St Timothys Episcopal Church

Study Brunch Fall 2013

The Gospel of Matthew
Session 3: September 25, 2013
Seneca: Philosophy . . . moulds and constructs the soul; it orders our life,
guides our conduct, shows us what we should do and what we should leave
undone . . . Ep. 16.3

Introductions and Opening Prayer

Matthew remembers Jesus combining Jewish and Popular Greco-

Roman Thought
The Antitheses: Building a Stoic fence around the Law

The Stoics: Developed from 300 B.C.E. to be the leading

philosophy in Matthews time

Key Stoic philosophical tenets in three sentences:

This is the best of all possible worlds

The universe is suffused with the pneuma or spirit that

brings the logos or meaning, or rationality into the
universe.

Events are inevitable; therefore, virtue comes not from

actions but from intentions

Stoicism in the New Testament

What from contemporary culture should we incorporate in our
faith life?
A Description of Stoicism

The Stoics . . . prided themselves on the coherence of their

philosophy. They were convinced that the universe is
amenable to rational explanation, and is itself a rationally
organized structure. The faculty in man which enables him
to think, to plan and to speak -- which the Stoics called
logos -- is literally embodied in the universe at large. The
individual human being at the essence of his nature shares
a property which belongs to Nature in the cosmic sense.
And because cosmic Nature embraces all that there is, the
human individual is a part of the world in a precise and
integral sense. Cosmic events and human actions are
therefore not happenings of two quite different orders: in
the last analysis they are both alike consequences of one
thing -- logos. To put it another way, cosmic Nature or God
(the term refers to the same thing in Stoicism) and man are
related to each other at the heart of their being as rational
agents. If a man fully recognizes the implications of this
relationship, he will act in a manner which wholly accords
with human rationality at its best, the excellence of which is
guaranteed by its willing agreement with Nature. This is
what it is to be wise, a step beyond mere rationality and the
goal of human existence is complete harmony between a
man's own attitudes and actions and the actual course of
events.
A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics. (New York: Charles
Scribners' Sons, 1974), page 108.