than the
birds of the sky of the flowers of the earth, as we read in the book of Ecclesiastes,
52
surely we are of greater import than mugs. Mugs neither think, nor feel…live, nor
die. Mugs either work or do not, and their value resides almost solely in their ability
to do just that: work.
We are, however, earthen vessels and, like all other earthen vessels–mugs
included–we are breakable. In that way, we are no greater than any other earthen
vessel, or flower, or bird. Though we do not know the appropriate time, we have
faith that, when we have gone by, God will retrieve us, too, as it is written. That we–
and all of creation with us–will not be forgotten and discarded, broken though we
may be, is worth rejoicing.
52
Matthew 6: 25-34, or as discussed in III.
44
VI. Care Little for Material Possessions
Teachings
If my wealth should melt away it would deprive me of nothing but itself, but
if yours were to depart you would be stunned and feel you were deprived of
what makes you yourself. With me, wealth has a certain place; in your case it
has the highest place. In short, I own my wealth, your wealth owns you.
– Seneca
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Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay
destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For
where your treasure is, there also will your heart be…No one can serve two
masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
– Jesus
54
Commentary
Neither writer denounces wealth outright, but each recognizes that putting wealth
front and center is an error in judgment. One must own his property and not be
owned by it, as Seneca writes, serving God and not mammon, Jesus’ Aramaic word
for “wealth” or “property”. As such, one must “hate” his wealth in order to own it
and serve God, lest he love it and, in doing so, be owned by it and serve it. As Seneca
writes, wealth “has a certain place”: not as a book has a place on a shelf, but as a line
item on a list of priorities.
It is with this list in mind that the “hatred” previously mentioned gains some
context: Hatred is comparative, akin to loving less, much as Kierkegaard explored in
Fear and Trembling. In the book of Genesis,
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God asks Abraham to sacrifice his
53
On the Happy Life, XXI.
54
Matthew 6:19-21, 24.
55
Genesis 22:1-19.
45
beloved son, Isaac. Without so much as a second thought, he sets off to do just that.
How could he? In comparison to the love Abraham had for God, his love for Isaac
was infinitely less. In effect, Abraham comparatively “hated” Isaac.
It is with this in mind that we must hate our wealth. Unless we do, we will
find it impossible to own our wealth, succumbing instead to the power of mammon.
It is in this way that mammon can become for us an entity, as Milton imagined in
Paradise Lost. As Seneca and Matthew seem to agree, however, mammon has no
power to speak of. If we own our wealth and serve God, we will recognize that
mammon is merely the name of a vice we already know all too well: greed.
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VII. Never Lose Sight of the Goal
Teachings
Consider when, on a voyage, your ship is anchored; if you go on shore to get
water you may along the way amuse yourself with picking up a shellfish, or
an onion. However, your thoughts and continual attention ought to be bent
towards the ship, waiting for the captain to call on board; you must then
immediately leave all these things, otherwise you will be thrown into the
ship, bound neck and feet like a sheep. So it is with life. If, instead of an onion
or a shellfish, you are given a wife or child, that is fine. But if the captain calls,
you must run to the ship, leaving them, and regarding none of them. But if
you are old, never go far from the ship: lest, when you are called, you should
be unable to come in time.
– Epictetus
56
Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to
win over as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew to win over
Jews; to those under the law I became like one under the law—though I
myself am not under the law—to win over those under the law. To those
outside the law I became like on outside the law—though I am not outside
God’s law but within the law of Christ—to win over those outside the law. To
the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to
all, to save at least some. All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too
may have a share in it. Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all
run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete
exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but
we an imperishable one. Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were
shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having
preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.
– St. Paul
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Commentary
In many ways, this is the very heart of the project: training. If we do not train, we
can never hope to finish the race, let alone win it. We will find, as Epictetus remarks,
56
Epictetus, The Enchiridion, VII.
57
1 Corinthians 9: 19-27.
47
that the things that amuse us—be it shellfish, onion, wife or child—can distract
enough so as to mask the discharge of the starting gun. Unless we are listening for it
specifically, knowing the sound and even the scent of the gunpowder explosion, we
might even forget that we are running a race, let alone the race.
Interestingly, both Epictetus and Paul suggest that this training is both
spiritual and bodily: The mind must be ever bent toward the virtues of the mind,
and the body toward the bodily. Unless our appetites are properly curbed, we will
be powerless to resist the sweetness of the onion, experienced by the reflective
mind, and the carnal pleasure of the flesh, experienced by the sensory body. The
metaphor of running the race is, therefore, fitting: The combat and the Olympiad are
not merely imagined, but experienced in the here and now.
It is fitting, then, that the manual ends in the here and now. As you begin your
training–cultivating virtue and avoiding vice; caring for others, though, not too
much, and; caring little for physical possessions–you must not lose sight of your
goal, that is, the very goal of Christian-Stoicism: happiness. This manual, inspired by
the manuals of Epictetus and Nilus, serves as a starting-off point for the novice on
the path to sagacity.
This manual is not, and cannot be, the end-all, be-all of Christian-Stoicism. It
is not, after all, the race itself, but the means to ultimately win the race: the race, that
is, toward a good and happily lived life. With virtue as your guide and your priorities
straight, only the matter of actually running the thing–putting your training into
practice–lies ahead of you. The starting pistol has been raised. On your mark…get
set…live!
