American Society of Church History

Christian Approval of Epicureanism Author(s): Richard P. Jungkuntz Reviewed work(s): Source: Church History, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Sep., 1962), pp. 279-293 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3163320 . Accessed: 07/11/2011 13:44
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CHRISTIAN

APPROVAL
RICHARD

OF EPICUREANISM

P. JUNGKUNTZ

Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, Illinois In view of the rancor and vehemence which characterize much of the patristic condemnation of Epicureanism, it seems remarkably incongruous that there should be in the Fathers any expressions of approval at all for the philosophy of the Garden. Nevertheless, such expressions do occur and with reference to all three divisions of Epicurus's system, canonic, physics, and ethics. No doubt the best explanation for this apparent inconsistency of attitude is suggested by Clement's definition of philosophy and the tolerance that it implies: "By philosophy I do not mean the Stoic nor the Platonic, or the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but everything that has been well said by each of the schools and that teaches righteousness along with science marked by reverence;1 this eclectic whole I call philosophy" (Strom. i. 7. 732CD).2 Clement here really speaks for the whole patristic age. For wittingly or not, all the Fathers-including even Tertullian with his famous dictum, quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?3-are deeply influenced by Greek philosophy and thought. And it is a refreshing, if infrequent, indication of intellectual honesty when this sort of dependence is candidly admitted even in the case of such a hostile figure as that represented by the Fathers' image of Epicurus. Canonic First of the three criteria of truth in Epicurus's theory of knowledge were the sensations or sense-perceptions. Upon their reliability rested for him the entire possibility of knowledge and action. The fact that the senses are at times deceived he regarded as no proof against his tenet, for according to him the error is due to the opinion formed in the mind and not to the senses. Excepting only this last point,4Tertullian cordially endorses the Epicurean view, asserting that in their theory of knowledge they are "more consistent" than the Stoics, since they correctly maintain that in all cases the senses are always and equally truthful (De An. 17. 4). Tertullian also adopts the conventional Epicurean answer to the Skeptic's stock example of sense-deception, that an oar appears bent or broken in the water.5 He holds with the Epicureans that the senses themselves are not deceived: "The water is responsible" for the illusion, since the vision is correct when the oar has been removed from the water (ibid., 6). Tertullian again employs an Epicurean explanation, at least in part, when he attributes the illusion of a square tower's appearing round to the effects of the aerial medium between the object and the viewer (ibid.).6 Summing up his case for the trustworthiness of the senses, Tertul279

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lian borrows the Epicurean argument of their utter indispensability for human life (ibid., 11).7 Referring to the old example of the oar in the water,8 even Augustine, who elsewhere depreciates the Epicurean reliance upon senseperception,9maintains in his polemic against skepticism that the Academic school failed to produce any refutation of the Epicurean argument on this point (C. Acad. iii. 11. 26; cf. De Vera Rel. 33. 62; De Trin. 15. 11. 21). A similar readiness to jettison consistency for the sake of maka polemic point is to be seen earlier in Origen. After he has rounding ly denied that sense-perception can be the source of true knowledge (C. Cels. vii. 37), he finds the exigencies of debate compelling him to urge the palpability of the miracles of Jesus against Celsus's rejection of them as mythical fictions. That is to say, he points to the distinctness of their impression on the senses of the observers as proof that they really took place. So "distinct," enarge, he says, were the miracles recorded in Scripture that even Epicurus himself, as well as Democritus and the Aristotelians, would probably have believed, had they been able to see them (ibid., viii. 45)10 A unique and difficult notion very important to the thought of Epicurus was his second criterion of truth, the preconceptionsor anticipations, prolepseis. By this term he seems to have meant a kind of direct intuition,1l a clear cognition, enarges gnosis, anterior to or independent of ordinary sense-perception-though ultimately derived, like all knowledge, from sensations.62 This peculiarly Epicurean idea Clement presses into service in the interest of what Volker aptly calls his Lieblingsgedanke, namely, that faith is in a sense a postulate of all knowledge.13 Since he is taking faith in its broadest sense rather than in its strict Christian connotation, he is able to argue that faith (as preconception) is necessary before there can be any investigation or discussion regarding God. And for support he calls upon Epicurus: "Even Epicurus, who above all preferred pleasure to truth, takes faith to be a mental preconception; and preconception he reckons to be an apprehension of something distinct and of the distinct notion of the thing; and he holds that without preconception no one can make an inquiry, or be in doubt, or form an opinion, or even argue" (Strom. ii. 4. 948B). The same argument, defending the Christian idea of faith with the aid of the Epicurean notion of preconception, appears two and a half centuries later in Theodoret (Therap. 1. 813D). Physics the Fathers have no use at all for teachings properly Ordinarily included in the sphere of Epicurean physics-a measure perhaps of their general commitment to some form of Platonic idealism. Still, in

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this sphere too there are a few instances of patristic indebtedness to Epicurean doctrine. Highly ironic is the fact that of all people Epicurus is cited together with other philosophers in support of the doctrine of the resurrection by Pseudo-Justin, who argues that the atomic composition of all matter as taught by Epicurus plus the indestructibility of the atoms renders it "not at all impossible that by coming together again and taking the same position and arrangement they should make a body identical with what was produced by them before" (De Res. 6. 1584A). The logic of Pseudo-Justin's argument is attested by the fact that according to the doxography Epicureans themselves envisioned the possibility that every conceivable combination of atoms would ultimately repeat itself.14 Less significant in this connection, but still part of the total picture, is the appeal which Minucius Felix makes to the Epicureans' agreement with the Stoics regarding a cosmic conflagration, in order to support the Christian belief in the final destruction of the world by fire (Oct. 34. 1-3). A fundamental tenet of Epicurean physics asserted the corporeality of all being. Tertullian twice quotes with favor a line of Lucretius expressing this principle. Tangere enim et tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res.l Once, opposing the docetic Christology of Marcion, he cites the verse as a "worthy sentiment even of secular wisdom" and applies it to Jesus's being manhandled by the people of Nazareth (Adv. Marc. iv. 8).16 The other citation of the verse occurs in a context of Stoic arguments for the corporeality of the soul, which Tertullian approvingly closes with the endorsement furnished by the line of Lucretius, whom this time he credits by name (De An. 5. 6). Origen welcomes the opportunity to cite the well-known Epicurean rejection of all forms of divination as a rejoinder to Celsus, who praised the veracity of pagan oracles to the discredit of Old Testament prophecy (C. Cels. vii. 3; viii. 45). Eusebius too finds it expedient to applaud the Epicureans, together with the Aristotelians and the Cynics, for the derision with which they repudiated the mantic arts among their fellow Greeks (Praep. iv. 3. 14). He even goes so far as to say that he "admired them especially for the way in which they were by no means caught, although they had been reared in the customs of the Greeks and since infancy had received the tradition from father to son that these gods manifestly existed, but on the contrary proved mightily that the renowned oracles and universally popular seats of divination relayed no truth at all, and declared them to be useless and even harmful" (ibid. 2. 13).

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Ethics Most remarkable, however, is the commendation which the bete noir of all anti-Epicureanism, Epicurus's ethics, both personal and philosophic, elicits from the Fathers on occasion. Gregory of Nazianzus, for example, explicitly declares that Epicurus "gave support to his doctrine by his decent and sober way of life," for otherwise his advocacy of pleasure might be misunderstood (Poem. Moral. x. 787792).17

Even Ambrose and Jerome, who yield to none in their readiness to vilify the Garden and its founder, still feel obliged to utter a word of praise for Epicurus as an advocate of temperance. Ambrose has difficulty, it seems, spelling the name of Epicurus's successor correctly,18but knows well enough that according to the Master "neither drinking, nor revels, nor offspring, nor relations with women, nor abundance of fish and of other things that are prepared for the enjoyment of a sumptuous banquet, make life sweet, but sober reasoning" (Ep. 63. 19).19 Although Jerome professes to find it strange that Epicurus should have advanced arguments for ascetism, he does not hesitate to give them his own endorsement and to turn them against the very opponent whom he has been reviling as an "outrageous Epicurean" (A4dv.Jov. ii. 11). Similarly, his puritanical motives enable him to draw aid and comfort from the opinion of Epicurus "that rarely ought a wise man to marry, because marriage has mingled with it many disadvantages" (ibid. i. 48).20 Not only for specifically moral behavior and principles does Epicurus win occasional surprising commendation from his declared enemies in the Church, but also, less strangely, in the larger area of general ethical sentiment. Tertullian, in his brilliant attempt to demonstrate that the persecution of Christians is as unreasonable as it is unjust, commends to the Roman governor's attention the Epicurean grounds for discounting the effective force of pain and suffering to cause distress: "Think of this too in view of the brevity of any possible punishment, which-no matter what-cannot last longer than till death; for this reason Epicurus belittles all torture and pain, declaring what is slight to be comtemptible, and what is great to be not In Clement's view, the Epicurean watchwords "self-sufficiency" and "imperturbability"are so meritorious that he feels Epicurus surely pilfered these ideas from Euripides and Aristophanes respectively (Strom. vi. 2. 240AB).22 But even though the Greeks, as Clement avers, stole ideas from one another, and though all their philosophy of any value was plagiarized ultimately from the "barbarian," that is, Jewish wisdom, still he can say that the Epicurean Metrodorus was "divinely inspired" when he extolled the power of the soul to elevate
long lasting" (Apol. 45. 6).21

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itself in contemplation above the categories of space and time (ibid., v. 14. 204A).23 Furthermore, Clement quotes with unqualified approval from Epicurus's letter to Menoeceus the passage in which Epicurus encourages the young as well as the old to philosophize for the health of their soul (ibid., iv. 8. 1280BC).24 Finally, the coeducation that prevailed in the school of Epicurus-the example cited is that of Themisto (sic) of Lampsacus-unique as it was for the time, Clement regards as a notable illustration with which to demonstrate that women are the equal of men, and under the influence of the Christian Gospel surely as capable of attaining to the perfection which for the Alexandrian Fathers was the goal of all "true knowledge" (Ibid., iv. 19. 1332A). Unacknowledged Indebtedness In addition to instances, such as the foregoing, of overt patristic approbation of Epicurus or at least of his ideas, there are even more in which Fathers accept various elements from the Epicurean system without crediting their source. Like the frank endorsements mentioned above, these unacknowledged borrowings also cover a variety of topics. Withdrawal One of the most characteristic expressions of Epicurean counsel was the pregnant injunction "Live concealed," Lathe biosas. To ignore this maxim was to risk forfeiting a measure of the ataraxia which was the Epicurean's golden hope. Plutarch regarded the injunction as sufficiently subversive to write an entire treatise against it.25 But Basil the Great, at a time when he is restricted and confined by physical ailments, counts among his chief goods this very circumstance, his "living concealed," to lathein biosantes (Ep. 9). Theodoret, Nestorian sympathizer and bishop of Cyrrhus toward the middle of the fifth century, is even more explicit in his approval of the Epicurean maxim, although understandablyvague as to its originator:
One of the men who long ago were called wise said, 'Live concealed.' Since I approve the sentiment, I have decided to confirm the word by deed; for I do not think I am doing anything unreasonable in gathering what is good also from others. Bees, they say, gather their honey and draw forth the sweet liquid not only from plants that are edible, but from those that are bitter as well. . . . Much more justifiable, presumably, is it for those who are endowed with reason to harvest what is useful from every source. So, as I said, I try to escape notice, and more than other men I cherish the life of peaceful seclusion. (Ep. 62).

Another Greek Father who shared this characteristically Epicurean predilection for withdrawal from life's distractions was Basil's good friend Gregory Nazianzen. It was, in fact, on returning from

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Basil's secluded hermitage, where he had fled after being consecrated to the priesthood against his will, that Gregory delivered a sermon in which he explains why he had felt compelled to attempt an escape from the turbulent career of a parish priest. The sentiments are as nearly Epicurean as they can be: "I could not bear being coerced and pushed into the midst of the din and tumult, and by main force being dragged from this kind of life as from a sacred asylum" (Orat. ii.
6. 7).20

The same Epicurean hope that the ideal state of happiness and blessedness may most readily be attained by avoiding involvement in the anxieties that normally go with riches, office, or power is echoed again by John Chrysostom, except that he supplants the Epicurean way of freedom from pain, moderation in feelings, and temperate attitude, with the Christian path of "spiritual success and a good conscience" (Ep. ad Rom. Hom. i. 1. 7). Closely related to the counsel of withdrawal from the agitations of life in the system of Epicurus was his emphasis on "safety," asphaleia, as a leading motive for wise conduct. The Christian's chief solicitude, on the other hand, was traditionally for "the truth"; and the persecutions demonstrated the frequent imcompatibilityof the one with the other. Yet, Basil has no embarrassmentabout combining the two ideas, Christian principle and Epicurean catchword, into one axiom. Setting equal value on both concerns, he considers that nothing is to be prized before them (Ep. 245). Civilization The question of the city (-state) and an individual's proper relation to it, or, on a broader view, the problem of civilization in general, is one that receives considerable patristic attention, most significantly of course from Augustine in the De Civitate Dei. Pertinent here, however, is only what influence the Epicurean explanation of civilization may have had upon any of the Fathers. The traditional Greek doctrine of the golden age as the source of all good institutions, including the city, had been repudiated by Epicurus in his reaction against the Platonic view which regarded the city with veneration.27 Instead, Epicurus saw civilization as deriving from man's efforts under nature's tutelage to escape from fear of harm and the adversities arising from physical needs.28 In patristic literature the most explicit discussion of the topic occurs in Nemesius's formal treatment of it in the first chapter of his treatise On Human Nature. Here he describes the city as the remedy permitted by providence for the exigencies of life which man brought upon himself through the Fall (De Nat. Horn. 1. 5-6). This solution of the

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problem, however, merely mediates between the high Platonic estimate of the city and the Epicurean reduction of it to an expedient occasioned by indigence and fear.29 Death A paradoxical instance of positive, though unadmitted, Epicurean influence upon a Father of the Church is Ambrose's ingenious conversion to Christian use of Epicurus's second Principal Doctrine: Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us. This distinctly pagan and peculiarly Epicurean utterance Ambrose baptizes into the faith with a play on words that adroitly dodges the important Epicurean corollary that the soul as well as the body experiences dissolution upon death. His version of the axiom, therefore, runs as follows: "Death moreover is nothing to us; for it is in fact the separation of soul and body; the soul is released (absolvitur), the body is dissolved (dissolvitur). The released soul experiences joy, the body dissolved to earth again senses nothing; that which senses nothing is nothing to us" (De Bono Mort. 8. 31). The strong tendency toward syncretism among philosophical schools as well as among religions in the latter centuries of the Hellenistic-Roman period becomes evident in Gregory Nazianzen's laudatory citation of a famous Epicurean dictum,30 which he mistakenly attributes to the Stoics: "I applaud the spirited and highminded principle of the Stoics which asserts that external factors are no hindrance to happiness, but that the earnest man is blissfully happy even if he is being burned in the bull of Phalaris" (Ep. 32). Pessimism Occasionally one of the Fathers is able to achieve a kind of creative imitation of an Epicurean sentiment. An example is the turn that one or the other may give to Lucretius's vivid expression of Epicurean pessimism in his representation of the newborn child's wailing as most appropriate for entrance upon a life that will be filled with trouble.31 Combatting the view of the Stoics who denied that all the human faculties were present in infants at birth,32Tertullian maintains that children already possess understanding as well as sensation. In support of his argument he cites the birth-cries of infants and alludes to "certain ones" who interpret this wailing as a foreboding of the impending misery of life. (De An. 19. 7f.).33 Tertullian's great admirer Cyprian is even more imaginative in the use to which he puts the Lucretian picture. For him the infant's

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cries at birth are not merely a lamentation over its entry into an evil world, but-more significantly-a clamorous pleading for the gift of grace in the sacrament of Baptism, through which it may gain security in the midst of life's distress (Ep. 58 [64]. 6). Although several of the Fathers are at pains to dispute the Epicurean contention that Creation, if such there were, was a bungled job in view of the many worthless and harmful creatures it produced and the seeming purposelessness or even injustice of disastrous natural phenomena, nevertheless this nature-pessimism which characterized at least one aspect of the Epicurean world-view34left also its impression upon Christian thought. Again Cyprian, for example, reflects it clearly. Replying to the Roman proconsul's charge that all the troubles now besetting mankind-wars, famines, and the like -are due to the Christians' refusal to worship the gods of the state, Cyprian declares that the distress of the times is only natural since "the world has now grown old and does not stand in that strength in which it stood before, nor does it have that vigor and vitality which it formerly possessed. . . . This is the sentence imposed on the world, this is God's law, that all things that have come into being should perish, and things that have grown should become old, and that strong things should become weak, and great things become small, and when they have become weak and small, that they should come to an end"
(Ad Denmet. 3).35

Cosmology In matters of cosmology it is curious to find such an opponent of Epicureanism as Theophilus, whose philosophical background Robert M. Grant describes as a "strange combination of Platonism and Stoicism with the scepticism of Carneades," accepting the crude phenomenalism of Epicurus. Grant has conveniently summarized the data as follows:36 Theophilus "believes that the sun while undoubtedly bright and hot, is a very small planet. The planets have no regular course, but are so called because they wander about the sky. The moon really waxes and wanes each month.37 The earth is not spherical or cube-shaped. He probably regards it as flat and hollowed out toward the center. Finally, lightning precedes thunder in order to warn mankind of the sound"38(Ad Aut. i. 5f., 13; ii. 13, 15, 32). The earlier apologist Aristides to some extent anticipates Theophilus's derivation of cosmological opinions from Epicurus. In opposing the astral religion of Plato and the Stoics, Epicurus had insisted that the heavenly bodies were not divine themselves nor did they owe their regularity of motion to any external cause. Rather, they moved in accordance with the inner or natural "necessity" of

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their original fortuitous composition.39It is this anti-astrological argument of Epicurus-doubtless somewhat obscured in transmission through the doxographers-that Aristides makes use of in refuting the "Chaldean" belief in the divinity of the heavenly bodies. The periodic movement of sun, moon, and other lights of heaven takes place, he says, "according to necessity" (Apol. 4. 2; 6. 1-3). Another cosmological notion of Epicureanism-shared, to be sure, with the Stoics-which found a sympathetic ear among the Fathers is that of the fiery ether enveloping the world, and of the fixed limits set to it as well as to all other things.40 Echoing Lucretius, Basil asks rhetorically: "Who doubts at all that the ether is fiery and burning with heat? If it were not confined by an absolute limit fixed by its Creator, what would prevent it from setting on fire and burning to ashes all that is near it, at once consuming all the moisture from existing things?" (Hex. iii. 7). Again, it is Basil who reproduces the Epicurean arguments for the world's inevitable destruction from the fact that its several parts are subject to dissolution :41
For what sort of goal is attained by the calculationsof geometry and arithmetic, the study of solids, and by much-renowned by astronomy,that toilsomevanity, if even those who busily pursuethem . . . cannotunderstand this much, that a whole whose parts are subjectto corruptionand change must also some day of necessity undergothe same experienceas
its parts?" (ibid. i. 3)

Thoroughly in the atomists' way of thinking is also Gregory of Nyssa's description of how the fiery particles of original matter, being lighter than others, rose to the uppermost part of the cosmos and there ran together and combined to form the sun, moon, and stars (Apol. de Hex. 116B).42 Remarkable too is the way he flirts with Epicurus's doctrine of the atoms and the void (ibid., 80C), making illustrative use also-as Epicurus himself had done43-of the phenomenon of motes in a sun-beam, with which already the Pythagoreans had identified the round atoms of the soul (ibid., 105AF).44 Although several Fathers scornfully reject the Epicurean belief in a plurality of worlds,45 others subscribe to it. Origen affirms that "just as after the destruction of this world there will be another one, so we believe that others existed also before the present one came into being" (De Princ. iii. 5. 3). He diverges, however, from the strict Epicurean view when he adds, "It should not, indeed, be thought that several worlds existed at once" (ibid.). It is interesting that in support of his contention that "there were ages previously, and there will be others afterwards," Origen uses as proof-text the very passage in Ecclesiastes (1:9f.) which Jerome interprets in such a way as to deny the Epicurean doctrine of plural worlds and repeating ages.46 Basil, on the other hand, follows Origen's lead and, though

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he does not mention Epicurus by name, falls back upon his doctrine of "infinite heavens and worlds" in order to impugn the pretension of Platonists that there is only one heaven47and that "its nature precludes the addition of a second, or of a third, or of the least bit more" (Hex. iii. 3). Physiology In addition to these examples of his reliance on Epicurean ideas in the realm of cosmology, Basil also shows probable Epicurean reminiscences in regard to organic nature, animal life in particular. Perhaps there is little more than the common use of a stock illustration as to be seen in such a Lucretian passage48 this: "From which [strength of feeling] it comes about that a lamb bounding out of the fold among countless sheep recognizes the very color and voice of its mother, hurries to her side, and seeks its own sources of milk" (Hex. ix. 4). But the foedus naturae to which Lucretius poetically attributed the preservation of species and enduring continuity of characteristic animal distinctions49seems to have a clear echo in a passage like the following: "Nature always causes a horse to succeed to a horse, a lion to a lion, an eagle to an eagle; and preserving each of the animals by these successions without exception, she passes it on till the end of all things. No length of time causes the destruction or obliteration of the animals' peculiar characteristics; on the contrary, as though just constituted, their nature, forever young, keeps steady pace with time" (ibid., 2). In order to point up the difference between the creative word "spoken" by God and the ordinary speech of human beings, Basil is ready to draw upon a principle of Epicurean physics. Describing the nature of the human voice, he combines the explanation of Epicurus with that given by the Stoics: "When we speak of God's voice, of his word, of his command, we do not suppose this divine language to be [what human utterance is,] a sound emitted through the organs of speech, or a striking of air by the tongue" (Hex. ii. 7).50 Classification of Desires Epicurus's famous threefold classification of desires51into those which are both natural and necessary, those which are natural but not necessary, and those which are neither natural nor necessary, receives favorable treatment at the hands of several Fathers. Tertullian makes a fleeting allusion to it so far as the distinction between natural and unnatural desires is concerned. After referring to unnatural desires which arise from growing sexual awareness, he asserts that there is properly only one natural desire, namely, the desire for nourish-

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ment,52and that this has God's approval since he told Adam and Eve that they might eat of every tree of the garden in Eden (De An. 32.3). A citation by Clement of the Gnostic Isidorus furnishes an exceptional instance of a Christian Father's joining with a heretic to give sanction-without acknowledging the source-to this Epicurean classification of desire. Clement wants to prove that the practice of the later followers of Basilides is not in conformity with the doctrine of their original teachers. So he introduces a quotation from Basilides' own son Isidorus, who in his Ethics had written:
Sometimes we say with our mouth, 'I wish to refrain from sin,' but in fact our mind is committed to sin. Such a person refrains from doing what he wishes out of fear that punishment may be reckoned against him. Human nature has some wants which are necessary and natural, and others which are only natural. To be clothed is necessary and natural, sexual intercourse is natural but not necessary. (Strom. iii .1. OlAf.)

In a chapter remarkable for its philosophic eclecticism, Nemesius of Emesa proposes the ascetic life as a Christian ideal on the basis of a combination of Aristotelian, Platonic, and Epicurean views of pleasure:53
Of the so-called bodily pleasures, some are both necessary and natural, without which life would not be possible; for example, the pleasures of food to satisfy our requirements and of such clothing as we need to have. On the other hand, there are pleasures which are natural but not necessary, such as natural and legitimate sexual intercourse. For this brings about the continuation of the race as a whole; yet it is also possible to live without it in celibacy. Then there are pleasures which are neither necessary nor natural, such as drunkenness, lasciviousness, love of money, and gross over-eating, for these contribute neither to the continuance of our race, as does lawful marriage, nor to the maintenance of one's own life, but rather work harm. Therefore, the man who lives so as to please God must pursue only the pleasures that are both necessary and natural; while behind him, the man who marches in virtue's second rank may indulge not only these pleasures, but also those which, though natural, are not necessary, so long as they are in keeping with what is fitting, moderate, customary, seasonable, and opportune. (De Nat. Horn. 18. 37)

Pseudo-Clement, too, substantially reproduces the Epicurean restriction of natural and necessary desires to the body's need for food and drink and clothing. His aim is to prove that the world is so arranged as to promote man's exercise of free-will: "For crafts are learned and practised, as we have said, under compulsion of the desire for food and drink; but when knowledge of the truth comes to anyone, this desire becomes weaker and frugality takes its place. 'For how much expense do those have who use water and bread,'54 and who expect even this from God?" (Recogn. ix. 6).

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Criticism of the Gods Praechter, following Philippson, believes that from about the second century before Christ the entire ancient criticism of the traditional gods rested upon Epicurean foundations.55 The evidence suggests that this holds true with regard to Christian, as well as pagan, polemic against polytheism. The early apologist Aristides already shows dependenceon the conventional Epicurean rebuttal of the Stoic arguments that sought to prove the existence of God from the universal need for divine cults among the various races of people on earth. For example, Velleius, Cicero's Epicurean protagonist, had heaped scorn upon the "insanity" of Egyptian mythology.56 So did Damis, the Epicurean spokesman of Lucian, only more circumstantially.57 And Aristides follows exactly the same line: "The Egyptians being more fatuous and foolish than [the Greeks] erred more shamefully than all the heathen nations; for they were not satisfied with the things revered by the Chaldeans and Greeks, but introduced besides even irrational creatures as gods, . . . creatures of the dry land and the waters and plants and grasses; and in every sort of madness and licentiousness they defiled themselves worse than all the heathen nations upon the earth" (Apol. 12. 1). This emphasis on the confusing variety of individual cults which in their vile and contradictory follies only annulled one another was part of the standard Epicurean defense against the popular charge of impiety and atheism brought against them. Precisely the same use is made by Athenagoras of the ridiculousness of the Egyptian religion as well as the utter lack of agreement prevailing among all the heathen in regard to the gods (Legat. 14). Athenagoras further imitates Lucian's Epicurean in turning back against the accusers their citations from the poets :58
Poets and philosophers alike have not been considered atheists for the position they take regarding God. Euripides expresses his doubts about those whom public opinion ignorantly calls gods: 'If there really is a Zeus in heaven, he ought not make the same man unfortunate.' But when he states his conviction about Him whom our intelligence can grasp as God, he says: 'Do you see the one on high who encloses that limitless heaven and earth in his moist arms? Think of him as Zeus, consider him as God.' For he saw in the former so-called deities no essential reality to which the name gods would be fittingly applied. (ibid., 5).

Finally, inconsistent though it appears with the preceding quotation, reliance on some Epicurean handbook seems indicated also when the Fathers in their denunciation of polytheism associate the poets with the philosophers as the culpable promoters of false notions about the gods. Aristides offers only the first of numerous instances of

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this practice among the Fathers: "But their poets and philosophers, wishing by their poems and treatises to magnify the gods they had, only uncovered their shame more greatly and laid it bare to all" (Apol. 13. 5). As Geffcken pointed out originally and as Waszink has since supported,59 this association of poets and philosophers with these implications seems to have appeared first in Epicurean just sources, such as that which presumably underlies the remarks of Velleius in De Natura Deorum i. 16. 42. A Stoic who might speak of the same combination would not be suggesting the same criticism; in fact, Cicero's Academic spokesman in the same treatise (iii. 38. 91) leaves unanswered the question whether the poets have ruined the Stoics or vice versa. In summary, we have observed that about the only important Epicurean tenet which does not gain some sort of approval among the Fathers is the denial of divine providence. Almost every other facet of Epicurus's teaching was adopted or adapted by one Father or another. There are express words of approval for the Epicurean theory of knowledge, for his conception of the atomic and corporeal nature of being, for the moral qualities of Epicurus personally as well as for certain of his ethical ideals. Moreover, the unacknowledged borrowings of the Fathers range even more widely over the whole extent of Epicurean doctrine and argumentation-from the evolution of civilization and society to the counsel of withdrawal from it, from analysis of man's earthly desires to questions of cosmology and finally of theology itself. Thus, the considerable degree of favor which individual Epicurean ideas found with individual Fathers suggests that any generalizations about patristic antipathy to Epicureanism really need careful qualification to be valid.
1. By this qualification Clement seems to exclude EpicureaniJm from consideration (ef. his stricture on Epicurus, Protrep. 5); but in fact he does not exclude it, as will appear in this article. 2. Cf. Justin, Apol. ii. 13. 3. De Praescr. 7. 4. Tertullian attributes erroneous ideas or illusions, not to the doxa, as did Epicurus, but to the special causes which force the senses to transmit images in a certain, though perhaps illusory, form. 5. Cf. Lucretius, iv. 438-442; Usener, frg. 252. 6. Cf. Lucretius, iv. 353ff.; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. vii. 208f. Waszink notes that in speaking of the aequalitas circumfusi aeris Tertullian departs from the Epicurean explanation, because he refers the effects of the medium to the tower, rather than to the images as in the atomist view. Cf. J. H. Waszink, De Anima (Amsterdam, 1947), p. 246f. Cf. Lucretius, iv. 500-512; Cicero, Acad. ii. 10. 31. The same example of the oar is adduced by Jerome, C. loann. Hieros. 35, and Nemesius, De Nat. Horn. 7. 29. Cf. D. C. D. viii. 7; Ep. 118. 19f. According to the Epicureans the basis and foundation of all knowing is the enargeia, that is, the distinct or palpable sense-perception; cf. Sext. Empiricus, Adv. Math. vii. 216; also, Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen (4te Auflage; Leipzig, 1909), III, Part I, 401. This is not the Stoic kataleptike phantasia, the actual comprehension of the object when the logos has given its assent to the perception. Cf. Pohlenz, Die Stoa (Gottingen, 1948), I, 60. Zeller, pp. 398-401, shows that Epicurus

7. 8. 9. 10.

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Athenian hedonist into his garden. ' Hellenistic (Princeton, Philosophies 1923), p. 32. 27. Our idea of how the Athenian man in the street felt about the notion of a golden age is, of course, largely colored by Plato. Before Epicurus, Democritus had raised objection to it, and probably most of the sophists had protested as well. On the Democritean view of the state, cf. Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (Oxford, 1928), pp. 208-212. 28. Cf. Lucretius, v. 925-1160. 29. Apparently the first to detect this partial dependence of Nemesius on Epicurean ideas of society is Telfer, to whose acute commentary this paragraph is largely indebted. Cf. Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa, ed. William Telfer, Vol. IV of The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia, 1955), p. 243. 30. Cf. Diogenes Laertius, x. 118; Usener, frg. 601; Cicero, Tusc. ii. 7. 17; v. 10. 31; In Pison. 18. 42; Seneca, Ep. 66. 18; Lactantius, Div. Inst. iii. 27. 5. I. M. Werhahn, however, though allowing the possibility that Gregory simply mentioned Stoics for Epicureans by mistake, thinks it more likely that he actually had later, perhaps less orthodox, Stoics in mind, Gregorii Nazianzeni SYGKRISIS BION (Wiesbaden, 1953), p. 90. 31. Lucretius, v. 222-227; cf. ii. 576f. 32. Cf. Stoic. Vet. Frg. II, frg. 764; Diels, Dox. Graec. 434, 5; 646, 5-7; Seneca, Ep. 124. 8. 33. Cf. Lactantius, De Opif. Dei 3, 1, where the Lucretius passage is combined with a similar one from Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 2. 34. Cf. N. W. DeWitt, Epicurus and His Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1954), p. 185, although he restricts this pessimism to the Epicurean view of inorganic nature only, in spite of Lucretius, v. 195-221. 35. Cf. Lucretius, ii. 1150-1174; v. 821-836. 36. R. M. Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (Amsterdam, 1952), pp. 100f. 37. It should be observed that this is not necessarily Epicurus's belief, who offers three possible explanations of the phenomenon, Diog. Laertius, x. 94; Lucretius, however, considers it a possibility, v. 731-750. 38. Epicurus, of course, has no interest whatever in such a providential purpose, concerning himself rather with the possible physical causes. Cf. Diog. Laertius, x. 102. 39. Diogenes Laertius, x. 77, 92, 113. 40. Lucretius, i. 73, 76f.; v. 443-508. 41. Lucretius, v. 235-246. The Stoic Zeno is reported to have used the same argument, cf. Diog. Laertius, vii. 141. According to F. E. Robbins, The Hexaemeral Literature (Chicago, 1912), p. 47,

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

uses enargeia as a synonym for aisthesis and phantasia (pace De Witt). The expression is Festugibre's in his Epicurus and His Gods, trans. C. W. Chilton (Oxford, 1955), p. 68. Cf. P. Th. Camelot, Foi et Gnose (Paris, 1945), pp. 28f. Walter Volker, Der Wahre Gnostiker nach Clemens Alexandrinus (Berlin, 1952), pp. 235f. Cf. Usener, frgs. 266, 307; also, Lucretius, iii. 847-860, although here the point is the discontinuity of personality due to the annihilation of memory. Lucretius, i. 304. Cf. Luke 4:16-30. Though not admissible as evidence in this connection, it is interesting that in a descriptive catalog of the moral shortcomings and vices of a dozen philosophers from Thales to Aristippus, Tertullian does not even hint at Epicurus, Apol. 46. 8-16. Demarchus for Hermarchus. Besides this slightly bowdlerized version of Ad Men. 132, the same passage in Ambrose's letter contains, as Usener has noted (p. xliii), an inaccurate version of Ad Men. 130 and an allusion to frg. 181. The Epicurean sentiment comes to Jerome by way of Seneca, frg. 45; cf. Usener, p. 98, 6. Cf. Kyr. Dox. IV; Sent. Vat. IV; Usener, frg. 447; Cicero, De Fin. i. 12. 40; ii. 7. 22. In another passage Clement goes so far as to say, "Our goal is imperturtelos h0min he ataraxia bability," (Paed. ii. 7. 461B); but the contextan admonition, based on grounds of etiquette, against contentiousness in disthat here he does not course-suggests have Epicurus s ideal in mind. The statement which Clement attributes to Metrodorus is included in the fragments published by A. Koerte, "Metrodori Epicurei fragmenta," Jahrbiicher fiur classische Philologie, Supplementband XVII (1890), 557. With only slight variation, however, it appears also as a fragment of Epicurus in the Vatican collection. Cf. Sent Vat. X. Diogenes Laertius, x. 122. De Latenter Vivendo. Cf. Kyr. Dox. XIV; Usener, frgs. 548, 554. Paul Elmer More comments aptly: " Gregory's apology... might seem almost to be a sermon on the Epicurean text 'Live concealed,' which no doubt he had heard discussed from every point of view during his student days at the university of Athens. Yet if the seductive phrase of Epicurus, as we may suppose, had sunk into his mind so as never to be absent from his thoughts, it is no less true that the hidden life for which he pined was divided, as pole is separated from pole, from that, in some ways not ignoble, withdrawal of the

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n. 3, the scholiast on Basil says that with this argument Basil is criticising Aristotle and Theophrastus. Epicurus's hostility to the latter is well-known; cf. Plutarch, Non Posse., 1095c. Cf. Lucretius, v. 449-479. In ii, 184ff., Lucretius makes clear that this upward motion of the atoms of fire is the consequence of external forces or impulses. Cf. Lucretius, ii. 114f.; also, Theodoret, Therap. 4. 901AB. Cf. Aristotle, De An. 404a5-25. Cf. Diogenes Laertius, x. 45, 89; Lucretius, ii. 1048-1080; Filastrius, Haeres. 115; Augustine, D. C. D. xii. 12; Acad. iii. 10. 23; Ep. 118. 28; Paulinus of Nola, Carm. 22. 36; Claudianus Mamertus, De Stat. An. ii. 12. Jerome, Comm. in Ecel. 1. 1020A. Cf. Timaeus 32c-33a; also, Aristotle, De Caelo i. 8-9 (276a18 and 277b27). Lucretius, ii. 367-370. Lucretius, v. 918-924; cf. i. 584-598. The first definition is borrowed from Epicurus, cf. Usener, frg. 321; the second, inspired seemingly by Archelaus (ef. Diog. Laertius, ii. 4), was adopted by the Stoics, cf. Diog. Laertius, vii. 55 and Seneca, Nat. Quaest. ii. 6. Kyr. Dox. XXIX; Sent. Vat. XX. Cf. Sent. Vat. XXXIII. As Telfer, p. 353, observes (crediting Evangelides with having noted it first), it is ironic that Nemesius has no qualms

293

54.

42.

43. 44. 45.

56. 57.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

58. 59.

51. 52. 53.

about establishing a d o u b 1 e ethical standard for Christians on the basis of the distinction between pleasures made by Epicurus. Cf. Usener, Spicilegium Fragmentorum 469; frg. 181. Karl Praechter, Die Philosophie des Altertums, Vol. I of Friedrich UJeberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (5 vols.; Basel and Stuttgart, 1909-1927), 452, n. 1. D. N. D. i. 16. 43. Jup. Trag. 42; cf. Deor. Cone. 12. Significantly, it is Lucian also who implies that in the minds of common people Epicureans and Christians were closely linked or even identified as enemies of the conventional belief in the gods, fate, and divination. Cf. Alex. 25 and 38. On this association of the two movements in the popular mind, cf. A. D. Simpson, "'Epicureans, Christians, Atheists in the Second Century," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, L X X I I (1941), 379. Cf. Lucian, Jup. Trag. 41. J. Geffcken, Zwei griechische Apologeten (Leipzig und Berlin, 1907), p. 77; Waszink, p. 91. The latter lists some twenty additional occurrences in Justin, Ps.-Justin, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Clement, Jerome, and Filastrius.