St. Paul then, coming from Tarsus, the home of BO many of the Stoics, was not likely to have been a stranger to their way of thinking. In his speech on the Areopagus he seems to have addressed himself more directly to the Stoic part of his audience. He deftly quoted part of a line with which they were familiar, ' His offspring, too, are we,' probably thinking of the Hymn of Cle.anthes, though the precise form in which he quotes it comes from the contemporary poet Aratus.* Another point in which the apostle's language
• It mmy be remarked that the language of He 4^' is etronj^ly •uggeetlve of the Hymn o» Cleanthes (lines 9-13), which might
is coloured by the presence of Stoic auditors, is in the appeal he makes to their senti-rent of cosmo- politanism— 'and he made of onf ■ very nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,' while the words which follow, ' having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of theil habitation,' express a conception of fate and pro- vidence, which was common ground to the apostle and his hearers.
The constructive era of Greek thought had already passed away before the Stoics aiipeared upon the scene. Neither they nor the Epicuream extended the bounds of thought, but only empha- sized certain aspects in the philosophy of tneir predecessors. Both schools were intensely prac- tical, and endeavoured to make philosophy a 'life,' as Christianity afterwards announced itself to be. Both also were systems of materialism, and agreed in discarding the abstractions of earlier thought. The Stoics adopted the physical theory of Hera- clitus, the Epicureans that of Democritus. With both, however, physics were a mere scaffolding for ethics ; but the Stoics paid great attention to logic, while the Epicureans neglected this department of philoso]iliy. What was special to the Stoics was the exalted tone of their morality, their grim earnestness, and their devout submission to the Divine will. Of the Stoic physics we seem to have a trace in the doctrine of the destruction of the world by fire (2 P ?,'"''■ '""'S). Tlie idea of the soul going up to heaven at death is not alien to their philosophy. For death with them was the resolution of man's compound nature into its elements, and the soul, w hose natui-e was tire (cf. Verg. ^n. vi. 730, ' igneus est ollis vigor et cajlestis origo'), struggled upward to its native home in the empyrean. Witliout dogmatizing on disputed ground, it is at least interesting to com- pare Ec 12' ' And the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it,' with what Velleius Paterculus (ii. 123), echoing the Stoic doctrine, says of the death of Augustus : ' in sua resolutus initia . . . animam cselestem c;e1o reddidit.'
The doctrine of the Logos may not have come exclusively from Greek sources ; but at all events Lactantius (Div. Inst. iv. 9) admits that Zeno had anticipated the Christian teaching: ' Hunc ser- inonem divinum ne philosophi quidem ignorave- runt : siquidem Zenon reruiii naturae dispositorem atque opificem universitatis Xoyoi/ prsedicat, quern et fatum et necessitatem rerum et deum et animum Jovis nuncupat.' The words 5i' Sx rd Trdr-To, ap- plied to God in He 2'", are suggestive of the Stoic explanation of the name of the Supreme Being : ' Aia fiiv yap (paai, Bl dv to. TrdvTa,' while the words m St. Paul's sermon, ' in him we live,' recall the explanation otlered of the other form of the name : ' Zrjva d^ KaXoOffif Trap' 6(Xov tov ^riv atTibs iffTtv.^
The problem of fate and freewill, which was hardly rai.sed by the Socratic philosophers, was much discussed by the Stoics. In this also they display an atlinity with Semitic speculation. For this was the philosophical problem which divided the Jewish schools, as it has since divided the Christian Churches. The Pharisees leaned strongly to predestination, as we can see from the senti- ments of Gamaliel (Ac 5'") and from those of St. Paul himself. Josephus, himself a Pharisee, says that that sect was very like the sect of the Stoics among the Greeks (Vila, ch. ii.).
Another point of resemblance, which justifies this remark of Joseplius, is the Stoic belief in a future life. It is true they did not regard the souls even of pood men as being absolutely in* mortal. But Uiey held that the.se were dcstinea
be used aa an argument, so far as it goes, in favour of th4 Pauline authorship of that Kpistle.
STOMACH
STONE
en
lO last until the next re-alisorjition of all things into the Divine nature. Goii was delineil by the Stoics OS ' an individual made up of all being, incorruptible and ungenerated, the fashioner of the ordered frame of the universe, who at certain periods of time absorbs all being into hinisel/, and a"ain generates it from himself ' (Diog. Laert. vii. § 137).
Instead of drawing out further, as might be done, the parallelism between Stoicism and Chris- tianity, we will liere close with a caution. It does not follow that, because we find a Stoic notion in the Uible, it has got into it from the Stoics. It may originally have come to the Stoics from the Jews, or both may have borrowed from the same source.