'We should live soberly': how should the Church respond to contemporary Stoicism?
Now Tomlin does seem to recognise this when he says of Stoic teaching "there is real wisdom in all this" and admits that "many early Christian thinkers in the days when Stoic thought was at its most popular recognised it". This, however, is entirely overshadowed by the article's 'what have the Stoics to do with Christianity?' stance, beginning with the rather silly suggestion that "The Monty Python sketch depicting Christ on the cross, calmly facing misfortune with a smile and a song: ‘always look on the bright side of life’, was the Stoic reimagination of Christ".
Across Christian history we can see theologians gathering up Stoic wisdom, refining it and orienting it towards the fullness of life in Christ. Justin Martyr exemplified this, with his declaration regarding the Stoics in the Second Apology that "so far as their moral teaching went, they were admirable, as were also the poets in some particulars, on account of the seed of reason [the Logos] implanted in every race of men".
Tomlin's emphasis on Augustine's critique of Stoicism points to only one aspect of Augustine's relationship with the Stoics. As a recent study has stated:
Augustine’s debt to Stoic psychological and ethical theory was considerable, even when he sought to improve upon the Stoics’ account of the human condition. This is clear from the Confessions, where he employs concepts of self-affiliation, self-perception, sociability, maturation and ethical reasoning that he found in his Stoic sources.
Augustine's mentor Ambrose, of course, also revealed an obvious debt to Cicero's Stoicism in De Officiis, going so far as suggesting of Stoic teaching on our duties and obligations to each other, "whence have they got such ideas but out of the holy Scriptures?". Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy, in the words of one scholar, "still considers Stoicism to be philosophically constricting, nonetheless learned how it may prove indispensable in one’s intellectual development".
Outside of the patristic era, we can continue to point to Christian theologians gathering up Stoic wisdom into Christ. Thomas Aquinas' discussion in Summa Theologiae of how ingratitude undermines the virtues is a dialogue with the Stoic Seneca: "For, as Seneca observes ... Seneca also says ... as Seneca remarks". Similarly, not only can we point to Calvin's commentary on Seneca's De Clementia, we can also recognise, as one study puts it, that "Seneca is seen to serve as a point of departure for Calvin’s account of the Christian state" in the Institutes. In Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker's "stoicism is Ciceronian", while he includes the Stoics in "The wise and learned among the very heathens themselves" who perceived the rational order of the creation:
the Stoics, although imagining the first cause of all things to be fire, held nevertheless, that the same fire having art, did 'by a certain and a set Way in the making of the world'. They all confess therefore in the working of that first cause, that Counsel is used, Reason followed, a Way observed; that is to say, constant Order and Law is kept (I.2.3).
The extent of serious, meaningful Christian interaction with Stoicism indicates how wildly inaccurate a 'what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?' approach is to understanding this relationship.
The problems with Tomlin's account, however, do not stop there. Consider his three central contrasts between Stoicism and Christianity. Firstly, "For the Christian, composure is distinctly overrated". The teaching of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:24-34) might be considered as suggesting otherwise:
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Secondly, Tomlin states "The Christian ... cannot be stoical, content in inner imperturbability, untouched by the outside world". And this is what St. Paul urges (Philippians 4:11-13):
Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
Thirdly, Tomlin takes aim at the Stoic virtue of endurance: "Christians are not the same as Stoics – because while Stoics prized endurance, Christians focussed on hope". Not only does this overlook the words of Jesus - "But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (Matthew 24:13) - it also fails to consider how St. Paul (Romans 5:3-5 NRSV) considers endurance to be inherent to the Christian virtue of hope:
we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
In other words, the Christian vision of the good and wise life includes - rather than rejects - Stoic wisdom. This obviously does not mean that there are not significant differences between the Christian vision of the good and wise life and the Stoic account. It does mean, however, that much of what can be attractive in the Stoic account - composure rather than being consumed by worries, a certain detachment from our circumstances, and the value of endurance - can be found in the Christian vision.
Why might all this matter? As Tomlin recognises, responses to Prince Philip's death included appreciation for a stoicism that he was deemed to have embodied. Take, for example, the article in the New Yorker referenced by Tomlin:
In later life, Philip was asked about the effect of this fractured upbringing, with more than its fair share of wanderings, betrayals, and losses. He replied, “The family broke up. My mother was ill, my sisters were married, my father was in the South of France. I just had to get on with it. You do. One does.” That is the authentic note of stoicism, embattled but unlamenting. It is very rarely struck these days; with the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, I suspect, we will hear it less and less.
It is surely difficult not to see here something that is good, what the 1662 Catechism described as "my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me". What is more, it also reflects something of a wider cultural phenomenon, a renewed interest in Stoicism. As Mark Vernon said in The Church Times in 2017, "Today, Stoic philosophy is undergoing a substantial revival story". A story in The Atlantic in 2015 considered how the relevance of Stoicism in a society terrified of thinking about death, quoting one philosophy professor's 'conversion' to Stoicism:
“I thought I wanted to be a Zen Buddhist,” he says, “but Stoicism just had a much more rational approach.”
Oliver Burkeman's 2012 riposte to 'positive thinking' - The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking - sought to bring Stoicism to a mass audience, while Massimo Pigliucci (another philosophy professor) followed his 2015 New York Times article 'How to be a Stoic' with his 2017 How To Be A Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living.
This renewed interest in Stoicism might have a two-fold significance. It may reflect an unease with contemporary Western secularism's inability to offer an account of the good and wise life. This gaping hole at the heart of our societies is rightly perceived to be unfulfilling, if not unsustainable, not least in the face of the challenges posed by climate change, other accounts of civilization (Islamist, Confucian), technological advances, and the loss of any meaningful sense of solidarity.
Alongside this, there is in the post-9/11 world a deep-seated cultural suspicion of sectarian religion as inherently divisive and intolerant. Stoicism, by contrast, appears to offer an account of the good life without sectarianism and intolerance. As Pigliucci states:
There is something very appealing for me as a non religious person in the idea of an ecumenical philosophy, one that can share goals and at the least some general attitudes with other major ethical traditions across the world.
(The second illustration is a 15th century French painting of Lady Philosophy addressing Boethius.)
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