But what's the reason?

The Stoics assume our task is to reduce our estrangement from our nature, but they give no reason for this estrangement as a feature of human existence, the condition under which all humans come to be and must exist. They talk much about our ability to return to nature and not at all about why the human being qua human being is estranged from its nature in the first place. There are symptoms (passions, for example) but no disease, effects but no cause. In light of the Christian narrative, one might say that the Stoics do not have an account of the human problem that does the work the Fall does for Christians.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 255

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Well, that's the final excerpt from One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions. I hope you learned something from it. I certainly did. As I said at the time, the chapter on epistemology was worth the price of the book. The windows it opened in my mind will be with me for a long time. And the idea of a "second-first language" was extremely interesting.

Next up will be Emil Brunner's The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, the second in his three-volume Church Dogmatics. I was so happy when Wipf & Stock brought it back into print in 2014. But, if you prefer electronic, The Internet Archive has a copy and there are other legal ones out there as well. Personally, when reading theology, I prefer the hard copy.

I'm looking forward to this; I haven't done any serious reading in Brunner since seminary where his The Christian Doctrine of God was used in the introductory theology class (along w/the compendium of Calvin's Institutes and an assortment of John Wesley's sermons). I fought with understanding Brunner for the first hundred or so pages, but once I "got it," I loved it. I thank Dennis Kinlaw to this day for teaching me to read theology—and not using some vapid introduction to theology text, but instead forcing us to read the originals. Ad fontes, as they say ("to the sources").
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The sticking point

It is an obvious but often overlooked point in the comparison of Stoicism with early Christianity that the sticking point of any claims to similarity is Jesus of Nazareth. But it is only by ignoring or somehow attempting to minimize the fact that Christianity’s existence is directly dependent upon—indeed, utterly inconceivable without—Jesus of Nazareth that one can posit shared philosophical agreement between wide or deeply important patterns of speech.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 230

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.
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The Stoic paradox

At the heart of the Stoic story as it is expressed in Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus there is thus a profound tension, dialectic, or, perhaps, paradox. To learn what we are and how to become what we are—rational mortals—we must be inducted into the Stoic way of being. Reason is not what we think for ourselves but a specifically traditioned communal craft. And yet to learn the Stoic craft of reason is to go into ourselves, to become solitary, self-sufficient fortresses of right judgment. There remain other Stoics—and there is the need to teach and be apprenticed—but exactly to the extent that we succeed in the Stoic life, even other Stoics are finally removed from us by the same life that initially drew us together in the common task of learning how to love wisdom.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 215

On the merry-go-round

Ultimately, however, in the Stoic narrative of repair, these three focal points were not fully separate things, each with its own independent logic and modus operandi. They were, rather, tightly interwoven and interdependent ways of talking about the defining contours of the philosophical life: by getting impressions sorted into the right columns we extirpate the passions and grow in virtue; by extirpating the passions we can sort impressions correctly and grow in virtue; and by growing in virtue we can sort impressions correctly and extirpate the passions. Only by developing these three skills simultaneously will we return to our nature.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 213

<idle musing>
Right. No wonder the early Christians found a fertile field! Once you are on the merry-go-round of self-improvement, it's only too easy to get discouraged—which is why in our social media age we curate our appearance. What you see isn't who you are is the watchword. Of course, Stoicism is more honest than that! They were actually working on changing and becoming. We, on the other hand, simply chase a virtual reality and try our best to ignore the real one.

How's that working for you?

Yeah. That's what I thought. Come home to Jesus and let him heal the broken self. As it says in Isa 55:

All of you who are thirsty,
come to the water!
Whoever has no money,
come, buy food and eat!
Without money, at no cost,
buy wine and milk!
2 Why spend money for what isn’t food,
and your earnings
for what doesn’t satisfy?
Listen carefully to me
and eat what is good;
enjoy the richest of feasts. (Isa 55:1–2 CEB)

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Give it time

The Stoic story of human damage presumes that not even reading Stoic works can be done well without reason’s repair. Unlike Augustine’s story of his encounter with Paul’s Romans, we cannot just pick up and read, but must instead be taught how to read. Reading has an order to it, and this order corresponds to the repair that is necessary to make one into a good reader. Which is to say that we can’t be good readers until we become the kind of person who can read well. If the story here tells of a seeming paradox—right reading requires reason’s repair but reason’s repair requires right reading—the Stoics assumed that there was time enough to work it out.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 211

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Sorry. Doesn't work for me. I'm glad the Holy Spirit gives light to the blind; no need to go stumbling around and trying to fix yourself so you can fix yourself. The Holy Spirit does the fixing—and the teaching.
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A variation on a theme of discipleship

Internal to the Stoic way of reasoning is the claim that its pattern is visible in a human life and not apart from it. The particulars of the exercise that is Stoic reasoning are not analytically verifiable statements but lived shapes. Or, perhaps, the statements of logic that are analytically enticing find their analysis in the course of a Stoic life. A Cato, a Musonius, a Seneca, an Epictetus—these are necessary in the strictest sense to what Stoic reasoning is taken to be. Get an exemplum, says Seneca to Lucilius, so that you see reason in the flesh. Call it to mind so that you know how to become what you seek (Ep. 11.10). According to the Stoic story, the path to nature that is reason’s repair involves imitation of those who have gone before and shown the way.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 211

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There's a lot to be said for examples. But as Christians, we are told to imitate Jesus, which is a far higher ideal than a Seneca or a Cato or an Epictetus or a Marcus Aurelius. And, we are given the Holy Spirit to empower and guide us in that path.

Yep. I'll take the Christian way over the Stoic way, even while acknowledging that they have much of value. But, it is more a stream of light in a darkened corner than the flood of light in the revelation of God in Jesus.
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Not a lot of hope in that…

In stark contrast to both the modern scientific sense of evolutionary time and the Jewish or Christian sense that God precedes his creation, the Stoic story has no part without humanity. It is simply assumed that human beings are part of what the cosmic cycle produces or contains. We do not “come on the scene," nor do we go off it. As a thing, though not in its individual parts of course, we have always been here and always will be. The cosmic context in which our collective being is lived is thus eternal. Time may be marked in this or that linear way concurrently with our more limited existence (for example, “We will gather next Thursday after sunrise”), but in the big picture time is not a measurement that corresponds to progress or, for that matter, regress. It is, rather, only a local marker in the eternal pulsation that is our movement to and from the conflagration.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 208