One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions

343 Pages·2016·1.67 MB·English

by  Christopher Kavin Rowe

O T L
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O T L
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The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions
C. Kavin Rowe
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the Ronald and Betty Miller Turner
Publication Fund.
Copyright © 2016 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937657
ISBN 978-0-300-18012-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For William Thomas and Betty Bullard Rowe
In memory of my father and in honor of my mother
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COnTenTs
Preface ix
Introduction 1
part i
one Seneca 13
two Epictetus 43
three Marcus Aurelius 66
part ii
four St. Paul 85
five St. Luke 112
six St. Justin Martyr 143
part iii
seven Can We Compare? 175
eight Traditions in Juxtaposition 206
nine The Argument of Rival Traditions 239
viii Contents
Appendix: Objections and Replies 259
Notes 263
Select Bibliography 317
Index 327
PrefaCe
We often forget that Christianity’s entrance into the world was a surprise. My
previous book, World Upside Down, was an attempt to repaint something of this
surprise according to the only first-century narrative we have about it, the Acts
of the Apostles. In World Upside Down I explored the strangeness, explosive-
ness, and potential for reconfiguration of human life that was initially part of
the Christian way of being in a world that had never seen it. The principal focus
was on what we could call common pagan culture—the central strands of the
web that made being a pagan in the Mediterranean world. What happens when
these strands encounter the Christian mission? Trying to answer this question
according to Acts directed my attention by and large to questions of “religious-
ness,” “politics,” and, because of Paul’s lengthy trial, “jurisprudence.” In partic-
ular, the scenes that displayed pagan resistance to the coming of the Christians
illuminated fundamental features of Christianity’s surprise: businessmen
discerned the danger to their livelihood (Philippi, Ephesus), politicians found
themselves in a pickle (Felix, Festus), local religious authorities saw their
celebrations stop (Lystra), and so on. The modes of resistance varied, but they
were all eventually intertwined with a sort of violence—the type that was
based on the truth that the repentance and cultural reconstitution required
by the Christians amounted to a devastation of constitutive patterns of a long-
established, normal way of life.
But there would have been another mode of resistance as well, strong
philosophical traditions that would claim truth for their particular ways of life.
As a whole I did not treat philosophy in World Upside Down because I was
thinking more about everyday pagan life than about specific strong traditions.
And of course most people were not philosophers. Yet considering the questions
raised by pagan philosophical life is strictly and foundationally necessary to
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