Is it possible?

[The Sum of Awe]

Do you think it is possible (or especially if you think it's logical) to form a sync between Christianity and Stoic philosophy?

 

[Gjallarhorn]

It would require a (rather common) reworking of God into an impersonal force, and possibly scrapping the idea of Jesus altogether.

 

[Shiranui117]

IIRC, Christianity incorporated a lot of Stoic and Platonic philosophy, didn't it?

 

[Karl R]

Do you think it is possible (or especially if you think it's logical) to form a sync between Christianity and Stoic philosophy?

It's possible (and rather easy) to find strong commonalities between most faiths if you search for them.

Religions and philosophies seek to understand and describe the true nature of things. Since this truth is filtered through human beings, it's colored by the millions of different opinions out there. However, each religion and philosophy is ultimately seeking that truth, and in that pursuit of truth you will find a lot of common ground.

See this thread for an example of similarities between zen buddhism and satanism.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

It would require a (rather common) reworking of God into an impersonal force, and possibly scrapping the idea of Jesus altogether.

I don't see why it'd have to scrap Jesus at all, mind explaining why?

Also, I wasn't really talking about the pantheism in it, mostly the philosophical concepts such as; Will accord with nature, determinism, stoic ethics, etc. Not really their cosmology.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

I don't see why it'd have to scrap Jesus at all, mind explaining why?

Also, I wasn't really talking about the pantheism in it, mostly the philosophical concepts such as; Will accord with nature, determinism, stoic ethics, etc. Not really their cosmology.

Ah, then never mind.

 

[Vouthon]

Dear Sum,

I would say that there has already been a "synch" of sorts between Christianity and Stoicism. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were enormously popular among early Christians, and indeed the book was read by Christians even deep into the later middle ages.

Traces of Stoic philosophy are even detected in the New Testament

Read:

In the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 17, the author, traditionally presumed to be Luke the Evangelist, describes St. Paul’s arrival in Athens around 50 AD. Paul engages in discussion with certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers at the Areopagus, or high court, delivering a famous Christian sermon. The well-known 5-6th century Neoplatonic Christian mystic and philosopher Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite is named after one of the individuals described here as becoming a follower of Paul at Athens, with whom he was originally confused. Paul favourably quotes lines from two unnamed Greek poems in his sermon. Scholars have identified the first as coming from the Cretica of the pre-Socratic philosopher-poet Epimenides (fl. 7th or 6th century BC), which forms part of the verse:

They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being. [the line quoted by St. Paul]
​

The second has been identified as coming from the Phaenomena of the philosopher-poet Aratus (315/310 – 240 BC), a student of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism:

Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken.
For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus.
Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity.
Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.
For we are indeed his offspring… [the line quoted by St. Paul]
​

The words of Aratus, a disciple of the founder of Stoicism, are therefore part of the sacred scripture of the Christian religion - part of divine revelation.

St. Boethius, a sixth century AD Stoic-Platonist philosopher, has been canonized by the Church.

This is a link to an article on Stoicism: Stoicism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

A positive synergy is found near the end of the article: "The tradition of theories of natural law in ethics seems to stem directly from Stoicism. (Compare Cicero, de Legibus I, 18 with later writers like Aquinas in Summa Theologica II, 2, q. 94.)"

The new Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its treatment of the natural law, quoted Cicero (Republic, III, 22, 33) in paragraph no. 1956:

Catechism of the Catholic Church - The moral law

So Stoic philosophers even make it into the modern Catechism of the Catholic Church. John Paul II called the Catechism, "a sure norm for teaching the faith".

The fact that a Stoic is therefore quoted as an authoritative source is pretty significant.

Stoicism, with all that is in it compatible with Christian truth, has already been incorporated into the Christian tradition. Not every part of Stoicism is compatible. They seemed to regard suicide as at times a noble act.

In general however it is compatible in many respects.

The idea of the "passions", central to Catholic/Orthodox spirituality, was derived from Stoicism ie

Inheriting the Stoic precept that passions (passiones, affectus) should be controlled and repressed, early Christian thinkers had to deal with the idea that.....

“Medieval Christian Mysticism.” In: The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion. Ed. John Corrigan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008, 364-379. | Niklaus Largier - Academia.edu

From Wikipedia:

Stoicism was later regarded by the Fathers of the Church as a 'pagan philosophy';[3][4] nonetheless, some of the central philosophical concepts of Stoicism were employed by the early Christian writers. Examples include the terms "logos", "virtue", "Spirit", and "conscience".[33] But the parallels go well beyond the sharing and borrowing of terminology. Both Stoicism and Christianity assert an inner freedom in the face of the external world, a belief in human kinship with Nature or God, a sense of the innate depravity—or "persistent evil"—of humankind,[33] and the futility and temporarity of worldly possessions and attachments. Both encourage Ascesis with respect to the passions and inferior emotions such as lust, envy and anger, so that the higher possibilities of one's humanity can be awakened and developed.

Stoic writings such as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius have been highly regarded by many Christians throughout the centuries. The Stoic ideal of dispassion is accepted to this day as the perfect moral state by the Eastern Orthodox Church. Saint Ambrose of Milan was known for applying Stoic philosophy to his theology

So in essence, I would say no synch has to be found between Christianity and Stoicism. Everything compatible in this philosophy has already been transplanted into Christianity, in particular Christian mysticism.

 

[SageTree]

That Wiki stuff is what I know to be true as well, and was going to make a post of it.

Cheers.

How's that jive with you, sum?