Tuesday, April 25, 2023

And it doesn't translate the other way either

When we pose the question in reverse and ask how the Christians might render the Stoic sense of anthropos within a Christian grammar, we immediately confront an impossibility. Though the Stoic texts do not give an account of the origin of our propensity to disregard our nature and live contra the order of reason, they do assume that our undisciplined tendencies move us in damaging ways away from our nature. And in this one might be lured into seeing promise for synonymy. But as great as it may be, due to our weakness in passion or ignorance of reasons direction, the Stoics judge our damage not to be so great as to be beyond self-repair and the future direction of self-care. As long as we learn the habits of Stoic life and build well the fortress of reason within, there is no need to receive help of any other kind than what we can offer ourselves. It is true that we learn from human exempla how Stoic lives look, but our use for them is only illustrative; we do not depend on them in any fundamental way for the possibility of self-repair and future self-care.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 229–30

<idle musing>
As I've said before, no wonder the gospel was seen as good news! It's a lot of work to try to improve yourself—and it's never-ending, as the continuing publication of self-help books illustrates!

I'll take the infilling of the Holy Spirit as animating power any day over the continual grind of self-improvement! The Spirit motivates via love, which I find much better and easier than self-flagellation, whether literal or metaphorical/verbal.
</idle musing>

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