Stoicism (religion)

132:1.1It was with Ang­a­mon, the leader of the Sto­ics, that Je­sus had an all-night talk early dur­ing his so­journ in Rome. This man sub­se­quently be­came a great friend of Paul and proved to be one of the strong sup­port­ers of the Chris­tian church at Rome. In sub­stance, and re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, Je­sus taught Ang­a­mon:

195:3.3Chris­tian­ity came into fa­vor in Rome at a time when there was great con­tention be­tween the vig­or­ous teach­ings of the Sto­ics and the sal­va­tion promises of the mys­tery cults. Chris­tian­ity came with re­fresh­ing com­fort and lib­er­at­ing power to a spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry peo­ple whose lan­guage had no word for “un­selfish­ness.”

121:6.3Though the Hel­le­nized Jew­ish be­liefs were very lit­tle in­flu­enced by the teach­ings of the Epi­cure­ans, they were very ma­te­ri­ally af­fected by the phi­los­o­phy of Plato and the self-ab­ne­ga­tion doc­trines of the Sto­ics. The great in­road of Sto­icism is ex­em­pli­fied by the Fourth Book of the Mac­cabees; the pen­e­tra­tion of both Pla­tonic phi­los­o­phy and Stoic doc­trines is ex­hib­ited in the Wis­dom of Sol­o­mon. The Hel­le­nized Jews brought to the He­brew scrip­tures such an al­le­gor­i­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion that they found no dif­fi­culty in con­form­ing He­brew the­ol­ogy with their revered Aris­totelian phi­los­o­phy. But this all led to dis­as­trous con­fu­sion un­til these prob­lems were taken in hand by Philo of Alexan­dria, who pro­ceeded to har­mo­nize and sys­tem­ize Greek phi­los­o­phy and He­brew the­ol­ogy into a com­pact and fairly con­sis­tent sys­tem of re­li­gious be­lief and prac­tice. And it was this later teach­ing of com­bined Greek phi­los­o­phy and He­brew the­ol­ogy that pre­vailed in Pales­tine when Je­sus lived and taught, and which Paul uti­lized as the foun­da­tion on which to build his more ad­vanced and en­light­en­ing cult of Chris­tian­ity.

121:4.32. The Stoic. Sto­icism was the su­pe­rior phi­los­o­phy of the bet­ter classes. The Sto­ics be­lieved that a con­trol­ling Rea­son-Fate dom­i­nated all na­ture. They taught that the soul of man was di­vine; that it was im­pris­oned in the evil body of phys­i­cal na­ture. Man’s soul achieved lib­erty by liv­ing in har­mony with na­ture, with God; thus virtue came to be its own re­ward. Sto­icism as­cended to a sub­lime moral­ity, ide­als never since tran­scended by any purely hu­man sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy. While the Sto­ics pro­fessed to be the “off­spring of God,” they failed to know him and there­fore failed to find him. Sto­icism re­mained a phi­los­o­phy; it never be­came a re­li­gion. Its fol­low­ers sought to at­tune their minds to the har­mony of the Uni­ver­sal Mind, but they failed to en­vis­age them­selves as the chil­dren of a lov­ing Fa­ther. Paul leaned heav­ily to­ward Sto­icism when he wrote, “I have learned in what­so­ever state I am, there­with to be con­tent.”

121:7.7Paul’s cult of Chris­tian­ity ex­hib­ited its moral­ity as a Jew­ish birth­mark. The Jews viewed his­tory as the prov­i­dence of God—Yah­weh at work. The Greeks brought to the new teach­ing clearer con­cepts of the eter­nal life. Paul’s doc­trines were in­flu­enced in the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy not only by Je­sus’ teach­ings but also by Plato and Philo. In ethics he was in­spired not only by Christ but also by the Sto­ics.

132:0.4Je­sus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valu­able of all the man­i­fold ex­pe­ri­ences of his six months’ so­journ in that city was his con­tact with, and in­flu­ence upon, the re­li­gious lead­ers of the em­pire’s cap­i­tal. Be­fore the end of the first week in Rome Je­sus had sought out, and had made the ac­quain­tance of, the worth-while lead­ers of the Cyn­ics, the Sto­ics, and the mys­tery cults, in par­tic­u­lar the Mith­raic group. Whether or not it was ap­par­ent to Je­sus that the Jews were go­ing to re­ject his mis­sion, he most cer­tainly fore­saw that his mes­sen­gers were pres­ently com­ing to Rome to pro­claim the king­dom of heaven; and he there­fore set about, in the most amaz­ing man­ner, to pre­pare the way for the bet­ter and more cer­tain re­cep­tion of their mes­sage. He se­lected five of the lead­ing Sto­ics, eleven of the Cyn­ics, and six­teen of the mys­tery-cult lead­ers and spent much of his spare time for al­most six months in in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with these re­li­gious teach­ers. And this was his method of in­struc­tion: Never once did he at­tack their er­rors or even men­tion the flaws in their teach­ings. In each case he would se­lect the truth in what they taught and then pro­ceed so to em­bel­lish and il­lu­mi­nate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this en­hance­ment of the truth ef­fec­tively crowded out the as­so­ci­ated er­ror; and thus were these Je­sus-taught men and women pre­pared for the sub­se­quent rec­og­ni­tion of ad­di­tional and sim­i­lar truths in the teach­ings of the early Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. It was this early ac­cep­tance of the teach­ings of the gospel preach­ers which gave that pow­er­ful im­pe­tus to the rapid spread of Chris­tian­ity in Rome and from there through­out the em­pire.

98:6.2Oc­ci­den­tal re­li­gion thus lan­guished un­til the days of the Skep­tics, Cyn­ics, Epi­cure­ans, and Sto­ics, but most im­por­tant of all, un­til the times of the great con­test be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Paul’s new re­li­gion of Chris­tian­ity.

195:2.6The Stoic and his sturdy ap­peal to “na­ture and con­science” had only the bet­ter pre­pared all Rome to re­ceive Christ, at least in an in­tel­lec­tual sense. The Ro­man was by na­ture and train­ing a lawyer; he revered even the laws of na­ture. And now, in Chris­tian­ity, he dis­cerned in the laws of na­ture the laws of God. A peo­ple that could pro­duce Ci­cero and Vergil were ripe for Paul’s Hel­le­nized Chris­tian­ity.

185:3.6Pi­late was not able to fathom Je­sus’ words, nor was he able to un­der­stand the na­ture of his spir­i­tual king­dom, but he was now cer­tain that the pris­oner had done noth­ing wor­thy of death. One look at Je­sus, face to face, was enough to con­vince even Pi­late that this gen­tle and weary, but ma­jes­tic and up­right, man was no wild and dan­ger­ous rev­o­lu­tion­ary who as­pired to es­tab­lish him­self on the tem­po­ral throne of Is­rael. Pi­late thought he un­der­stood some­thing of what Je­sus meant when he called him­self a king, for he was fa­mil­iar with the teach­ings of the Sto­ics, who de­clared that “the wise man is king.” Pi­late was thor­oughly con­vinced that, in­stead of be­ing a dan­ger­ous sedi­tion­mon­ger, Je­sus was noth­ing more or less than a harm­less vi­sion­ary, an in­no­cent fa­natic.